My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Season 8 Episode 13: "The Mean 6" (SPOILERS) · 4:04pm Jun 9th, 2018
In which Chrysalis makes Dark Evil Clones of the Mane Six.
When the Mane Six and Starlight go off on a friendship retreat, a weird photographer shows up at the school to take pictures of each friendship teacher--and also steal a hair from each of their manes.
Spoiler alert, it's Chrysalis. She's lost her mind, and has a new scheme to build a new "hive" of ponies by using her "Mean Six" to steal the Elements of Harmony and weaponize them.
The "Mean Six" are basically the Discorded Mane Six all over again.
The Mane Six are headed for the Tree of Harmony for nostalgia, while the Mean Six and Chrysalis are searching for the Tree of Harmony and being generally a bunch of dicks--and Mean Twilight is VERY MUCH The Starscream here.
...calling it now, her Derpibooru tag will be Twilight Starscream.
Members of the Mane Six and the Mean Six keep tripping over each other, but few of them ever figure out what's going on. Worse, Flutterbitch turns the entire forest against Fluttershy, leaving poor Fluttershy a quivering ball of tears.
The constant runnings-into of opposites stretch tempers to the breaking point, leading to Pinkie Pie snapping at the REAL Twilight after a bad encounter with Twilight Starscream, leaving Real Twilight in tears and heartbroken. Meanwhile, Chrysalis realizes Twilight Starscream plans to betray her, but Twilight Starscream has a plan to guarantee Chrysalis needs the Mean Six.
Chrysalis finally rounds up her cohorts; Starlight and Rarity catch up to Twilight and Pinkie Pie fighting with each other. When everyone bickers with each other, Twilight calls order and reminds everyone they're all friends, and the Mane Six and Starlight make up and continue onward to the campsite.
The Mean Six beat them there and destroy the campsite for funsies. Twilight Starscream has them all go for the Elements, revealing her plan to Chrysalis, who tries to destroy her. Twilight Starscream is able to fend her off with her own alicorn magic (YIKES), but the negativity of the Mean Six angers the Tree of Harmony, which snares them in its magic and destroys them. Twilight Starscream dies cursing the pettiness of her "friends", and Chrysalis, her plan thwarted, flies away--having lost the battle, but now aware of the EXACT location of the Tree of Harmony.
Meanwhile, the Mane Six find their wrecked campsite and share a laugh, blissfully unaware of everything that just went down...
The main complaint I'm seeing about this episode is the slow pace and exposition. I, personally, find that to be the best thing here--it's not in a rush to speedball through this plot. It's taking its time to establish a serious threat to the Mane Six--even if they're all a bit on the dipshit side and Chrysalis has clearly cracked her chitin. It feels like this episode is setting up something bigger down the line, and it was a fun watch--though I half expected there to be a TBC at the end. So I'm giving it an 8/10.
And with that, MLP is on hiatus until late summer/early fall!
This is easily one of the funniest episodes of the series.
It's also my personal second favorite of the season, and my fifth favorite of the series.
When the Elements were blinking black I thought the Mean 6 were corrupting them somehow, but it now occurs to me that it was actually the elements realizing that the clones weren't their owners.
Arrrrrgh! No confrontation, all that buildup and no confrontation! The
DiscordedChrysalised Mean 6 should have been noticed IMO.The bit where Twilight diffused the situation even though she didn't realise what the root cause was was pretty cool though. It's nice to see how far she's come.
I thought it was a TBC after all.... remember how the logs looked when the Tree "destroyed" them? It would be an interesting twist if those turned into changeling versions of the M6. After all, that was sorta how Chrysalis was created in the
mangacomic.I love how without minions to monologue to Chrysalis has resorted to talking to herself. Evil Twilight is a lot of fun, she reminds me of Evil Ron from Kim Possible (though clearly not as intense as him) in that she automatically realizes the obvious way to beat the heroes and how overly complicated Chrysalis' whole revenge scheme is when she is capable of walking right up to the main 6 undetected.
Not sure if we'll see Chrysalis again this season but this was a pretty fun appearance for her and a good way to end the show before the hiatus.
theres going to be clop of the mean 6 isnt there
I was expecting this episode.
Chrysalis is character I do like a lot and this was pretty much an episode dedicate to her.
Yes, the mean six are a rehash of the discorded mane six, but they serve their purpose. Mean Twilight sure was the most entertaining to watch.
The Tree of Harmony sure is an entity you musn't fool around if it can you wipe you out as simple as this.
I really liked the fact that this was almost exactly like one of those episodes where the villain has this grand plan, but things keep going wrong, and they just give up. Yeah, Chrysalis really should've realized the Mean 6 weren't gonna be able to even use the Elements of Harmony to bend them to her will; it worked great for Discord, but not Chryssi. The pacing was pretty good, but it did leave me wanting a bit more. Chrysalis is that villain who always comes back. Twilight Starscream is a good name for corrupted Twilight; she almost had Chryssi, but it blew up in her face.
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I found myself laughing a bit.
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Probably.
I don't know, it doesn't feel like much happened here. And Chrysalis' entire plan seemed doomed from the start anyway, because how does she think evil versions of the mane six will be able to channel the virtues tied to the Elements of Harmony?
If she's doing this to get back at Starlight, why not just kidnap her or make an evil clone of her instead?
Let me repeat myself.
Anytime someone snips and keeps your hair or DNA to collect like that and run off before you can see them or you don’t know what they’ll do with them, it’s a map for trouble!! XD
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Yup.
This is a bet I will not be taking in any way shape or form.
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It's meant to be played for laughs evil Twilight points out right at the start that Chrysalis' is plan is way too complicated and that there are simpler ways to get revenge but being a cartoon super villain Chrysalis doesn't really think of simple schemes.
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True. I think they missed an opportunity there, however. It would have been really cool if instead of Discordified Twilight, Chrysalis instead got Midnight Sparkle. True, the wings and fiery domino mask would have been impossible to hide from the others, but it would have been worth the look of shock on Chrysalis' face when she realized that evil Twilight isn't necessarily obedient Twilight.
I just love the weird feeling of seeing the mirrors of the main cast getting “erased” in such a weird way.
I don’t know how to describe watching it XD
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What's a TBC again?
Sounds like an interesting episode.
From this break down two things come to mind.
One: This whole taking a hair thing to make clones, I could swear i've heard or read this being done already. If so was it in the comics? I have falling way way behind in the comics. Or was it a piece of fanfiction.
Two: which I will discover upon watching the ep. However, how do they get separated enough to cause this mix up. There is practically a road to the tree how would they get to the point where clones of them can come and go with no one noticing. Also something else, if the campsite was waiting for them, who went ahead to set things up for them.
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Ah.
I expected at least a super-sized episode because my satellite guide said LPS didn't start until 12:15. Therefore, I was slightly disappointed when it ended at the normal time.
I liked this episode a lot more than most of the rest of you seemed to. It's now headcanon that Chrysalis lost the reverberation effect to her voice after she got loveblasted at the royal wedding.
Chryssy's clearly a couple of bees short of a hive these days. I understand why she came up with such a cockamamie scheme, though. She has no more drones, and even if she did, they'd have no idea what the Mane 6 are like, so they couldn't convincingly mimic them.
I love the Mean 6. They're like the Discorded 6, taken up to 11. Someone at Equestria Daily mentioned a saying about minions that applies here: Smart, Loyal, Evil -- choose any two. Applejerk's increasingly convoluted stories were a hoot, and was anyone having more fun with her lines than Tabitha this week? To her credit, Traitor Sparkle would've succeeded had the Tree of Harmony not sniffed out what the Mean 6 really were and put a stop to that shit right there.
Another thing this episode did expertly was show why the Mane 6 were superior in every way to the ersatz Mean 6. The Mane 6 stayed together, or tried to, while the Mean 6 took the first opportunity to go off on their own. When misunderstandings cropped up, the Mane 6 worked them out. The Mean 6 fell into more infighting. When their plans didn't go as planned, the Mane 6 rolled with it. The Mean 6 fell apart.
So, when is this mid-season hiatus over?
This was a good episode. And I approve of "Twilight Starscream" XD
There's some interesting - disturbing - implications to stuff from this episode. Like you said, Mean-Twilight has alicorn magic of her own... and with the fact that it's now possible to clone someone just through a photograph and a piece of hair? Um, yikes...
Was the title "Pahat ponit" for anybody else?
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Well, "death", as they were never really "alive", just very imperfect magical copies.
my impression of the episode:
Chrysalis is turning into the team-rocket of MLP.
Just as incompetent and useless.
So much fun. That ending was messed up though
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Yeah, it was dark for a kids show.
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I think it mostly was meant as a funny episode rather than anything too consequential, with the possible exception of Chrysalis now knowing where the Tree of Harmony is located. That could be a setup for something in the future.
As for her plan, I think her point was to hurt Starlight, and it would be extremely painful for her to believe all her friends had turned on her. In some ways it would kind of parallel what Starlight did to Twilight at the end of season 5 in keeping her from making friends and having to suffer they the results of that. I doubt that Chrysalis knew about that but maybe the writers were going for that a little.
I just want to know where RD’s clone was going, and how anyone caught up to her. That, and where the actual photographer was, if there ever was one...Until stayed otherwise, I’m gonna day that Photo Finish found her and the two are still in some sort of legendary battle.
Also, Starving Chryssalis seems a lot more fun. Insane from the hunger, focused on revenge only, and now unwilling to put up with anyone else’s incompetency or machinations. I like it.