"A Matter of Principals" Review: Discord vs. Starlight

Season 8 is finally back and it's already off to an excellent start, with another Friendship School episode! A Friendship School episode in which we see Starlight Glimmer losing it and killing Discord..... What? No, I'm not kidding. This actually happened!
When Twilight and her friends got called away by the map for a new mission, that requires all six of them again for once, Twilight suddenly had to face the problem that her school will not have any teachers left to educate the students. So she went and appointed Starlight as temporary headmare until they are back and left her in charge of the school.
Soon after their departure, Discord showed up and made clear that he wants to be principal of the school and started to make "suggestions" about how to run the school during the teachers' absence. When Starlight sent him away because Twilight entrusted her with the school, he reacted peeved and started to sabotage Starlight's efforts, by altering the entire appearance of her office and by hiring Iron Will, Cranky and a dragonsneeze tree (his schedule was free) as replacement teachers.
Iron Will taught the students to force others to be their friends via intimidation and made Yona aggressive like he did with Fluttershy a long time ago, Cranky abused Cozy Glow, Gallus and a few others and let them work as his servants and the dragonsneeze tree made Spike and Smolder sneeze and almost burn down the classroom (and, unfortunately, Smolder singed Silverstream's mane, that's the real tragedy here!).
Starlight ended up kicking Discord out of the school but, after Starlight had hired Spitfire, Trixie and Maud as new teachers, Discord showed up again as a student and continued his sabotage by disturbing Trixie's lesson. When he summoned a bugbear to force Sandbar, Silverstream and other students to run more laps, after Spitfire's sports lesson was already over, Starlight stepped in, saved the students and almost attacked Discord when he refused to stop his sabotage of the school.
An intervention by Spike, having reminded Starlight that Discord is her friend, failed when Discord insulted Starlight by calling her an "incompetent, power-hungry unicorn" and Starlight blasted him with a huge surge of magic and disintegrated his body. Which is something I can see a lot of bronies call "character regression", but if you pay attention during the episode, you'll see that Starlight only did this after Discord dissed her and insulted her. Starlight still knows everything she learned and she has nothing forgotten. She just reacted emotional there after having gotten her feelings hurt like that.
Which is something that, as Spike accurately predicted, just made things worse, though, because Discord returned as a ghost (!) and continued to terrorize the students during a "Spellvenger Hunt" that Twilight had planned out before leaving.
This is something very impressive because when Spike said to Starlight that he thought she had only banished Discord, Starlight replied that she has, but only his body, and that his ghost rampages in the school now. So, what we have here is Starlight having killed a friend of hers in the heat of the moment because she lost her temper when she got insulted and confronted with her past misdeeds.
This might not be the darkest thing we have ever seen in MLP: FiM ("A Health of Information" still holds that trophy), but a friend killing another friend is once again one of these things where I am surprised that they dared to put this into the show. Even now, they still manage to surprise with MLP: FiM and I trust them enough to keep this up for many more seasons to come.
In a surprise twist at the end of the episode, Starlight gave Discord his body back and apologized to him after having realized that he felt left out when Twilight did not give him a job in the school and she offered him to be her vice-principal. I already said this in a review for an episode of Season 5, but here it shows again that Twilight still doesn't trust Discord and, from what it looks now, might never really trust him. Which is something you really can't blame her for, after the way Discord has messed with her several times in the past and when he does things like the ones we saw him doing in this episode simply for feeling left out. Even Starlight saw it as necessary to tell him that he should just ask the next time.
Unfortunately for Discord, Twilight and her friends returned suddenly, revealing that Discord had manipulated their cutie marks and the map to get them out of the way for a while so he can try becoming the principal of Twilight's school, which robbed him off his newfound position again.

Other than Discord's schemes and Starlight's reaction on them, what I find especially interesting about this episode is some new lore we got out of it. For her "Spellvenger Hunt", Twilight has organized six legendary, magical artifacts that Celestia donated to her for the school, one for each of the nations Silverstream and her friends represent at the school:

The Amulet of Aurora (Hippogriffs), the Talisman of Mirage (Changelings), the Helm of Yikslur (Yaks), the Crown of Grover (Griffons), Knuckerbucker's Shell (Dragons) and Clover the Clever's cloak (Ponies).

About a few of those, we have heard already. Clover the Clever is a pony everyone will know from the tale of Equestria's founding, Grover is the first king of the griffons we heard about in "The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone" in Season 5 and Yikslur is apparently the name giver of the yak festival Pinkie Pie was invited to in Season 7. But Aurora, Mirage and Knuckerbucker are entirely new names, important historic figures of the hippogriffs, the changelings and the dragons. The library of Twilight's school even has portraits of Aurora, Mirage, Yikslur and Grover hanging in it.
There was not much revealed about them and not what they could do with their magical artifacts and we already knew Clover and Grover, but apparently, every nation, even the hippogriffs, changelings, yaks and dragons, have their own ancient, national heroes.
I am especially curious about what Mirage did for the changelings to become a hero and how she (he?) got famous, as the changelings were still evil back when Mirage lived, indicated by the portrait in the library. I hope we will find out more about them one day.

Lastly, as a friendship school episode, "A Matter of Principals" has of course tons of screentime for the Student Six! We have seen quite a lot of interaction between them and things they did. As always, I loved Silverstream the most here. The curiosity with which she approaches pretty much everything, be it the concept that learning can be fun or that she never ran as fast as she did when she fled from the bugbear before, is contagious and intoxicating. I can't help but love her more every time I see her. <3
Gallus was great, as well. Especially his interactions with Silverstream. When Twilight announced the Spellvenger Hunt, he was dissing Silverstream for not knowing so many things because she was underwater for such a long time, but it didn't take Silverstream long to tease him in return, when he revealed during the hunt that he had listened during a lesson for once, making him embarrassed and worried about being seen as an egghead. I like this teasing relationship that exists between them and I hope we get to see more of this.

Another thing that excites me a lot are the Twittermites that Discord summoned. In "Bloom & Gloom" during Season 5, we saw them for the first time and ever since then, I wondered if the Twittermites are actually real or if they were just a figment of Applebloom's imagination. Now we finally have an answer on that question, more than three years later, and they indeed exist!
This lets me now think about my theory again, that big cities like Manehattan hold Twittermites captive inside power plants to use the electricity they create. This theory of mine now got validated a bit, the actual existence of the Twittermites makes that possible now!

A thing that makes me a little worried is how Twilight and her friends left the school almost "unattended" to "run off on an adventure". Sounds familiar? It's what Chancellor Neighsay voiced as concern when he heard that Twilight wants to open a school. This incident confirmed his concerns and it will not make him happier about what Twilight is doing.
We have possibly seen the beginning of future trouble here.....

And that's it for my review of "A Matter of Principals"! A review of "The Hearth's Warming Club" will follow tomorrow!