My Review of MLP Season Eight, Episodes Twenty-Five and Twenty Six, "School Raze," Pts. 1 & 2 (Spoilers) · 5:31pm Oct 15th, 2018
"You know, you ponies got it all wrong. Friendship isn't magic. Friendship is power! With Twilight and her lackeys out of my way, all of Equestria will bow to me! The future Empress of Friendship!"
What a finale. What a villainess. What a setting. What a plot. WHAT A TWEEST.
Where to begin... It was nice to see tons more worldbuilding done, Tirek's and Tartarus' cameos, the New Mane Six saving the day, if not the world, and it was also good to see Chancellor the Brain shed his racism after being fed a heaping helping of humble pie. But all that's just the frosting on the cake. What I wanna talk about here is not the episode per se—that's a solid 9 out of 10 (it's seemingly a bit rushed on the outside with all the plots being thrown around, but they come together in a superly duperly satisfying ending).
Who I want to talk about is that sweet-faced, rosy-cheeked little mastermind of a filly, Cozy Glow.
By now you know what she's about and what she did. We were shown some hints of Cozy Glow's darker side through select scenes from prior episodes and musical cues; of course we thought it would eventually lead up to something surely more. But never was it quite obvious enough to show me what levels Cozy would sink to in her efforts to accrue more friends, and therefore, in her eyes, more power. From the first episode we saw her in, from the first time she said "Well, golly," we knew something was up with her. Something subtle for sure, but something truly... off. The show took time for this delectable little fruit to grow and sprout from the branch, and now with the dawning of School Raze, that plot line is finally ripe and ready for picking.
Now, as I did, some of you might at first think that Cozy might have something in common with cruel and spiteful spoiled child supervillain tropes à la Princess Morbucks from the Powerpuff Girls (not the squigshit reboot, the original one supervised by the one and only Lauren Faust) or Darla Dimple from Cats Don't Dance. But Cozy Glow isn't a spoiled child with too much time and envy on her hooves. Cozy Glow isn't a jealous celebrity, or a snooty higher up attempting to maintain her status against the lesser masses through shifty means, or show that she's the best out there. Cozy Glow is an individual who started off at the bottom of the friendship ladder, and only managed to rise up to the tip by virtue of wit, charm, intelligence, and a dash of pure ruthlessness. And she did it all for the wrong reasons. In other words, she is an utter sociopath (and I mean that; she has all the elements of one!), and a very cunning and ambitious one at that. The way she reads people and taps into their wants and needs before they even realize it, then hands to them exactly what it was they desired, sugarcoated in all the essential ingredients, is a remarkable trait; of course, to her own ends, she abuses the ever-loving heck out of this skill. She even tells right off that the CMC, the ones who taught her the fundamentals about friendship out of the goodness of their hearts, are working as a diversion against her before they can give off so much as a hint to the fact and gets rid of them immediately without so much as a smidgen of self-disgust or remorse.
I still can't believe this show, one oh-so clearly aimed "strictly at little girls of simple, youthful mindsets," managed to capture such a unique, complex and charismatic individual as Cozy Glow so well. The way she manipulates all sides around her—the school, the Mane Six, and Chancellor the Brain (possibly even Tirek, if she ever pretended to have a desire to aid him in return for his insight)—to her own benefit by twisting about their objectives and merits with utter proficiency to win new pawns into her plans is as beautiful as it is abjectly terrifying. That rook chess piece cutie mark of hers suits her well. Also, she owns (and hugs) what seems to be a genuine pony skull, which scares me to think of where she got it from.
How is it that the people running the show managed to find such a devious method of twisting their own morals onto themselves to produce such a villain? To take the concept this beloved show preaches so dearly about, friendship, and have a character wring it around with all the mastery of a child with a toy to gain an insidious level of power over other people is amazing, and I can't say that enough. I'm willing to bet that our new triad of unreformed villains—Cozy Glow, Tirek, and Chrysalis—will find some method of teaming up in the next, and potentially final season of MLP:FiM. I wonder how Chryssie will break them out of hell- err... Tartar Sauce.
I love this show.
