A review of Season 8 · 6:10am Feb 2nd, 2019
The moral of the Season: Don't mess with the Tree of Harmony!
All right, there's a little more to S8 than the sapient Tree becoming even more OP, and the newest hero of Equestria. For the cold, hard, sad truth, let's get guest blogger Applejack out here. AJ if you please...
Sugarcube... The way things went this season, we might as well go right into G5 since the writers are running out of ideas.
Thank you, Element of Honesty. Season 8 pretty much waived the white flag since they did everything short of running out the shark ponies and kangaroo-hybrids. Let's list all of the shark-jumping moments this season gave us:
- Introduced the Student Six to replace the Mane 6 as our primary characters;
- Shipped off secondary characters (Big Mac x Sugar Belle, Maud Pie and Mudbriar);
- Flanderized Chrysalis, literally demoting her to mid-level Boss;
- Introduced another race in the Kirins - Allright that one was COOL!
The show needed the Student Six because the arcs for most of the primary and secondary characters have been completed. The CMC are now helping other species that have no cutie marks. Rarity now has three stores. Rainbow Dash is a Wonderbolt. Discord is so bored, he has to resort to being a jerk again when Fluttershy is not around. Speaking of Flutters, she already had multiple self-confidence episodes AND got an help build an animal Physical Rehab Facility. Twilight built a School of Friendship to justify her Princess title. The only real character development we got from the Mane 6 this season was Pinkie Pie learning to play the yovidaphone.
Hey, we got a Celestia episode!
And Spike grew a pair of wings! So now he can fly. Now maybe we can get to Scootaloo next season...
Speaking of what to do with regular characters, Starlight Glimmer. What is her role? I means playing the straight man role in the Trixie/Starlight comedy duo. Will they ship her with Sunburst? Are they gonna ship her with Trixie (or make it unofficial like they have done with Lyra x Bon Bon, and Octavia x Vinyl)? Will she do some actual guidance counseling to the Student Six? Will they give her another arch-enemy now that they nerfed Chryssie? Maybe the CMC should help her find her place in this series.
There's only one card left in the deck that they haven't played yet - the time skip. The introduction of the Student 6 is the reason they haven't resorted to this act of desperation. It is usually saved for the series finale as an epilogue. Sure they are plenty of ideas left to use for S9 in terms of world building and character growth, but S8 has shown us that the series has made the turn, and it's heading down the stretch towards the finish line.
But hey, we got Season 2 of Equestria Girls, right?
