Season 3 - Disappointing Start Already

What can I say about the start of the Season other than disappointing. It started out taking chances with it's demographic with it's better than average writing, getting it's brony audience. Now that all takes a step backwards with it's simpler writing and motives and its audience feeding ironically resembling feeding to a children audience.

The lesson was a misfire more about how Twilight was suppose to get the job done than job itself.

How many times does Twilight have to learn that Celestia doesn't have such rigid standards? "I don't need a letter to tell me that." "What gave you that idea of me banishing you?" Something about who exactly needs accomplish was never even mentioned by Celestia so Twilight wouldn't have likely come to that conclusion, she would have prioritized and think about getting it done at all.

And Spike having to do it instead isn't of real relevance outside the fact that Twilight at first stubbornly said he shouldn't do it. So an arbitrary setup for a character arc.

That test was a missed opportunity and where the lesson should have been.

See these crystal ponies need the Heart of the Crystal, but why?

Twilight said that the crystal needed the joy and cheer of the ponies to work, without that it would be useless. So if it just channels those feelings, couldn't the ponies do it just fine without it?

At the climax, when Rarity tells them that the real crystal is actually here, AJ tells her "I think they're not buying it now." Doesn't that actually make the 'Heart' useless now defeat the purpose of it now?

It could have been about how these crystal ponies had it in themselves to have hope and optimism to overcome tyranny.

But instead they need some Magic object to rely on to take care of them. An object that ironically was more dependent on the ponies than the ponies were of it to work in the first place.

And as for King Sombra. There was nothing to him other than some vague visual references to Aku from Last Samurai. Remember that Lauren and some of the MLP animators worked with Genny Tartakovsky. So expect the least amount of fanfiction for this guy.