[SPOILERS] Future Equestrian Stories Analyzis Firework! - Part 1: "Rainbow Roadtrip" and the Dark Secret of Hope Hollow · 6:27pm Jun 20th, 2019

This week has seen a massive amount of news about upcoming (or freshly released) official MLP: FiM content, with previews! Which means there is lots to analyze right now and I will cover all of it in three separate blog entries! Here is Part 1, about the "Rainbow Roadtrip" Special:

The "Rainbow Roadtrip" special will air on June 29th on Discovery Family and it is animated in the style of the movie. According to the synopsis, Twilight and her friends will visit a far away town called "Hope Hollow" for the Rainbow Festival that is going to happen there. But when they arrive in Hope Hollow, they discover that the entire town and all of its citizens have become gray, literally:

It's this screenshot that excites and intrigues me the most. With how gray and gloomy everything is there, it looks very creepy and scary. This screenshot alone has an excellent atmosphere that reminds me quite a bit on old black and white horror movies. Especially the fog in the background where the street lamps stand contributes to this unsettling atmosphere. Judging by this screenshot alone, this seems to be a very creepy moment that we are going to see there and as a passionate fan of the horror genre, I can't wait to see how this will play out and it increases my hype meter for this special immensely!
There are a lot of things on this screenshot that intrigue me; the statues Pinkie is standing on, the hole in the roof of the house that can be seen behind Fluttershy and, most importantly, these strange marks on the mountain in the distance behind Rainbow Dash.

The statues show two mares (or perhaps fillies, the details of the statues don't make that completely clear) who seem to be singing. So far nothing too special, but I am wondering if we will find out the story behind these statues. Granted, such statues aren't uncommon in Equestria, similar statues stand in Ponyville and Canterlot and we haven't heard the stories behind them. But every statue has a story behind it, as statues are built for a reason, and since Hope Hollow is a new place for us, the chances are higher that we will learn the story behind it.

The hole in the roof is a little mysterious. It's a thatched roof and as such, the hole shouldn't be hard to fix. Especially considering that the other houses are all in pristine condition. And there is a festival happening, so you would think that the townsponies would go and fix it up quickly, to have everything be beautiful for the festival. Yet, nopony seems to bother to repair the roof.
The synopsis talks about that all color has left Hope Hollow and its citizens, which is evident on the screenshot, and there seems to be some dark force that did this. And, maybe, the loss of color affects the mood of the ponies of Hope Hollow, too. They could be similar to crystal ponies; while crystal ponies can only empower the Crystal Heart when they are happy, the ponies who live in Hope Hollow become depressed and unmotivated to do anything because their happiness depends on their colors. It could be the other way around, too, that something happened that made them depressed and that this let their colors and the colors of their town vanish.
The task that Twilight and her friends will take on there could either be to make the ponies happy again to bring back their colors, or, to undo or defeat whatever let their colors disappear with the goal to return their happiness that way.

If true, that leaves only the question what is exactly responsible for it that all colors vanished from Hope Hollow. Which brings me to what intrigues me the most on this screenshot, the aforementioned marks on the mountain in the distance behind Rainbow Dash.
These marks look like something has left deep trenches in the mountain and immediately when I saw them, I realized that they look like marks left by gigantic claws. Claws that belong to a monstrously huge creature.
Is Hope Hollow haunted by a towering nightmare creature that is even bigger than an entire mountain? Even though Equestria exists in a world where demons and dark creatures are common, we haven't seen a monster in mountain-size so far (not counting Tirek when he absorbed all of Equestria's magic). Even the Tatzlwurm we've seen in Season 4 and in the official comics is still much smaller than a mountain.
Does such a monstrous creature exist in Equestria? It would be epic to see one and to see how Twilight and her friends would deal with slaying a beast like that and these claw marks on the mountain add a bit to the possibility that one exists in Equestria.

My main theory about "Rainbow Roadtrip" is a different one, though, and I saved that for last (largely because it just came to me while writing this analyzis). I can't shake myself off the feeling that the ponies of Hope Hollow aren't what they seem to be and that Twilight and her friends will run into a trap. I'm not entirely sure where this feeling comes from, but it could be the name of the town.
"Hope Hollow" sounds suspicious, as a name for this town. The term "hollow" means nothing positive or good, it means "empty" or "meaningless". Which sounds like it's referencing the condition of the town after losing its colors, but the synopsis implies that Hope Hollow wasn't always like this, that it was a happy and cheerful town, cheerful enough that the resident ponies celebrate a festival dedicated to rainbows. Which the "Hope" part of the town's name fits to, but the second part of its name doesn't.
Why did the ponies who built Hope Hollow give it a name with such a depressing undertone ("Hope is Hollow" = "Hope is Meaningless") if it used to be such a cheerful and happy town? The only way the name would make sense as a reference to the lost colors and a resulting depressed mood of the townsponies would be if it was named after the colors disappeared.
But when that happened, Hope Hollow must have existed for a while already and the ponies living there couldn't know that such a thing would ever happen to their town. With that, naming the town "Hope Hollow" after the loss of the colors would have only made sense if they had built the town only recently and if they had removed the colors by themselves somehow.
Could the ponies of this town have constructed a situation that makes it look like they need the help of Twilight and her friends with saving their town from a threat and then invited them to a fake festival to lure them into a trap?
What seemingly speaks against this theory is the tone of the synopsis, with the mention that Twilight and her friends have to solve the mystery "if they hope to bring the 'rainbow' back to the Rainbow Festival and color back to the lives of their new friends".
It makes it sound like the townsponies are normal and friendly ponies who have become victims of something. But this sentence is written from the perspective of Twilight and her friends. They come to Hope Hollow and see there is a problem, so they obviously try to help. And if it is a trap, they wouldn't know that it is one. The sentence even contains the word "hope" in reference to what they are trying to do.
So, Twilight and her friends hope to solve the problem, but what if they can't solve it because the problem is a lie and the townsponies want to get rid of them? It's also a little ominous how the word "rainbow" is set in quotes in this sentence, indicating that this rainbow isn't real. This could hint at it that the Rainbow Festival Twilight and her friends come to Hope Hollow for doesn't really exist. And why would the townsponies lie about it?
I'm thinking that Twilight and her friends get purposely lured to Hope Hollow because they are targeted by someone. Is it all a massive trap for them? If so, who are the ponies of Hope Hollow? Are they even ponies? Or are they something else? And why do they have interest in attacking them or possibly even killing them? Is there someone who wants to enact revenge on them or someone who is reaching for Equestria with them standing in the way? Could it even be that Grogar is somehow involved in all this? Or is it a completely new enemy we've never heard before?
There are many open questions here, but one thing is clear, this special has many exciting possibilities. Only a little more than one week left until we will find out!

Here are the rest of the screenshots: