Finale Review · 1:33am Oct 13th, 2019
And so pony comes to an end.
First, the two-parter. It was... not great.
The Grogar-Discord twist was terrible, raises a lot of questions, leaves a lot of plot holes, and relies on Discord having an Idiot Ball shoved up his ass. I was afraid Grogar would turn out to be an anti-climax, with him beaten easily by the heroes or the villain trio, but this was even worse than that. Grogar's Bell also turns out to be The Worf Effect MacGuffin, because with it, Tirek easily beats up the Pillars, Chrysalis easily beats up Starlight, and Cozy beats up Celestia and Luna. I like the idea of the bell empowering them, but their defeats of the heroes are too quick and easy. But then by contrast, the idiot ball swings back to the villains, who repeatedly make terrible decisions and have more trouble fighting the heroes now that they've been drained of their powers than when they had them. Tirek took on the Pillars with ease, but he can't take out Applejack at a full sprint; Chrysalis took out Starlight, but can't beat Pinkie when she's right next to her. Not to mention they keep bringing Grogar's bell with them even though they have no intent to use it and know full well if the sisters and Discord get their magic back, it's gonna be a problem.
Twilight's shattered self-confidence was totally forced and regressed all her character development over the season, including the reassurances she was growing for realsies this time and was confident in herself at last. It made her final speech ring hollow when she's just going through the motions she's already gone through before, and now there's no way I buy it because it was sold to us hard this last season and then revoked. Her angsting over the Elements is especially bad because they used the power of the Elements to beat Sombra without the Elements themselves. This finale seems like the characters just completely forgot the events of the season premiere.
The racism subplot, and by association the Windigos, was stupid and pointless, it was very weakly set up and didn't amount to much and the windigos ultimately meant nothing, they were just a background asset while the heroes handled the trio. I don't know why this plot point was included, it just wasted time. And as a whole things just seemed small, Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy are a huge threat in concept, but they barely did anything in this episode besides drain the heroes of magic, they seemed to spend more time standing around arguing about what to do. It's kinda sad how their individual finale episodes had them all as bigger, more effective threats alone, than they were here united.
Okay, I've bitched a lot, but there were a lot of great things in this episode. The final battle once the calvary arrived was very well done, I loved seeing everyone come together as one nation to fight the trio. I liked the powered-up designs for Cozy Glow and Chrysalis powered up, and I loved the jokes about Cozy and Pinkie temporarily getting Discord's powers and becoming insane gods. And I liked the dual reference to the S1 finale and Avengers with them going out for donuts. I just wish the set-up for this finale was handled better.
On to the epilogue, which was much better. I laughed very frequently, especially at Twilight tripping over her coronation gown. I liked the grown-up designs for the cast and think we got just enough of them to be satisfactory without spending the entire epilogue as a "where are they now". Also, ALL THE SHIPS ARE CANNON AND SUNSET IS CANON, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I love it, I am sincere in loving it, all the ships are canon and they have kids and I don't care how much pandering it is, I ate it up and want seconds. And the final song was great, great seeing all the cast, and very touching and warm.
Overall, Episodes 24 and 25 were a disappoint, but 26 was very good and a suitable ending for the show.
I did my blog earlier on the show ending, go read it if you want. FiM, it has been a wonderful six years and I will never forget it. Thank you for everything.
the discord thing would have worked so much better with 1 change
he was trying to redeem the 3
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I was thinking that too. "Well, all of Equestria's other threats have reformed, I thought if I brought those three together, forced them to work together, and maybe gave them someone to work together against..."
I like how Starlight by herself is more effective fighting Chrysalis than all The Pillars combined fighting Tirek. She even got a cool action movie one-liner! I also liked how The Pillars, the Main 6 and the Student 6 fire a triple powered Harmony Beam™ against the three villains that represent the past, present and future (or, more accurately, the distant past, the recent past and the present, but you get my point).
Edit because I was fast:
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This was LITERALLY my thought process. I thought that it would be that Discord thought because HE reformed because he made a friend, that the same thing would work on other villains.
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indeed
it would even line up perfectly with discords character he would want to show how far he has come
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I disagree, it would have been slightly less stupid but still pretty stupid. But despite what some people think, it was totally in character for Discord to help in the worst way possible.
Honestly I like the idea behind the twist but the reason it didn't work is the same reason it didn't work in Iron Man 3, you can't pull a bait and switch on a villain people actually want to see you're supposed to do it the other way around.
That said I loved the finale, best part was definitely Starlight being a total badass throughout.
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I was waiting for the REAL Grogar to show up after all, like his spirit was trapped in the bell or the Windigos were like his spirit, or something.
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Well maybe in season 10 (what they're changing the name of the comics to).
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I have to admit, this is what I was hoping Discord was going for when he reveled he brought them together.
Oh, and apparently becoming an alicorn is as easy as simply powering up on enough powerful magic, Sunset was right all along.
Still, canon ships and canon Sunset.
Wait, Sunset was in the finale? O.o I totally missed her! At least Tempest was there.
Conversely, I loved the two-parter but I'm really cool on the finale. :|
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https://derpibooru.org/2127281
According to a leaked script from the big leak, the epilogue included a flashback to a couple years after her coronation where Twilight went around getting her friends together, and included a chat with Sunset by the mirror where Sunset mentioned she had become Principal of Canterlot High
Meh. I think the pros far outweighed the cons in this case, but to each their own, I suppose.
I think we're all just glancing over the fact that the war is over, and AppleDash has finally conquered RariJack.
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No, the war has just gone interdimensional.
I’ll actually defend the Windigos plot point, I think that thematically it was the strongest part of the two parter. While I found it obnoxious that basically all the background characters were so willing to abandon everyone else, it did the best job at showing why Twilight should take over Equestria. She inspired ponies to be better. Not just one student, but a wide collection of different ponies and creatures. When everyone came together in the end after the lowest point, it truly showed what Twilight accomplished... and then they ruined it with by having Celestia, Luna, and Discord decide to petrify them and keep them as a (implied to be aware) trophy, with the implication that they plan to keep them that way forever. Seriously, what the hell was that ending? Pretty much agree with everything else except the bell being a Worfing bell. In order to Worf, the characters need to actually have some wins under there belts, and the only non Tree/artifact or love nuke win they had (and showed) was Sombra round 2.
Twilight's regression was because of Discord! Him bringing back the three villains and revealing himself to be Grogar made Twilight believe he basically was a safety net against all other threats and her victories weren't actually real because of it! Discord messed with Twilight's fragile mental state for the sake of trying to give her confidence for no good reason, how many times has he tried to mess with Twilight only for it to backfire on him in spectacular fashion?!
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Discord is just really bad at being good.
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Both sides technically win. Pony gets AppleDash and EQG gets RariJack now we just need someone to write a fic about an incredibly awkward double date.
I was actually a bit behind (still on season 8), and was hoping to catch up during the week cause I believed that the last episode would be released as a 2 parter. However, upon reading Sunset was cannon I immediately went to check out the epilogue episode. So cool, and I loved it. Definitely the best way the show could have ended, minus the awkward looking Twilight, I much prefer her normal alicorn design. Seeing everyone change and move on is definitely bittersweet and a true lesson in life I feel most of us can relate too. I definitely feel that lesson, as someone who used to travel a lot, I've got lifelong friends too many miles away and can't help but feel the bittersweetness of knowing it's never gonna be the way it was but that's not bad. I'll definitely have to finish it off the normal way though. Overall, while I don't agree with some ships I could look past it cause everyone is happy and that's what counts. Also cause with fanfiction I can just imagine whatever I want. Also sunset needed more but I appreciate her being shown at least. Sunset best pony.
So glad you mentioned the lack of villainy. Everyone makes a big deal about Cozy, but she and her allies in the episode, but they just blew up the roof and roughed up some guards. Cozy...is actually the least threatening villain and her plans are self-defeating and terrible. Chrysalis is better at this and why wasn't Tirek more destructive? He went berserker last time.
The Chrysalis vs Starlight scene was nice though. So was Twilight protecting her friends.