Ranking the Twilight Sparkle Episodes (From Worst to Best), Version 2 · 4:08pm Oct 19th, 2019
This list has been a long time coming for the update, Twilight got an additional nine episodes in Season 9 (intentional or not I have no idea) and that bumps her total number of episodes all the way up to 56! I'd say that translates into roughly a quarter of all the episodes of the show. If I tried to explain why each episode ended up where it did we'd be here forever. So I'm going to do the same thing I did for the princess episodes ranking list, I'll just list all the episodes and bold the newcomers, then I'll explain briefly at the end why each new episode got placed where it did. Like many other lists of this nature we're looking at how they represent the character, not necessarily just the ones with the best (or worst) overall quality, and as always it's purely the result of my personal opinion so please respect it. Here's the first version, from February. Now strap yourselves in, there's a lot of ground to cover!
56. A Trivial Pursuit (Season 9, Episode 16)
55. What About Discord? (Season 5, Episode 22)
54. Look Before You Sleep (Season 1, Episode 8)
53. The Point of No Return (Season 9, Episode 5)
52. Bridle Gossip (Season 1, Episode 9)
51. Owl's Well that Ends Well (Season 1, Episode 24)
50. Feeling Pinkie Keen (Season 1, Episode 15)
49. Winter Wrap Up (Season 1, Episode 11)
48. Boast Busters (Season 1, Episode 6)
47. and 46. The Return of Harmony Parts 1 and 2 (Season 2, Episodes 1 and 2)
45. and 44. The Cutie Re-Mark Parts 1 and 2 (Season 5, Episodes 25 and 26)
43. Three's A Crowd (Season 4, Episode 11)
42. A Bird in the Hoof (Season 1, Episode 22)
41. A Flurry of Emotions (Season 7, Episode 3)
40. It's About Time (Season 2, Episode 20)
39. Luna Eclipsed (Season 2, Episode 4)
38. Castle, Sweet Castle (Season 5, Episode 3)
37. Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 (Season 4, Episode 22 in production order/21 in airing)
36. P.P.O.V (Pony Point of View) (Season 6, Episode 22)
35. Top Bolt (Season 6, Episode 24)
34. and 33. School Daze Parts 1 and 2 (Season 8, Episodes 1 and 2)
32. Friendship University (Season 8, Episode 16)
31. No Second Prances (Season 6, Episode 6)
30. The Hooffields and McColts (Season 5, Episode 23)
29. and 28. The Ending of the End Parts 1 and 2 (Season 9. Episodes 24 and 25)
27. Magic Duel (Season 3, Episode 5)
26. and 25. A Canterlot Wedding Parts 1 and 2 (Season 2, Episodes 25 and 26)
24. MMMystery on the Friendship Express (Season 2, Episode 24)
23. The Ticket Master (Season 1, Episode 3)
22. and 21. Friendship is Magic Parts 1 and 2 (Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2)
20. and 20. The Crystal Empire Parts 1 and 2 (Season 3, Episodes 1 and 2)
18. and 17. Twilight's Kingdom Parts 1 and 2 (Season 4, Episodes 25 and 26)
16. Twilight Time (Season 4, Episode 15)
15. A Health of Information (Season 7, Episode 18 in production order/20 in airdate)
14. Celestial Advice (Season 7, Episode 1)
13. Magical Mystery Cure (Season 3, Episode 13)
12. Sparkle's Seven (Season 9, Episode 4)
11. The Hearth's Warming Club (Season 8, Episode 15)
10. and 9. The Beginning of the End Parts 1 and 2 (Season 9, Episodes 1 and 2)
8. Amending Fences (Season 5, Episode 12)
7. Horse Play (Season 8, Episode 7)
6. The Last Problem (Season 9, Episode 26)
5. Once Upon a Zeppelin (Season 7, Episode 21 in production order/22 in airdate)
4. and 3. Princess Twilight Sparkle Parts 1 and 2 (Season 4, Episodes 1 and 2)
2. The Summer Sun Setback (Season 9, Episode 17)
1. Lesson Zero (Season 2, Episode 3)
Now allow me to explain why each episode ends up where it does. "A Trivial Pursuit" takes everything that was bad about Twilight's previous freak out examples, adds in some of that naraccisim we saw her display in "What About Discord?" that made her unsympathetic, and she crosses a line that she's never called out for. Heck, she starts out the episode already completely frazzled and freaking out, and she only gets worse from there. It was by far the worst outing for her bar none. "The Point of No Return" is so low because of all the Twilight freak out cases this one is by far the weakest. She's obsessing over an overdue library book, oh the horror! Never mind the fact that it apparently wasn't so important that the library would try to contact her, or Princess Celestia would try to send notice to Twilight. By the time we get to something actually interesting, Twilight feeling guilty about what happened to Dusty Pages, the episode is already almost over. "The Ending of the End" does give a justifiable reason for Twilight to regress as a character, Discord mind screwed her and his actions are a textbook example of gaslighting (the act of making someone question their sanity). But it's still jarring that she goes back to that and has just given up all hope, basically leaving her friends to die. What exactly would she have done if Discord hadn't freed them? Was she just going to wait for Equestria to freeze over? And in the end, she kind of ends the two parter where she started, meaning that there was no reason for Discord to test her in the way he did and should've realized it. "Sparkle's Seven" is a group effort, and I do question how Twilight never planned even a little to distract or remove Shining Armor or Princess Celestia, if it's a test of security then wouldn't the first step be to remove the head of security? It doesn't matter how many security systems you disable if you don't account for the one who designed it, because that just means they'll know and they'll be able to stop the sabotage. But she really isn't obsessing over the crown, in fact when Rarity takes over she's perfectly content to just be an observer until she's told to go back to the original plan. "The Beginning of the End" at least lampshades Twilight's freak outs, and you have to think about it from her point of view. She's been asked on short notice to take over and rule Equestria, no planning, no preparation, no transition. Just getting tossed the keys and told "Good luck". Of course she's going to panic, of course she's going to be stressed out, the princesses are asking a lot of her on short notice. And to be fair, when things really get rough she's able to pull herself together fairly quickly, which means Discord's plan already didn't work. "The Last Problem" showed Twilight as a ruler quite well and also addressed her concerns in the past about taking over, it would've been great to focus on it more but what we got wasn't bad. And "The Summer Sun Setback" as great as it is, does have one problem in that we never saw this change in Twilight directly. It just happened off-screen and now we're seeing the end result of it. "Lesson Zero" showed Twilight's descent into madness over the course of the entire episode, which is why I still consider it her best outing.
Whew, and there you have it. Come back tonight when we'll do something similar to this for an updated ranking of the mane six/seven/eight episodes.
For me, only 29 episodes count as Twilight Sparkle episodes.
The rest I either consider more group episodes, or are episodes that feature her, but give the focus to other characters.
Here's my ranking:
A Trivial Problem
Cutie Re-Mark
Twilight’s Kingdom
Lesson Zero
Top Bolt
A Canterlot Wedding
Amending Fences
Celestial Advice
Magical Mystery Cure
Magic Duel
Testing Testing 1 2 3
Hooffields and McColts
PPOV
Point of No Return
Boast Busters
A Flurry of Emotions
A Health of Information
Once Upon a Zeppelin
Princess Twilight Sparkle
Three’s a Crowd
Luna Eclipsed
It's About Time
Horse Play
Feeling Pinkie Keen
Winter Wrap Up
The Crystal Empire
Rockhoof and a Hard Place
What About Discord?
Friendship University
You know, if Lauren Faust had stayed on as executive producer for the show, I think these episodes would have turned out to being a lot better in quality.
Of course I could be wrong about that assumption.
5142297
Season 1 and 2 (the seasons in which she was running the show) were good and amazing (respectively), but Season 4 was the best season, and she wasn't running that. I think the writer is more important than the executive producer.
5142317 Sometimes.