The Beginning of the End Review

‘Tis the season to be cranky,
Fa-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la,
These writers were too busy wanking,
Fa-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la,
This episode is a load of bullcrap,
Fa-la-la Fa-la-la la-la-la
Shove the Christmas tree up it’s freaking plotcrack,
Fa-la-la-la-la la-la-la-laaa

Hello, everybody; in case you haven’t checked your calendars for a while, it’s less than five days til Christmas! I didn’t even realize it was so close; my head has been weird the past week. But today, I’m gonna give you guys a little present and by that, I mean I’m gonna complain about a sucky episode of a show made to sell toys; strangely, a good deal of you guys seem to like that, kinda.

Now, I know I said repeatedly that I would do a review of the entirety of Seasons 8 and 9, episode by episode, but around the time I was watching the majority of Season 9, I came to the realization that this show ain’t worth the effort. However, there are certain episodes that I do want to talk about, both good and bad. This is one of them. I would say ‘so, is it a good or bad’ but the song at the start already gave it away.

The Beginning of the End, the Season 9 opener, is a disasterpiece. It is mind blowing how bad it is. I’ve watched it twice, once with my best friend, and have given a lot of thought to it. And the more you look into this episode, the more it falls apart. So, what about it is so bad? Well, a lot of things.

Let’s start from the beginning.

First thing: Melodramatic title much?

Okay, let’s get into the actual episode. It starts with Twilight and her friends being called in by Celestia and Luna who reveal that they are retiring… And immediately, the episode takes a nosedive, but not before Luna says this.

“Equestria is currently it’s longest period of harmony in recent years.”

AAAAHAHAHAHAHA! Ahahahaha hahaha! Heh aheh ahahahahaha! Ah… You’re serious?

Oh, you’re right, Luna, Equestria has been very peaceful… Well, aside from, you know, you coming back as Nightmare Moon and nearly dooming the world with eternal night, Discord throwing the world into chaos, Chrysalis and the changelings trying to take over Equestria and feed on everyone (twice), Sombra threatening to re-enslave the Crystal Empire, the Everfree Forest nearly over growing over Equestria (also Discord’s fault), the Tantabus nearly making the world a literal nightmare, Tirek trying to drain all Equestria’s magic, Starlight rewriting the timeline and nearly dooming the world, Storm King doing storm stuff, a little psycho filly trying to harness all Equestria’s magic, and that’s not even mentioning the little stuff like monster attacks and nearly going to war with yaks and dragons. Yep, super harmony. Seriously, if this is the best peace Equestria has had in years, Equestria must be even more screwed up and dangerous than I thought.

Anyway, Celestia then declares that Twilight will rule Equestria in their stead. And there’s the nosedive.

Okay, let’s talk about this. I’ve seen a lot of fics that deconstruct the idea of Celestia, for all intents and purposes, tricking Twilight into becoming an Alicorn which implies immortality, which entails a lot of fridge horror. I’ve been willing to suspend my disbelief on that subject, but this? This is way too much.

So, basically, Celestia has groomed Twilight since she was a filly to be her heir. She groomed a child who isn’t even hers to take up her position; an indescribably stressful and life-consuming position; when she felt she was ready and she did it all behind Twilight’s back, knowing that Twilight idolizes her and wouldn’t refuse her will. And I have to assume that that was the entire purpose of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns; for her to find a child she could mold into someone who could take the throne regardless of how they may feel on the matter.

This puts Celestia’s entire character in a different light. A very ugly light. It makes her manipulative and selfish, especially since she evidently never considered Twilight’s feelings on these matters; that is a startling lack of empathy from a supposedly all-loving princess.

Oh, and on top of that, right after dropping this bomb on the easily-stressed-the-F-out Twilight, they give her only a few days to prepare for the throne. Yes. A FEW DAYS. So, not only are you two terrible people, you’re insanely stupid as well. I like how even Discord is baffled by their stupidity here.

This episode ruined Celestia and Luna for me, especially the former. Tellingly, I watched Between Dusk and Dawn, which by all means is an adorable episode that develops their characters and their sisterly relationship, but I could not enjoy the episode because I simply cannot sympathize with them.

And before you comment, I am aware that Lauren Faust had planned for Twilight to succeed Celestia from the very start and that’s fine, but the way it ended up happening is not.

And this is just the start of the episode. There’s more.

After a scene with Twilight freaking out and in this case it’s 100% justified, we see Tirek, Cozy Glow, Chrysalis, and a revived Sombra summoned by Dis-cough-Grogar, who wants them all to work together with him to take over Equestria. But Sombra doesn’t play that game.

You know, when I saw the trailer for Season 9, when I saw Sombra, I was so hyped. I had hoped he would somehow returned because I always saw so much potential in him as a villain. And we got him… Actually, we didn’t because they completely changed Sombra’s character. Is it a good change? Hahahahaha-nope.

No offense to Alvin Sanders, I’m sure he had a lot of fun in this role, but he was an awful choice if you ask me. Sombra is supposed to be sound deep and intimidating. Why is he talking like a teenage girl? Why is the big scary black horse talking like a little white girl? Riddle me that. But that’s nothing compared to what the writers did. Sombra as the villain of the episode is a big cause for it’s immense suckage levels. Why? Well, let’s see.

After being released by Grogar, Sombra immediately attacks the Crystal Empire and brainwashes the citizens into an army before taking Flurry Heart hostage to make Cadence and Shining Armor surrender, taking over the empire flawlessly in mere minutes. So far so good. It even has an awesome shot of Sombra marching with the brainwashed citizens and creating steps of Crystal to casually walk into the castle. That’s badarse, but just wait a moment.

After being alerted that Sombra is back, the gang goes to confront him. He uses his brainwash eyes to trap them in their worst fear, but they break away fast and just blast him with their rainbow power, seemingly destroying him.

Here’s a question: why didn’t Sombra use Cadence, Shining, and Flurry Heart against them? He has them hostage right there. Why doesn’t he go “Hey, Twilight, I got your brother, your sister-in-law, and your baby niece here. Try anything and something bad will happen to them.” But nope, it doesn’t cross Sombra’s mind. Now, you could defend this since Sombra’s actual plan needed them to think he was dead, but… Well, we’ll get to that in a minute.

The gang goes back to the Tree of Harmony to return the Elements but then Sombra outta nowhere! Sombra reveals he’s still alive by destroying the Tree and trapping them. He then reveals that he’s gonna take over all of Equestria and uses his brainwashing eyes on them… Oh, wait. He doesn’t. He teases it, but decides to just leave them because he figures they can’t do anything… even though they can just dig themselves out (which they do) and can possibly still beat him.

Sombra loses because he’s been turned into an overconfident idiot. You know what’s something I loved about the real Sombra? He was one of the very few MLP villains whose defeat didn’t come from overconfidence or carelessly leaving loose ends. He was smart, he was paranoid; he was a ruthless monster who left nothing to chance. He cursed the Crystal Empire to disappear, so he must’ve understood that he could be beaten. He left several booby traps to protect the Crystal Heart just in case someone came looking for it; traps that would’ve stopped Twilight if Spike hadn’t been there with her.. And now, that same guy is blatantly and knowingly giving up a sure fire chance to win just because the plot says so. What a freaking joke.

So, Sombra takes over Ponyville and Canterlot and celebrates by… making crystals? Guess the memes were right. The gang finds the town brainwashed and that the chaos vines are now growing without the Tree of Harmony to stop it. So, Celestia, Luna, and even Star Swirl show up to deal with it while they handle Sombra. And this leads to yet another Dethroning Moment of Suck.

The first time I watched this, I was too distracted by the fact that for some reason, Star Swirl’s magic blasts were so much stronger than the two Alicorns’ blasts, but this line is so much more stupid.

“The Pillars and I planted the Tree of Harmony. Who do you think the Forest under control before it did?”

Why the buck you lyin?
Why ya always lyin?
Mm, oh my Glob.
Stop bucking lyin!

Okay, I know the writers don’t really give a crap about the consistency of what happened 1000 years ago, but come on. Did they not watch the Season 4 opener? Do they not watch any of the stuff they make? ...Actually, that makes sense.

That Everfree stuff started growing outta whack because of the chaos seeds Discord planted and they didn’t even grow back then because the Tree of Harmony, which grew after the Pillars disappeared, stopped it. How do I know that? Because I freaking remember the episode! How stupid do these writers think we are?

Anyways, the gang head to the Canterlot castle gates where they’re forced to face against their brainwashed loved ones until Twilight decides to teleport into the castle. Hey, genius, why didn’t you do that in the first goshdang place?

Final battle, Discord makes an ass of Sombra by no selling all his blasts and Sombra keeps blasting despite it not working instead of trying something else like, oh I don’t know, your brainwashing eyes! After seeing Discord favor Fluttershy, Sombra fires at her and Discord takes the bullet to pretend to be injured to motivate them. He gives a speech that goes on a bit too long while Sombra just stands there like a doofus and then they rainbow blast his flank to Hell. Yup, it kills him this time.

Hey, remember when they rainbow blasted him before? It clearly hit him and when it hit him here, it killed him. So, why didn’t it kill him before? What did he do? Did he teleport at the last second? Did he make a hologram; an illusion? Well, whatever the heck he did, why didn’t he do it here to get away? He had more time to get away here than before! If he could escape before, he could’ve escaped here. If not, then the blast should’ve killed him before. This makes. No. Sense!

Also, kinda worrisome that the Mane 6 have no reaction to the fact they just killed someone. Yeah, it was Sombra and they didn’t have to see a corpse, but they still straight up killed someone. Of course, the writers probably didn’t want to draw attention to that detail, so it’s understandable (unlike the rest of this stuff).

Everything is fixed and Celestia decides to give Twilight more time to prepare herself. Gee, it’s almost like that was a really stupid idea.

Guys, this episode is… amazing. It’s amazing how ineptly made this episode is. It’s far and away the worst opening episode of any season of this show and while it’s not the worst episode of the series (unfortunately, it’s not even the worst of the season), it may very well have the most amount of problems. From Celestia being a sociopath to Sombra being a doofus to the awesome apprentice of Grogar being a shame to continuity being screwed sideways, this episode is a mess from start to finish. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so insulting.

I hope you enjoyed my review. If you like the episode, that’s cool. This isn’t to change your opinion, just to voice mine and I hope you can at least see where I’m coming from.

All that said and all negativity aside, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas. Stay safe and have fun, and God bless us, everyone.

Comments

[RainbowSparkle3]

I understand your problems with the episode, but I disagree with basically all of them. First of all, there's a difference between harmony and peace. Recently, Equestria has been making allies with neighbor nations, the elements of harmony are stronger than ever, and ponies are living happily everywhere.

Twilight becoming the ruler of Equestria is a natural progression of her character arc from student to princess to mentor. Perhaps Celestia could've been more open about it, but that's more of a story thing than a character thing. And since on that end, it's good writing, I don't think it's an issue.

The few days thing was purely comedy on the writers' part to make way for great Twilighting, and it was great indeed. They were kind of right about the fact that Twilight's ready for the throne in general, they just probably should've given her more time to be prepared for the royal duties side of it.

Supposed to is very subjective. He's less scary, but in turn is more hammy and entertaining. It took me a while to get used to his voice too, but it's just a lot of fun once you do. And because he's hammy, he wants them to suffer knowing he didn't need to control them to beat them. It is a flaw, but it's really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

As for Starswirl being stronger; first of all, that was not proven by the evidence. Sure, he was the one who seemed most impressive because he was the focus of the scene, but each of their blasts against a large area did the same amount of damage. And how is it stupid when he was their mentor?

...no to that whole next paragraph. The princesses literally said the tree will continue to contain all that grows there, which was before Discord. Discord's plunder seeds alone weren't the cause of the Everfree's chaos, it was the fact that they attacked the tree and stopped it from being able to stop the forest.

Twilight even explained that she didn't want to teleport at first because she wanted to think of a way to save their friends. She only fled when all hope seemed lost.

Um...that only really works at close-medium quarters. It's really not that fast of an attack, and certainly fast enough for Discord to dodge. It's a moving pair of glowing eyes. I'm pretty sure Sombra knows that won't get to Discord before he erases it or dodges it or whatever.

I think the reason he was able to survive being hit before was that he prepared some spell or other plan that allowed him to escape. He wasn't prepared for the encounter with the Mane 6 the second time though, so he had no time to prepare an escape.

The Mane 6 have killed for the greater good before. Sombra, the Storm King, and basically Discord and the PoS (being turned to stone and banished to a void are pretty damn close to death).

As for the positives, it is absolutely hilarious (especially the first 10 minutes), tense, fast-paced, had a really good Discord, Sombra was very entertaining, and the way the villains were set up for later in the season got me so hyped. 9.5/10, one of the best premiers in the series (probably 3rd after the season 3 and 4 premiers).