Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Hiding Spike

Remember that time when Just For Sidekicks and Games Ponies Play portrayed overlapping events? 

Spike was left behind to watch all the pets back in Ponyville whilst the Mane Six traveled to the Crystal Empire to convince Ms. Harshwhinny of the Equestria Games Committee to choose the Crystal Empire for its location. They were two very different episodes.

Spike's story was one of greed gotten out of hand (claw) - a theme that the show had gotten into plenty of times before. The Equestria Games storyline, on the other hoof, was a farce of mistaken identity as the Mane Six went to lavish efforts to make the wrong pony feel welcome. The whole thing comes together when, at the end of Games Ponies Play, we find Spike and the pets hiding under the seats of the train - exactly where we'd left them at the end of Just for Sidekicks.

This kicked up a lot of buzz at the time. Non-linear storytelling wasn't really MLP's thing - especially back in 2012. The concept itself was an interesting experiment in shaking up the show's formula.

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If you think about it with a touch of hindsight however, this was actually the most convincing way to write Spike out of the trip.  By keeping him home, the show managed to avoid addressing the fact that Spike has become a Crystal Empire folk hero. They absolutely needed to save that storyline for later (Equestria Games).

They planned this 26 episodes in advance, and used the novelty of the two interlocking episodes to keep us from questioning why Spike hadn't come along to the Crystal Empire. For a show that started out with no long-arc continuity whatsoever, this was a pretty remarkable decision - a landmark in the show's development that none of us could possibly have appreciated at the time.

Discuss.
-Sprocket

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Comments

[Reese]

Oh, clever! Thanks! :D