DANNYJ REVIEWS: MLP SEASON 9 PART 4 · 8:36pm Dec 23rd, 2020
Episode 18 - She Talks to Angel:
Actually... you know what? Fuck She Talks to Angel. I don't care about this episode. Let's talk about Equestria Girls for a moment.
It's funny to think that this official high school AU which started with a terribly written and unpopular movie to sell knock-off Monster High dolls would become such an integral part of this franchise. Equestria Girls has always been a very strange beast, but what's even stranger to me is how much I've legitimately enjoyed it since the second movie. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Equestria Girls as a whole is far better written and more enjoyable than 90% of late-series MLP.
Sunset Shimmer was a big part of that. Her redemption arc in Rainbow Rocks was probably the most powerful and well-realised of any villain in G4. She wasn't just instantly forgiven by everyone, and she struggled with more than just her own guilt. The mane six still accepted her, of course, but she had to prove that she'd changed to everyone else and earn back their trust. Even after the first four movies, her past still came back to haunt her, and there were still people who she had to make amends to. Not to mention that she didn't just angst about her dark past, but actually used it to help redeem others as well. I can't say the same for Starlight.
Smugset Shimmer.
Discord's reformation arc is the only other one which I consider to even be in the same league as this, albeit for completely different reasons. His redemption I liked more because it was realistically slow and gradual, rather than a complete personality shift like Sunset and Starlight both went through. But even Discord's arc was later undermined by his backsliding in the final seasons, whereas Sunset remained a good character until the end of the series.
Even beyond Sunset, though, Equestria Girls had a surprising amount going for it. The high school setting felt kinda generic and limiting at first, but I feel like they really fleshed it out once the franchise transitioned from movies to shorts and specials. All of the background and side characters being together in one school meant that they were always close at hand to use for a one-off gag or short without needing to explain their presence, and we started seeing more variance in the settings and scenarios, particularly as they moved beyond the school. We got stories in the mall, in a movie studio, a museum, a music festival, and other places beginning with M, many of which were used to tell more modern stories that, ironically, Equestria was too limited as a setting to use for.
And of course, the Equestria Girls series had a fucking fantastic soundtrack. Turning the mane six into a band was one of those gimmicky creative decisions that they couldn't have done for long in the main series, but it works perfectly in Equestria Girls, and in retrospect it was a stroke of genius. The way that it redefined this franchise to be about its music gave it a kind of longevity that I don't think it would've had otherwise, because some of the songs and music videos that they produced for it were just phenomenal. I count the full version of "All Good" from the Spring Breakdown special as not just my favourite Equestria Girls song, but my favourite MLP song, period. Something about it just makes me smile every time. And that's not even mentioning all the other great songs like "Hope Shines Eternal," "Let it Rain," or the duet version of "What More is Out There." Post your favourites in the comments!
Now, I won't pretend that I didn't have problems with the direction that Equestria Girls went in after the movies. Some of the world-building decisions like Equestria Land or EG Tirek being a fictional character from a video game didn't make much sense to me. I think that some of the later specials had some pretty boring and forgettable antagonists, like Vignette Valencia and Post-Crush. There were a few interesting fanfic-like concepts such as Sunset finally reconciling with Celestia or the Rainbooms visiting Equestria which were very shallowly done in my opinion. And I was also very disappointed by the way the series essentially went out with a whimper with those holiday shorts, rather than getting a grand finale like the show did.
For all that, though, even the rockier later specials of Equestria Girls were at least consistently entertaining. I complain about them, but I respect the hell out of Nick Confalone for actually trying to do something interesting with these characters. He really leaned into the connection between the human world and Equestria, continued Sunset's journey of redemption in a believable way, and he even teased intra-mane six shipping in official canon, at least as much as he was allowed to. I'm not majorly into shipping or anything, but hell yes I liked official EG Rarijack. It's way better than the weak shit we had going on in season nine. The time loop special by Whitney Ralls was fun too.
The Rainbooms flashing gang signs is peak Equestria Girls, and if you don't think that this is fucking hilarious, then I can't help you.
So needless to say, I'm a little miffed by the way that season nine ignores the series. Confalone-era Equestria Girls consistently went out of its way to maintain that connection back to the show that the early movies had, even going back to doing full crossovers with pony characters in Equestria, but the show hardly ever reciprocated this. In the earlier seasons, back around season four, we used to get stuff like the pony Flash Sentry cameo in Three's a Crowd, and even as late as season seven, the Sirens featured heavily in the Pillars' backstory. So why is there almost nothing in season nine?
For a final season supposedly paying tribute to the show's history and tying up loose ends, I'm of the opinion that Equestria Girls should have had more of a presence, especially since it never got a proper finale of its own. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it Sunset cameo in the epilogue episode's montage, but that's about it. I'm not exactly asking for a full crossover episode here (though that would've been nice), but there should've been more than this, surely?
In fact, there originally was! According to the season nine leaks, Sunset was supposed to show up properly in the epilogue episode, now the principal of Canterlot High. This... doesn't sound great, if I'm being honest, but at least it's something. But someone in the email chain (executive producer Eliza Hart, I think) argued against it on the grounds that the viewers wouldn't know who Sunset was. Which sounds absurd to me, given how she's basically the main character of Equestria Girls by this point, but even if that were true, I don't know why that should stop them. Season eight sure didn't have any compunctions about suddenly dumping a load of continuity from the 2017 movie on our laps; I'd say that that was far more intrusive than an Equestria Girls crossover would be.
Horse.
But anyway, that's enough about Equestria Girls. Since we were talking about Nick Confalone, She Talks to Angel was his final credit for the show. I already spoke at length about his relative strengths as a writer in the season eight review, so I won't repeat myself here, but I think that most of the same stuff applies to this episode too.
Fluttershy's episodes throughout the series have rarely ever had a unified theme beyond her own character growth, and sometimes her care of animals. Establishing Sweetfeather Sanctuary was, as I mentioned before, conceived as an attempt to definitively conclude her story. It had her make a tangible achievement in the field of animal care, and it showed her character growth by having her stand up to the dumbasses who wouldn't follow her plans. At least, it did in theory. It actually kinda sucked on both fronts, because the reintroduction of Dr. Fauna the vet just undermined Fluttershy's own role as Ponyville's resident animal care expert, and I don't think that her "assertiveness" actually shows as much growth as the writers think it does.
A big problem that I have with a lot of late-series depictions of Fluttershy is that the writers seemed to feel insecure about all of those criticisms of her still being shy and not growing as a character, even though most of those criticisms were about season two, so they massively overcompensate by making a big show of how much more assertive Fluttershy is now. This is even directly spelled out for us in Fame and Misfortune.
Only their primary references for assertive Fluttershy are Putting Your Hoof Down and, I suspect, Dragonshy. So their only idea for how to write Fluttershy not being a doormat is to have her make angry faces and shout at people if they're being mean or not listening to her. In Sounds of Silence she shouts at Applejack and argues with her. In Dark and Dawn she shouts at the giant turtle. In Sweet and Smoky she directly insults Garble a few times. She's just not very diplomatic anymore. When Fluttershy got angry in Dragonshy and Stare Master, it was because the monsters were hurting her friends, and the anger gave her the courage she needed to stand up to them when she was otherwise too scared to. In all of these instances, she just seems to be angry because she's an angry person now. It's character development, sure, but I wouldn't say that it's growth. More like a steady downward spiral.
Taken together with her apparent dissociative episode in Fake It 'Til You Make It, as well as several other isolated incidents, and all signs point to Fluttershy slowly going insane. Discord has obviously been a very bad influence on her.
"Stay out of my shed!"
All this is to say that I think that Confalone mostly avoids these pitfalls here. He doesn't write the usual angry overly-assertive Fluttershy here, just a character who's reasonably frustrated by a stressful situation. I praised him in my season eight review for his ability to write realistically flawed characters and relationships, and I think that he really showed that here with Fluttershy and Angel.
As a final Fluttershy episode, her relationship with Angel is actually a great choice of subject matter. Like I said, there aren't many common themes to her episodes, but Angel has been with her since the beginning, even if we probably don't think about him much, and he's always been kind of an asshole, but it's never really been addressed. An episode seriously examining and resolving their relationship, with Sweetfeather Sanctuary as a backdrop, is pretty much a perfect final episode for Fluttershy. I think that it could have been improved somewhat if Discord had been in it too, perhaps in Zecora's role, so that we could also get a final resolution on their relationship, but this works fine.
The insight into Angel is definitely welcome. I like how the episode was able to show his perspective and why he's so selfish in a sympathetic way, while also showing that he does care, and having him come around to understanding Fluttershy's needs by the end. And seeing him in Fluttershy's body is also very entertaining. Andrea Libman did a great job of really making him sound different.
I also really like how this is one of the few episodes to ever acknowledge that teaching at Twilight's stupid fucking school is an additional burden on these characters. I have no idea how the hell Rainbow Dash makes time for teaching between being a major sports celebrity and military officer, or how Rarity does it between managing three boutiques in three different cities. But I'm glad that we at least get to see that Fluttershy is realistically overworked doing two jobs.
But despite that, I still can't put my stamp of approval on this episode, because it still breaks down when we examine the logic of it. I mean, it's a major plot point of this episode that Zecora gives Angel and Fluttershy a body-swap potion and doesn't tell either of them what it does. That alone is already questionable. Then Fluttershy decides to walk alone through the Everfree Forest to find her again, and Angel lets her, because that sounds like a great idea, right? Letting your primary carer get eaten, in your body, no less? Then when Fluttershy actually gets there despite all odds, Zecora somehow doesn't realise what's going on, and can't communicate with her, and then again lets her walk back through the forest on her own, which nearly kills her. Can Fluttershy not write or something? Can't she just draw pictures in the dirt?
And what's up with Nicole Oliver as Dr. Fauna? Maybe this is just me, but she sounds more like Celestia in this episode than she did while actually voicing Celestia in Dark and Dawn. What's going on with her this season?
But my biggest problem is Fluttershy feeding all of these carnivores a vegan diet. She makes a wolf eat carrots while it's staying at the sanctuary, and feeds a python vegan cookies. I hate this, not just because it's stupid, or even because we've already seen Fluttershy feeding fish to other animals before, but also because it's an actively harmful message. Many animals need meat to live, especially canines, but some dumbfucks out there actually do this shit in real life. They try to impose their human morals on fucking animals, and slowly weaken and starve them to death in the process. Now call me old-fashioned, but I'm of the belief that this kind of behaviour should not be encouraged in any form, even in a little girls' cartoon, because this is basically an implicit endorsement of animal cruelty.
Seriously, anyone who tries to feed a wolf a vegan diet should not be allowed to own animals.
See, this is exactly the sort of shit that makes me think that Fluttershy is losing her mind. Angel at one point in this episode refers to her wanting to marry Discord, and I believe him, because she's basically the Harley Quinn to his Joker at this point.
On a final, less serious note, the giraffe in this episode weirds me the fuck out. This is a problem that goes back to Fluttershy Leans In, but the giraffe has this uncanny valley effect, because it's a hooved creature just like a pony, has a face like a pony, and it even makes expressions like a pony, and yet it's supposed to be a non-talking animal. Everything about it is just wrong. I don't like it. Ech.
I hope that the next episode is better.
Episode 19 - Dragon Dropped:
Nope. It's a Josh Haber episode full of ghoulish memefaces. It basically doesn't get worse than this.
It's hard to really call who got the worst final episode. If we count Trivial Pursuit as the last solo Twilight episode, I'd probably go with that. But on the other hand, Rarity's final episode was all about Spike, which is arguably even worse depending on your point of view. Admittedly, Spike's crush on Rarity was a very long-running subplot in this series, and to a degree, I am glad that it was addressed. But it was always much more important to Spike's character than it was to Rarity's. This is her big send-off before the end of the series. And this is what we're going with? Nothing about her successful fashion empire with Sassy Saddles or Coco Pommel? No big high society type event with Fancy Pants in Canterlot? No Shadow Spade or Sweetie Belle? No appearances by her celebrity friends like Hoity Toity or Sapphire Shores? No Blueblood?
Shit, there's a thought. You want to talk about tying up loose ends? Blueblood is a huge loose end. He was a season one antagonist that never appeared in a speaking role again. We still don't know how he's actually related to Celestia. Imagine a Rarity episode where Blueblood returns and he learns from her how to not be a shitheel, and it ends with her finally getting the fairytale romance that she dreamed of back in season one. How's that for an ending?
Let me write for the show, coach! I'm ready!
You say that you don't want a douche like Blueblood to bang your waifu. I say that somebody has to.
Ah, whatever. This isn't really the send-off that Rarity deserved, but screw it. If I keep judging it as a final Rarity episode, I'm gonna hate it no matter what, so let's instead look at it as the final Rarity and Spike episode, which let's be honest, is what it was really written as.
I know that I've already said this, but I really do find this show's approach to romance weird. Some characters are allowed to have explicitly romantic relationships, while others are seemingly off-limits and only implications are allowed for no apparent reason. I get it with the lesbian pairings, even if I don't agree with it, but I don't understand why none of the main characters are allowed to have an actual relationship of any kind until the literal last episode of the series. I already talked about this with Pinkie and Cheese back in The Last Laugh, but it applies here as well with Spike and Gabby.
I mean, all they ever say is that they're pen pals, but like... this is obviously romantic, right? I'm not the only one who sees it, am I? They're never hanging out with other friends. It's always just the two of them, doing something together, like a date. They go out to a place for milkshakes, and Gabby feeds Spike a cherry directly out of her hand. When she finds him alone with Rarity playing a game, she's genuinely hurt and betrayed, as if he were somehow cheating on her or something. Spike fucking blushes when she talks about them hanging out again. This all seems overtly romantic to me. So why not just come out and say that they're dating? What exactly is Josh Haber afraid of?
Well, I think that if there's any story-related reason for this, it's probably that changing the romantic subtext into actual text would make all of Rarity's actions in this episode even more problematic than they already are. Rarity already comes off really badly in the story as it is, and I can imagine that Haber probably didn't want to have to deal with all the additional baggage of Rarity being insanely jealous of an actual couple. But honestly, I feel like there's no salvaging this either way.
The thing about Rarity and Spike's relationship is that it's kind of one-sided here. Spike's been in love with Rarity literally since episode one, and always did everything that he could to win her over, but she never really returned his feelings in the way that he wanted her to. From Secret of My Excess, when he tried to confess but Rarity stopped him, we know that she's at least somewhat aware of his feelings, but that she doesn't want to openly acknowledge them, probably because of their age gap, since Spike is always referred to as a baby dragon in the earlier seasons. She usually at least tries to be a good friend to him, and there are plenty of episodes where Rarity looks out for his wellbeing of her own volition and shows gratitude for what he does for her. But there's no getting around the fact that Spike's more servile attitude towards Rarity is at least partially motivated by his romantic feelings towards her, and there's a fine line between accepting help from a friend and exploitation which Rarity's worst episodes always tread.
Dragon Dropped falls pretty firmly on the latter half of that line. The entire premise of the episode is that Rarity takes Spike's help and devotion for granted to such a degree that she can't do without it anymore when he stops being obsessed with her and waiting on her hand and foot. It paints their whole relationship in a decidedly uncomfortable light. Spike finally getting over Rarity, a mare who he probably never could've had in the first place, is a positive development for him that she should be encouraging. But instead, Rarity doesn't want this. She wants him to keep being singularly devoted to her. And this possessiveness would be creepy regardless of her exact motivation, but any possible motivation that she could have for this makes it worse, because as we established, she is aware of his feelings.
If Rarity is just doing all of this because she misses Spike's help and wants him back as her assistant, as the episode seems to imply, then this is deliberate exploitation, because she's trying to go back to using his feelings to manipulate him into doing unpaid work for her. Not exactly how an Element of Generosity should act, if you ask me. But the funny thing is, this is probably Haber's preferred interpretation of Rarity here. Because the alternative is that she really is just jealous of Spike's new girlfriend for taking him away from her, which is hard not to view as romantic, especially when she does things like sneak into his bedroom in the dead of night to "show her appreciation" to him.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
And if Rarity's feelings are romantic, then that raises more awkward questions, such as why she's been stringing him along until now if they both feel the same? Because he's too young for her? Well if he's too young for her, then why is she so obsessed with keeping him to herself? What, does she just want to keep him around and interested until he's old enough? Isn't that grooming? Or at least borderline? And she sure hasn't shown any reservations about pursuing other stallions like Blueblood or Trenderhoof in the meantime, so what is he, her backup? Literally everything about this is creepy, and if Rarity ever got her way, this would probably be a very unhealthy relationship.
Even aside from her questionable motivations, though, Rarity is really selfish and self-absorbed in general in this episode. Regardless of why she does it, we can't ignore the way that she doesn't even consider the idea of Spike having a life outside of her, how ungrateful she is to Applejack and her other friends when she gets them to fill in for Spike, or how wilfully ignorant she is to Spike's obvious misery after he splits up with Gabby. And I'm still not completely sure whether or not Rarity broke them apart intentionally. I wouldn't be surprised, honestly. This episode is like a showcase of all of Rarity's worst traits, really an all-around terrible writing decision for her final episode, which is a shame considering that it's also one of Tabitha St. Germain's best performances.
This episode has one big problem other than Rarity, though, and it actually centres around Gabby.
Now, to be clear, I don't actually have a problem with Gabby's inclusion or portrayal at all. I think that she was handled pretty well, all things considered. The explanation for her return ties back into both her debut episode and current events in the show in a sensible and logical way, her presence isn't too overbearing, and the reasoning for her becoming "friends" with Spike is sound. I find her an oddly random choice to pair him up with considering that her only story purpose is to make Rarity jealous. You could easily replace her with Ember or Smolder and get the same effect, but eh, this still works, I guess. I thought that Discord and Fluttershy were an odd choice of characters to pair up for an episode too back in Keep Calm and Flutter On, but look how that turned out.
No, my problem with Gabby isn't actually anything to do with her, specifically. My problem is that she makes daily commutes across the fucking ocean just to make this story work.
Look, Gabby can be a long distance courier. That's fine. But it should still at least be acknowledged as a distance. Ponyville is centrally located on the Equestrian continent. It was already a huge stretch back when Fake It 'Til You Make It had the mane six travelling by train between Ponyville and Manehattan several times a day, and Manehattan was only on the east coast. Griffonstone is even further than that. In fact, it's so much further that there's actually a whole other city between it and Manehattan on the official map. Yeah, Trottingham. On the Griffish Isles. The sea separating Equestria and Griffonstone is so big that it has a series of islands with their own cities in the middle of it. And Gabby flies that distance. At least twice every day. To deliver mail. Seriously.
"Hello, Fuckery Department? Yeah, it's me. Yeah, it's happening again."
I've had ENOUGH. Bring me the FUCKING Startrix episode.
Episode 20 - A Horse Shoe-In:
Why do half the mane six only get one episode each this season, but Starlight Glimmer gets two?
This episode was written by... Ariel Shepherd-Oppenheim? Who as far as I can tell is a new writer to season nine. Not the first this season, actually. Between Dark and Dawn was also written by a first-timer to the show, Gail Simone. Yes, that Gail Simone. I'd say I was surprised that such important episodes in the show's final season were still being entrusted to newcomers, but nothing surprises me anymore after seeing those fucking cheat sheets.
A Horse Shoe-In is both the final Starlight episode, and also the last episode to really address the School of Friendship in a significant way. Judging it as a conclusion to Starlight's story, I'd say that it's... fine, I guess. At least in terms of the premise and themes. As a character, Starlight's always had three major things going for her. She has her past as a villain, her relationship with Trixie and other side characters, and her position as Twilight's right hand and possible replacement, both Doylistically and Watsonianly. Well, her redemption arc is already long concluded by this point, and she never had much of a connection to Ourtown after leaving, so no need to force that in. But this episode covers her relationship with Trixie and succession of Twilight well enough, so... great.
That's rather the point of the episode, actually. Since Twilight is going to be taking Celestia's throne soon, she's abandoning the School of Friendship to Starlight, who's taking her place as headmare, and Trixie is expecting that she'll get to be Starlight's assistant.
So, a lot to unpack here. Let's start with Twilight and the school.
I'm running low on both alcohol and patience at this point.
I think that the School of Friendship may possibly have been the worst idea in this entire franchise. It might even be worse than manes being immune to magic. The sheer irony of it all is that Faust intentionally conceived of Equestria as a world where the characters could be independent and wouldn't have to be tied down to a school, and we even fucking have an official canon high school AU now to tell school stories with while keeping them out of the main series, but then Hasbro went ahead and forced a shitty school setting into Equestria anyway.
And Twilight's school in-universe was every bit the pointless, ill-conceived, flash-in-the-pan disaster that it was as a creative decision, too. I spent most of my season eight review explaining all of the ways that the school's curriculum made no sense, how worthless a friendship education really is, and how horribly it failed at even its one relatively simple goal. And let's not forget, it also gave a villain a platform with which to almost destroy Equestria, which they wouldn't have had otherwise. And then after putting all that time, effort, and money into building this school, and after all of the trouble that she caused for everyone while running it, Twilight just up and abandons it just like that.
One season. Twilight stuck out this teaching gig for one season before she gave up on it. All throughout season eight, this school was the centre of her fucking world. She claimed that it was the divine mandate of the Tree of Harmony that she had to establish this school to spread the message of friendship somehow. She roped in the leaders of other nations across the world to get them to take part in it, even risking causing a war to do so. She fought bureaucracy and defied the EEA to establish her institution outside their influence, even at the cost of her school's accreditation, because it had to be done her way. She even emotionally blackmailed all of her friends into working at this school with her, no matter how busy their own lives already were, and no matter how little free time it left them with, just because it was so important to her.
But then as soon as Twilight has something more important to be doing, she drops it like a bad habit, and just expects her friends to pick up the slack. If I were Rainbow Dash or Rarity, working an exhausting second job at this school despite having zero teaching experience, looking after a bunch of shitty kids as a favour for a friend in my off hours from my extremely important dream job, and then my friend just up and left because she had something else to do now, I'd be pissed. And let's not forget, they're also expected to help Twilight run the kingdom soon, so something's gotta give. I give it two months tops after Twilight leaves before they all fucking quit, and sure enough, none of them seem to be working there anymore by the epilogue episode.
Taking over the country isn't even a good excuse for abandoning the school. Celestia managed to run her own school while she ruled the kingdom, and even tutored a series of personal pupils in her off time, and Celestia's a fucking dumbass. So why can't Twilight do the same?
Really, Twilight's entire season nine arc is basically an admission that the school was never important and was always a waste of time. Which I agree with, but if even the show admits that this was all fucking pointless, then why the hell were we subjected to it for a whole season in the first place? You could have done anything with season eight. ANYTHING. And this is what we got? This school, the student six, and fucking Cozy Glow?
Neighsay tried to spare us this. Why did nobody listen to him?
Then there's Starlight's side to all this, and honestly, even by the end of the series, I'm still mixed on Starlight. I feel like I like the idea of her more than what she actually is most of the time, because what the show wants her to be is the next Twilight, and I just don't see that in her. I never have. In all of the school episodes and premieres and finales, she's meant to be the guidance counsellor, both in title and in spirit. She's the one who gives Twilight advice when even the mane six can't get through to her, like she's the wise one, and I just don't buy her as this zen master who has it all figured out, when even in her last episode she's still getting pissed off and shouting at her girlfriend.
It almost feels backwards when the show tries to present her in such a positive light. I mean, in the season premiere, she faked having a freak-out when Twilight assigned her responsibility for the castle and library, only to reveal that she was actually totally fine with it all and confident that she can do it, and Twilight is equally confident in her. But why? What has Starlight done to warrant this confidence in herself? Because I watched Matter of Principals and School Raze, and from what I recall, both times that Starlight was left alone in charge of the school, it ended very, very badly.
I just don't know anymore. Looking back at her arc across the entire series, the sum total of all that is Starlight, I just don't think that she ever worked that well as a straight-up hero. She was pretty great as a villain, and decent as a recovering villain who was really bad at being good, like an inverse Sunset Shimmer, but I feel like all of the good episodes where Starlight is this deeply flawed character are totally at odds with all of the bad ones which keep trying to tell me how great she is.
That's why my favourite version of Starlight is the one from the Winningverse, because Chengar Qordath and Ponibius portray her really negatively, and in my opinion, she's just so much more interesting as a character for it. Most of Winningverse Starlight's appearances are from before her reformation, mind, but whenever we see her, she's hypocritical, selfish, overzealous, and lacks self-awareness, and it fits her so well. This probably speaks more to my personal tastes than to any actual flaw with the show, but... that's just how I feel. I wish that Starlight was a greyer character.
Anyway, we should probably get into the actual events of the episode now, so... okay. Twilight comes in and tells Starlight that she's gonna be the new headmare, and then has to leave because she has a... royal etiquette lesson with Celestia and Luna? Wow, really didn't take long for me to find something objectionable here, did it? Why does Twilight need a personal hands-on lesson with both princesses about napkin placement when in season six she was the one trying to teach Starlight about this table-setting shit?
Okay, fine, whatever. So Starlight gets the idea to hire a vice headmare, and as we saw in the previous Starlight episode, Trixie is clingy and doesn't like it when Starlight's job takes away from their time together, so she wants to be her vice headmare. In fact, she expects to be her vice headmare, because if you aren't learning nepotism in friendship school, then what are you learning?
But Starlight still makes her go through the interview process, in the interest of fairness to the other candidates. I'm not sure why she's suddenly so concerned about finding the most qualified pony for the job now, because she already hired a bunch of unqualified friends as substitutes once before back in Matter of Principals. Actually, she's even already hired Trixie as a substitute before. But whatever her reasons, this time she's determined to do it right, so we get to see her interview...
...Big Mac, Octavia, Doctor Whooves, and Spoiled Rich?
It's never going to end, is it?
Why...? Why, may I ask? Big Macintosh and Applejack are the only regular workers on Sweet Apple Acres, and one of them is already tied up in this fucking school. Why does Big Mac of all people want a second job here as well? What possible reason could he have for this? Same question for Octavia. She's a musician. A big enough musician to play for the Grand Galloping Gala. Why does she want to be an administrator for an educational institution? Bit of a left turn careerwise, isn't it? At least Spoiled Rich makes sense, since it's an obvious power grab for her, and she's already on Ponyville's school board, but most of these characters just feel totally random. And why does Starlight keep referring to the position as "vice headmare" when there are multiple stallions applying for it?
Hey, do you know who I notice isn't applying for this job? Anyone with a background in teaching. I guess that everyone in Equestria who actually works in education already knows what a sham this school is, and they avoid it like the plague. They know that it won't look good on their record. Sure, it's got the Princess of Friendship's name on it, but everyone knows that the School of Friendship was only ever accredited as a personal apology by Neighsay because he made an ass of himself.
I notice that Cheerilee never shows up around the School of Friendship. I can't say that I blame her. Can you even imagine being Cheerilee during seasons eight and nine? Imagine being the lone teacher of a small town one-room schoolhouse with all these rickety old wooden chairs and tables, drawing up your lessons in chalk on the blackboard by mouth, trying to teach the town's children real subjects like maths and science to make a difference in their lives, and still having to deal with educational bureaucracy like the school board and the EEA.
And then the local princess just goes and builds herself a lavish, decadent private boarding school campus with its own waterfall, in defiance of any real educational authority, staffed entirely by her own friends (who all have zero teaching experience between them), all basically just as a monument to her own vanity rather than out of a desire to actually teach anything useful.
I'd be mad as fuck. Wouldn't you?
So anyway, Starlight's trial process for the candidates makes no more sense than the candidates themselves. The first test is teaching classes, once again a case of the School of Friendship just handing a prospective teacher a class before even actually knowing if they can teach or not. Then they have to give parent-teacher conferences, which makes even less sense. How are all of these interviewees supposed to give the parents feedback for their kids' progress through the school year if they've never actually fucking taught them before? Are they just supposed to make up something that sounds good? And some of these parents are coming here from really far away, so this isn't exactly something that they can do all the time. Don't they deserve to get some actual feedback from their kids' real teachers?
Trixie's enthusiasm at least gives the episode a little energy. She's pretty adorable in some of these scenes. I liked the way that she stands up for Gallus in the parent-teacher conference, even if Grandpa Gruff's apparent apathy towards Gallus is immediately at odds with the previous episode's assertion that he's exchanging mail with Ponyville on a near daily basis now. I don't think that it's nearly enough to justify Starlight making her the new guidance counsellor at the end, because Trixie is if anything even more screwed up than Starlight is, but it's better than nothing, I suppose.
You just know that Starlight and Trixie have fucked on every single desk in this building at some point or another.
So Trixie teleports a chunk of dangerous swampland into the classroom, and Starlight blows up at her, because that's the kind of relationship that they have. I laughed when she said that Twilight's friends are "competent," and that they "care" about what they do, because a quick glance at any episode of the last three seasons disproves that immediately. Then Twilight shows up, they talk, Starlight apologises, and then we get the resolution, which seems rather confused.
The moral of the story is apparently that not everyone is a fit for every job, so you can't just hire your friends and expect it to all work out, which is certainly true. But then the episode ends with Starlight hiring her friends for all of the open positions anyway. Trixie just gets put in a different position than she initially wanted, and Starlight hires a different friend for the vice headmare position – Sunburst. Seems a little contradictory, doesn't it?
I mean, okay, it's the School of Friendship, so hiring friends for the job makes sense to a degree, but don't you still want friendship experts for this task? People who could conceivably be said to understand friendship on a comparable level to the mane six? Does that sound much like Sunburst to you? And even if you're hiring him for his organisation and administrative skills rather than his abilities as a friendship teacher, is he really the best choice for that? Yeah, sure, he's a nerd, but does he have any experience with this kind of job? In fact, has he ever had a job at all outside of being a glorified babysitter?
Hey, if being an expert on friendship isn't actually a requirement to work at a friendship school, then Neighsay would be perfect for this position. He knows how to run a school competently, and he softened his stance on Twilight's way of running things in season eight. He'd probably be open to it. And it'd be a good way of demonstrating and continuing his own personal growth as well. He and Starlight could both learn a lot from each other. Sure, he'd be busy with EEA stuff a lot, but already having another job never seemed to stop any other character from wanting to work here.
Do it, Starlight. Hire Neighsay. I said, hire Neighsay, you FFFFFFFFUCKING COWARD.
Episode 21 - Daring Doubt:
Oh fuck, it's this episode. I am so not ready for this right now. I've got no fucking alcohol left in the house. Wish me luck, boys.
Look, I'm just going to come out and say it. Daring Do is shit. Making her a real pony back in season four was a mistake. She should have stayed a fictional character like Shadow Spade did. This is the fifth Daring Do episode in the series now, and not a single one of them has been good since the first, because the A.K. Yearling/Daring Do duality makes no sense and never has done. It's shit. Do you hear me? It's shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
Hey, do you think that they settled that Canterlot street sweeper strike from Dark and Dawn yet?
I don't know what it is about Daring Do episodes that seem to make the writers immediately stop trying, but Daring Doubt is another one of those scripts that feels like it wasn't even edited before they pushed ahead and animated it. Nicole Dubuc wrote this one, and it may possibly be her worst contribution to the show to date, depending on how much of School Raze or The Ending of the End was her fault. It's also definitive proof that she never watched this show that she became a writer, story editor, and executive producer for.
Not a single beat goes by in this story without something stupid happening. The inciting incident of the episode is that Dash somehow didn't hear until a week after the fact that a new Daring Do book just came out, written from Dr. Caballeron's perspective, and by someone other than A.K. Yearling. It's presented as non-fiction, apparently a first for the series, and claims that Daring Do was actually the bad guy in the true events all along. Dash is utterly shocked by this, as she says that the mane six are supposed to be the only ones who know that Daring Do is real and that she's also A.K. Yearling.
Yeah, the only ones who know. Except for Wind Sprint, who Dash also casually revealed the secret to back in Common Ground. Oh, and also everyone who ever read the friendship journal after the mane six published it in its totally unedited form, since Fame and Misfortune had a scene where Dash was mobbed by fillies asking her about her adventure with Daring Do. Oops.
So yes, even though Dash and her friends already blew Yearling's secret years ago, this new book by one Groom Q.Q. Martingale is somehow a revelation to everyone. Sick reference, by the way, guys. I get it. So Dash and Fluttershy go out to "warn her" about it a week after the fact, but shockingly, they are too late, as Yearling is already being hounded at a book signing by outraged totally-not-fans, even though these not-fans are wearing full Daring Do cosplay. Not sure what Dash was even expecting her to do if she had been warned "in time," either; it's not like they could've stopped anyone from reading a book that's already been published.
This scene leaves me utterly confused. It's like everybody involved in this is an idiot. Okay, let's accept for now that literally everybody forgot about the Journal of Friendship, and that Caballeron's new book was the one to blow the lid on Daring Do being real. So a new book in everyone's favourite adventure series comes out by a totally different author, essentially published fanfiction, claiming that everything in the series is actually real, and everyone believes this immediately. It's written from the perspective of the bad guy of the series, who thus must also be real by this logic, and he claims that he's not the bad guy, but that the hero is, and everyone immediately believes this as well. Like the real fucking Voldemort just shows up on the streets of London one day claiming that Harry Potter was the real villain, and people believe him. Yeah, sure.
And then, despite both the main series and this new book being written from the perspectives of opposing characters from this book series, who everyone now knows and accepts are both real, nobody aside from Dash at any point makes the logical connection that A.K. Yearling might be Daring Do, or that Groom Q.Q. Martingale might be Dr. Caballeron, even though both their disguises are paper-thin? Even Daring and Caballeron themselves don't guess each other's true identities, despite Caballeron having gone after Daring at her own house and at a Daring Do convention before? Is that seriously what you're telling me, Daring Doubt?
There are only four other Daring Do episodes to watch. I don't think that this is an unreasonable amount of research to expect.
Daring says that she always feared that people would eventually find out that she's real, but I still don't know why she even tried to present her adventures as fiction in the first place, or why keeping all of this a secret is so important. There's no benefit to it, and it seems ridiculous to think that it would ever remain a secret for long anyway. It's not like Daring even makes any attempt to hide how real she is whenever she's out on adventures. The entire town of Somnambula already knew that Daring Do is real. All it takes is a single pony travelling to or from Southern Equestria at any point in the past decade or so, and the cat's out of the bag.
And again, what's the benefit of maintaining a secret identity as an author anyway? It doesn't keep her safe, because she still gets attacked by villains in her own home, and it doesn't afford her any greater level of privacy, because she's famous in both of her identities. Is it a Batman situation, where she's knowingly operating outside of the law, and the secret identity is for plausible deniability's sake? No, that can't be it either, because she deliberately unmasks as Daring Do in front of a witness later in this very episode. So either Daring got arrested by the friendship police immediately after this episode ended, or this whole charade was just a waste of everybody's time.
Daring Do also says in this scene that she writes her books to share the stories, not for the fame. Yeah, I'm sure that the huge piles of money that she makes from the series also have nothing to do with it, right? Hey, maybe that's why she writes her books as fiction? So that she can hold sole copyright on everything that she writes about, and capitalise on selling merchandise of things that she didn't actually create? Maybe instead of trying to slander her for the tenth time, Dr. Caballeron should have fucking sued Daring Do for claiming his name and likeness as her intellectual property instead? Hit her where it hurts, Cabby. In her fucking wallet.
I am all for a Caballeron V Daring Do court battle episode. That would be miles more entertaining than this.
So after a quick confrontation with Caballeron in his secret identity, he suckers Fluttershy into coming along with him on an expedition to retrieve some artefact, and Rainbow Dash and Daring Do immediately set out to follow them.
This whole scenario is stuffed with plot convenience, chiefly that Daring is able to immediately guess exactly which artefact Caballeron is going after, based on nothing more than the fact that Fluttershy is a pegasus, and that this particular artefact requires a pegasus to reach. Daring Do, you will notice, is also a pegasus, and already knows of this particular artefact, including exactly where it is. But she hasn't gone to retrieve it herself already, despite retrieving artefacts to protect them from shit like this being her stated raison d'etre, because it's "too dangerous." At least, it's too dangerous for the mare literally called Daring fucking Do to consider. Not too dangerous for Dr. Caballeron and his party of earth ponies, though.
As for Fluttershy's part of the episode, she joins Caballeron and his henchponies as they all put on an act of being nice for her, and she gradually wins them over with understanding and kindness despite their initial ill intentions, until they basically end up reformed. Then she helps them retrieve the Truth Talisman at the temple, which honestly doesn't seem that much more dangerous than the average Daring Do setting, and they link up with Rainbow Dash and Daring again, now being trailed by Ahuizotl, who tries to set the temple's guardians on them.
The Truth Talisman is another huge plot convenience, not just because every character already knows exactly where it is and what it does at the start of the story, but also because of what it's used for. Caballeron puts it on for no reason, and it both forces him to reveal the truth to Fluttershy, and confirms that his reformation is genuine to both Dash and Daring. It's basically a narrative shortcut to get all of the characters to immediately take the villains at their word without questioning it, so that we can get the reformation portions of the episode over with as quickly as possible. I personally find this extremely lazy, but this is still on the lower end of this episode's mistakes. At least this time there's a reason for Caballeron stupidly blurting out confessions to all of his lies.
Then comes the worst part of the episode, the rushed last-minute reformation of Ahuizotl.
In his retrospective review of season five, Present Perfect at one point remarked that Diamond Tiara's reformation "feels good in the moment," but is actually "technically as bad as Ahuizotl's in season nine." Now Present, my man, you know that I respect you as a reviewer, but I'm sorry, I gotta call you out on this one, because no reformation on this show even comes close to how bad Ahuizotl's was.
Fluttershy in this episode keeps resolutely insisting that there are two sides to every story, and in the case of Caballeron and his crew, that's fine. They're small-time villains, so reforming them is reasonable. Even if Dr. Caballeron is a proven liar and criminal who does not deserve the benefit of the doubt, he's at least shown himself to be fairly affable and open to conversation, and it's obvious that his villainy comes from simple greed and selfishness, not outright malevolence. He's the kind of villain who it seems possible to get through to. Now sure, I probably wouldn't have ever taken a chance on someone like him, but Fluttershy cut her teeth reforming Discord, so it makes sense that she'd be willing to try. She even basically does it the same way.
But there's a limit to how far the mentality that Fluttershy espouses can realistically go, and Ahuizotl crosses that line. Believe me, I am very much in favour of tolerance, understanding, and reaching out to hear the other side's perspective. I feel like our world would be a much better place if more people were willing to do that. But some people are objectively fucking horrible, and hearing their side of the story doesn't make their actions any better. If Fluttershy made Hitler wear the Truth Talisman, he might very well make her understand his motivations, but he'd still want to kill all the Jews, and there ain't no getting around that part.
Only with Fluttershy.
Okay, I hear you, invoking Godwin's law might seem a little much here. Ahuizotl is not Hitler, sure. But I'd still firmly place him in the category of "genuinely malevolent individual." He may not be a fascist dictator, but Ahuizotl seemed totally onboard with mass death and destruction back in Daring Don't when he wanted to perform a dark ritual to burn the land with eight hundred years of unrelenting heat. That's not something that someone does because they're misunderstood. That's genuine grade-A supervillain shit. Nightmare Moon wanted something equivalent to that, and she was imprisoned for a thousand years because of it. The only reason that Ahuizotl isn't considered a threat on par with the Legion of the Doom members is that everyone in the Daring Do bubble are quarantined to their own episodes to keep all this stupid shit from leaking into the rest of the series.
So why in the name of fuck would you ever assume that he's a reasonable guy who must have good intentions and would be open to talking things out? Ahuizotl to this point has shown no signs of that, and every sign of being a dangerous lunatic. He tried to kill them just minutes before for basically no reason at all. Fluttershy may as well have been giving Jason Vorhees a chance to explain himself at that point. If she weren't a character in a children's TV show, Ahuizotl could've easily twisted her head off and popped it like a grape right then and there, and she would've deserved it for being so fucking stupid.
Now, this isn't to say that you can't reform the genuinely evil and dangerous villains too. Even King Sombra got a reformation in the IDW comics, believe it or not. But it's a much bigger change for a truly evil villain to turn good than it is for a villain who's just kind of a jerk, and you need to put in a lot more work to make it believable, starting with giving us a reason to think that they even can change. With a minor antagonist like Diamond Tiara, we can usually at least take it on faith that they're not a complete sociopath, and that they can change if shown a better way, but we can't take that for granted with villains who mind control people or cause apocalyptic disasters, because you need to be a special kind of twisted to even consider doing those things in the first place.
Notice that none of the mane six ever tried to reform Discord when they first met him, not even Fluttershy, because they had no reason to believe that it was even an option at the time. In fact, Lauren Faust did originally conceive of Discord as a villain who was beyond redemption. It was only after Celestia vouched for it being possible that Fluttershy agreed to give it a shot, and even then he still needed a whole reformation arc afterwards to make it believable to the audience that Discord of all characters wasn't evil anymore.
The architect of Equestria's dark age, everyone.
But we don't get any of this with Ahuizotl. There's zero indication that he's anything other than pure evil up until the moment that Fluttershy decides to try anyway, then he immediately changes his tune, and that's it. His story's over. I got fucking whiplash from how sudden and jarring that was. The length of his reformation treatment is not proportional to his villainy at all. Despite being a cackling megalomaniac on par with the big two-parter villains, he has the shortest reformation arc of any villain in the series. Literally. I checked. It's two minutes and forty-seven seconds from the moment that Fluttershy first considers giving him a chance to the end of the episode and his final appearance in the series.
And it's not even a good two minute and forty-seven second reformation, whatever that may look like. The whole thing is basically just Ahuizotl making excuses for himself while wearing that stupid fucking Truth Talisman so that everyone believes him. He doesn't even apologise for just trying to kill them all a minute ago. He just says that he won't kill them all this time, so long as they promise to fuck off and never come back. Basically the episode is saying that everything that he did was justified, because moral relativism. And what was his excuse, exactly? That he was just trying to protect the artefacts all along, and that Daring Do and Caballeron both mistook him for a monster because they're both just racist I guess.
Bull fucking shit.
I seriously cannot believe that Nicole Dubuc actually expected us to buy this. I don't have a problem with introducing new backstory to recontextualise a villain's actions, since that's a pretty effective way to humanise any character, but this is just a blatant contradiction to whitewash a character who is objectively in the wrong. If Ahuizotl really is just some guardian there to protect the artefacts, then what in God's name was all that business about using magic rings for a dark ritual to scorch the entire land for eight hundred years about? What, was all that really just to keep Daring Do out of a few temples? And even if it was, how does that in any way make it okay?
Why watch the show when you can read the cheat sheets?
To me, Daring Doubt is the ultimate indictment of Nicole Dubuc's run on this show. Ahuizotl only ever had about ten minutes of screentime in the whole series, if that, and she couldn't even be bothered to watch that much. Or she did, and then wrote Daring Doubt anyway, which would be even worse. Either way, it clearly demonstrates that she doesn't care. And that would be bad enough even if she were just another freelancer, but she wasn't. She was a story editor and executive producer. Along with Haber, she was the one deciding the course of this entire series, pitching episode ideas, planning the season arcs, and she was supposed to keep all of the newbie freelance writers in line so that their scripts made sense and they didn't fuck up their continuity. Yet this is the standard that she holds her own writing to.
I stand by my belief that Josh Haber is more at fault than Dubuc for the problems with late-series MLP in general, but I still believe that she shouldn't have been allowed to even touch this show, much less be given creative control over it. Again, nothing personal against her, but they couldn't have picked a worse person for this job if they'd tried.
Speaking of pitching episode concepts, I want to return to that subject one last time.
As much as I do not care about Daring Do, she was undeniably a big enough part of the series to warrant a final episode in season nine to wrap up her storyline, so I can't completely object to an episode like this existing. Resolving Ahuizotl and Caballeron's "arcs," such as they were, is also a sensible choice, otherwise they would indeed be loose ends. I object to the way that it was done, of course; a better way might've been to just reform Caballeron, and then maybe he and Daring team up to defeat Ahuizotl once and for all by catching him in some magical temple trap, sealing him away forever or something.
But what really bothers me is that we were already getting a Daring Do episode this season, but then we also had to have a separate Quibble Pants episode on top of that. I already complained at length about Common Ground and what a bad fit it was for Quibble as a character, so I'm not going to repeat myself, but the big missed opportunity of both episodes is that we never really did get a proper follow-up to Stranger Than Fan Fiction.
Now, I was never the biggest fan of that episode, personally, but Stranger Than Fan Fiction was at least light-hearted in the way that it poked fun at the fandom. It never felt mean-spirited to me like Fame and Misfortune did. And it was also the only Daring Do episode to ever use all the weird A.K. Yearling shit for an actual purpose. In every other episode, the fact that she's real and is the author of her own books only ever perplexed me. I still see no reason why Daring Don't couldn't have just been another imaginary adventure in Dash's head like Read It and Weep was. But having an episode about an obsessive Daring Do fan criticising a Daring Do adventure as he goes through it is actually pretty fun. It accomplished a lot of things at once as an episode.
And I think that season nine really could have used an episode like that, one to not only resolve all of the Daring Do subplots at once, including Quibble's, but also to give one last shout-out to the fandom. Sure, the meta episodes were always controversial even at their best, but if season nine really is the season of looking back and tying up loose ends, then it needed one. Because otherwise, Fame and Misfortune forever stands as the show's last direct message to the fandom, and I find that a very sour note to end on.
But at least Quibble Pants is with us here in spirit, as the episode ends with everyone immediately dropping the series for Ahuizotl's new book. Finally, the Daring Do fandom sees that Quibble was right all along, that Daring Do is garbage and has been for a long time, and they're all finally moving on to greener pastures. Quibble Pants has transcended his mortal form, and has become a concept embodied by the fandom at large. We are all Quibble, and Quibble is us.
Feel him in your heart.
Feel at peace.
Imagine if the last Harry Potter book had ended with a random new side character turning Voldemort good in the final chapter.
Episode 22 - Growing Up is Hard to Do:
So finally we come to the actual last Cutie Mark Crusaders episode, written by Ed Valentine of all people, a returning writer from seasons four to six! Not quite the show's heyday, but a damn sight more promising than most other writers this season. He actually started with this show at the same time that Josh Haber did, even if he didn't stay as long. And most of his previous credits were Crusaders episodes, to boot. He wrote Flight to the Finish, The Fault in Our Cutie Marks (Gabby's debut), and Cart Before the Ponies (with Vogel) as well as Three's a Crowd. So he already knows this show and these characters. Which means that this ought to be good, right?
...Right?
...Help.
Despite how it was more about Scootaloo than the rest of the Crusaders, and despite how terrible it was in general, I actually think that The Last Crusade would have been a much better choice for the final CMC episode than this one. At least The Last Crusade actually celebrates the Crusaders' previous accomplishments. Growing Up is Hard to Do, if anything, just tears them down. It's an episode about how the Crusaders are a bunch of stupid kids who don't know what they're doing, and how they should shut up and listen to the adults in their lives, which is kind of a spit in the face after we just spent the last nine seasons watching them grow and develop as characters.
This episode just seems to have no idea of how old the Crusaders are meant to be. It treats them as really young foals still, the kind who can't be trusted to use public transport on their own, who are dumb enough to assume that being tall automatically makes them smarter, and who still fucking call adults "grown-ups." In the early scenes of the episode, they're intentionally written to sound super whiny and immature, and the voice actresses really exaggerate the squeakiness in their voices before they age-up, especially Claire Corlett as Sweetie Belle. Their song later in the episode even references them having bedtimes.
None of this makes any sense for the Crusaders. They haven't been treated as little kids like this since season one, which Ed Valentine should know already, since he wrote for them in the middle of the series after they had already gone through the majority of their character development. I mean, it's been at least five years in-universe since the first episode. If we assume that they were all ten years old in episode one, they'd be in their mid-teens by now, and they've even visibly grown in size in that time. There's no reason for them to still be this stupid and helpless, especially after everything that we've already seen them do on their own over the past nine seasons. They got their cutie marks, they opened their own summer camp, Scootaloo joined a fucking professional stunt team, but oh no, going to Appleloosa on their own is too much.
This problem is perfectly encapsulated in a line by Rainbow Dash. She tells them "You'll understand responsibility when you get older," when two seasons ago in Forever Filly, Sweetie Belle didn't want to spend the day hanging out with Rarity because she had responsibilities as a Crusader now. This episode is pure character regression for the Crusaders, just as surely as Trivial Pursuit was for Twilight and Non-Compete Clause was for Dash and Applejack, and it fucking sucks just as hard as those episodes did.
"New script here from Mr. Valentine."
But okay, the Crusaders need a chaperone now. Fine. Whatever. Except that the mane six are all busy, and for some reason, all with completely different things.
I don't understand why we needed this level plot contrivance to have them all be unavailable. The fact that they all work two jobs each is already plenty good enough reason why they wouldn't be able to jaunt off to the other side of the country on a moment's notice, and in fairness, Dash and Rarity at least take advantage of this. But for the others, we instead get this series of contrived coincidences, like Twilight's doing an experiment that she needs Fluttershy for, or Big Macintosh is sick and Applejack is the only one who can take care of him for some reason. Why can't Granny Smith or Sugar Belle take care of Big Mac instead? And why are the Crusaders only bothering to ask the mane six, anyway? What about the lesbian aunts? They live in Ponyville now, right? Or do they just not ask because they already know that Lofty and Holiday don't actually give a shit, and wouldn't lift a hoof to help them even if they were free?
So finally we come to the main draw of the episode, seeing the Crusaders as adults after they wish on a magic flower that Twilight got from Star Swirl.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about the wishing flower, because on the one hand, it's another overly convenient plot device, and a fairly nonsensical world-building addition, since we've never seen this kind of wish magic in the series before. But on the other hand, we almost need something like this to do this story at all, because only top-tier unicorns are supposed to be able to do age spells, and there aren't many scenarios that I can think of where Twilight or Starlight would agree to cast one on the Crusaders. I suppose that they could've always gone to Discord or something, but at the end of the day, I think that I prefer the convenient magic wish flower over them retconning age spells or having Zecora make a them potion or something equally stupid.
As for seeing the Crusaders as adults, I like their adult voices and models, and to an extent I am glad that we got a whole episode to show them off rather than just getting a brief glimpse of them in the epilogue or something, but what's even the point if you're not going to actually do anything with them? All they do is sing a mostly okay song, get lost in the woods, deceive a couple of other kids and give them bad advice, and then get into trouble at a carnival. There's nothing special about any of this. The whole premise of the episode is the Crusaders becoming adults, but you could remove that plot point from this story, and it almost wouldn't change at all. It's a waste of a good idea.
Instead, the final ever Cutie Mark Crusaders episode is more concerned with these two boring new side characters. Biscuit and Spur have to be the least interesting foals that the Crusaders have ever interacted with. All of their dialogue is so stilted and awkward. Spur at one point unironically says "What do you grown-ups think?" And their pet, Bloofy, is basically just the winterzilla from Best Gift Ever again. It's another cute, cuddly creature that suddenly turns into a massive destructive monster under the right conditions, à la Gremlins, only this time with a stupider name. Why the hell does the episode spend so much screentime on these two and their pet rather than telling a story about the Crusaders?
Biscuit looks like he's gonna start ranting about Friendship is Witchcraft against a gradient background any minute now.
Their presence also totally breaks this flimsy excuse for a plot. The Crusaders aren't allowed to go to the Appleloosa fair on their own because they're just kids, and then they get lost in the swamp trying to go anyway because they're just kids. So in the end, their solution is to follow two other kids, who I notice don't have any adults accompanying them. Then they inadvertently cause all this trouble at the fair with the winterzilla— Um, I mean Bloofy, and it's supposed to be a lesson about kids getting in over their heads, and how they need adults to handle big problems like these. But then even after Twilight and Fluttershy arrive to help, they still make Spur go in to calm down the rampaging tornado monster. I know that these two are supposed to be older than the Crusaders in this episode (so like... eighteen?), but doesn't all this still rather undermine the message?
The episode has a really stupid ending too. Instead of just using an age spell or something, Twilight makes them waste the flower's last wish on undoing their previous wish, and then they have a whole "liar revealed" confession scene with Biscuit and Spur, who they say were so much more mature than they were, before another generic "everybody laughs" ending. Really bold choice, dedicating the last ever Crusaders episode to telling us how much the Crusaders suck compared to these two random new side characters. Who, let's not forget, owned a pet that could turn into a rampaging tornado monster, and then brought it into the middle of a large public event anyway, on the advice of three random ponies that they found bumbling around in the swamp.
But actually, do you want to hear something interesting? There actually is a point to Biscuit and Spur being in this episode! They are here for a reason! It's just not a reason that ever made it to the final draft. But since I've read the season nine leaks, I can tell you! You'll never guess. Seriously.
They're meant to be Cozy Glow and Tirek in disguise.
Mind = BLOWN.
See, they're a leftover from a much earlier draft of season nine's Legion of Doom arc. Because Grogar is secretly Discord, in an earlier version of the story, all of the members of the Legion of Doom were going to be given "Elements of Disharmony," and then periodically throughout the season, we'd see them show up in various unrelated episodes to do something nefarious. For example, Chrysalis was supposed to appear in Sweet and Smoky (which was originally going to be called Trial by Fire) and use her Element of Disharmony to conquer the Dragon Lands, and Spike and Fluttershy were supposed to team up with Garble to stop her.
Well, that's what Biscuit and Spur are. They're Cozy and Tirek intruding into the episode to cause trouble. In the original pitch, the Crusaders are tired of living in their sisters' shadows and being treated like babies by the adults around town, so Apple Bloom actually makes a potion to age them up, and then they go to some other town to prove that they can go on adventures too, where they're mistaken for their sisters somehow and celebrated by the townsfolk. Then when Cozy hears that the mane six are in town, she goes out with her Element of Disharmony to cause trouble for them, presumably accompanied by Tirek.
Yeah, makes sense now why these two are here, doesn't it? Sounds like a much better version of the episode too, maybe minus the potion part. You can still sort of see the remnants of this in the final version of the episode. Cozy attacking the town on purpose makes a lot more sense than "Bloofy," doesn't it? And Spur even looks like Cozy. Admittedly, I'm not sure where Tirek as Biscuit fits into all of this, since it wasn't specified in the documents that I saw, but this was still very early on in production, and they didn't seem to have any real ideas for him yet. At this point, they literally just had a placeholder in the episode list saying "TIREK ATTACKS."
And there were many more interesting insights in those leaks that I could tell you about, particularly with regards to the season arc, but there'll be plenty of time for that in the finale. First, let's take a break to cover the final regular episode of the season, and one of the few... mostly good ones.
Episode 23 - The Big Mac Question:
It probably shouldn't surprise anyone that I liked this episode. After all, I've enjoyed pretty much all of the O&O gang episodes. Spike, Discord, and Big Mac were another strange set of characters to group up back in season six, but I think that they genuinely work well as a comedic trio in the way that they play off each other.
Big Mac and Sugar Belle have always been equally strange to me, and I never really found their romance to be that compelling, but it kept grinding ahead after season seven through sheer writer inertia, so I kind of just accepted it after a while. And while I still don't find them that interesting, I think that the writers at least hit on a good idea for them with season eight's The Break Up Break Down. If the Big Mac and Sugar Belle romance is boring on its own, why not use it as a secondary element to drive stories about the O&O gang instead? Hey, it works. And The Big Mac Question is another episode in that same vein.
So yes. I liked a lot of the humour in this episode. In fact, I probably laughed more times during The Big Mac Question than I did through the entire rest of the season combined. The Saddle Row Review-esque interview format was fun. I liked all of Discord's antics, especially the appearance of the giant apple monster. And Granny Smith recounting her dream of being in space with Grand Pear, Mudbriar, and Discord was probably my favourite gag of the season.
"This reminds me of a Star Trek episode."
There were also a lot of callbacks in this episode, and they were really well done for once. I was actually impressed by how many episodes The Big Mac Question called back to and tied together. The episode is effectively a sequel to The Break Up Break Down of course, but we also had the Crusaders there, referencing the beginning of their romance in Hard to Say Anything, and there were also a surprising number of references to The Perfect Pear. Grand Pear, Burnt Oak, and Mrs. Cake's appearances, as well as the proposal in the orchard, all drew parallels between Big Mac's relationship and his parents', and it's actually quite heartfelt. I wouldn't say it lends Big Mac and Sugar Belle much more depth, but it's something. It's the most that I ever felt for them, at least.
Still, the episode is hardly flawless. One minor complaint of mine is that while I liked the way that the episode showed Sugar Belle's perspective in the second half, I felt like it repeated a smidge too much in the middle after catching back up, going through two entire jokes from Discord again before moving on. Admittedly, this one's more of a nitpick, but it did bother me.
But my bigger complaint is the selection of wedding guests in the final scene. Sure, we have the "core" Apple family there, the Crusaders, the O&O gang, Grand Pear, Goldie Delicious, Mrs. Cake, yeah, all great. But doesn't this all seem way too small for an Apple family wedding? We've seen their family reunions; they're huge. You'd think that this would be a well-populated event, but we barely see any Apples here. Even Braeburn is absent, despite being mentioned in two other episodes this season, and appearing in a speaking role for another.
Big Mac's family aren't the only absentees either. Where are Cranky and Matilda? He attended their wedding. Didn't they get invites? Or what about the mane six? Sure, Applejack is here for her brother's wedding, even if she didn't get any lines, and Spike put in an appearance, but none of the rest of them did? The mane six have all known Big Mac and the Apple family for years now. And Pinkie's actually related to the Apples! Where are the Pies? They spent last Hearth's Warming on Sweet Apple Acres, but won't even come to Big Mac's wedding? What, are they all just refusing to attend out of solidarity with Marble?
Marble took a dark turn after Best Gift Ever.
Even Sugar Belle's side has a notable absence, which is quite an accomplishment for such an underdeveloped character. We see all of the other Ourtown residents there, like Party Favour and Double Diamond, but notably, not a single sign of Starlight. Not that I would blame her for not wanting to invite the ex-cult leader who lied to and manipulated her for years to her wedding, but didn't Sugar Belle and the other villagers forgive Starlight at the end of season five, and invite her back to town for the Sunset Festival in Where and Back Again? If she really is forgiven, why wouldn't she be invited? They were neighbours for years, weren't they?
So the wedding scene doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Which is a shame, because I think that the rest of the episode was very well done. Probably one of Haber and Vogel's best, in fact. But I still rate it quite highly in spite of that blemish. In fact, I'd say that The Big Mac Question is my personal favourite episode of the season, even if I still think that Going to Seed is technically the better episode. Neither of them quite reach the highs of any of the best episodes of previous seasons for me, but you look for quality wherever you can find it in these trying times.
Anyway, I think that we've put it off for long enough now. Time to talk about the series finale.
...
An important point which I wish more people were aware of in general.
Spike being underage when Gabby is not, presumably.
No, there’s no salvaging it.
Remember that reality bill that Celestia learned about and convinced Luna to retire immediately? Space was already getting repossessed by that point, she knew what she was doing.
Actually, we don’t know that, and canon statements don’t contradict this being true: he could be a guardian spirit of the disparate cultures he himself genocided. As karmic punishment.
And then someone caught on that fanfic has already done this better a few times, right?…
And if you DON'T acquiesce to their 'morals'... they call you an alt-right Yahtzee on Twitter and cancel you. ESPECIALLY if you hate the new Doctor Who and Star Trek with Mikey Spock, whom they believe is TEH BESTEST EVAR!!!
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Isn't Gabby underage? In her only previous appearance, she spent the whole episode hanging out with the Crusaders and trying to get a cutie mark. If anything, she came off as younger than Spike.
Headcanon accepted.
I wish. If the writers read more fanfics, maybe they'd steal better ideas.
Alara J. Rogers was making fun of the Elements of Disharmony idea back in 2014.
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She does have an actual job, so more likely than not, she isn’t underage. That said, we don’t really know.
I know. Ironically, while on my statistical investigations I’ve tripped over many stories using them, Not the Hero is the only one I actually read.
I think this'll be my last one, because this is getting tiring, and I've got nothing nice to say about the last three episodes. Plus, my final comment there pretty much sums up my overall attitude. Needless to say, the final episodes I condemn to Hell and wish Satan have fun with them, because I can't muster up anything new to say about them that I haven't already said for other episodes.
The fact that it was any good I consider a major selling point, at this stage. Have I mentioned I think most redemptions in this show are cheap and unnecessary? Each one would be a problem in isolation, but when there are just so many, I cannot look fondly upon the trend at all. The first half of the show is not exempt from this criticism, either.
Although if Hasbro stepped in and decided that Diamond Tiara's story was "done", despite the fact it had only just reached the point where it started to be interesting, then that suggests it was entirely the wrong atmosphere to be trying stuff like redemption.
I agree with your points about why it works in Sunset's case (dealing with consequences, for one thing), plus the fact that we got to know her actual character better as the EqG franchise went on. Still, I think it also works because - pulling no punches - she was a lousy villain in the first place. She could only go up from there. The most insightful aspects of her story in the first movie were confined to throwaway lines mentioning her backstory, meaning she played out as a generic bully for the vast majority of her introduction.
Back to the actual season episode...
Seems to be a case of Omniscient Morality License, wherein being a wise character who knows how things turn out gets you a pass for the ethicality of your actions. I haven't seen this actual episode, but that's not a good start.
Another reminder that this show by design can't do really interesting stuff, like accept the fact that natural carnivores have to kill to survive. In a twisted way, it's a shame the show couldn't push the envelope even a little bit, because now we're getting silly compromises like this.
To be even-handed: myself, I once wrote a fic in which Fluttershy invited a collection of spiders and their relatives to her home for a day, and fed arachnids some customized protein feed, on the grounds that she had a sort of truce with all the creatures in her territory and could hardly let them eat other insects.
But in my own defence, there was a clear implication that this was specifically a quirk of Fluttershy's, and it didn't hold for broader Equestria, where carnivory is exactly as natural as it is in our world. I'm quite happy in other stories to emphasize that Fluttershy is aware of how the food chain works, and that she (reluctantly) accepts it as a fact of life.
Or, to put it another way, the show can't do stuff a fanfic writer can, and yet again, it shows.
I'm amazed you managed to get through this episode review without once explicitly comparing Rarity's actions to a potential paedophile. I remember that being a major complaint of the episode from some quarters, and honestly it makes the episode sound so wretched I don't even want to watch it.
Like, isn't it enough Spike had a childish crush just to show the audience that a particular pony was "beautiful" despite having the same body model and facial structure as any other pony? It was fine as a cute little child's crush - because it happens and is innocent enough - but any further romantic subtext is just... no.
And that's all I'm going to say, because even saying that much makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.
Allow me to quote your own words back at you:
Oh no no no no, I disagree with you there. As asinine as the School of Friendship is, if you squint and dim the lights, it makes a kind of sense for someone like Twilight to found a school, and to put an emphasis on friendship to make it stand out. Twilight is an academic prodigy who discovered there's more to life than just "dusty old books" and who's made multiple efforts to reconcile her written reports with her daily life lessons and experiences. Stupid as the Friendship School was in execution, there's a tiny seed of potential buried under the dead concrete.
Whereas manes being resistant to magic was an impossible sell, totally arbitrary, introduced solely to make a one-off plot work. It wasn't even a good way to make the plot work: you pointed out multiple better options yourself. In a series where dragons can grow moustaches, space-time can be rewritten, and miracles happen if you friend hard enough (including side-effects such as changing mane colours and shapes with Rainbow Power, hello!), magic-immune manes is complete, unforgivable bullshit.
I agree.
That's my reminder that the kind words I expended on the school just now were meant to be relative, not absolute.
I won't repeat what I said about Starlight elsewhere, but I will say that, if they wanted a unicorn replacement for Twilight, Trixie seems like the far more intuitive choice. She has an established strong personality, a clear gimmick of her own (stage magic) that ties in to the element she represents, has a lot of character growth to go through, has been a long-time fan favourite, and was already a redeemed character who wasn't that bad and whose redemption at least had a semi-decent excuse (she was unsuspectingly drunk on the dark side at the time).
The fact that she's also funny as hell, and voiced excellently by Kathleen Barr, I consider a bonus.
Most of what you said about Starlight (being a greyer character, for instance, or bad at being good) I already reserve for Discord. In fact, why have Starlight in when Discord's redemption story isn't even technically finished? All he did was undo his own catastrophic mistake from Season Four's finale. You don't just go from that to being best buds with everyone again. He still has to work to atone for it.
This is why I felt very mixed about whether or not characters reappeared later in the series. On the one hand, Cheerilee got ignored for the vast majority of it despite being very well placed to factor into the lives of the CMC, or Twilight's life if you want to make the academic connection, or even Applejack's if you want to rope in the whole family and maybe have a rapport between family and teacher.
On the other hand, given what they did to Big Mac, it's probably just as well. Thank the lucky stars for that. Cheerilee was spared by canon.
This whole section you wrote simultaneously makes me feel bad for Cheerilee (the economic comparison hits hard) and makes me think she's actually lucky (because we're now throwing our tomatoes at Twilight instead of asking why Cheerilee can't control her class properly). Thank goodness for fanfiction.
(Sees the picture of Trixie immediately below that).
Er... what is going on with Trixie's leg there?
I'd have said "mishandled", myself (the character herself is OK, if flat), but I suppose it works out the same either way.
I'll go to bat for "Stranger Than Fan Fiction", but even I have to admit that one is saddled with problems (even if its meta-humour is much better at defusing them), and the problems I consider much more crippling in the other entries (which make the mistake of running with a premise that can't work and trying to play it seriously).
I'm jumping straight to the Ahuizotl bit, because the whole spaghetti dump around the copyright and fiction/non-fiction issues just reiterates a point already made.
See, we were having a discussion on this on Pineta's post: Daring Do and The Brutish Museums. One of the major talking points was the culpability of Ahuizotl, and needless to say, there was a lot of skepticism around the idea that it could work as presented.
One of the more interesting points was that this might have been an attempt to address colonial injustices such as historical theft of a people's treasures, and the more modern reparations much later in time. I'd recommend reading the post if you haven't already.
I mean, myself, I'd lump its applicability to Ahuizotl alongside the racism and LGBTQ+ stuff: this show cannot address the issue for shit. But I do wonder if there's at least the seed of potential there too, which could be better served in some Alternate Universe modification. After all, before now, fanfickers took the Daring-Ahuizotl connection in a multitude of directions.
To be fair, the comparison would probably be more like Belloq suavely trying to sway public opinion by explaining that Doctor Jones was really a cultural vandal desecrating temples, while Belloq himself established good relations with the local tribesmen and helped them to stop him stealing their treasures. Also, that stuff with the Nazis obviously isn't true. That was just Doctor Jones' crude propaganda.
No, no, go back and try again. "A. K. Yearling" was a stretch, and at least that worked as a double reference to a show writer and to a popular children's author.
That's why she banged on about the importance of keeping secrets in "Daring Don't", despite publishing her secrets for all the world to see.
Sorry, sorry, low-hanging fruit. I'll move on...
We're not on the same page here, I'm afraid, though I agree it was rushed and poorly thought out. We pointed out some other inconsistencies in that blog post I mentioned earlier, such as why he had any business all the way in Somnambula that one time if he's supposed to be a local guardian, and why any of this justifies lethal force.
That's the other problem with message episodes like this one, and why trying to stick anti-racism subplots in artlessly just tests the show's structure well past its breaking point. They take a respectable moral and then walk it off a cliff.
Especially in a show where its built-in, simple optimism can end up pushing a hard concept beyond most real-world limitations, this is a damn good reason why it should be careful about that sort of thing.
I think one of the main things keeping Ahuizotl out of the "worst redemption ever" category for me is that, really, he's small-time stuff when all's said and done. The Daring-Do-is-real stuff is so weaksauce that he comes across as ineffectual compared with the more front-and-centre threats, and he barely makes an appearance in any case. Plus, he's so flat that a flat redemption merely feels like idiotic whiplash than outright breakage. The show so blatantly doesn't care about the details behind him that I find it hard to muster much of a reaction to him suddenly being retconned into a misunderstood nice guy. I just roll my eyes at it.
Besides, I can at least see some scope for Ahuizotl having humanizing elements, such as a devotion to his temples/civilization, or legitimate grievances against Daring Do. Making him yet another redeemed villain is missing the point, but I think there is a point somewhere to drive a wedge and get him out of the boring supervillain funk.
Oh hello, Amethyst Star. Wasn't expecting to see you here, but my word does your face fit right in.
Also known as a very poor excuse to show us the staff's CMC fanart.
Although it's nice to hear Creber, Corlett, and Peters be allowed to speak in their natural voices rather than keep pretending they're children.
No, I don't agree with you on this one. This episode was just a case of bog-standard lameness in its treatment of the CMCs as immaturely backwards, but at least I could imagine their teen versions being slightly cocky and overconfident. Its biggest problem is being a forgettable one-off. The Scootaloo one actively sought to tear up eight seasons' worth of goodwill towards her and expect us to like it, and I do not want to imagine these naive writers being that overconfident at all. I only wish it was forgettable.
That image with the reaper was... harsh.
Wait... counting the doors... checking the cutie marks on them... Fluttershy was spared?
Yet another moment I came to dislike the backstage shenanigans, with these scars all over the place as a result. Past a certain point, it's just embarrassing to read about. I'd almost call it sabotage, if I wasn't convinced Hanlon's Razor didn't hold (though replace "stupidity" with "apathetic/ignorant incompetence" to get a more exacting flavour).
I kinda like the idea of Apple Bloom's potion skills making a comeback. I was disappointed when that Twilight Time concept from Season Four ended up dropped like a stone with no further development, because the CMC's relationship with Twilight opened up a lot of possibilities for their mutual development.
Less happy with the idea of it being used to defy another established bit of lore, the sheer difficulty of the age spell, but I think on balance it'd be less capricious than a random wishing flower coming out of nowhere and meaning nothing anywhere else.
I'm going to be blunt: no amount of people telling me how good this episode was will induce me to watch it. Big Mac and Sugar Belle is nothing more than a canon crackfic, and its attempts to capitalize on the goodwill of "The Perfect Pear" does absolutely nothing to make me feel it earned even a second of its time on this show.
Helps I barely care about romance, anyway, but seriously, why is this in the show? And why does Big Mac keep getting roped into problematic romances, at that? Cheerilee and he got involved because of a G-rated mind-control drug administered by three children, and Marble Pie may well be a relative. Chuck in a random side character for shits and giggles, and I find it hard to feel anything good for any of this.
Mm, I see her more as either a Poison Ivy (plants being tied to earth) or a Clayface (well, because of the clay).
5421269
If that was ever a concern with any influence, then this whole season wouldn't have made it past the first few minutes.
And I'm not touching the finale. I made my overall view quite clear, and in any case I don't have much to add to any of what you wrote other than it, like your review of "School Raze", took something I already considered the lowest of the low and managed to push it deeper into the dirt.
Besides, I can only vent my frustrations for so long before I want to just move on. This was fun at first, but I don't want to wallow in negativity for much longer. I did consider posting my own blog with a statement to that effect, but honestly I'd much rather leave the topic alone for a while, especially with Christmas so close, and focus on the positives again.
Still, thank you for posting these reviews. They opened my eyes to a lot of things, helped me reassess my position re: the show, and even where I disagreed, I at least felt happy knowing there was someone I could talk to about the later parts of the show. It's been a relief for me too to feel I can find someone who gets my position, and even express it better than I could.
5421452
Spike has a job. And Scootaloo joined a professional stunt team, even though she was explicitly called a foal.
5421455
Oh, I agree. Extremely uninteresting villain. Her character design was pretty much the best thing about her. That's why I called Starlight an inverse Sunset Shimmer when I talked about her later. Sunset Shimmer was a terrible villain, but a great protagonist, whereas Starlight was a very interesting villain, especially in her first appearance where she was a creepy ideologue cult leader, but her reformation arc was underwhelming, to say the least.
No, but Fluttershy has already fed fish to carnviores before in earlier seasons. This vegan diet shit is just something that happens in this episode. I don't know if this was Confalone being stupid or the triumvirate, but this is definitely the work of an individual being stupid, not any narrative restrictions on the show itself.
I mean, she could be; I'm not gonna rule it out, and that's another potential layer to the creepiness for sure. But I actually don't know how old Spike is meant to be by this point in the series. I mean, he's gone through dragon puberty now, nobody has called him a baby in a long while, and we know it's been at least five years since the start of the series, because we've seen five different Hearth's Warmings, so who knows? Maybe Spike isn't a minor in season nine. I'm not gonna speak definitively on the issue when it's so muddy.
Agreed.
See, you give credit for the potential in the ideas, but when I say that Ahuizotl's redemption was the worst, I'm judging purely by its execution. Other redemption arcs on this show have been mishandled, sure, and there are villains who probably never should've been redeemed in the first place, but what makes Ahuizotl's the worst to me is that screws up in every way it's possible to screw up. No set-up, rushed through at the last minute, blatantly contradicts previous episodes and portrayals, serves no purpose/nothing done with him afterwards, and I could go on, but you get the idea. If they were ever going to reform Ahuizotl, then he needed a whole episode of his own to do it. Or at least he should've done it alongside Caballeron.
No, Fluttershy's door is just further back, and off-camera.
In fairness, the shorts already demolished that, so it's not like the potion plot point would've done any further damage.
Fair.
Aww, shucks. Thank you. I'm glad you got something out of it.
Enjoy the holidays. Hope you have a good time.
5421500
You too, and Merry Christmas.
I dunno... had some retards lately claiming China is great cuz a certain senile old man says so.
People are, in fact, far stupider than you imagine. It's difficult, sometimes, as even a reasonably intelligent individual, to lower yourself to the level of the TRULY braindead. The 2+2=5 crowd, ya know? Who try to justify their mathematical failures by presenting cases that only PROVE they know nothing of how math works.
Yeah, and that reformation was awful too, because it wasn't really even the same King Sombra. He had VASTLY more power than in the show, being able to petrify the Princesses... if he could do that, how did they beat him so easily in the past without even bringing the EoH with them? Hell, he was so little of a threat, they threw Twilight & Co at him as a TEST FOR TWILIGHT, and specifically instructed her not to bring the EoH with her, when having them could have ENDED Sombra instantly!
If there was a single thing Season 9 did right, it was utterly negating that comic and making Sombra just the unrepetent powermonger he was portrayed as in Season 3's opener. And then blowing him up for good.
But they STILL overpowered him in that episode. He blew up the Tree of Harmony. THE TREE OF HARMONY... the thing even Discord was powerless to touch until his Plunder Seeds had attacked it for CENTURIES after the EoH had been removed from it. And, lest we forget, in that SAME EPISODE, Discord was just toying with Sombra and brushing off his magic like it was a child throwing handfuls of flour his way.
Just... ugh... Sombra was a perfect example of how the writers involved just did NOT understand how to craft a super-powered villain without Lauren.
See my earlier comment on how agenda poisons EVERYTHING when it becomes the sole motivating force behind writing.
If Grogar had actually been Grogar, this idea would have been great.
It's astounding... they had all the pieces to make a really good final season, and DELIBERATELY sabotaged their own work.
But then, that's how these people think.
Ah, a Redlettermedia fan. Clearly you are a man of culture with a dumb-high IQ of 189 who has a MASTER PLAN to take over ZAWARDO and offer up sacrifices to Billy. (Alondro gets his Youtube cults mixed up...)
Those HACK FRAUDS had better get the Rise of Skywalker Mr. Plinkett review up soon! I mean, what with the asteroid about to slam into the planet and kill us all... and then the alien invasion... and then Wuflu II: The COOFening...
I like how this part has the longest replies so far.
I don't think this is a very controversial statement, myself. :')
Oh god, yes, it's one of the greatest sins of the entire show.
Someone needs to legitimately write this, holy shit, this is the only Fluttercord I would ever love.
Me since No Second Prances.
Wait, Freeport Venture is part of the Winningverse? No wonder I didn't get it!
Sexism.
You're goddamn right they have.
I'm surprised you didn't mention how Sunburst becoming the royal Crystaller was a huge deal back in season 6, but by season 9, it pretty much doesn't matter and he can just stop doing it whenever.
This is maybe the one part of this hell episode that I actually liked. It means their disguises are bad only to our eyes, because we're supposed to know who's who. In-universe, they actually work. That horses are so easily fooled is hilarious.
I mean, fair.
Mister Stark, I don't feel so good. D:
The fuck you say.
...Wow, that's fucked up. Mostly because they decided not to do it.
Have you no shame? D:
I don't know if you saw it, but Pineta (I think) posted a blog recently about returning artifacts to their native cultures, which led to a discussion about Daring Done Fucked Up and at least something of an explanation for why show staffers might have thought a quick "he's just misunderstood" reformation for Ahuizotl was a good idea, and also why they fucked it up. (Because big, important, real-world issue, as all those previously mentioned which they also fucked up.)
5421455
Oh my god, can you fucking imagine
Maybe the end of episode two, the Legion is standing around Grogar, finally realizing that they're up against some Real Shit, and he's like, if you all work together, we can take revenge on Twilight Sparkle! And then they start laughing evilly and the camera begins to iris out, only Grogar turns into Discord and stops the viewfinder and says to the viewer, "Actually, nevermind. Just go read fanfics, they've already done this better."
And then he dons a Hawaiian shirt and leads the Legionnaires in a horrible rendition of the theme song while they all flip off the camera. Yes, even the horses. And then that's just the end of the entire show, get fucked.
5421645
I just figured Shining and Cadance fired him for letting horse Hitler capture their daughter while he was off in the crystal brothels.
None.