Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Perseverance (Twilight's Kingdom) · 5:12am Mar 15th, 2021
Twilight's Kingdom. The episode that cranked pony to 11. From alicorn princesses in chains, to the destruction of the Golden Oak Library, to the giant Dragonball fight in the end. Keys. Trees. Musical numbers. The second redemption of Discord. A shiny new castle.
Everything about this episode screamed ambition. Go big or go home.
Ironically, none of these things are what sticks out for me as subjects worth writing about. This episode, at its core, is about purpose. Twilight Sparkle spent the first half of Twilight's Kingdom suffering through an existential crisis, worried that her role as princess wouldn't amount to anything. She sang a sad song about it and everything. Given what we'd seen of her "princessing" up to this point, it's not exactly an unfair concern. With Celestia reigning over the day, Luna over the night, and Cadence running an empire, Twilight had every reason to feel like she hadn't found her place.
This drama is only amplified when she is called upon to hold on to all of the alicorn magic in the universe. By herself. With neither guidance, nor safety net.
A whole bunch of crazy stuff happens that I'm not going to recount here because, watching this episode now, seven years later, after the show has ended, and G5 is already on the horizon, the single most remarkable thing is a simple sentence uttered at the very end of the episode. After Twilight defeats Tirek, and the tree of harmony gave her a weird looking tree-shaped castle playset to live in, Twilight remarks that she is "The Princess of Friendship," and that she now realizes that her true royal duty is to "spread friendship throughout the land."
At the time, that sounded like a really goofy title, and I honestly didn't expect much to come of her mission of "spreading friendship. It just sounded like a vague platitude. A throwaway line.
It turned out to be the foundation that would grow to shape the message of the entire show. They built on that idea so much that it became the thread that held MLP:FIM together - the rock that kept it relevant for five more seasons. Twilight's mission of "spreading friendship across the land" reached its pinnacle in the series finale when aid came to Equestria in the form of...every single race that the Mane Six had ever helped. That one shot - that one moment - tied the whole series together. We all got to witness how powerful an impact the Mane Six had made - how worthy the mission of friendship was!
It's so strange if you stop and think about it. I don't think that the creators planned the series five seasons ahead, but it's still rather incredible how they reshaped this show over time. How they kept it fresh. How this simple idea of "spreading friendship" grew to become the central message of a show that already had a legendary moral foundation.
How it all started with one line that none of us could have predicted to be so cosmically important.
I wish that everyone got to see the sum total of the good they do in the world - how small acts of friendship, kindness, and courage really do add up. But such things remain mostly invisible, so we're left with our doubts and uncertainties and anxieties. It's unlikely that any of us will ever see a legion of our allies banding together to save the day in our hour of need, but it's that image that we should all hold on to and remember.
Believe it or not, there's truth in it.
Keep fighting the battles that no one can see. Keep fighting for others. Keep "spreading friendship throughout the land" (or whatever term you want to use for helping your fellow human beings). It makes a difference.
Discuss.
Sprocket
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It's a logical transition. The first three seasons were Twilight learning friendship in all its facets. Season 4 was an awkward adjustment period for her, both in body and purpose. By the end, she'd grown into both her power and her domain as Princess of Friendship, and from there it was paying her experiences forward: Refining her methods with Sunset and Starlight, reaching out to other nations, bringing together her experiences in the School of Friendship, and completing her diplomatic renaissance of Equestria once she took the throne.
Which really does raise the question of what happened prior to G5, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Thank you for your continued insight, thoughts, and goodwill. :)