I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS SPECIAL!!!! As the self-proclaimed biggest G5 fan ever, I’ve been anticipating Make Your Mark’s return for such a long time and now, it’s finally happening!! The animation looks like it’s been improved as well. Definitely cannot wait to see what happens in this one. The new character Ruby Jubilee looks interesting too. I’m curious if she will be a one-off villain who will try and upstage Pipp and/or Izzy or if she will be simply a genuine ally to the Mane 5, I don’t know. I’m leaning more towards the latter after seeing the second trailer. Although I am anticipating the final showdown with Opaline more than this, I definitely cannot wait to see this special.

I also love how we’re getting dedicated specials to seeing the new pony holidays and customs like Winter Wishday and now Bridlewoodstock. It helps flesh out modern Equestria a bit more and places extra emphasis on how different cultures find common ground in each other, which I believe is a big part of G5’s main thesis. Cannot wait!!

7836503
Not only that at least bridlewood would have some excitement in their small town

Another Season special? Will they even try to make at least a 6 or 12 episode season?

7836534
After the special, there will be 6 additional normal-length episodes. Also, I know the whole ‘Chapter’ thing is confusing, but I’d like to point out that these aren’t seasons if it makes you feel any better. The Chapters are part of one complete season plan of four specials and 23 episodes total. This is the second wave of content as part of that plan. What happens after that is anyone’s guess, but here’s hoping G5 gets renewed for more stuff afterwards.

7836499
While a Music Festival sounds like the sort of thing that would be talked about as the Season Premiere, I find issue with the name.

"Bridalwoodstock"

For all the creative names one could have used to describe a music festival, this name is overly-long and doesn't carry with it any energy in its name outside of it being in Bridalwood. You could have gone with any other music-themed naming convention for a celebration that coincides with what the locals of Bridlewood call "The Lumabloom". In fact, I will show three alternatives right here that would have been more interesting than just lazily portmanteau'ing Bridlewood and Woodstock:
The Midsummer Concert: the equivalent to The Summer Sun Celebration of G4.
The Festival of Lanterns: how the Lumabloom manages to light up the night as though there were Lanterns all around.
Pixie Ring Palooza: The presence of efflorescent Mushrooms all around similar to a large Mushroom Circle; an icon in some mythos pertaining to a location of raw Magic.

7836499
If the special ends with a ponified Jimmy Hendrix playing Equestria, the Land I Love on a distorted guitar, I will be a very happy camper.

7836573
At least they didn't call it Bridaltamont...

7836589
I for one am still quite bitter about how they screwed with audiences back in Chapter One by playing up the importance of Maretime Bay Day is to the Ponies living in the town that they are willing to stake their lives on the line to ensure that the celebration goes off without a problem; and after saving the day as the audience is to get the chance to finally see what the festivities are all about that we had followed their adventure to see it through: the episode decides to instead cut to Opaline in a scene that she did not deserve any reason to be a part of due to how she was never properly built up in both the preceding movie or that Special AT ALL, and after that we then cut back to Maretime Bay just several seconds later to after the Maretime Bay Day Celebration went underway to see the Mane Five talk about the celebration and how good it was. Meanwhile the G4 2017 Movie had started with the Friendship Festival getting crashed by The Storm King; only to after he's defeated and Equestria restored again SiA is finally allowed to sing her song which plays into the credits.
Or how the Wishentine Song which the Queen said would have been talking about the history of the Pegasus Holiday of Wishentine, just revolved around repeating the phrase "Joyous Joyous Wishentine!" along with vague niceties of anything that remotely felt like Christmas as opposed to how Hearthswarming Eve had told the audience of how Equestria itself was founded and what helped to unite the Three Tribes back then, wrapping it all up with a powerful song number that serves as the climax of the story we the audience just saw.

The only time where there was any sort of big scale song number at a party was Pipp Petals' song number in A New Generation, and even then; it wasn't the main focus of the scene since it was being used as a distraction by the other Main Characters to try stealing the Pegasus Crystal for themselves.

The point of this is, I'm keeping my expectations on the low end that we'll get anything like what you're describing. The track record for G5 when it comes to both its celebrations or songs so far leaves me with very little chance for any sort of music in it being as bombastic or energetic as was repeatedly shown in G4, or even making any sort of push to try getting their songs past the one minute mark while on the screen, and instead reserving the rest of the song for online downloads or Youtube. One could almost say that G5 can be categorized as "False Advertising" due to how often we are pulled in by one thing when it comes to a festival or celebration; only for the narrative to go in a completely different direction. No matter how big or small-scale it is.

7836612
Fair fair. Still, it'd be a pretty neat callback to both a beloved G4 song and one of the most significant moments in music history.

7836534
Yeah it is a very odd way they are doing it how they represent their episodes and everything like they're just making special episodes

7836612
I have to agree, I keep holding on in hopes of seeing the flash of brilliance in story/song/theme of an episode doing something. But the recent posting for the next 'chapter' of G5 in the MYM series 'special' leaves me feeling let down some.

7836622
There'll be six episodes as well as the special.

7836741
Standard G4 Season: 26 Episodes
G5:
Chapter 1: 1 Special
Chapter 2: 12 Episodes
Chapter 3: 1 Special
Chapter 4: 6 Episodes and 1 Special

What's next?
Chapter 5: 2 Specials
Chapter 6: 3 Episodes and 2 Specials
Chapter 7: 2 Special
Chapter 8: 1¹/₂ Episodes and 3 Specials
Chapter 9: 4 Specials

7836966
Sometimes you never understand how much it takes to work on 3D animation. :/

7836970
Oh I'm well aware of the length of time needed for 3D Animation, I'm just poking fun at how Netflix had seemingly went all half-cocked with their show by having it divided up into this format to begin with; whereas most shows decide to release them in batches known as Seasons: when the animation is 100% Completed months in-advance after doing extensive testing and re-testing of the animation quality to make sure there aren't any noticeable errors or what-have-you.
With how abruptly Chapter 2 had ended most of its episodes without much of a resolution or how often the characters relied on Magic to solve all of their problems in Chapter 3 without doing anything on their own and by-extension making Sunny Starscout: the Series' Main Character be nothing more than a passive observer or even Background Character on the adventure due to how little she had even contributed to things. It makes it feel as though G5 has been severely rushed out the gate just for the sake of putting it out the gate. What is really needed to try and make G5 work is a little important thing called TIME: time enough for the creators to get their shit together to work on a proper Season instead of trying to piecemeal it for the viewers.

In many ways, it reminds me all too well of The Writers' Guild Strike back in '07 where most of the talent was underappreciated and left many shows, movies, and programs without any competent authors to help make the scripts with: resulting in the quality of many shows to take a serious nosedive. And which is now being repeated again in '23.

7836966
I will agree Netflix have seriously hampered the show with this bizarre release model. Though may I ask where the 1 1/2 episodes figure comes from?

7836970
I suspect the animation ordered is already complete, as stuff like this is subcontracted to speed up production (a good example is Rainbow Roadtrip, which was animated by Boulder Media rather than DHX).

7836979
Hmm...

7836988
True. :P

7836986
That was just a joke at how the number of episodes per Chapter is halved compared to the previous Chapter and is replaced with Specials. I was just bringing it to a logical conclusion if this trend were to keep going like it apparently is.

7836990
Netflix are to blame here, I suspect.

7836991
Something in me suspects the decision to order more or cancel after 23 episodes and 4 specials will be made soon.

I sincerely hope it's not the latter.

7836995
Yeah, but since we do live in the modern streaming world... one can never expect though. :P

7836997
If anything, let's hope for the former. :)

7836998
Lets.

7837004
Yep =3

7836997
Canceling the show after 23 Episodes or ordering up more Specials? Because honestly, these guys need to tone down on giving us these Specials since the Winter Wishday one didn't try to have our characters do anything more than doing some window shopping of the Holiday Season in three locations and that Magic constantly did everything which left The Mane Five no chances to bother doing anything on their own. Outside of Izzy coming up with a new spell and Zipp and Pipps' performance in Zephyr Heights; what exactly did Sparky, Sunny, or Hitch even do or provide to resolve the Specials' conflict? I mean it's one thing to have Fluttershy and Applejack sit-out the 2017 Movie and not do anything, but Sunny is supposed to be the Main Character that is supposed to get the plot rolling in the first place.

7837007
Eeyup.

7837022
Cancelling G5 outright. It rather goes without saying I'd rather it didn't get cancelled.

7837034
On this we can agree. G5 is a mess, but unfortunately if it's instantly cancelled out of the blue it's collapse will spiral out into the entire My Little Pony Franchise and do plenty more damage to Hasbro as a whole than what this otherwise innocuous show by Netflix is capable of doing.
The marketing strategy by Hasbro for My Little Pony has been a seriously flawed approach because the Holders don't seem to want to have their own specialized studio that would give out licenses to other companies in order to produce material for the My Little Pony brand in various or interesting ways. Note how we went throughout all of G4 and we never got a decent videogame release outside of Cellphone Apps, and when we finally get to G5; the creative team is playing things so close to the vest that the game team is forced to recycle the plot of the Movies' bad guy despite the game taking place after the Movie.

It's part of the reason why groups such as Lucas Arts: Lucasfilms' dedicated Videogame Division is so fondly remembered due to them holding the License to produce Star Wars Games back before the Division was irresponsibly closed down during the Disney Buyout. However once a certain Coffee Girl decided to follow the Money and sold the production rights to one of the absolutely worst companies in America, the quality for Star Wars Games had dropped significantly due to how money-grubbing EA is along with their scummy business practices that wound up involving a State Governor calling them out on it in a Star Wars Game no less.

It's also why Bandai Namco is capable of much more widespread success with their Mobile Suit Gundam Franchise: because the setting treats the Mobile Suits as vehicles and as reflections of the Pilots that fly them, with each individual series having chances to dedicate themselves to focusing primarily on the Mobile Suit Pilots rather than their Gundams initially, making the franchise just as much a character-driven piece that is disguised as an elaborate toy commercial. And the best part about it; they are able to license out many different Series to suit the tastes of a wide variety of audiences. You have your standard Mature settings like 00, Iron-Blooded Orphans, or Thunderbolt that are meant to tell a story, but there's also the silly ones like Gundam Force, and Gundam Build Fighters where the stakes are low for the characters to get hurt in any meaningful way.

7837074
Media as a whole is a joke. I've largely lost faith in big studios, but smaller projects keep my eye open. And this might sound soppy, but I'm very emotionally invested in MLP as the show helped me through a few tough spots. To see it all flushed down the pan wouldn't be great.

The lack of exposure for the brand is odd. G4 merch was everywhere back in the 2010s, but G5 stuff is oddly hard to find. Even at the major retailers!

7837111
Again, the creators of G5 are unwilling to share information about their projects with one-another. Without any knowledge to work off of; such as a Show Bible, they are forced to wait it out in order to make sure what they make as an original toy doesn't contradict with the show, largely forgetting that G4 had done similar experiments in the past like the Guardians of Harmony line that while non-Canon was still a cool toy line that made My Little Pony into Action Figures.

In layman's terms: G4 was Proactive while G5 is more Reactive.

7837127
Fun for collectors, but a nightmare for people who wanted show-accurate merch. I've seriously considered commisioning custom plushies of some characters as the official plushies barely resemble the characters.

And if it is reactive, that's concerning. Thomas and Friends was in a similar boat late in its run and partly went down the pan because of it.

7837132
Let those who've read this conversation to this point take to heart why exactly having a well thought-out storyline with a set beginning and ending, and having a Show Bible already established that details what can and cannot happen in a story before beginning production on a major project involving other people is important. That, and keeping your other creatives that are helping you in the loop so they are aware of what you do and do not want for your project when they sign up for it.

We already suffered a Trilogy that was under a game of Tug-Of-War between two directors: one that cannot stick a landing and another known for wanting to make a story where the audience is completely polarized and attacking one-another, and both of them led by an Idiotic Coffee Girl that only cared about doing an agenda first and creating a story dead last...

7837137
Star Wars?

7837282
Yes.

7836573

For all the creative names one could have used to describe a music festival, this name is overly-long and doesn't carry with it any energy in its name outside of it being in Bridalwood.

For somebody who's a fan of Star Wars, I'd think you come to relate that one can't pass up the chance of referencing something they're very fond off, no matter how cliché it is.

But to be real for a moment, I'm taking a stab here and assuming that the name might be foreshadowing trouble in the midst. I'm not too clear on the events of Woodstock outside of it being a wild gathering with music at its center, but I'm aware that 99's Woodstock didn't end on a happy note. With this being the fourth chapter along with a villain that's pushing the title's reputation back forty years, I think there's going to be a bit of mayhem in this special.

7837329
Only time will tell, along with the shows' track record when it comes to keeping Sunny Starscout and Opaline Arcana as far apart and separate from each-other as possible.

7837321
Ah.

7837329
1969's Woodstock was also pretty chaotic. They ran out of food and had to have supplies airlifted in by the National Guard. The campsite turned into a sea of mud. Three people died (two of drug overdoses, one from a longstanding medical condition). What did stand out was that the festival didn't turn violent, unlike Altamont that December.