Aside from the previous idea I proposed of Seasons 8 & 9’s majority being part of a show by a Chaos production company, and the various comics being made by a Chaos publishing company, I often thought of this wild idea here:

At one point, in the “future” depicted in “The Last Problem”, some sort of catastrophe occurs that threatens all of existence, and it unwittingly causes a character or more to be sent back in time. All the way to the beginning of Season 8, and interrupting Twilight from proposing her plan to build the School of Friendship, because the present Main Six would then have to help with the problem occurring in the future. And, rather than completely undoing what happens in the two seasons, this would ultimately create a parallel or alternate universe where things happen differently after the 2017 film. Some things are even changed as a result of this, such as Scootaloo’s family life and background.

Basically, this approach I came up with is similar to what was done with the Star Trek series starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, John Cho, and Simon Pegg.

What do you think?

7891563
As far AU ideas goes, this sounds pretty cool. It could make for a good AU story.

7891563
Considering the AU I've been wonderfully concocting within the CEM, this is not the craziest idea I've seen. Granted, for mine, Season 8 is mostly the same. Season 9, on the other hand... Mwahaha... MWAhAHAHAhaahHAHAHahahahAHHAhaHAHAhAHHAhAh

7891589
Intriguing.

7891563
I'd be cautious with time travel plotlines. A common issue is that if the past is changed, those in the future have no reason to travel back in time, meaning they don't travel back in time. The result is a time paradox.

7891700
I feel like I’ve heard of that term before, but I can’t exactly place what it is. What’s a time paradox, exactly?

7891709

Time Paradox: a hypothetical contradiction of cause-and-effect within a timeline that results from traveling back in time.

Dictionary.com

Types of time paradox include the bootstrap paradox (a closed loop created by somebody travelling backwards in time that always ends with the person being sent back in time again ad infinitum) and the grandfather paradox (where a person travels back in time and changes the timeline in such a way that the point they travelled back from no longer exists).

A famous example of trying to prevent a time paradox occurs in the film Back to the Future; Marty McFly travels back in time to the time when his parents met-only for his own mother (as a teenager) to fall in love with him. Much of the plot focuses on Marty ensuring his parents get together, as if this doesn't happen he will never exist.

7891718
Ah. That makes sense.

Ironically, while the 2009 “Star Trek” film does have a “past being altered” storyline, Leonard Nimoy’s version of Spock doesn’t fade out of existence. And neither does the timeline he’s from either.

What sort of time paradox do you think that is?

7891733
I don't know the technical name for that one, but I believe this is an example of a split timeline, or where the process of changing the past creates a new, divergent timeline instead of editing the original one. Avengers: Endgame uses this trick to resolve its plot; the previous events remain, but new, diverging timelines are created in their place.

7891800
Ah. Ironically, “Avengers: Endgame” was another inspiration I had for the time travel aspect of my idea.

7891814
It's one of the few films that handles it well, as time travel plots can easily become convoluted messes for the reasons stated above.