It's almost time again for the next episode of season 9!

This one is called "The Point of No Return", and is by Gillian M. Berrow. She wrote a lot of mlp chapter books, the one about Pinkie Pie's nose, Fluttershy Leans In, Daring Done?, Grannies Gone Wild, The End In Friend, and some of the shorts.

This is also her last episode, and she wrote this on Twitter about it:

Tweet

The Point of No Return sounds like some sort of exciting cliffhanger, though! Or maybe Twilight forgot to return a library book.

As usual, this is the official discussion thread, so feel free to speculate about it before it comes out and discuss it after here! Or vice-versa.

Edit: Added a spoiler tag because I just glanced at the plot summary and am apparently psychic.
--Sweetie Belle

Like others I think it's the book from the S1 opening.

6839635 More likely, Luna forgot to return a book before she was banished, and now she owes more than the GDP of Equestria in fines and interest.

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I'm just surprised that I was right when I wrote that line, though, admittedly, it's what I would have made the episode about, given the title. I'm also not going to be able to watch it without thinking about the first MLP Micro-Series comic...

That does seem like a reasonable guess, though.

--Sweetie Belle

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Wow, that's one sweet tweet. Happy to see that people who work on MLP at the end are enjoying it.

I have read all of Berrow's chapter books to my daughter as bedtime stories. They have all been good! Some of the MLP authors just phone it in--I've seen fanfics better than some lf the official novels--but Berrow clearly has passion.

My Little Pony: Princess Luna and the Festival of the Winter Moon, in particular, was touching.

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Told Ya'll I would call it in that MoonDancer would speak again X3

I..dunno. I empathize with Barrow over this being her last episode.

That said, the episode itself is kind of all over the place, but has fun moments.

An interesting re-take of sorts on Amending Fences. Sometimes our actions can ruin peoples lives without meaning too - but sometimes they can improve them without meaning to as well.

I'll be copying what I said from /r/mylittlepony's discussion thread on the episode.

In which wars waged with fruit can be good for retirement homes.

Yes, Twilight is sort of the humble type when it comes to being a princess, but even if her late fees are exorbitant (which they aren't, but let's assume for argument's sake), would she really have a problem paying it off? Princess money and all? And even if that were off the table, she should be fine with some other equivalent like, say, downpayment in bits and then dozens of hours of community service (which should be logical and OK with a princess). Then again, another point of her being all worried is because she'd lose that perfect book borrower status.

/u/Lankygit pointed it out: there are many familiar old ponies in there. Too many of them in my opinion. It gives off this cramped feeling that, in the end, they're all living there all along when, all this time, I thought they were living in their own homes or other places throughout Equestria. And even if they do have tons of other retirement homes, I find it unbelievable that a lot of them would flock to this retirement home in particular—at best, it could be brushed off in-universe as a sad coincidence. On the bright side, Season 9 being the farewell season can give them the excuse to reuse a lot of familiar old ponies as a subtle send-off to them, rounding them up altogether for probably the first (but certainly the last) time.

Speaking of Season 9 and familiar faces: there's quite a few. The most obvious is the flashback to the show premiere (and, if I recall correctly, they re-animated one of the scenes in a different angle just to give the Perfection book a better view before it gets thrown off). Then you have Moon Dancer eating at Saffron and her dad's restaurant. Ogres & Oubliettes gets mentioned by Spike, and Derpy gets a more prominent spear carrier-like role here.

As for the episode itself: Entertainment-wise, it's very on-point. It's not too on-the-nose with its comedy like with Twilight's smiling face on her perfect book-borrower portrait (unlike a certain other smile in the Best Gift Ever special, which felt forced to me honestly). Twilight stressing out over books is also a fun treat, as well as Dusty Pages rocking around with the guitar and participating in an epic fruit war. And... well, it took me a while to figure out that they consulted Silverstream about Dusty Pages merely because she had the word silver in her name. (Now I wonder what a fic involving Silverstream and Dusty Pages would be like, especially given the hippogriff's never-ending curious wonder at the outside world and how books can help with that.)

Truth be told, I didn't expect the moral to be about perfection. I was expecting something mundane like the importance of remembering stuff like books about to be overdue, and then as the episode progressed, I thought it would instead be about moving on from the past and accepting the present (what with Twilight obsessing over Dusty Pages the librarian when she's moved on to be the pony she truly wanted to be).

And... it's touching. While the episode has a very silly tone to it, the moral silenced me because I am often very hard on myself for my mistakes and even, at times, not being perfect or meeting my own expectations. I ended up not trying this or that because I knew I would suck at it from the get-go and I don't want to make a fool of myself with mistakes like that. And even with the things I'm already doing, I stress myself out when I shouldn't because I drum up in myself that sense to maintain this level of perfection (or at least very high excellence) that when I do slip up, it's not unlikely for me to feel guilty about it.

The moral is neatly summarized in the book's title: Perfection: The Impossible Pursuit. In pursuing perfection, you're guaranteed to fail and probably die trying, and maybe you're not really pursuing perfection but more of running away from mistakes and what they can teach you. Honestly, everything you do has a risk of mistakes. If you want to maintain a perfect record, then don't do anything... which is just bad. Sure, you won't make any mistakes, but you also won't make any progress—and even then, a big chunk of that progress can only come from mistakes.

This episode also reminds me of Flutter Brutter with its similar moral of doing things even with the chance of failure. In fact, I think this episode and Flutter Brutter can go hand-in-hand to provide a fuller moral of: don't be afraid of failure and don't be obsessed with perfection, or else you'll end up going nowhere good.

Overall, this is an unexpectedly grand and awesome episode!