The G4 did finally reach the station. And, as we should have expected, it overshot the platform, hit a wall, and exploded into flames.
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Let's deal with the mismatched abomination of nature first. I was really liking the plot related to Grogar and his Legion of Doom. It's some of the best writing this show has had in years. But then they pull this, and not just in the finale but to start it off. It was a dumb move by Discord, but it was also a dumb move by the people running the show. You had created an excellent character with a mythos behind him not just from what he referenced but within the series itself. And it turns out to just be Discord is disguise? It makes me feel like they didn't know how to use Grogar for a final fight even though the conclusion for dealing with the Trio is the standard get everyone together, give the same old power of friendship speech, and smash them with a rainbow laser.
The Trio at least showed they were competent at villainy and Starlight Glimmer actually had a fight that was interesting with an interesting finisher. It didn't work, but it was more enjoyable than Friendship Spectrum Attack.
However, I have to wonder about Celestia's ability to rule since she apparently couldn't even keep the ponies united. They were willing to work together when times were good, but the moment even minor inconveniences start, they fracture. Me thinks they could learn for the G1 ponies where being attacked by an eldritch horror is called Tuesday and they see themselves as ponies first, not their particular species. This almost makes me feel like Faust was wrong to give the ponies their own kingdom, or at least did a bad job of developing it. I mean, sure, our current politics shows people within a nation can be deeply divided, but I want to escape that when I'm watching candy colored ponies.
The final fight was sadly what we've seen before. They reach their darkest hour and Twilight gets pulled out of the fire by her friends at the last minute only with more of them. Then she makes her speech and hits the bad guys with the Rainbow. There is no denying it, for a supposed intellectual, Twilight is an idiot. Wind Whistler, Bright Eyes, and Kimono are just standing there gobsmacked at how incompetent she is and yet she is going to rule a country. I'm mean, I guess she wouldn't turn her back on the Kurds, so she would be an improvement over what we have in real life, but we're living in the worst possible timeline at the moment. (I need to stop with these political tangents.)
And can we just kill the bad guys? You turned them to stone? Remember when it was the bad guys who turned things to stone? I do.
And then we get the epilogue and predictably they botch the coronation because of course they botched the coronation. Characters botch a ceremony is a trope with this series and we just did that plot last week and arguably the week before. I have no opinion of Luster Dawn because she seems to just be a stand in for Episode Twilight. And I see what you did there, you followed the celestial occurrence synonym for Sparkle thing only you reversed the order. How clever.
I also wanted to see more of the future, not a rehash of a tired plot on this show. Make the coronation the ending of the two parter and spend the epilogue in the future. Make Luster Dawn an actual character. Show some creativity.
I'm going to go back to the G1 camp. There's something about MLP I do enjoy, but I'm not holding out much hope for its future. I might be surprised, though.
Decided to watch again. I saw the leak and wasn’t that impressed, but decided to check it out when it was actually aired for real.
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I’m still thrilled that we actually have villains that didn’t reform! Steven Universe is terrible with its redemption of all villains, but I’m so happy this series decided to not go that route.
The more I think of the whole “Grogar is Discord” thing, the more I think that is incredibly lazy. I suppose it was too late in the game to introduce a new villain. But he wasn’t even needed. Why not just take him out of the equation and have those 3 villains get together of their own volition?
How old are these older Main 6 in the epilogue? The “middle-aged” look wasn’t really prevalent in the series. It was baby, young, adult, elderly. That was kinda weird.
In the end, I’m absolutely thrilled this thing is finally over. I really hope the next one just goes back to mindless commercialism like MLP is supposed to be, rather than shoving love and friendship and all that ridiculousness down our throats.
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I wasn't really impressed with the final episodes. I don't understand why Twilight didn't teleport everyone to Canterlot when they already said they were late to getting on the train. Discord being Grogar kinda rendered the past several episodes featuring him moot. Also, why didn't they show the coronation in full? Instead we had this back-and-forth chit-chat with a pony that was clearly not interested in friendship. Plus it was completely out of nowhere to start the episode with everyone aged up after Twilight had said "I'm gonna wait to hold the coronation". Another thing was why does that mean Twilight has to leave her friends behind? Why can't Celestia and Luna stay in the castle and have Twilight stay in Ponyville? Scootaloo is now teaching? Sorry but what qualifications did she meet? Also, what was the point in saying the magic didn't work when clearly magic can get through?
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Overall I enjoyed the episodes. It was nice seeing Tempest and Capper for a few moments even if they didn't speak. I had no idea that Grogar was really Discord. I'm not a big fan of Discord so it was disappointing to me that is who Grogar really was.
Chrysalis had the perfect opportunity to go after Thorax yet she still focuses all her rage on Starlight Glimmer only even though Thorax was just as much a part of defeating her Starlight Glimmer was.
I'm okay with Cozy, Chrysalis and Tirek being turned to stone. I don't think any of the three of them would have stopped trying to take over Equestria.
It was nice seeing the Pillars, the Mane 6 and the Young Six coming together to activate the Elements of Harmony. I always wondered what would happen if they were all needed at the same time
I liked seeing Twilight's ruling princess form and seeing some of the baby/younger characters grown up at the very end. That being said I could see that Twilight was going to send Luster Dawn to Ponyville from the beginning and it was very obvious that the show was trying to complete the circle by giving us another pony just like Twilight that needs to know the importance of friendship.
Where is Queen Novo's cameo? I missed it.
Ponyfan
Post Merge: October 14, 2019, 01:00:02 PM
The recent leak shows that they wanted Discoshy to kiss and some sort of hint that Appledash had become a couple.
Gross. An old, dangerous man and the young woman who beauty-and-the-beasted him as a romantic couple and two friends who constantly bickered and had nothing in common except for being both stubborn as a couple. Good it wasn't done the way they wanted it to go.
The fandom deciding on which characters should become a romantic couple is one of the dumbest results of social media. Just yell death threats on twitter and see your ship forced together confirmed :lookround:
Taking this opportunity to let out my shipper rage over them tackling this subject at all. Poorly worded as usual.
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It was a bit out of nowhere for all of these things just because MLP isn't a very romantic show? Sure, you have the Big Mac/Sugarbelle thing but that feels different in a way. We knew maybe OF Sugar Belle, but she seems like she was mostly brought in to be in the pairing. Which, sure, whatever, but there isn't too much obvious shipping between the main/side characters aside from that. To hint at/confirm romantic relationships like they did felt...odd. They could have very easily just shown Pinkie Pie come in without a kid. They didn't hint at anything with the last Cheese Sandwich episode. I know it's 20 years in the future but we didn't see an INKLING of a crush, so it does feel very out of nowhere!
I like that they kept the Appledash and Discoshy ambiguous. I like one of those ships and was happy, and I can deal with the other one just because there wasn't anything EXPLICITLY stated. Sure, we all drew our own conclusions in favor of Discoshy but looking at it again, there wasn't any romance there. I can deal with that. They should've left Pinkie's status more ambiguous.
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Spoiler
Finally reserved the time to watch the final triad of episodes and, from the outset, The Ending of the End was fundamentally pretty awful stuff. While I was kind of touched by the entire ancillary cast conglomerating in the final scenes to defeat the villain trio, Twilight's composure only 8-9 episodes following her meme face-laden trivia breakdown was definitely challenging to buy as a result (telling us a character is grown is not equivalent to actually showing they have, but I guess the writers preferred to squeeze more drops of blood from the bag of cliched sitcom humor), several vital scenes fell surprisingly flat (even Starlight's battle with Chrysalis seemed desperate in a way (particularly considering her minor role in the remainder of the plot), as if the writers were scanning a checklist and inserting the bulk of its criteria onto the screen whether it benefited the story/made coherent sense or otherwise) and the entire experience (save for aspects of the climax) simply exuded a weirdly empty air to me, which I assume can be chalked up to the cliched nature of the plot and latter-day FiM's typical brand of obtrusive and overly basic comedy (digging the viewer in the ribs to laugh at a meme face simply because it's a wacky expression/weird is not really effective (or well thought-out) comedy, particularly when the earlier seasons actually offered a variety of well-structured jokes as opposed to dumb material - bizarre one-liners and obvious attempts at manufacturing fandom memes included - which give the episode an air of a semi-self parody (or, more plausibly, Josh Haber and co. simply writing the script on autopilot).
The Last Problem was merely pleasantly forgettable. The plot was reasonable for a final episode, yet it (subjectively) simply wasn't successfully funny enough to work for me. It was also kind of insidious how the show's crew spent six years continually reassuring the fandom that Twilight wouldn't become immortal and outlive her friends before blatantly contradicting this in the final episode of the run. I sense it may be emblematic of the brony fandom and staff's relationship as a whole in a way.
With FiM concluded, I can only concur that it finished in a worse position than it started - from what I've gathered, the later episodes seem to be more popular with fans over on the major brony sites (primarily for having 'more meat and substance' and 'more introspective dialogue' than the earlier seasons, yet I would argue that the Faust-run seasons are far more consistent and well-written in that they actually commit to conveying (mostly) solid narratives with a unique personal touch and utilize dialogue/comedy in more effective ways (for some reason, the use of dialogue in the Haber-edited episodes (seasons 6 and end of 7 onwards) always felt overly expository/lazy to me, as if to create the illusion that something more complex was occurring on-screen than the reality) than their successors, which enables individual episodes to work better as an entire narrative as opposed to being 'the one where Rarity shreds with the guitar' or 'the one with Twilight pulling the uncanny 'pudding' face'.
Final season ranking: 2>1>4>3>5>7>8>9>6
Top 5 (decreasing order): Lesson Zero, Hurricane Fluttershy, The Best Night Ever, It's About Time, The Return of Harmony
Bottom 5 (decreasing order): Hard to Say Anything, What About Discord?, Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?, 28 Pranks Later, Non-Compete Clause
Leave stuff ambiguous for fans to debate strikes me as weak writing. Your job is to tell a story, not leave a bunch of loose threads for the fans to pick at.
This. Usually, I’m for stuff being left to interpretation, because IMO, it’s also bad to hold the reader/watcher’s hand throughout. But yeah, it was pretty weak writing in this case. Though... Spoiler
I think I’m mostly bitter about them just hinting at Granny dying, rather than showing how that was dealt with. How did AJ react? Did her passing break the family for a bit? Big Mac obviously held some strong emotions about his parents, so how did he take it when the current matriarch passed? What about Applebloom? Did she rely on her friends? Could have been a really amazing episode, because every kid experiences the loss of a grandparent at some point... But the Apples are just fine and dandy in the end while AJ wears GS’s shawl. They seem to want to be able to tackle tough subjects sometimes, but they just skip over the obvious loss of a fan favorite. You want to be as groundbreaking a show as you claim, FiM (you’re not), then go all the way rather than kinda-sorta hinting at difficult subject matter and then pulling a JK Rowling on fans via Twitter.
Appledash and Fluttercord were both planned to be canon according to the new leaks.
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Judging by their role in the final episode (and the obviously deliberate wording of their introduction in the epilogue), I'm honestly not surprised (assuming you've read the Eliza Hart treatment for the final episode also included within the leaks, the ending line with Twilight admitting that the entire coronation was a ****show was also a highlight).
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On a related note, the leaks themselves are fascinating stuff - one could easily write an entire 'art of' book on FiM and then some with it, particularly in light of the uber-detailed animation revision notes and the plethora of premises (particularly for seasons 4 and 5 - I assume you've uncovered the various early incarnations of the 100th episode (including that document with the Doctor Whooves scene's DW references turned up to eleven), the rejected season 3 episode where Twilight temporarily assumes Mayor Mare's position, the infamous canned deer episode from season 1 and the entire rejected first draft for that Legally Blonde parody with Rarity M.A Larson referenced way back in 2015?) and drafts (the first draft of the season 3 finale in particular is shockingly different, particular Steven Magnet's climatic verse). Although I haven't downloaded them myself (a contact sent a number of screenshots depicting the material they found most noteworthy to me), they were a fascinating read and it's compelling being in a position to view documents which accurately reflect the undiluted 'styles' of the show's crew - note that the Faust-era writers seem to have a more lighthearted energy about their work, whereas the style of the documents' text noticeably changes upon Haber and co. assuming the reins into a more sardonic style, basically reflecting the show's shift in tone at large.