We've explored all six of our beloved ponies, but what about that other main character? The one who hangs around and acts as the token boy?

That's right, it's Spike the Dragon. And for what will probably be the last of these, let's take a look at him.

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Spike is a baby dragon, and after being hatched by Twilight Sparkle, serves as her personal assistant. (Apparently, child labor laws don't exist in Equestria, or just don't apply to non-ponies.) When Twilight went to Ponyville, he came along to act as her personal messenger between her and Celestia, as well as to just assist the Unicorn in any way possible. As a result, he also becomes friends with the rest of the Mane 6, and frequently gets involved with their adventures.

And then Season 2 happened.

Spike's role was greatly diminished along with Twilight's. While he was still on hand to help write letters to Celestia, since the letter writing was no longer integral to delivering the moral, he was no longer required to be in every episode. He did get two episodes dedicated to himself in the second (compared to one in the first), but he was now mostly just a background or secondary character at best.

Also, some meta information. Spike is pretty much the oldest character in (at least) the animation branch of the My Little Pony franchise, having first appeared in the very first special/pilot back in the 80s. Since then, he's appeared in every series and generation, save for My Little Pony Tales, and having a different role and personality in each one. (And just for clarification, Applejack was also in the original pilot, but as far as I know, she never made it the regular series. She was also in some of the G3 cartoons, but had no lines.) FiM Spike leans more towards the original version, acting like a regular little boy than the poised, gentleman-like dragon from G3. It's nothing important, but it's a nice bit of trivia.

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As mentioned above, Spike serves as Twilight Sparkle's personal assistant. Despite being rather lazy and undisciplined, he deeply cares about earning and keeping Twilight's affections. Whenever she gives him a task, he does it, even if he grumbles a bit while doing so. And whenever she praises him, he makes sure she repeats herself a few times, just to keep his ego soothed. However, he also has a tendency to try and cover up his mistakes with lies and deception, which only serve to aggravate Twilight. He also acts like a voice of reason in Twilight's life, pushing her to make friends in the early episodes while also acting as a counterbalance whenever she goes off the deep end.

Spike's main power is the ability to breath fire, which works in two different ways. He can breath normal, burning fire, both as a stream and in ball form, which he primarily uses for cooking purposes and starting roaring fires in the fireplace. In addition, he can burn certain scrolls into magic smoke, which then zips on over to Celestia before reforming into an undamaged scroll again. As a result, he serves as Ponyville's official correspondent with Canterlot, apparently sending both official documents and friendship reports in equal measure. He can also receive scrolls, which he does by burping up a similar cloud of smoke that forms into the new letter. However, this looks like it's incredibly painful, and when Celestia tried sending friendship reports back en masse during "Return of Harmony," the poor dragon was left writhing in complete agony.

Personality-wise, Spike is very much a traditional eight-to-ten-year-old boy. Despite living in a world seemingly dominated by mares, he's obsessed with his masculine image. He flexes his muscles, acts like a tough guy whenever possible, and tries to deny being interested in anything remotely frou-frou. He's also a bit of a smart ass towards Twilight and the others at times, especially when they're just being silly or ridiculous, and has trouble knowing when to keep his mouth shut. That being said, he's also a sensitive, caring kind of guy, and his better nature shines through quite often, and when one of his friends - especially Twilight or Rarity - is in trouble, he will always try to come to the rescue.

Spike is the only dragon in Ponyville, something he has not failed to notice. Having been raised by ponies his entire life, he has little to no understanding of how dragons are expected to behave, or even the basics of how his body's biology works. About the only thing he does know is that dragons are basically omnivores to the extreme, and that he has quite a taste for gemstones and the like. While he mostly ignores this, if the situation becomes pressed enough his isolation can really get him down. Ponies also know almost nothing about dragons, mostly because the beasts are a very dangerous thing to be around and nopony wants to get turned into a pony barbecue. As a result, whenever Spike goes through a sudden shift in his physiology, or desires to learn more about how dragons live, his friends are at a loss for how to help him.

Spike takes his position as Twilight's assistant very seriously, as it is his main way of receiving and maintaining Twilight's love for him. So whenever something comes along that threatens that relationship, he has a tendency to become intensely jealous and, for lack of a better word, villainous. He's not adverse to frame-ups and other shenanigans if it will get him what he wants, although these attempts will ALWAYS backfire horribly. Even worse, if he thinks Twilight doesn't love him at all anymore, he's more than willing to try running away from home or the like. After all, he is just a kid.

One aspect of the show that I don't think was fully intentional was the idea of Spike getting abandoned repeatedly. While I mostly chock this up to Spike not being an integral character to most episodes and the big wigs not wanting to pay for extra lines of dialogue, he has a tendency to be left behind, even when the plot feels like he should be there. The most egregious example cited is him not being at Twilight's birthday party in "Sweet and Elite," which really did feel odd. Of course, many fanfic writers have taken this plot and run with it, creating a world where Spike is completely neglected by everypony else and left to fend for himself. It's such a sad life he leads...

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Shipping Spike is interesting because he already has a canonical crush: Rarity. From the moment he met her, the dragon's been in an almost sustained state of puppy love whenever the opportunity arises, to the point where he's willing to perform any task, regardless of how demeaning or disgusting, to win her affections. Rarity's response to this, however, varies greatly between seasons. In the first, she seemed completely oblivious to his affections, instead using him like a pincushion like he meant nothing to her and then pushing him away when he smelled of garbage. The second season, however, had her acknowledge his crush in one of the sweetest moments in the entire season. With the two seemingly seconds from death, Spike tries to admit his feelings, but Rarity simply puts a hoof over his mouth and gives a loving smile. It's a genuinely emotional, touching scene, and I loved it.

Unfortunately, that moment is undermined if Rarity did know about the crush before that moment. If Rarity did learn about the crush before that moment, it makes her behavior at the beginning of the episode absolutely deplorable. She finds Spike about to eat an extremely rare ruby, so what does she do? She seduces him into giving the gem, which he has been aging for a very long time, to her so she can make an outfit for herself. Fortunately, her interactions with him after that (as few as they are) are much more positive and pleasant.

That being said, shipping the two is...odd. Personally, I always saw Spike's crush as being just that. A lot of us had those moments, whether it be with a teacher, a neighbor, a celebrity, or just some other kind of adult. It's often how we start developing our ideas of romance and love to begin with. The biggest problem with the ship isn't that Spike will outlive Rarity by centuries (you'll run into that problem if you ship Spike or the Princesses with anypony), or that they're different species, but that she's a full-grown adult and he's...a ten-year-old kid. And he'll probably be living in Ponyville for the next several years, until he either grows too big for the town to handle or Twilight has to move away, so she'll be around as he's growing up. In the words of Spike, "Dude, that's creepy." He also gets shipped with Sweetie Belle, if only so he can still be close to Rarity while actually having a workable love interest, but since the two really have never interacted on-screen, it's kind of hard to tell how well that ship works according to the canon.

Spike's main relationship outside of Rarity is with Twilight. Like I said above, he vies for her affections and wants to remain her "Number One Assistant," but they can also get very frustrated with each other. Twilight doesn't like it when Spike lies or acts like a jerk, and Spike hates it when Twi goes on an order crusade or snaps completely. But then you get to the biggest question of their relationship: Is Twilight Spike's mother? Personally, I'd say no. Twilight may have hatched Spike, but I hardly think a little filly would be able to take care of a baby anything, let alone a species nopony knows anything about. He's more like a bratty little brother to her than anything else. I'd honestly peg Princess Celestia as being more of a mother figure to him, as that was what Faust apparently had intended back when she created the series bible.

As for the rest of the Mane 6...I honestly dunno. Spike is friends with them, certainly, but he isn't a major focus of their lives. He does know that impersonating Rainbow Dash is a bad idea, but other than that, he just shows up whenever it's time for the moral.

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The strange thing about Spike is that his three episodes are frequently considered some of the least popular in the series. "Owl's Well That Ends Well" is almost always towards the top of the "Worst of Season 1" list, and his Season 2 episodes didn't exactly inspire a lot of love for him, either. That doesn't mean he's a bad character, however. He works great as a straight man to Twilight's bouts of madness, and I find the non-shipping relationship with Rarity somewhat sweet. However, he suffers because he's a male character in a female-dominated show. It was the same thing in the first series, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Seriously, though, can he please get a GOOD episode? Possibly?

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So...yeah, that's it. Hope you enjoyed.