"The Hearth's Warming Club" Review: How the Student Six saved Hearth's Warming (for Gallus) · 2:59am Aug 7th, 2018
This is it! The kind of episode I have waited for! Finally, for the first time ever since "School Daze", we got a proper, 100% Student Six episode again! And it delivered in the best way possible!
Not only is it another Hearth's Warming Eve episode, something Season 7 did not offer to us, we also learn a lot about the lives of Sandbar, Gallus, Yona, Smolder, Ocellus and Silverstream and about the culture and traditions of their homelands!
And we learned something about Gallus that I did not expect and that gave me a gut punch: Gallus does not have a family and is an orphan.
Since his first role in the show in "School Daze", we saw him acting snarky and sarcastic all the time and one could have thought that is just because he is a griffon and griffons are like this, but now we know there is actually a very deep-seated reason for this. With being an orphan and having no family who cares about him, he has grown bitter over the years. I never disliked him because of this attitude, yet, when I saw him dissing Silverstream in "A Matter of Principals" for having lived underwater for so long and not knowing many things because of that, I couldn't help but starting to think that he is a true jerk. But with this reveal now, I can only feel for him anymore, the moment where he told them to not have a family almost let me break out in tears.
This is a huge development for Gallus and I'm now eager to find out more about him, particularly, why he is alone and what happened to his family. At some point, we definitely need an episode now that answers these questions, perhaps, when Silverstream and the rest of the gang decide to visit him in Griffonstone?
And it's not only a huge development for him, but for the show as well. For years, the fandom has theorized that Scootaloo could be an orphan, because her parents were never to be seen anywhere, until this got debunked just very recently, in the "Ponyville Mysteries" books. And there have been many who said that MLP: FiM wouldn't go for this, to have a character who is an orphan, saying that it would be too dark. But now, there's an orphan in MLP: FiM anyway and it once more proves what a serious show MLP: FiM is.
This is definitely something I want to see explored more in it and I hope MLP: FiM is following this and shows us more about Gallus' lonely life in Griffonstone!
Hearth's Warming-wise, while not being my new, favourite Hearth's Warming Eve episode after all, as I could conclude after comparing it with the other three, this episode was also wonderful. While we haven't gotten to see ponies celebrating a traditional Hearth's Warming Eve together with their families and friends in their homes (something I'm still waiting for to see in detail and with a focus on it, after "Hearthbreakers" only showed the weird and even depressing traditions of Pinkie's family and "A Hearth's Warming Tail" showed us at least a few glimpses of ponies celebrating together) and the episode sadly cut off before we could see the Student Six celebrating with Twilight and her friends after Twilight invited them (which is something I would have really loved to see, but it seems fanfictions will have to cover this now), we still learned a few new things about Hearth's Warming Eve.
The first one is already a new Hearth's Warming Eve tradition, replicas of the Fire of Friendship on top of Hearth's Warming trees to remind on the unity between pegasi, earth ponies and unicorns that was formed on the first Hearth's Warming Eve and on the day of Equestria's founding. And I am actually wondering if this tradition has always existed or if Twilight created it for her friendship school and her students.
During past Hearth's Warming Eve celebrations we've seen in the show and in the official comics, we have never seen the Fire of Friendship on Hearth's Warming trees, not even during Twilight's own Hearth's Warming Eve celebration in "A Hearth's Warming Tail", so it seems that Twilight came up with this to inspire her students.
Inventing a new Hearth's Warming Eve tradition is not a small feat and I'm curious to see if ponies in general will adapt this for their own Hearth's Warming trees. The Hearth's Warming Eve special in December might tell us that.
And creating new traditions for Hearth's Warming Eve is not the only thing Twilight did, as Ocellus explained, she also told the changelings about Hearth's Warming Eve and inspired them to adopt it as their own holiday. This is interesting, as changelings obviously don't have the same history as ponies and therefore no real reason to celebrate Hearth's Warming Eve, but it shows how much they have changed and want to do everything to embrace friendship and love. And, maybe, the changelings will develop their own winter holiday eventually? They have already created "variations" of the typical Hearth's Warming traditions, so a first step for that is done already. This was a very interesting bit of worldbuilding for the changelings.
Last, but not least, we also saw a bit of a past Hearth's Warming Eve celebration of Sandbar. We did not get to see any new Hearth's Warming Eve traditions in the flashback showing Sandbar's memories, as we already know about the Hearth's Warming dolls since "Hearthbreakers" in Season 5, but it was interesting to see his family and his little sister.
Most importantly, though, the reveal of Gallus' tragic life and how Silverstream and the rest of his friends decided to stay with him at the Friendship School so that he won't have to feel lonely during the holidays, is what makes this Hearth's Warming Eve episode so great. I love this development, because it means that Silverstream and the others have become Gallus' family, and their decision and sacrifice creates the perfect amount of heartwarming that is needed for a good Hearth's Warming Eve episode to get the spirit of the holiday across.
While it doesn't beat "A Hearth's Warming Tail" for me, mostly because we didn't get to see the Student Six (or anycreature, really) celebrate together, this episode is now my second-most favourite Hearth's Warming Eve episode!
Lastly, we also got a ton of worldbuilding for the nations Yona, Smolder, Silverstream and Gallus come from. Yona's winter holiday (I have a hard time understanding the name of it, so I can't write it down here) consists, as Gallus summed up, of "smashing and family", but also involves a certain rite that could have something to do with the coming-of-age of yaks. In the same flashback, showing Yona's memories of how she got her hair braided for the first time, we also see Yona's family and learn that she has a little brother and a little sister. With this, we now know the families of Silverstream, Yona and Sandbar. This only leaves the families of Ocellus (assuming she has a specific family, considering the way changeling society works) and Smolder, about whom we only heard that she has a brother, as she told Spike during his molt.
The dragons celebrate the "Feast of Fire", telling each other gruesome stories about weak and kind creatures getting defeated and dominated, with the creator of the winning story being rewarded with a pile of gemstones, the hippogriffs have the "Three Days of Freedom Celebration" to celebrate the defeat of the Storm King and the griffons try to be nice to each other during the "Blue Moon Festival", but apparently fail with that each year, which makes this a rather depressing holiday.
The amount of worldbuilding here in just one episode is astounding and I can't wait to (hopefully) hear more about these festivities in future episodes!
In addition to this, we also saw some intriguing, new personality aspects of some of the Student Six. Aside from Gallus' reveal, we also learned that Sandbar is very passionate about Hearth's Warming Eve, so much that he sings "Hearth's Warming Eve Is Here Once Again" all the time, that Silverstream loves Tuesdays (I would die to know the reason! :D) and that Smolder has a thing for stories with depressing endings. And, like last episode, we also saw a nice dynamic between Silverstream and Gallus again. When Gallus volunteered to get interrogated first to get away from cleaning, it was Silverstream whom he threw his mop to, followed by Silverstream willingly catching it. This adds nicely to the teasing between them that we saw in the last episode. The two of them get along exceptionally well, something that even Twilight noticed hence why she put them in the same team for the Spellvenger Hunt, and there seems to be some kind of special bond between them that lets them being closer to each other than to the rest of their friends. This is also something I hope to see explored more in future episodes.
Also, at the end of the episode, we saw Yona rather randomly asking Gallus if she can braid his feathers. Does Yona maybe have developed some feelings for Gallus?
And I guess that wraps it up! There is a lot to see in and learn from this episode and I'm incredibly happy we finally got another, proper Student Six episode to bring a fresh breeze into the show, after the episode before already gave them a lot of screentime!
The amount of screentime for them has drastically increased with the last two episodes and I hope this means that the show is now transitioning to them as new mane characters much faster! I can't wait to see next week's episode and to find out if they will have more big roles in it.
Gallus might be able to relate to Scootaloo.