Season 5 Finale - Reactions · 9:02pm Nov 29th, 2015
Season 5 is already done? I didn’t even realize the finale was yesterday until someone mentioned it to me. This has been a weird season. I can barely remember half the episodes. But all right, here we go.
- Opening
- So, uh, not that it isn’t still decently funny, but how many times can we redo the ‘Twilight overprepares for something’ gag? I feel like I’ve seen this a dozen times this season alone.
- Twilight’s lecture
- Twilight helpfully recaps that episode about how each of them got their cutie marks for Starlight Glimmer’s benefit, so I assume Starlight can go travel back in time and muck everything up.
- I will say, I like the continuity. I think this is the first time a season finale has directly followed off the plot of a season premiere? I mean, there was that box that one time, but that box was dumb.
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- “We traveled back in time to when Dash raced the bullies who made fun of Fluttershy and performed her first sonic rainboom?”
- I kind of wish the characters would talk like this all the time, giving unnecessary overly long and telly explanations of everything. Twilight even re-explains how time travel works from that one episode. This episode has so much continuity that the first five minutes have been spent doing almost nothing but recapping things that happened in other episodes.
- “With this!”
- “Star Swirl’s spell! Oh no!”
- Wait a second. Didn’t Twilight just say that that Star Swirl’s spell only allowed for traveling one week back in time? How does this being Star Swirl’s spell explain how they travelled back to before any of them had cutie marks?
- This does get explained later, but said explanation is just: “Magic.” So, whatever.
- Rainbow Dash’s race scene
- I didn’t bother to go back and watch the old episode, but how closely does this match that episode? Is it the exact same scene?
- Filly Rainbow Dash is consistently the funniest part of this episode.
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- Starlight Glimmer ruins everything
- Exactly as expected. This show has always been predictable, though. The appeal has always been in the individual characters. So while of course Twilight is now going to return to some terrible future, then rescue the world with the power of friendship (hopefully actually with the help of her friends this time) this should still be a pretty fun episode as long as it involves a pony-filled romp with lots of character-specific slice of life shenanigans.
- And on a second watch, of course that’s not what happened, and the mane 6 get barely any screen time besides Twilight again, and even she spends most of it trying to be an action hero. I wonder, I was hoping her return to a future in which Starlight’s dream of no cutie marks became a reality, and then Twilight had to rally her cutie mark-less friends and help them remember their old selves, and then show that communist Starlight the true power of capitalist individualism. I think I would have preferred that.
- Wandering about broken down Ponyville and seeing the ruined, abandoned houses of Twilight’s friends
- So, uh, this awfully similar to that other time in that other season finale when we saw a ruined Ponyville after everyone’s cutie marks got screwed up, right? Emotional impact is a little lessened when almost this exact same scenario has already occurred.
- On that note, jeez, those cutie marks sure are important. Switch ‘em around a little and the whole world goes freaking bonanza.
- Factory commune camo-wearing Applejack
- Ew, Applejack does not look good in camo. Also, camo Applejack is really boring.
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- War between Celestia and Sombra
- Firstly, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie’s new haircuts look great.
- Secondly, what the hell am I watching? This sort of reminds me of that weird lazer fight between Twilight and Tirek in the last finale, where it’s a long sequence that I think I’m meant to find cool, but actually just feels like the antithesis of everything that makes this show good.
- I mean, it is cool. But where are my character-specific slice of life shenanigans? Which actually never end up showing up at all.
- “But I just can’t believe it! We stopped Sombra! You, me, and all of our friends!”
- For someone who has actually traveled through time more than once, Twilight sure is having a hard time grasping the concept.
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- Starlight Glimmer gloats about how awesome her spell was
- Jeez, this is an incredibly elaborate spell. First it’s a modified version of Star Swirl’s that apparently allows for traveling further than a week (something Twilight couldn’t do?), also somehow uses the map to travel anywhere in place or time, also somehow is rigged to trigger when touched by Spike to also draw them back in time, and also somehow rigged so that when Twilight uses it, it also auto-sends Starlight wherever Twilight went.
- Like, what?
- But, I’m pretty sure if she’d just left Twilight and Spike in that crystal instead of letting them go, she would have avoided her inevitable loss. This show’s villains have a weird habit of turning their backs on the one pony who can thwart all their plans, just in time for said pony to thwart all their plans. Chrysalis did it. Tirek did it. Now Starlight’s doing it.
- Twilight awkwardly creeping on filly Rainbow Dash
- Wow, Twilight is really dumb sometimes.
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- And then everyone put on jungle costumes
- I have no idea how to feel about this
- I like Zecora’s new haircut though, I’m also digging Twilight’s body paint
- So, I guess this is going to be a series of different futures in which Twilight and Co. failed to defeat each villain? Cool idea, but a little more focus on the Mane 6 and a little less focus on random bizarre apocalyptic futures, boring villain monologues, and fight scenes would be nice.
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- And then there was another unicorn lazer fight
- Why?
- Nightmare Moon future
- Oh, ew, Rarity and Rainbow Dash’s new haircuts are gross in this one. I do like Rarity’s weird spiky shoulder suit thing, though. If these alternate futures are good for anything, it’s cool new haircuts and outfits.
- How did Nightmare Moon not realize that Twilight was an alicorn? Also, all Twilight did was teleport around her, is that really so hard to stop?
- I will say though that Nightmare Moon’s voice actor is nailing the maniacal laughter and desperate cry of, “Noooooo!”
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- The sequence of quick changes between past and future is really cool, a lot more silly and fun than most of what came before. Too bad they didn’t do more of this style of time alternate dimensions and less giving half of every villain their own five-minute monologue/battle sequence.
- Starlight Glimmer’s tragic backstory
- “‘That’s ridiculous.’”
- Twilight nailed it. This is really silly. She lost one friend, therefore she destroys the whole world? The insecurity is astounding. Who even stays friends with the people they were friends with when they were kids anyway? Literally everyone ever loses friends.
- She was a far better villain when it seemed like she genuinely thought everypony would be better off if they were equal. She was sympathetic then, her reasoning made sense, and it even seemed like a potentially real ideological threat to Twilight’s version of harmony, instead of just a physical one, which would have been a much more interesting conflict.
- “I think it’s more than that. Friendship connects all of Equestria, and undoing one group of friends made its magic less powerful.”
- This is a lovely sentiment, Twilight, but no. It’s really just because you and your friends are awesome and have saved Equestria like twenty times.
- Reminds me of back in the last finale when Twilight gave her whole, ‘We did it together!’ speech at the end, even though the whole episode was literally just her kicking ass by herself. This show has a bit of trouble practicing what it preaches at times.
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- Resolution
- This episode is, at least on a technical level, immensely impressive, a real animation tour de force. Each alternate future had a whole different style, huge animation sequences with lots of lasers and evil villains. But it reminds of Season 4’s finale, in that it’s very impressive, but it drops all the things that make the show great in order to be a swashbuckling adventure.
- This show’s greatest asset is its characters. From episode one, that’s been clear. They’re consistently enjoyable, sympathetic, silly, and genuinely complex. As cool as a lot of this episode was, it’s almost totally lacking in character, besides a few random cameos in the alternate timelines by versions of the characters that don’t really act like themselves. The regularly returning filly Rainbow Dash was probably my favorite part of the episode, and even she only has a handful of lines.
- I also think there’s just too much going on in this episode. It’s so crowded, so many different characters, fight scenes, timelines, different versions of characters. I suspect focusing in on just a single alternate timeline and alternate set of characters (because it is a cool idea) would have made a better episode.
- And Starlight Glimmer, just like with Diamond Tiara a few episodes ago, is drastically weakened by a cheesy tragic backstory, and this one is really lame. She lost a single friend? So has every single other person in the history of the world. There’s a nice message of learning how to move on after losing a friend in there, but the execution feels silly.
- This was a very cool episode, but I didn’t get much out of it.
Well, that's it. Is there going to be sixth season? I haven't heard anything, and I've sort of assumed not. The show has outlived the network it originally aired on, and five seasons is a lot of seasons for a cartoon, or any show. Eventually, they've gotta move onto another generation, right?
No, season six was announced a while back, though there haven't been any episode titles released.
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Yep. Also, de Lancie leaked that it's probably going to be another year-long hiatus, with the MLP Movie a year after that.
While the animators were working on this season, they were probably under the impression that this would be the least season of MLP:FIM (renewal for S6 was not announced until after production of S5 was underway). This explains why they wrapped up so many plot points (CMC getting their cutie marks, Rarity opening a boutique in Canterlot, RD getting to fly with the Wonderbolts), and why the finale served to recap all of the previous villains on the show. If (when?) the new episodes start disappointing, remember that this was meant to be the end.
They are certainly reusing shots, though Rainbow has motion blur now.
There's this exciting new concept called 'variation'.
Somepony else saves Equestria in all the other timelines against all villains but one. In particular, for the first Equestria to look like that Nightmare, Discord, Chrysalis and Triek must have been defeated. All of the variations just show that all of the destruction is really caused not merely by lack of Mane 6 Elements Team, but by random details spiraling into major changes.
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Please put away the salt. It's not necessary.
Trying new things is a great idea, but doing so by removing what makes the show good in the first place is not. The characters are what make this show great, and an episode without any character isn't a very fun episode. The characters don't have to be doing the same thing every episode, but in an episode in which they barely appear or interact at all, or in which so many characters appear that none of them have enough time to do much, the show doesn't have much to fall back on. It still has its phenomenal animation, voice acting, sound production, but that doesn't feel like enough.
Except it's the lack of Twilight and friends that causes all that spiraling destruction in the first place. Without the Mane 6 around to save the day all the time, Equestria becomes a total wasteland. Their friendship is integral. Nothing points to that being true for other groups of friends in the show.
The Mane 6 are better friends than other friends. That's not really a debatable point.
Also, I'm not sure you're right about how the time traveling was working. I'm not sure anything implied that they were traveling further into the future each time (they didn't go in chronological order, the travels went Sombra>Chrysalis>Nightmare Moon>Tirek>Discord>Flim and Flam). I assumed they were traveling to the same point of time (the present), every time, but in a new alternate timeline. Villains weren't being defeated, it's just that a different villain happened to successfully rise to power in that round.
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Ah, cool. Good to know we might eventually get to see more of what they do with the Cutie Mark Crusaders and Starlight Glimmer's new role.
... Duh?
They're making a movie for Chrissake. They're not gonna cancel the show now.
I enjoyed the finale, but I'll agree that the show has departed from what makes it so great. I've felt that this season focused more on random and background characters than the actual mane 6. I mean, each episode would only feature two of the mane 6. I love seeing them all react with each other in slice of life scenarios. I told a friend that, while the action and all that is cool for those who like it, it's not what I want in MLP. I wish the show would go back to having a better focus on its characters and the morals it teaches.
While I like a good adventure story (and looking at what some people working on the show said there was to be more of those originally) I 100% agree with you with what was wrong with this episode. That problem being the lack of the use of characters and their interactions.
A good action adventure is a great idea to change things up but why is it that they always use Twilight almost by herself? Twilight has become thoroughly uninteresting because she is so well developed compared to everybody else and they make her seem to be the only pony who can solve a crisis.
This episode would be far more interesting if they kept the adventure themes but Twilight concentrated on trying to make friends with the alternate universe ponies to get an advantage over Glimmer. Then we could have some cool interactions and more character building. We could see how the characters were similar and different from how we knew them.
The episode would also be cooler if we got to see more of the other characters showing they have the ability to save the world too. IN other words more scenes where Pinkie breaks rocks and Dash kicking but. Twilight is not the only hero in this series despite what the season finales tend to show.
I also HATE that they keep redeeming villains. Having excellent villains is fun and they keep getting rid of their better villain choices.
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I'm not sure it was all that certain. All shows end, and most of them before six seasons. FiM has been going on a long time. The Hub is gone, and since the switch to Discovery Family the ratings have been consistently lower. It seemed reasonable that as the show became less profitable, the studio would focus resources on giving the movie format a shot instead. A lot of other television shows have gone on to do movies after the show has ended. It's not uncommon.
The story line seems to be coming to a natural conclusion as well. Twilight is a princess, Rainbow Dash has flown with the Wonderbolts, Rarity has opened a successful boutique in Canterlot, the Cutie Mark Crusaders have gotten their cutie marks. The show feels like it's been heading towards resolutions for each of the characters. Major plot lines are being settled.
With how little has been said of the next season, the low ratings, and talk of a movie (difficult to both at the same time, I'd imagine), it seemed entirely plausible that there might not be a sixth season.
3580834 Meh. Ratings. Hasbro is a toy company first and foremost. As long as the toy sales are brisk, there'll be Ponies.
I will say that three things bugged me about this episode:
1) Twilight saying "she doesn't know why" her friendships are so important - she bloody well knows. They literally saved Equestria four times with magic friendship lasers, and her friends were instrumental in at least several other major occurrences.
2) Starlight Glimmer's motive SHOULD HAVE BEEN "if I break their friendships, then I will get my little communist commune of equality back." This would have been a great motive, and it also would have been great if in every future timeline, Starlight Glimmer was frustrated because SHE DIDN'T GET WHAT SHE WANTED. Her commune NEVER worked because of the horrible disasters overwhelming Equestria; for Starlight, it was a no-win situation, and she can't even get revenge on Twilight Sparkle without making her life even worse.
3) Seriously, I was disappointed by the lack of character moments of the non-Twilight characters. There were lots of opportunities, but freaking Zecora of all ponies ended up getting more character than anyone else. Except maybe Filly Rainbow Dash, I guess (who, yes, was cute).
Though, I've always liked the idea that Rainbow Dash was the true lynchpin of Equestria. This is only going to further bloat her ego.