Episode Re-Review: Castle Mane-Ia · 5:06pm Mar 25th, 2021
Season 4 brought back Amy Keating Rogers but it also had a huge shake-up in the writing department in that several new writers were brought on from across various works. The first of these was Josh Haber, and Haber would ultimately go on to take over as showrunner from Meghan McCarthy after Season 5. Of course, at the time no one knew that was going to happen. Still, adding a bunch of new writers several seasons in was cause for concern. So, did Haber's debut go over well, or he did get better over time? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with Twilight searching for leads on the chest left behind by the Tree of Harmony, so we're picking up right where the premiere left off.
No books in Ponyville hold the answer, so Twilight is considering going to Canterlot and searching through the archives. However, a letter from Princess Celestia suggests something else: The Castle of the Two Sisters. More specifically the castle library (or what's left of it according to the letter). Twilight is naturally excited to see the library even though the castle itself has only continued to detoriate. But Spike is freaked out by the presence of star spiders, a never before seen and will never really be seen again group of creatures. They don't seem to have any kind of supernatural abilities, they just seem to be plain old spiders with star patterns on them.
Then we cut to Rainbow Dash and Applejack as they appear to be covered in bees and are waiting for the other to make a move. Pinkie Pie soon reveals that this is part of a dare contest they've been having, and we see that they had special bee proof costumes for this occasion. However, the bee keeper wants his bees back and as a result Applejack and Rainbow Dash are tied for most daring pony. Pinkie then trots off to go ring the school bell because she volunteered to do it, leaving Applejack to come up with an idea for a tie breaker challenge. And meanwhile, Rarity and Fluttershy are trotting through the Everfree Forest in broad daylight without a fuss (and Angel is tagging along for some reason). Considering this came just after we saw the Tree of Harmony and had it restored, it's very possible that the tree tamed the Everfree Forest. Or it's just possible that the ponies don't fear it as much because they've got more experience. Either way, Rarity reveals that she's learned about the Castle of the Two Sisters' tapestries and wants to "borrow" one to restore. Not sure why she feels the need to put it like that since the castle is unoccupied and sits in the middle of nowhere. Still, at least this castle doesn't have paintings you can jump into and potentially get trapped inside of.
Angel starts to run off as soon as the castle comes into view and Fluttershy chases after him, worried about his safety. Rarity, for her part, is just fixated on the tapestries and wants to find one. Unbeknownst to them, a cloaked figure sees them enter. And soon after they leave Twilight and Spike pass by with candles. Spike insists he was only a little bit afraid, but Twilight doesn't seem to take the hint and insists the candles are for reading since they'll be staying late into the night.
Applejack and Rainbow Dash arrive at the castle just after Twilight and Spike have passed by on a balcony, and Applejack mentions that Granny Smith told her legends about "The Pony of Shadows". According to the legend, The Pony of Shadows is leftover dark magic from Nightmare Moon that comes to life at night. We'll discuss this more in detail later, but apparently The Pony of Shadows was going to be the villain for the Season 4 finale. Anyway, it isn't long before spooky things start happening. Fluttershy tries to help Rarity free a giant tapestry from a wall and ends up activating a rotating wall mechanism. This causes her to inadvertently scare Applejack and Rainbow Dash into thinking they've seen a ghost and they run away. It turns out that this is the tie breaking dare Applejack had in mind, basically a game of chicken where whoever stays in the castle longer wins.
As for Fluttershy, she sprains her wing when she's flung out of the tapestry after the wall rotates back around. Rarity then decides to find a better candidate elsewhere and comments on how Fluttershy must've activated a secret passage of some sort while speculating that the castle must be full of booby traps. Soon afterward, Angel triggers one by accident and it turns out to be a trap door that Rarity and Fluttershy fall down.
Angel then scampers off and eventually finds Twilight and Spike, scaring Spike enough to trigger a lever that exposes a hidden room that houses Celestia and Luna's old diary. Meanwhile Applejack and Rainbow Dash make their way down a spiral staircase and find a hallway full of disembodied pony legs holding up what are probably meant to be torches. Both do a pretty poor job of hiding how creeped out they are by such a display, with Rainbow even covering her face with her wings. Rarity and Fluttershy, meanwhile, find themselves stuck in a darkened room and Rarity manages to light it up with her horn. She spots a small hole and sticks her hoof out to inspect, which causes Rainbow Dash to think it's Applejack putting her hoof around her rather than admit she's scared.
Of course it's not really Applejack and both she and Rainbow run away screaming. Rarity screams too, having felt something alive. Fluttershy thinks it's Angel and sticks her hoof out, pulling on the pony leg which makes the wall spin and deposits her and Rarity into the hallway. Rarity has had enough and is ready to call it quits, but Fluttershy insists on looking for Angel while worried that he might be hurt or trapped somewhere. Of course he isn't actually, he's perfectly safe with Twilight and Spike as Twilight reads about an "Organ to the outside" that is connected to various traps that apparently Celestia and Luna set up. At that moment, a mysterious figure begins playing on the organ deep within the castle but only Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Spike hear it.
Rarity soon spots another tapestry and decides to try and take it herself even though Fluttershy insists on finding Angel. Meanwhile, Applejack and Rainbow Dash run up to some armor as Rainbow comments "It's not like it's gonna come to life or anything." and despite tempting fate that doesn't happen. Instead, the mysterious figure plays on the organ some more and Rarity and Applejack are whisked away, frightening Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash when they see this unfold. Applejack even ends up on a balcony outside the castle while Rarity is tossed out completely, but is only horrified upon discovering that the tapestry she hopped to restore is now in even worse shape. One by one, each pony makes their way back into the castle: Rainbow Dash and Applejack to find each other (or hope that the other ran away so they win by default), Fluttershy to find Angel and Rarity simply because she won't give up on trying to restore a tapestry. Eventually, they all bump into each other and get spooked.
Rainbow Dash starts pinballing from place to place, knocking over a tapestry which ends up on Rarity when she runs toward it, and this in turn causes leaves to land on some rocks which makes Fluttershy think she sees Angel. However, Applejack's running about knocks over a pillar and makes Fluttershy believe Angel's been pinned underneath. It's this distraught cry that finally gets Twilight's attention after she's previously been dismissive of the commotion as just sounds of the castle falling apart. She goes to investigate and finds four of her friends running around and making fools of themselves, so she uses a powerful spell to freeze them all in place and get their attention.
Angel finally reunites with Fluttershy as Twilight asks her friends if they've been running around and scaring each other. Rainbow says it depends on whether or not Twilight's The Pony of Shadows, which Twilight has never heard of before. Just then, everyone hears the organ playing again and Twilight decides that the only thing to do is investigate. They all sneak down to where the organ is and spot the mysterious figure playing it. Twilight suddenly believes it's The Pony of Shadows despite never having heard of it before, but she still trots up to the player and lifts the hood to expose none other than Pinkie Pie!
Except Pinkie Pie wasn't The Pony of Shadows either, even though she was playing the organ. She got done ringing the bell pretty early on since she was told she only had to ring it for a couple of minutes (and apparently she rang it by sticking her head inside of it). So she came all the way out to the castle to look for bluebells for a party she was gonna throw, and she wrapped herself up in a hood because it was so cold. And she all thought her friends were having their own kind of party at the castle. It kind of feels like a stretch for her character. Her playing the organ makes sense, there was never an indication that she couldn't and I can buy her triggering the traps by accident since only Twilight found out what the organ was meant for. But her being down there the whole time and just thinking earlier that her friends were having their own party is a huge leap of logic even for her. Pinkie Pie was obvious, there was no way they weren't going to have her show up in the episode after the rest of the main cast was there.
Later, the entire group is all gathered together in one room as Rarity is restoring the tapestry she had and promises to put it back once she's done. Then we learn that Twilight wasn't afraid simply because by reading Celestia and Luna's diary she knew what it was like to live in the castle. This in turn gives her the idea to start a journal with her friends so that they can someday pass on their knowledge to others. This does away completely with the friendship lesson letters from Seasons 1-3, meaning less time needs to be spent reiterating the lesson the characters just learned. But it won't be long before this too fades away. Anyway, Applejack and Rainbow Dash intend to have their first entry be about how they're glad Granny Smith's story about The Pony of Shadows wasn't true. And Pinkie Pie points out that because of this the two are still tied for most daring pony.
Spike even scoffs at how ridiculous the idea of a pony made of shadows is, but the episode ends with a shadowy figure glaring at the group. Apparently, The Pony of Shadows was intended to be real and intended to debut at the end of Season 4, perhaps coinciding with the Castle of the Two Sisters getting a bit more focus. However, when the Season 4 finale happened to coincide with the MLP franchise's 30th anniversary, they decided to change the villain so as to nod to the very first G1 special "Rescue at Castle Midnight". The Pony of Shadows would be resurrected a few seasons down the road, but with a completely revised backstory with no mention of it being tied to Nightmare Moon or any part of her.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, this episode is basically just a nod to the classic Scooby-Doo haunted castle kind of formula. It's all about scares and how nothing is what it actually appears to be. Strangely, despite the title being a nod to the Castlevania franchise there is no direct nod to it at any point. Everyone feels more or less in character, but Pinkie Pie and Rarity feel like they had their personalities stretched a bit to make the story work. Rarity in particular seems kind of vain and self-centered, never to an unlikeable degree but definitely not her best showing. And sometimes it seems like the humor comes at the expense of Spike or the expense of Fluttershy, making fun of them for being worried even though their fears are kind of justified since the former can hear things Twilight isn't aware of and the latter is legitimately worried about Angel's well being and safety. In fact, why was Angel a part of this episode? Aside from being a motivator for Fluttershy in a few parts and triggering a trap door, he contributed nothing of substance. His role could easily be written out and something else be given to Fluttershy as reason to do it. The star spiders mentioned earlier are intended to be a red herring, so why not use them more in depth with Fluttershy instead? Applejack and Rainbow Dash's rivalry does sort of feel like we're just revisiting "Fall Weather Friends" but just like in that episode it's fine because their antics only ever affect them until the climax and no else gets hurt because of them. Plus, they're athletes, it's natural that they're gonna compete. The whole daring pony thing could stand to use some explanation though, even just a few lines about what brought it on which at least "Non-Compete Clause" for all its mistakes did provide something of a reason for the need to compete (before pointing out how both characters should be beyond such petiness when they're teachers).
Then there's this really weird bit of Twilight suddenly believing there's a Pony of Shadows only to scold her friends when it turns out to be Pinkie Pie. And even though we know it's going to be Pinkie, why did she need to be there the whole time? Why not have it so that she just showed up and an actual mysterious figure that she didn't get a chance to see was causing the traps to activate (still unintentionally)? The humor is probably the highlight of this episode, and how much you like it is gonna depend on how much you like classic Scooby Doo kind of plots. Plus, this episode unintentionally set things up for the key search to take place across the entirety of Season 4, but after this it would never be brought up again until the finale. I get that the show's style of writing involved working on episodes in no particular order each season, but if that's the case they shouldn't have teased the prospect of a mystery if they weren't willing to try and work around it with the writing style or even try to change it to see if a more serialized story could work. It's still a fine episode though, albeit lacking a little in polish. But for Josh Haber's debut I think he did a good job, so this episode gets a borderline B+/A-.
Now it's on to "Daring Don't" which remains polarizing for fans in light of the fact that it made Daring Do actually exist in-universe, something that fanfics had already explored a good deal before this episode I might add. In fact, I'll bet that the existence of those fanfics was at least part of what made the show want to make Daring Do real in the first place.
This is a fun little episode.
That was a pretty fun episode
Bees...
My God!
So between Twilight dismissing Spike and Rarity dismissing Fluttershy, which would you say is worse?
5483293 Definitely Twilight dismissing Spike. Rarity at least was willing to go with Fluttershy to find Angel, Twilight did nothing to reassure Spike and when he used her own argument against him she brushed him off. If she's not scared herself she could take a moment or two to calm Spike down and let him know he's going to be okay.
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You know what the sad thing is? This is still better than when Twilight dismissed Spike in Spike at Your Service, if only because she at least acknowledges his existence more here than in that episode. I can only assume Josh Haber did this because he wanted to make extra sure the fans were reassured that Twilight hasn't completely changed after becoming an alicorn princess.