Every time I search for anything related to King Sombra, he almost is the main villain in many stories? So I guess he can't be as many say the worst character to be on the show.

2406863 Hardly any lines and we know close to nothing about him, other than he wanted all the crystals. We didn't know any motives or anything.

We don't have any personality for him either.

2406863 King Sombra is best villain 'cause he wasn't fucking around like Nightmare Moon, Discord, and Chrysalis. Plus, he's stronger then Celestia and Luna by themselves.

2406872 but he was intelligent enough to set up traps one thousand years prior to the events of the show. Still when and if you look up any stories with King Sombra he is mainly the villain used.

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People are butthurt that he wasn't another Discord.

2406887 True, and I'm not one to speak, considering he is my favorite villain and I absolutely love him. That's just sorta the reason for others.

2406886 Amen to that he was doing things! Where the other villains would gloat about how they would win. I believe seeing it for my own eyes, and what I saw was a very intellectual mind that fell to darkness who could rival two goddesses.

2406911 Well, first off: they're not goddesses. If they were goddesses, only one would have been needed to defeat Sombra. Second: Sombra is smart... until he started yelling at the crystal ponies once they had the heart. He should have teleported away the moment he regain his full power and lost the heart.

2406957 I agree with your points. But we have also seen he can regenerate himself, I do hope that they bring him back. Like they start off an episode with his horn in the snow until he begins to take shape again. That would awesome.

2407017 That would be some season finale stuff, right there. I always felt, when Sombra returns, he'd have a duel to the death with Spike. More particularly, Spike the Knight. They do have the exact same color scheme, plus, they're the only one that wear capes.

I don't think it's a coincidence.

2406863 Here are my thought on him as I had previously said in the pro's and cons forum for the Ultimate Square Root of all evil/King Sombra the Magnificent Bastard.

Pros: he was Evil, Powerful, Clever (a door that takes you to your darkest fears? if spike hadn't come down the stairs, Twilight would have never escaped until it was too late.), and honestly the most successful bad guy in the entire series.

Con: He got Cheated out of a victory he clearly deserved for proving his superiority to Twilight with his final trap, by a last minute Marry Sue from Cadence, who had gone days without rest, was barely able to stand, and had just completely run out of magic moments before Shining picked her up and threw her. Let's face it, Shiney Hiney was expecting her to splatter on the ground, and threw her in an attempt to please his new dark overlord, which is exactly what should have happened! That and that the greatest villain so far failed to have sufficient amounts of dialogue.

2407114 you sir have made a new friend today. Hail King Sombra. Very fine points if I may add, looking back now I can see that Cadence pulled a Mary sue.

2407138 Yeah, That's what bugs me most about that episode. Don't get me wrong, Cadey is my favorite princess of all of them, but I like Sombra much better.

I don't see why everyone thinks discord and NM are better villains than him. Sombra's the only one who didn't actually have a serious flaw in his plans. He took out the main character of the show Twice without even knowing she was there. The Best Discord did was make her have a pity party for a few seconds.

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Yeah.

They don't like him.

2407202 You, sir, speak lies.

2407208
I never said this was true. I was just saying they don't like him.

2407201 Very true and he also meant harm to the characters! His attitude towards the crystal ponies, seeing them as things and not living ponies is borderline sociopath behavior. He is also cruel and cunning. Those two traits make him far more dangerous entity than the other villains.

Sombra is by far the most underestimated villain in the entire series.

If he had managed to get the Crystal Heart, Equestria would be affected as a whole. Anybody remember Celestia's demonstration of dark magic on a piece of crystal? Meaning, that Sombra was a bigger threat than they realized. He wasn't able to break through the barrier because he was still weak from regenerating. What if he had reached full form? Equestria would be in shambles.

2407246 Exactly what I've been saying all along.

2407234 Exactly. King Sombra is easily best villain.

2407284 All Hail the great King Sombra. He is and will always be the best villain in my eyes.

2407299 Hail!

2406863 King Sombra was perhaps the most dangerous villain in the series so far. Due to the nature of the target audience, he was horribly nerfed from the very definition of an evil genre savvy mastermind to a creepy shadow with a crystal obsession. When Celestia was describing what she knew of the Empire and Sombra she said he enslaved the Empire and we saw what he did. This was a guy who knew how to gain absolute and total control. It's hard to actually write him without overcompensating for what happened to his adjustments post explanation in order to give him what he would've needed to rise to have enough power and control to threaten Celestia and Luna as much as he did. Just remember, he's more like this:

2407357 So true.

I like King Sombra because is the only villain that was TRULY evil. Then again Queen Chrysalis was evil too. But Queen Chrysalis was invading canterlot so her kind would live and gain power. On the other hand/hoof King Sombra invaded Crystal Empire so he could rule and slave pones. Which one is TRULY evil...King Sombra.

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people call him worst villain because they were expecting another Queen Chrysalis.
but they both have their different tactics, hell Sombra was a lot better villain than she was. and I don't say that as some crazy fangirl. He legitimately was very well prepared, unlike Queen Crythalithp whose plan didn't even make any sense (in the long run).
He just wasn't hammy and comedic like most villains are, so people got bored with him and declared him worst villain ever cuz, fans be fans, and have way to high expectations
anywho, that was my two cents

2407557 Fun fact: it was never stated that he invaded, merely that he enslaved the crystal ponies. Granted we saw no other crystal ponies other than average earth ponies but that seems like we would simply be making assumptions at that point.

2406863 Sombra was the most genere savy villan of all time. He was cold, calculating, and knew how to ensure he didn't slip up. The only reason he lost was because of the fact that he clearly wasn't expecting Spike, and for good reason. He could stand up to two alicorns who could not even turn him to stone like they did Discord, and thus he had no reason to fear anyone. His lack of dialogue also meant he couldn't blab out his plans and get defeated while talking. Hm, you know now I wonder what would've happened if he'd actually done that? Probably would've done something like this:

2406863 I occasionally do editing on top of my regular writing, though I'm not the best editor, I can see the major flaw. Don't they really mean to say, Best Villian in the Show?

Asides though, I must have at least made 7 story ideas that involved him in some way. He might not gotten the bulk of screentime he deserved, but it is the potential he housed that allows people to create intriguing backstories or revenge fics and delve into better characterization for our underated King.

He's a damn mighty badass

2409264 I have a challenge for you involving him (if you want it). Interested?

2409289 I'm interested in hearing it though I am in some form of a writer's block. I keep getting ideas being poured in, but I'm writing at my lowest capacity. At most for Sombra being the main character in one of my stories and not some sort of 'ominous dark force from the nether regions of the shadowed curtain of the universe', I do have a revenge fic of him with a few chapters. But that was a long time ago in my backseat of writing.

I'm still interesting in hearing ideas though. There were many times where I wish I could've gotten a second opinion on something before I went with it

2409346 I know the feeling and I warn you, you'll end up showing him in a different light if you do this. Not as an evil mastermind, but as a darker, more troubled noble. Warning, will involve shipping!

2409387 Oh nice! I know someone who was doing something similar to that but with a different character. (Whenever people do backstory stuff they always tend to ship Sombra and Luna since well, Darkness + Night mix, eh? But also the backstory of how Luna wanted to backstab her sister and rule Equestria.

It looks nice though. Since Cheerilie doesn't know what Sombra looks like, it works out in favors of her meeting a stallion and then heading to the Grand Galloping Gala or whatever, or they meet up at there. And then two angles I see at the moment include where Sombra is legitimately live and only wants to find love of some sort, or he's a coniving backstabber who wants to use Cheerilie's love for him to get him to be more pony-like and to fix whatever hold he had from death that made him into a corpreal shell of his former self.

I like the 1st idea though. If this is a Disney remake, then obviously Twilight and her crew would likely be the Gastons and try to kill him, and eventually goes into the part where, "Okay, you're alright now. But please don't try to murder anypony."

Definately a great idea when one delves into its hidden meanings, since Sombra is technically considered a 'Beast' for staying alive and in general for being a cruel tyrant.

Despite the amount of text you may see above, I for the life of me cannot open a word document to actually start writing any of this down... or what I said above.

(3rd idea: It could be a oneshot of Cheerilie being allured by the mysterious stallion at a Gala event. They dance and whatnot and as quickly as he shown up, he disappears. She is left wondering who that stallion was, while the guards in the background are panicking that a Mr. Sombra had returned and was going to eat all the cake )

2409473 I love that third idea but I'm going the Disney-ish route.

2409264 you have made a new friend today.

i think he's the best villain, i love the fact he could grow dark crystals himself.
i guess a some said he's the worse villain is because he's a male ans he's hard to be 'rule 63'-ed

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I love Sombra, but here are my problems with how they portrayed him as a villain. This is also why he's fantastic; he just didn't come off the way Hasbro/the writers wanted, and I think they handled him all wrong. Part of it was because it was really a Twilight-centric episode, but still.

Supposedly he was meant to be an evil overlord, reminiscent of Sauron. The show's first mistake was in not giving him any minions or other obvious means of laying out plans and bringing them to fruition. He was literally just trapped outside and waiting all that time? This sort of makes sense for NMM and Discord; one isn't even on the planet anymore and the other was turned into a statue, but I liked the addition of the seeds to Discord's history etc. Unfortunately, it makes no sense for a Sauron inspired character like Sombra.

That's how the hidden tyrant works. They have stuff going on, but they delegate it, use subterfuge, and generally work in the shadows (har har. Zing!) In this respect, Sombra should have really had some underlings or at least some other methods of affecting the world this whole time. He should have been there since the beginning, or at least built up over many episodes. They used him as a two-part one-shot, so his impact was somewhat negated.

Second, his motivations were very awkward. Yes, he wanted power. He may have just wanted to let the world burn in agony. But why? Further more, why did he enslave every Crystal pony? This is another place where he really needed underlings to delegate to as well, even if they weren't the exact same ones through-out the century. Was he just subjugating everyone through magic and going about his leisure at the same time? The logistics alone are weird, but then there's also why he enslaved them. What was he having them do exactly? What were his plans for Equestria, if any? Some characters can get away with very little back story, but Sombra really needed a bit more investment. This makes him fantastic for fan fiction, but bizarre on the show itself.

Third, he never should have gotten his body back at the end. This was what made me sympathize with him and consider alternatives. If they didn't want him to reform and wanted him to stay dead, keeping him as a monstrous shadow was important. Showing him as a pony, with a real body again, made me feel bad when he blew up. AND THOSE FACES HE MADE... once he turned physical form again? The lip-licking was a bit weird (though it created a head-canon that he also eats gems/crystals, much like dragons do. It was also probably one of the origins of my erotic interest, as well as that hair.) But that WTF face he made and his dismay at realizing his imminent destruction? It was brief, but seeing him realize that he'd just lost and was about to die ruined it. We're also never told why he changed back. I assumed it was because of the heart being nearby, but it was never explained and was also kind of bizarre.

Yes, we should eventually see the 'faceless' villain, but up until then we'd seen plenty of him as a shadow. He was also rather adorable as a shadow, but certainly more menacing and larger than life in that form than in his original unicorn form. It just felt like a huge mis-step to me.

Fourth, his dialog... I'm not sure what would have been better. I think just not hearing him talk wasn't enough, but the growls were overdone and what he did say didn't add much, other than to prove he could speak. It also added to the 'from a puppet back into a real boy' feeling for me. He didn't talk at all, until the second episode, especially when he was beginning to lose. It was a huge mistake all over. I think a lot of people misjudge his threat level, because his general lack of speech gave the wrong impression.

I think they seriously needed to reconsider his role, or what they were going for. I really like him, and I think the awkward mishmash he became was inspiring to write about. If nothing else, because we want to try and explain WTF happened. But otherwise, his actual appearance in canon was more flawed than most of the other villains. Considering they're all a bit ham-fisted in different ways, that's saying something.

It's more about how he was written, than how he was as a character. Then again, canonically, we don't know that much about him, and I think it's a real shame.

It does open a lot of doors though.

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Dude, I've seen some utterly beautiful rule 63s of mare Sombra. No lie.

2422037 Sombra was actually the good guy. When he learned that the Windigo's forced ponies into friendship, he decided to kill them to give Equestria 'true freedom'. Sombra takes the quickest route he can: enslave the crystal ponies, since there right next to where the Windigo's would pop out. When Celestia and Luna found out, they try to use the elements on him, but they fail 'cause Sombra is 'trying to protect Equestria' in a really fucked up way.

Also, rule 63 Sombra is hot as fuck. I was planning on doing an AU clopfic about Barb fucking Oscura in order to save the Crystal Empire.

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This is why I made my fanfic "WHO WAS I?" turn him from worst villain to "best filthy magnificent bastard villain"

You know, I wonder what would have been the reaction to Sombra been like had He debuted either in the first/second season or had he appeared when people been so sick of relatable villains that a simple powerhungry douche like Sombra was nice change.

Let me explain, Sombra in the premiere had Three villains to compete with, all three of them had a motivation and where relatable, it setted up some expectations for poor Sombra, he was expected to be hammy, he was expected to have a background that explains his actions, he was expected to steal the show and appear in most of the episode. So he had no chance to fulfill the expectations that were set on him since he was the first villain to not be the main center of his two parter.

Had he appeared early like in Season 2 or even in Season 1's finale the reaction would have been better, While Nightmare Moon is not a hard villain to Compete with, Discord had his episode devoted for him, he was the most likable and the shocked everyone because people had low expectations for the villains when he appeared, Queen Chrysalis IMO barely got away with it because nobody saw her coming, people where expecting a boring Wedding and they got something cooler, Plus she got a motive, army, villain song and her fight with Celestia was the first fight in FIM. So the expectations for Sombra was too high.

And had he appeared later on when MLP was starting to become like Naruto(no disrespect tocits fans but that anime overuses tragic villain) where people were starting to get sick of relatable villains and wanted a simple powerhungry evil for the mwahahahha type of villain then the reaction to Sombra would been better.Y