The end is here... ...the Pony of Shadows has arrived. Can the Mane Six save Equestria from certain doom? What secrets do the Legends of Equestria hold? Will Sunburst's magic and knowledge be enough to help in the battle against this sinister foe?
Remember that the episodes haven't actually aired yet, so I'm feigning ignorance for those who haven't seen it and don't want to be spoiled.
It is more or less frowned upon. Even when they leak, we don't post threads until the episode airs on TV... even if it is in Canada. We don't post threads about them when they are only in the "leaked" status.
The season finales continue to fail...fail to disappoint, that is. This was easily the most thrilling and thoroughly enjoyable episode of the season. No scene of exposition dragged on for too long, every part had me excited for what was going to happen next, and there were even parts I found...thought-provoking. No, not the scene of Pinkie hugging AJ’s ass and possible implications of Garble being a pedo (HE HAS TO LET ME GIVE IT TO HIM), but the conflict of villain redemption that gets debated. Did Celestia ever really need to banish Luna? The conflict with Stygian and Equestria’s ancient heroes is very reminiscent of the first conflict in the show with Luna and Celestia, and if I had to think of one flaw for this episode, it would be the lack of Nightmare Moon. She really needed to be in this episode, at least as a cameo. After all, the Pony of Shadows folktale mentioned her. Oh well, with the returning villains that have been confirmed to return in Season 8, I think we’ll get more coverage soon enough.
Well, I watched the finale today... AGAIN!! I'll admit, I cracked and watched it a few weeks ago when it leaked but watching it today STILL gave me goosebumps!! I love the fact that it was Starlight's experience-based advice that led to the REAL solution. I also thought about the Luna/NMM situation. It makes me realize that even powerful ponies who seem to have all the answers can make mistakes with huge implications. There's an Albus Dumbledore quote that can speak to that but I'm too lazy to look it up right now. Tidbits: We finally got to meet Somnambula... oh and Swirlstar and the rest. I LOVED Somnambula's voice and accent!! All of my squee!!! And Starswirl was... kind of a jerk. Guess they're right when they say, "Don't meet your heroes." Glad he came around though. Overall: 10/10 Since we've gotten a PRETTY good glimpse of what the S8 premier holds, I can't wait to see what else this world of magical talking horses has to offer!!!
I suppose we should have expected that Star Swirl would be a jerk. After all, we've known since Season 3 that he didn't actually know understand friendship.
If I have to criticize something, is that everything goes too fast. They find the Artifacts of Legends too quickly, they don't give the Pony of Shadows enough time to establish him as a menace, they don't give Stygian enough time to make us care about him, they don't give enough time to the "fish out of temporal water" situation with the Legends, Twilight finds a spell to send the Pony of Shadows back to Limbo too quickly, Starlight finds a way to separate Stygian from the Pony of Shadows too quickly, and the reunion between Star Swirl and Celestia isn't given the gravitas that a reunion between a surrogate father and his surrogate daughter deserve. It seems like they wanted to get this two-parter done as quickly as possible to focus all of their efforts towards the theatrical movie and the Equestria Girls web series. And the Legends suffer from the whole "introduce these characters in the show so we can sell their existing toys, no matter how" mentality that Phelous talked about.
Yeah, there was a lot crammed into 45 minutes. Thing is, if they didn't rush things the way they did, it would've been 2 hours long or essentially 4 episodes. Would've been nice to see them recover the artifacts in separate episodes and have the finale be the culmination of that. Still, even with the pacing "issues," it still made an enjoyable episode... for me anyway.
