I thought that was a pretty good story, conceding that the differences between timelines didn't make much sense. Why are all the threats mutually exclusive? And how does Flim and Flam's rise prevent the others in particular? Though I got a kick out of seeing them in the montage. It was interesting seeing the timelines, including the long-awaited return of Chrysalis in the show (and this is the first time her name was actually mentioned in the show). All the scenes at Flight Camp were pretty good, my favorites being Twilight trying to get Dash to race her, only to scare her off, and Twilight and Starlight's fight distracting Dash from the race.
That said, I was disappointed that we didn't get much of an exploration of how the lives of the main six changed, with more focus placed on the season bookend villains (and Flim & Flam). All the girls still had the same cutie marks, as far as I could tell, and some of them were even still together. Twilight also never ran into herself. However, this did make some sense when it was clear that the important thing was them all becoming friends, not them getting their cutie marks, and that the key was to just talk to Starlight, not try to fight back against her. Incidentally, the timeline that Twilight showed Starlight was probably the one where Pinkie didn't get her hair cut in "It's About Time".
It was also a bit annoying seeing Twilight be slow to catch onto what's happening.
Concerning Starlight's power level, I get the impression that Twilight would have beaten her in a straight fight after some time, but dragging out the fight at all would have distracted Dash.
When Starlight talked about how her friend getting a cutie mark separated him from her, I was expecting Twilight to bring her to the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I didn't have too much of a problem with her motivation, since friendship is a huge deal in ponyland, and her reformation wasn't bad either. The revelation that preventing Twilight's friendships actually did ruin the world (even with the characters still apparently getting their cutie marks) was the first push, Twilight's speech itself was the second, and Twilight distracting her long enough for things to go on as they should was the last one. I liked that she wasn't really out to ruin the world, but just wanted petty revenge for ruining her grand experiment and didn't believe that Twilight's friendship was
that important. I wasn't a fan of the final song (maybe on relistens?), but I did like the montage of Starlight bonding with the girls.
In the end, Cutie Mark Magic didn't appear at all this season, and the Cutie Castle from the mobile game and toyline didn't show up either. I guess that means we won't have to worry about the season bookends being based on toylines anymore.
There is also some odd timing with this episode. With the recommended episode list I talked about us making, I was considering the possibility of leaving out "The Crystal Empire" if we ended up not including any other episodes involving that location, but this episode went ahead and put a lot of focus on a timeline where Sombra is still around. The references to "It's About Time" also mean that it's now a mandatory episode, since you could say you didn't need it for "Twilight's Kingdom"'s explanation for where Tirek came from, but Twilight talking about time travel in this episode needs that episode to make sense.
Speaking of which, I'll start planning out that episode guide next Saturday in the community thread.
And
PixelKitties already has some art.
