Season finale thoughts

I may add to this post over time. Warning: pony-heavy. And spoilers.

Saturday was the season 2 finale of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It centered around a royal wedding, of Princess Celestia's "niece" (I'm guessing that either Equestrian family relationships differ in their degree of tightness*, or else there is another sibling we've never seen, as I'm pretty sure Luna has no children)

(*I *think* I remember reading about some cultures where people would call cousins they were particularly close to "brother" or "sister" and somesuch. So it could be a distant cousin once removed, or something)

The groom-elect is Twilight's brother. Um, yeah. Her "big brother best friend forever," who has JUST NOW been mentioned in the episode. (Though it's noted that she saw less and less of him after her move from Canterlot. Hm. Leaving a door open for "fill in" stories in a future season, about Twi's first year in Ponyville? Or flashbacks to her time in Canterlot?)

I will note right here I didn't really like Shining Armor's voice; I was imagining something more refined and less...surfer-dude. Then again, maybe I was setting out with more of a template of the "real" royal wedding (of Kate Middleton and Prince William) than I actually should have. Certainly Kate wasn't replaced by a changeling at her wedding....

Two other things from the "real" royal wedding I would have liked to have seen in this show? The cartwheeling  verger (which was one of my favorite news stories ever - after the Royal Wedding last year went off so beautifully, there's a video of a verger (sort of a low-level clergyman) doing a cartwheel. Some wags speculated that maybe he'd been at the sacramental wine, but I prefer to think that it was simply an expression of pure joy and relief - joy that it went so well, and relief that nothing went wrong.

Perhaps Pinkie Pie's cartwheel upon being told she got to plan the reception was an allusion to that, if it was, it wasn't a very close one.

The other thing I would have LOVED to have seen was one of the flower girls scrunching up her face and clapping her hooves over her ears while out on the balcony, like the little girl in the real royal wedding. (I could see Sweetie Belle doing that).

The plot was...not what I expected. ((I had tried to avoid any of the possible online spoilers).  I guess I was wondering, "How on earth do they stretch a wedding story line out for an hour, even given commercial breaks." I'm glad it wasn't 45 minutes of Twilight not-being-okay with her brother getting married, because yeah, not so entertaining, and also perhaps not so understandable to six year old girls. (I will note...if Twilight were, say, considerably older than her brother, and he was marrying first, and she was stuck in what felt like eternal grad school....then yeah, I could see her really not being okay with the wedding at least at first. Or maybe that was just me, circa 1998.)
 
So, yeah. Changelings. I have to admit I kind of like that idea of them being there as another sort of villain. The changeling queen (who is apparently named Chrysalis, though it's never spoken in the episode) had pretty cool character design...but yeah, still the kind of thing I would have had nightmares about at seven (and might even still have nightmares about today). The idea that someone can completely take over and act like a person you love, while feeding on your love for them - that's a pretty grown-up creepiness right there. I have to give props to the people who came up with that storyline, and I would kind of like to see the changelings again as antagonist characters.

(I commented in a semi-private Twitter conversation that I could imagine the backstory for the changelings as being a bit like the Lucifer story - that they were once ponies who decided that instead of sharing love and tolerance and all those good things, that they would only TAKE love...and as a result, they got changed into those evil creatures)

There's also an Epic Pony Fight (I understand Lauren Faust had input on this episode, and I also understand she originally wanted the show to be more of a Magical Girl Quest show, a la Sailor Moon). Pinkie Pie uses her Party Cannon as an offensive weapon. She also turns Twilight into a magic-firing Gatling gun. (And Fluttershy! Instead of fighting, she pantomimes "Let's go fight over there" to all her changeling clones, and then when they rush off, she goes the opposite direction...I also liked Applejack's "Real me! Real me!" as Twilight was going through eliminating all the Applejack clones)

In the end, "Love conquers all" is the lesson. Or, no, wait, the lesson is "Trust yourself and even if all your friends think you're overreacting, believe your gut." Or maybe: "There's 'bridezilla' and then there's BRIDEZILLA."

We also got cameos of both Derpy (Derpy! Though I admit I would have loved it more had she been in a fancy outfit for the wedding) and Luna. (People are speculating at Luna's absence during the Epic Fight but I can understand it: she's the night shift, she worked ALL NIGHT LONG trying to watch out for threats to Canterlot and was probably deep in a chamber somewhere with earplugs in and an eyemask on. Or maybe she's like a vampire and will turn to a pile of sparkly dust if exposed to sunlight for too long...)

And we saw Twilight's parents (who are, of course, also Shining Armor's parents) again.

(And who was the pony standing next to the Cutie Mark Crusaders (I think it was) in the big Russian style hat and coat? Her outfit was cool, whoever she was.)

The end of the show felt rushed - the vows were said, we got a glimpse of the reception*, then the couple left - stopping to throw a bouquet which, naturally, Rarity caught. Making the implication that she's the next to marry**.

(*And DJ Pon-3 had magenta eyes, as was speculated earlier)

(This raises a question: how old ARE our pony friends, exactly? Shining Armor is Twilight's big brother and he's MUCH larger than she is, like the difference in body size between a 20 year old human and an eight year old human. And yet...the ponies are mature enough to live on their own and even run businesses. I guess what I'm saying is I hope a future season doesn't devolve into "Rarity's Search for Mr. Right...")

(**I have been to fairly few weddings but have never caught a bouquet. Okay, one of the ones I was at when I was about 14 I took myself out of the running because I thought it would look unseemly for me to be competing with the groom's 18 and 20 year old sisters and cousins. But still)

Lots of songs in this episode. I will buck general opinion here and say I can do without MOST of the songs. However, the "This Day" aria was genius....it was very much like something you'd see in a  serious, grown-up type musical play. And I read - I didn't actually hear this myself, or if I did, I didn't recognize it - that the chord progressions used were the one called "Authentic Cadence" and "Deceptive Cadence" (Authentic resolves to a I chord, Deceptive to a V7). Considering that the character singing was named Cadence (or, "Cadance" as some versions have it, and I prefer the Cadence name), and there was an authentic and deceptive version of her singing at that point....well, it's one of those tiny brilliant things that perhaps 5% of the people watching catch - but they bothered to put it in anyway. Whoever was responsible for that entire sequence, both musically and in terms of animation deserves a big pay raise.

One other tiny quibble: I had to mute the Tori Spelling bumper commentary. I get that she was trying to talk to the 6 year olds watching, and I get that it can be hard to interact with an animated character when you're used to acting with real humans, but....yeah, not for me. I hope they leave that out on future re-runs of the programs.