S6 E25/26: To Where and Back Again (S6 Finale!!!!)

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Well, isn't that quite the combination of secondary characters? - Discord



And here we are. The Season 6 Finale has arrived. Properly and without any leak nonsense.
And it was an epic Finale that went beyond my wildest expectations! One of the reasons for that was that it started like anything but a season finale:

Twilight, Starlight and Spike are in the castle, as Starlight gets an invitation for a festival in her old village (delivered by BEST former background pony and best sidepony Derpy Hooves!!!! :D).
She arrives there, only to be confronted with hatred and disdain, before she realizes that it's a nightmare and Luna comes to help her, giving her the advice to talk about her feelings with her friends.
They build her up and Twilight advices her to go to the village with a friend she trusts and who cares about her, subtly implying that she's talking about herself, only to get the shaft when Starlight immediately thinks about Trixie. Trixie, apparently still not liking Twilight, mocks her because Starlight chose her and then she and Trixie make their way to the village.
Once arrived there, it quickly becomes too much for Starlight when the ponies she had formerly enslaved want to put her in charge of the festival and, after she attacked them while losing her nerves and Trixie took the blame for it and helped her escape, showing what a true friend she is in the process, they talk it over and Starlight resignedly returns with her back to Ponyville.
With this set-up, the Finale starts completely ordinary and it seems like it's a Slice of Life two-parter for once.
So far, every two-parter had already hints for it that something dangerous is going to happen or at least hints for a big, major event that will go down, like the wedding in the Season 2 Finale, but this two-parter is different.
It started out completely unsuspecting and innocent, only to slowly turn into hell very soon. It was only when Trixie and Starlight had arrived in Ponyville again that it became clear that something is wrong.
This is the first time a two-parter of the show had such a sudden turn of events, without any hints for that at all, a plot twist that reminds me on the Season 2 Finale and Chrysalis' reveal, just even more unsuspecting and sudden then back then.
It's already here where the Finale shows how thrillingly good it is, but of course it doesn't end here and neither do the similarities with the Season 2 Finale.
From the moment of their return to Ponyville, a very slow build-up happens, starting with Twilight and her friends all acting strange. And unless you got a spoiler for the episode and knew that Chrysalis would attack again (which unfortunately happened to me and spoilered me more than I thought it would, as I had to realize), you still didn't know what was going on there.
Was this just another nightmare by Starlight Glimmer? Has she maybe not even woken up yet and she didn't yet go to the village? Or did some villain unknown to us attack and put a spell on the citizens of Ponyville to make them his loyal followers?
There was no definite way of telling that Chrysalis had returned and let her changelings replace Twilight and her friends in order to prepare another invasion of Equestria.
Only when Luna appeared in Starlight's dreams again and warned her, it became clear who is behind everything and, even then, it took a few minutes longer until we saw it directly confirmed, when the changelings who replaced the Mane Six and Spike contacted Chrysalis with their magical communication rocks.
This is a masterfully crafted, slow build-up that lets the suspense and the thrill of the situation crawl under your skin deeper and deeper while everything becomes slowly revealed in a pace that is almost painful to watch with the steady increase in atmosphere.
From there on, the pace suddenly quickens and we get the complete reveal of all of the heroes who would help Starlight on her unexpected dangerous adventure to save her friends and all of Equestria even, after it turned out that even Celestia and Luna were indeed replaced by changelings:

Trixie, Thorax and Discord.

After Trixie losing her nerves and panicking over the situation and making a plan to get to the Crystal Empire to tell Cadance what happened, Thorax appears and tells them that Cadance and Shining Armor, and even Flurry Heart (!), were taken as well!
Sunburst sent him to Ponyville to get the help of Twilight and her friends, only to discover that it's too late for them too.
This is already an interesting starting point with both Starlight and Thorax having believed that they could get help elsewhere at the respective other end of Equestria, only to find out that this place has fallen too and that they are on their own when they meet. We also find out that something mysterious happened to Thorax' wings, something that even he doesn't understand, which will be important later.
But it gets even better, when Discord appears too and, upon hearing that Fluttershy was captured too, loses his temper completely and teleports them to the changeling hive, which fails, so they only land nearby it.
Here the next big surprise happens, when we find out that Chrysalis is more powerful than we thought she is:

Her throne is built from a type of rock that sucks up all kinds of magic except for changeling magic, like changelings suck out love from their victims, leading to it that Discord's attempts to charge at the hive and take it apart to save Fluttershy fail.
This does, at the same time, give an explanation of how the changelings could, apparently very easily, overthrow Celestia, Luna and Cadance, as well as how Chrysalis did it with Cadance the last time; they possess rocks that can suck up a unicorn's or alicorn's magic, letting them easily defeat magic users without any effort.
All of a sudden, the changelings appear to be even more dangerous than they used to be!

Here, the first part of the adventure ends, with the fate of Equestria in the hooves and claws of four unexpected heroes; a mare whose only real strength is magic, unable to use it, and who has anxiety issues when being in charge of something, a showmare without much magical talent who has to rely on her wits and equipment to fight, a seemingly reformed changeling with knowledge about the hive who joined the good side and could turn out as either a loyal ally or cunning traitor during their mission and a draconequus without his reality-bending powers.


They make their way towards the hive, with the plan to destroy Chrysalis' throne so that Discord can defeat the changelings with his powers, not without developing a code in case they get separated and need to confirm their identities.
Arrived at the hive, they climb in through a hole in the wall, only to get informed by Thorax that the hive is constantly changing its appearance like changelings themselves do (which is, I want to say at this point, an incredibly epic thing!) and that only changelings can find their way in it, which he impressively demonstrates quickly by turning at a wall in which an opening appears a mere second later.
Unfortunately, they soon run into a dead end and even Thorax can't find his way anymore. Has Chrysalis changed something significant about the architecture of the hive after Thorax betrayed her and fled or has he lured them into a dead end on purpose?
Either way, Discord loses his patience and loudly announces his mission to save Fluttershy to all of the changelings in the cavern they're in, which leads to the first of our heroes' time to shine:

Trixie pulls out her smokebombs and distracts the changelings chasing them, while the others sneak upwards into another room. Where it gets revealed that it was actually Thorax doing all of that, not Trixie!
He took Trixie's smokebombs and transformed into her to distract the changeling while the rest of his team snuck past them.

Having been unintentionally getting led into the direction of the throne chamber by two of the changelings, they continue their way and have to stop again at the gate to the chamber when they saw that it's guarded by six changeling guards.
This time, Discord, still devoid of his usual power, uses his personality to pave them a way through the gate, by doing an improvised stand-up comedy show with the help of Trixie's microphone to distract the changelings, which succeeds and the others slip through the gate unseen.
Discords gets chased by them, though, and suddenly stumbles into a trap by a changeling who turned himself into Fluttershy. The events take a turn for the really creepy here when a whole swarm of changelings does the same, playing psychotic games with Discord by leading him to believe that one of them is the real Fluttershy, trapping him in the dilemma of having to decide between trying to figure out who the real Fluttershy is and risking to get caught or to flee and to leave Fluttershy behind, with potentially lethal consequences for her.
This was once again one of those "You know, for kids!" moments, where it shows that this show is made for a much broader audience than just children.
Having escaped the changeling swarm, Discord joins Starlight, Trixie and Thorax again a few minutes later.
But when he fails to follow the code, it becomes clear that he was replaced and Thorax explains that he's trying to lure them to a changeling swarm that is ready to attack.
Trixie offers herself to distract the changeling in Discord's disguise, which lets Starlight panicking over losing another member of her team and almost crack under the pressure, but Trixie manages it to calm her and to let her realize that she's a good leader because she brought them so far without any magic.
Then she captures the changeling with one of her tricks, while Starlight and Thorax flee into the other direction to the throne chamber, and Trixie sacrifices herself for her team when a changeling swarm lashes into her from the ceiling.
Soon, even Thorax and Starlight get separated, but Starlight manages it to reach the throne chamber alone, where Chrysalis already awaits her with more soldiers of her army.
Starlight stays confident, even though Chrysalis already spells doom on her for being all on her own, and mentions that Thorax is still out there, which makes Chrysalis furious.
She forbids her to mention him by name and calls him a traitor and then proceeds to announce that she will kill him once she finds him.
Shocked over this announcement, a blue shine appears in Starlight's eyes and it turns out that she was Thorax all along!
Chrysalis transforms him back by force and threatens him, while Starlight is in the back, trying to destroy the throne with a rock as her only means to do so, but Chrysalis finds her and forces her to hide herself.
With Thorax captured and herself being unable to do anything to fight Chrysalis, Starlight Glimmer remembers what Thorax had told her earlier about it that he lost his need to feed after making some friends and suddenly, she has a realization.
She tells Chrysalis that changelings don't need to feed on the love of others if they make friends and share love in hope to get Chrysalis to stop with everything that way.
But instead, Chrysalis becomes wrathful over this statement. She pulls Starlight out of her hideout and shuts her down immediately by saying that changelings are always hungry for love in a very enraged, almost nervous, way.
When Starlight continues to argue, Chrysalis becomes even more furious, shuts her down once more by telling her that she doesn't understand the changeling race and what it means to be a leader and throws her against a wall with full force in an attempt to kill her.
Starlight survives the impact, though, and, persistently, explains Chrysalis that being a leader does not mean to rule in fear and intimidation, speaking about her own past and what she learned thanks to Twilight and her friends.
But it fails again and Chrysalis proceeds to kill Thorax by sucking all of his love out of him, which is when Starlight finally realizes what the transformation of his wings means.
She encourages Thorax to give all of his love to Chrysalis, which creates such a big surge of love energy that his queen gets blown away through the whole throne chamber and against her throne, where she witnesses in horror how he gets wrapped into a cocoon.
As Starlight touches it, it opens and, in a bright light, it gets revealed that Thorax has transformed into a new kind of creature, akin to a changeling, but different!
Encouraged by Starlight, the other changelings follow his example one after another, and undergo the same transformation as he did by giving away all their love, which destroys Chrysalis' throne and the whole throne chamber.
All of Chrysalis' captured victims, including Discord and Trixie, become freed from their cocoons and Flurry Heart gets re-united with her parents by one of the newly transformed changelings.
After a quick explanation what happened that Starlight gives Twilight as she wakes up, Chrysalis turns out to be still alive and everypony, including Flurry Heart herself even (!!!), get ready to fight her.
Starlight approaches her, but, instead of attacking her with her magic that she can finally use again now, she tells Chrysalis what she did after Twilight and her friends defeated her and explains that she doesn't have to go down the same path of revenge, but can be a good ruler for her subjects.
Robbed of all her power, weakened and facing superior forces, left with the decision between fleeing and giving up her dark plans, she falters for a moment and thinks about giving up, only to realize again that power means more to her and that joining the good side would be a sign of weakness for her.
She slaps away the hoof Starlight had stretched out to her and promises her to enact revenge on her, then she dives down the remains of her hive and flies away through the badlands surrounding it.
Starlight realizes that she made herself an enemy and gets comforted by Twilight in this hard situation.
At this point, my prediction from shortly before the episode became true:

That Starlight will be the one who ultimately gets to decide what will happen with Chrysalis and that she will have to decide between killing her or letting her go.
And she decided for the latter, as I said in my comment before, she applied the forgiveness she received to Chrysalis and offered her the same chance, only to get fooled into giving Chrysalis the opportunity to escape, with the threat of another attack on Equestria, and even herself, looming over all of them.

Another prediction I made became unfortunately not true. Until the very end, I was convinced that Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle would be Starlight's unexpected heroes, based on the magical outburst that happened when they got their cutie marks, hinting at it that an unknown power rests in them, and the fact that most wouldn't expect them to be heroes who save Equestria.
Sadly, it didn't come like this, so, I guess we need to wait longer until we see what that outburst meant and what epic things destiny holds for them.
But I am glad that Chrysalis didn't capture them as well. I feared so, at first, and it took me a while to realize that she hasn't replaced all of Ponyville, only those who could have been dangerous for her, which I'm incredibly relieved about, because with already having captured them and tried to kill them once, she would have made short process with them if she would have gotten them.

At the end, Celestia announces to improve the relationships between the changelings and ponies and then, Discord brings them, upon Starlight's suggestion, to her village where they proceed to celebrate the Sunset Festival together and, unexpectedly, Discord and Trixie of all ponies, two polar opposites, show to have gained a mutual respect for each other during their mission.



All of these moments, after Starlight and Trixie discovered the changelings, get built up superbly in a way that increases the suspense by the minute in fast, yet not rushed, pacing, until everything culminates into the epic showdown between Starlight and Chrysalis and the unexpected conclusion of everything.
I can't write everything that stands out about this Finale into this review here, and I don't want to derail it with too much deep analysis, so I'm keeping it mostly at plot descriptions here.
But I will outsource a lot of analyzis in own journals over the course of the next days and weeks.
This finale has brought so many new things and is a real game changer, it contains so many exciting events and reveals that give plenty of opportunities for a vast amount of analyzis, fics, art and more based on it!
So, even though the hiatus has started now, there will be much more analyzis about the Finale from me in the coming weeks.

To end this review, this Finale is without any doubts the most exciting and suspense-filled we've ever gotten during the show so far and with all the things it promises, the future for the upcoming seasons of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is definitely full of things that will probably exceed it in quality by far!
Can you wait? I certainly can't await it and already desire the end of this dreadful hiatus to see how everything continues now, what changes the recent events bring and how the life of the ponies I love so much, especially of my Crusaders, continues now!
© 2016 - 2024 CMC--Scootaloo
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DinkyUniverse's avatar
Changelings are now Beetlelings! There very colorful, I wonder what this is going to become of them afterwards, not to mention what is going to happen to there queen. Don't some bug colony queens die once abandoned by the nest? That might be a bit dark, it is kind of unclear what route is going to be taken for her but it may be similar to Starlight Glimmer after she was abandoned by her colony.

I expect her to be in the background of season seven like Glimmer in season five. Or at the very least copies of the same pony that may act odd to which I will be screaming it's the bug queen.

Maybe she will create another hive, I mean she is not a queen who lays eggs all day but it can be very likely that they reproduce in a different way, but from the way things kind of look like she invaded a species in the past and turned them into something they where not and then forgotten. So who says she can't do that again?

Season seven is going to be a very interesting one indeed.