S03E13 (Finale) Magical Mystery Cure

Youtube links when they become available
Twenty minutes and counting, just time to walk the dog and prepare myself for two things.

1. Alicorn Twilight (And lots of singing)
2. The knowledge this is the last bit of pony for nine months

Good or bad, so draws to a close the Winter 2012-2013 Season 3 of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic

IT...BEGINS....

Honestly, I liked it.
It was done better than I thought it would be.

Now to wait for season 4.

Running Commentary

Opening Song?
And it appears Rarity is already trying to run the weather
Color me confused even if this bit was shown out of context in the only spoiler I accidentally saw.

And we are back and second song
So Rarity is Rainbow Dash, Dash has become Fluttershy, who has turned into Pinkie who has become Applejack who's become Rarity.
And it's all Twilight's fault.... good job absentminded mare.... so what caused...
THE BOOK! Starswirl the Bearded's little black book, 12 episodes it's been hiding in the background and we finally see it again. You sneaky writers you.... I had thought you had forgotten... ooh you tricksie writers.
And another song, a sad song, because Twilight again fucked up

And back for third song which lasts pretty much this entire second
So I wonder if we can read in friendships from which pony goes to which?
Twilight goes to Fluttershy then uses Fluttershy on Rainbow Dash and so
Few things, first seeing Dash tied up with the animals branding dinnerware was hilarious as was the follow up with the "Ahem hello I'm still tied up here" as they go on singing.
But not as funny as Rarity's little "I was having the most terrible nightmare". beat... "I might still be having it"

And we are back.... and Twilight has drilled through to the heavens themselves
Is this?
Yes it is, this is happening, Alicorn Twilight is here and yet another song (after the last song) holy shit songs after more songs.
Thank you Pinkie for the Spit-take
So yeah... this is happening, huh.
Well that's the end of the episode most of the stuff I'm not commenting on because I'm just experiencing it but I must take a time to mention the fact that Shining Armor's "Liquid Courage" was both hilarious and instantly dirty in my head.

My more coherent thoughts later.

Cptadder wrote:Running Commentary
Shining Armor's "Liquid Courage"

Liquid Pride

The term "alicorn" when used in reference to the race of princess ponies in now officially canon.
...Now to slap the faces of those snobby MLPwiki mods with it...

The ascension scene was all kinds of awesome. Crazy star dimension, man.

And now best pony is best princess.

This has been a good day.

i have mixed feelings about this new episode.....

I still think she might turn back in season 4.

Okay the Season 3 finale is behind us lets look back it as a whole.

First note, it was not until I was reviewing this post that I noticed my first line was "Alicron's a Twilight", let me correct that now. So Twilight is an Alicorn and as far as we know it's for good. The question is if she is a winged Unicorn or a goddess in pony form. AKA is she Cadence or is she Celestia or Luna? The worst part story wise from this episode is the simple fact it's not a finale, at least not yet. What this episode is... it's setup. As in Season 4 will be about what? Well Twilight's an Alicorn and a Princess, are we going to get an episode about her helping Pinkie babysit the Cake twins for Pinkie or an episode about her using her Princess powers to invade East Eurasia.

And that's the take away long term from this episode. What is Season 4 going to do with this? This is not like a standard season episode or even a previous finale. Best Night Ever for example ended with them going to a party, they had a bad time but in the end enjoyed themselves the end. The Wedding by contrast we met Cadence and Liquid Pride I mean Shining Armor (I could totally buy that as a pony name), but at the end of that episode it was not Twilight who changed it was just another new set of characters and a great new villain.

This? This..... This is different. Twilight has fundamentally changed, for the better some might say... for the worse others would say. Either way she's a different pony than before and that should in the hands of a good storyteller change everything. If we spend Season 4 adjusting to new Twilight only for the Season 4 end game to change something totally different then I'd retroactively say MMC is great. But it's not addressed with, slowly over the next Season then MMC looks like a studio decision, and a dumb one at that.

Imagine if you will your favorite sitcom. Now imagine if one episode one of the leads on the show wins a billion dollars in a lottery and at the end of the episode they still have the money. Fast forward the only thing that changes during the next season is that character dressing nicer (They have a billion dollars after all) but nothing else changes. If they have work they still go to work, they still hang out at the same crappy bars and keep the same friends without much being mentioned. That's what MMC could end up being, the shark jumped moment... but that's only if it does not act on Season 4 and beyond as the fundamental change it is.

With all that out of the way let me say this. This episode itself was musically very good, I'm not sure if any of the songs will end up in my musical list besides the six part harmony but it's nice to see so much singing. Even if makes no bloody sense for Celestia to be bursting into song in the ether there.

I could go on about each part of the episode but as I've said several times... I'm more interested in the "what's next?" than the here and now of this episode. The what's next of course is... nine months away... Well....

....MMC succeeds in one important thing...
....I HAVE to know what happens next....
....nine months from now.....
....Dang it.....

Well I posted this in the season 4 thread.
I guess I could just post it here too.

Spoiler:

So, yeah. What the hell happens next?

Holy incoming pony drought, Batman.
Well, time to fill our buckets with whatever we can.
I actually really liked this episode. It has a good message that makes a lot of sense, its potential for more plotlines is immense if they can pull it off (and I am inclined to believe that they can and will), and leaves us excited for more.
Meanwhile, the background at 20:30-20:32 has both Derpy, who is alone in a crowd and easy to spot, and Lyra, who looks quite a bit less sane than usual (she's jumping up and down, off to the left.)

I'm more partial to the Fiefdom of Ponyville rather than another castle beside Canterlot, with Twilight perhaps living in some sort of keep. Or in the library, which is still pretty likely IMO.
Say, where did Cadence live before usurping the leaderless Crystal Empire?

IncoherentOrange wrote:
Say, where did Cadence live before usurping the leaderless Crystal Empire?

She slept in in the guest bedroom of course.
Somehow I mentally imagine her being the couch person in the Celestia/Luna relationship. I still want to see more of the Celestia/Cadence relationship. We know Celestia and Luna are over 1000 at this point (Even if one of them spent 1000 years locked in the moon) what about Cadence? Was she alicorn come lately? A surprise birth of royalty to some unicorn family?

Inquiring fanfic writers want to know!

swicked wrote:
I really wish Luna could have been there when Celestia was singing to twilight in... where was that, exactly? The overworld? Hyperspace? Clearly some form of magical other dimension.
It honestly sort of reminded me of Somber's afterlife.

Silly swicked... that was the Twilight Zone
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-b5aW08ivHU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

swicked wrote:
I really wish Luna could have been there when Celestia was singing to twilight in... where was that, exactly? The overworld? Hyperspace? Clearly some form of magical other dimension.
It honestly sort of reminded me of Somber's afterlife.

Yeah, that was one of my instant few thoughts when that happened. (ohmygodthestardimensioniscanon)

And I concur, I am disappointed by the fact there was too little Luna involvement (as usual).

@Music: There was quite a lot of it this episode. Someone in the livestream brought up an interesting point though. The music is a method that the writers can use to tell the story in a way that dialogue can't, and in a quicker way. I suppose it's true, and it would be useful overall in this case, given that this finale was a one-parter rather than a two-parter.

Also, I'd like to add that Celestia's Ballad may very well be one of my all-time favorite songs from the show now. I had feels.

Orm wrote:Well I posted this in the season 4 thread.
I guess I could just post it here too.

Spoiler:

So, yeah. What the hell happens next?

This episode alone should have already been divided into two parts, I'll elaborate further in the last paragraph.
But this is good to know nevertheless, something to look forward at least.

I liked it, I loved all the six/seven songs, liked that we had got to see Pinkamina again.
What is space dimension? I don't even... Is that Celestia singing?
Pinkie screaming "Alicorns! Canon!", was rich.
And dat liquid pride. Way to go, Shining.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, this was the first time Celestia and Luna were wearing dresses, right?

As for my previously mentioned criticism, there were some minor inconsistencies, however my greatest problem was with the pacing and setting. It was... like the storyline started half-way through (which it kinda did) but tried to narrate like it's at the beginning of a story, meaning it had to cramp an enormous amount of content, events and character development into mere 22 minutes. The result was terribly rushed version of what could have been a great two-parter.

Relatively off-topic, but this has probably made me laugh more than it should :

http://derpiboo.ru/245765

I liked the songs and it could just be me but I think the animation was slightly better this episode.

I'm saying that because it looked slightly different to me and since it wasn't bad I'm going with the other direction.

Pinkie screaming "Alicorns! Canon!", was rich.

She said, "Alicorn! Party!" I'm afraid.

Related
How to be a Princess by Celestia

Spoiler:

swicked wrote:...no offense, but I wish people would stop complaining about the pacing in MLP episodes. They work with the budget they have, not the budget they'd like.
It's not like they could just get another episode into this season, or even make this one any longer.

Well, given that they HAD TO cramp all that into one episode, they did a great job, I admit that.
But if you ask me, they should have scrapped the "Spike at your service", the weakest from the season, which would make room for the second part of the finale, budget and season length problem solved.
Or better yet, they should have made it a two-parter with the first part being the last episode of season 3 and the second part being episode 1 of season 4.
That way they could have narrated the entire storyline properly and even add a one-year-long cliffhanger.

IncoherentOrange wrote:

Pinkie screaming "Alicorns! Canon!", was rich.

She said, "Alicorn! Party!" I'm afraid.

Dunno, it sounded to me like I wrote. Don't destroy my Pinkie-breaking-4th-wall dream world.

I was trying to figure out my feeling on this episode, and this sums it up pretty well:

If you removed every line containing the word "friendship" from the season 3 finale, you'd have a silent film.

That's from this blog, and in general I agree with what's said there, but here's my spin on it: This episode was pure spectacle. Music and art and animation and singing and singing and singing. I enjoy spectacle, you enjoy spectacle. But that's all there is to this episode: Spectacle. There's no lesson in friendship here, we just get the word "friendship" thrown around everywhere. And yes, this is intended to be a big emotional "she's now a princess! yay!" moment, but it falls flat because across all of FiM, we have no information about any connection between being a princess and being a good friend. Dear Princess Celestia: Today I learned absolutely nothing about friendship, nothing about myself, and nothing in general.

Honestly by the end of it the whole thing seemed to be going "Behold Twilight Sparkle! The Friendship Princess!"

So Celestia rules the day, Luna the night, Cadence is the Crystal Princess of Love or whatever and has the Crystal Empire which apparently means there's going to be nothing but love and harmony across the land, and Twilight apparently is the Princess of Friendship because she's learned the true meaning and power of friendship.

That's what I got.

So...

Am I the only one that couldn't stop feeling like this was a forced (and extremely rushed) plot point done just for shiggles?

swicked wrote:...by the way, is anyone at all curious why Starswirl the Bearded was working on a spell to create alicorns?
And if he really did fail to complete it?

I don't think it was to make alicorns. It seemed to be some kind of destiny related spell.

Now all we really know about Starswirl was that he was a very famous and powerful unicorn, but nothing else. The show implied the spell did what it did because the Element of Harmony was there, but we don't know if Starswirl even tried to cast the spell himself.

If he was powerful enough to cast it himself/ the Elements wasn't needed, then he probably ruined the lives of his friends and to paraphrase Celestia "Even Starswirl didn't know friendship like you do" and wasn't able to help them.

Or he he wasn't able to cast the spell in the first place and just gave up on it.

Just a few things bouncing around in my mind.

Or Starswirl had no friends and became Starswirl the Undying, terrible Lich villain of Season 4!
...One can dream

Seriously making an alicorn does not seem to be the intent of the spell, just the bending of reality. How we went from swapping the essences of people to turning Twilight into an alicorn is not exactly... clear....

Cptadder wrote:Or Starswirl had not friends and became Starswirl the Undying, terrible Lich villain of Season 4!
...One can dream

I'll take this over anything I come up with any day. Maybe Twilight getting the spell "right" as everybody thinks is what awakens him from his slumber and attacks.


Anybody else think it was odd the whole town stayed angry until Pinkie went back to normal? I mean, it could have been from the fact the spell wasn't 100% broken at the time, but it implied they rely on Pinkie to keep everybody happy.

Moodyman90 wrote:

Anybody else think it was odd the whole town stayed angry until Pinkie went back to normal? I mean, it could have been from the fact the spell wasn't 100% broken at the time, but it implied they rely on Pinkie to keep everybody happy.

You forget the town had additional reasons to be angry. The weather being the big thing, if I went home and got lightning at, rained on and snowed on while it 90 degrees. That's enough to ruin anyone's day.

So I was sitting here thinking some more about the finale and how I felt about it.

Ya know... alicorn Twilight... Umm... other then the obvious of gaining the title of Princess and you know... wings... what changed? She's still Twilight. Just with Princess in front of her name and now has wings.

"Games Ponies Play" did more to change her with the "keep calm" breathing technique.

Yeah and it'll make a great playset when it comes out, but there's nothing saying she has to stay there. At least not during the day.

If they end up taking away her wings or not for season 4, I really don't see where it's going to matter. I could be underestimating stupidity again, but Twilight is a princess now because of the magic of friendship so it's unlikely they're going to separate her from the others.

I guess where I'm getting at is... the episode doesn't matter. At least to me. I don't hate it, I liked the songs and good with what happened in it..., but over all in terms of how I enjoy the show and everything about it, the episode doesn't add to or takes away anything for me.