Weakest Episode: Newbie Dash. Y’know, I like Dashie, she’s often my favorite of the six, but damn if he pouty episodes aren’t tiresome. How many times has your overcompensation gotten you owned Dashie? Right, all of them. Why you gotta do a thing. Admittedly the Wonderbolts running on friendly assholism is kinda bleh to me to start with, even if it does make sense for the sort of people they are.
I’ll admit I needed to skim episode titles to single that one out, but there’s a couple episodes like that (Flutter Brutter’s another one) where, yeah it’s new stuff I guess? But it’s really just a new coat of point on a typical [x]-episode plot and it’s season 6 guys, you did this one and it wasn’t good the last time.
But really the bulk here are just… fine. As slice of life content goes, season 6 holds the batting average. There’s some fun concepts in there, and I dunno if they got all the milage they could have outta, oh, “Dischord vs DnD” it still exists and that’s peachy.
Our continuity this season though with in Starlight episodes, which actually did something they show had been aching for: showing just how hard it is for a villain to earn redemption in their own eyes. Well, okay, Equestria Girls had been doing something with that with Sunset, yeah, but y’know what? Her problem was her confidence was shot after her inner darkness manifesting as a literal demon. Starlight’s deal is her coming to grips with just how bad she was in the first place.
I mean some folk, not without reason, were kinda pissed that Starlight seemed so easily forgiven after her “I almost destroyed time!” escapades. Y’know who else thought that? Is crushed daily by just how dysfunctional her understanding of basic life is? Spends noticeable amount of time in each appearance paranoid about the possibility of relapse? Was so overwhelmed at the ease with which the people of her village forgave her she had a panic attack?
Yeah. Even if everyone else either accepts that she wants to change and wants to make that easier for her, or doesn’t really know what she did and thinks of her as just Twilight’s weird friend? Starlight Glimmer hasn’t forgiven Starlight Glimmer, and time will tell if she ever can.
Honestly the more they show Starlight the more I am so, so tempted to delve into thinkpiece “diagnose the MLP characters!” stuff and that’s totally not something I should be doing. But I’m sure that piece exists and damn if I don’t feel like Starlight, specifically, hits you in the face with it harder than everyone except Twilight.
ER, anyways, so the Starlight arc through the season has a secret weapon in its quest to make me like the episodes and root for her.
That’s right, they brought back my irrational favorite pony, the Pathetic and Friendless Trixie!
Best Episode: To Where and Back Again part 2. This is probably my single favorite episode in ages, and it mostly just cheats to get there then lets everything unfold naturally. Shove Discord and Trixie into the party together, biggest braggarts of the show? Yeah, nah, that’s ending gloriously. For good measure they bring back the biggest hanging villain on the show, because of course they do, they know continuity is my catnip. Thorax is a bit nothing as a character which isn’t ideal, but I have to admit, I do like that the episode that introduced him didn’t really have much Starlight in it, cool way to downplay that the changelings were going to be a thing in the finale.
On the whole there’s some signs of fatigue in the basic structure of the show here. Having Starlight to be the lead on some episodes, and the format tweak for CMC episodes, help quite a bit, but I think the writers for the non-anchor episodes are starting to strain under continuity rather than using it. Which sorta makes it surprising that the show has an eighth season lined up in some ways, but we don’t know much about that yet and it’s entirely possible it’ll start winding down at that point.
I mean, I saw they launched a proper Equestria Girls webseries sometime this year, the exact thing I mentioned that the last EQ movie was setting up for. Seems like a thing that could happen.
Rating- 7/10. The good episodes were an improvement from the last couple seasons, but the middle episodes were a bit weaker, so around the same feel overall I think.
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