Woo hoo! I *finally* got to watch the new episode "Luna Eclipsed" this morning. I was *so* excited for this episode, to the point where I was literally counting down the days until it aired, and then when Saturday morning finally arrived real-life intervened and I didn't get a chance to watch my recording of the episode until now... and it was a rough wait, let me tell you! Not only did I have to temporarily boycott visiting both the Furtopia MLP forums and Equestria Daily for the past three days to make sure that I didn't accidentally run across any spoilers, but when I saw Liedt in-person last Saturday afternoon I had to force him to not talk about the new episode as well because he had already seen it. Oh well, the episode was so good that it was definitely worth the wait!
I was *extremely* curious to see what Princess Luna's character was going to be like, and how the writers of the show were going to play Luna's visit on Nightmare Night out. Up until now all that we had seen of her was that absolutely adorable small lavender-colored pony with the periwinkle-colored mane who was huddled up, sad, scared, and remorseful, at the end of the episode "Friendship Is Magic - Part 2 (Elements of Harmony)." As I am sure that you are all well aware, that brief appearance of Luna in Season 1 caused a slough of Luna fan-art to be created in the Brony-community, with much of it showing her being quiet, meek, sad, and sullen, with a personality much like a personified quiet, lonely, and peaceful moonlit night. I have to admit that I also bought into this fan-developed perception of her-- it was basically just taking how she acted in her brief first appearance in Season 1 and running with it, so it made sense to me.
Going along with Princess Luna's original appearance and demeanor, I expected the episode "Luna Eclipsed" to play out very differently than it did. Here is how I thought that things were going to happen: I did imagine the Nightmare Night festivities to play out pretty much as they did, with the trick-or-treating, costumes, traditional American Halloween-type games, etc. However, I imagined Luna secretively sneaking into Ponyville's Nightmare Moon Night festivities while hiding herself underneath a cloak or a costume so that she could silently observe the festivities. With Luna being so ashamed and remorseful about her Nightmare Moon past, I thought that she would have been shocked and devastated to find all of the ponies celebrating a holiday that was based around her horrible past, and that she would be made extremely upset from seeing all of the effigies of her old Nightmare Moon persona put on display throughout the town. That revelation to her would be like an emotional stake through her heart-- here she wants nothing more than for everypony to forget about her past and forgive her, but instead the images of her wicked former self are still everywhere, tormenting her. Around this point some pony, not knowing that the mare in the cloak/costume is Luna, would say something horrible about Nightmare Moon to her/ make her play some kind of degrading game like "pin the tail on the Nightmare Moon" or something along those lines, and that would push Lune to the breaking point where she would throw off her costume, reveal to everypony who she was, and run out of town crying. Then it would be up to the Mane 6 to find Luna, console her, and convince her that Nightmare Night was a night of fun, laughter, etc., and that she should embrace the fact that even her less than admirable past has been the cause of so much fun and adoration for her.
Wow, I pretty much missed the mark on that one to a large degree. Instead of a quiet, curled up, and frightened little lavender and periwinkle pony, we got a larger, dark blue-violet-ish pony with thunder, lightning, evil-looking demon-winged pegasi escorts, a booming voice, the ability to create giant spiders, and Nightmare Moon's star-field hair. Wow, again. I think Luna's personality changed just as much as her appearance too-- just as with her appearance there are still some elements about her that are still the same, but there is a huge amount about her that is different. So while the new Luna is not a *complete* 180 from where the original character was heading, it is definitely a significant change in direction! Now my predictions about the episode weren't
entirely wrong-- Luna did end up leaving town all sullen and crushed and then got a lecture about how wonderful Nightmare Night was to convince her to return. But I would have never foresaw all of the thunder, lightning, yelling, and giant spiders that it took to get the story to that point! Yeesh, Luna definitely needed to learn how to take it down a notch or two! In fact, Luna was acting so Nightmare Moon-ish at some parts of this episode that I was almost wondering if the Mane 6 were going to have to once again band together and hit her with their giant orbital rainbow friendship cannon (a.k.a. "The Elements of Harmony") just to tone her down a bit! You know, like put Princess Luna into a 5-minute time out for bad behavior!
In any case, my feelings are a bit mixed about the new Luna. I thought that Luna's original design was *very* pretty, so much so that she was probably my favorite character design out of all of the ponies. While Luna's new design is also pretty, I hate the fact that we will probably have to lose the original Luna design to gain this new one. To explain what I mean, this kind of reminds me of the whole Coca-cola/New Coke debacle. I actually liked the "new Coke," but I also always liked the original Coca-cola classic, so I was sad that I had to give up one for the other. Now, Coca-cola remedied this by making both Coca-Cola Classic and the renamed Coke II both available, so for a few years you could actually enjoy both. It would be cool, at least to me, if MLP:FiM would do kind of the same thing with Luna. After all, they established in this episode that Princess Luna can use magic to alter her appearance because they showed her temporarily portraying Nightmare Moon near the end. As a result, maybe they could do something like have Luna appear as her smaller lavender and periwinkle form when she is away from her subjects and in private, and then have her take on her new blue-violet star-field form when she is out in public and wants to appear more imposing a regal, kind of like how she used her booming voice in public to appear more imposing and regal. That would make sense to me (and make me happy), and in my opinion it would fit the new-version of Luna's character a bit more than
Lauren Faust's personal explanation on Luna's change in appearance. (I know that it is probably sacrilegious for me to question anything Lauren Faust says and that I will probably become yet another stone garden ornament in Celestia's garden of vanquished foes because of my blatant impudence, but what can I say, I like my idea better and I really wish that there was some way to make it so! Oh well...)
As far as Luna's new personality goes, well, we only got the tiniest little hint of what Luna was possibly like from the episode "Friendship Is Magic - Part 2 (Elements of Harmony)". In fact, most of what I thought I knew about the original Luna probably developed based on the fan-made material that I saw of her later. So I guess I can't argue against the "new" Luna's personality at all, because there really isn't that much of a
canon "old" personality to compare her against. Besides, as the new episode has shown, underneath all of the new Luna's yelling, thunder, and giant death-spiders there is still a sad, quiet, and vulnerable pony who wants to be accepted. That was the element of the "old" Luna that I liked from her original appearance, and I guess her appearance in this new episode showed that it is still there, only just buried a little more. I guess I can go along with that. In any case, I just hope that from now on we see Luna a bit more often! "New" design or "old," I still think that she is way neater than Celestia!
Some additional random observations:* Is it just me, or is Luna talking with ye olde-style English a bit of a retcon? I understand why the writers made her speak that way because they wanted to make her sound regal and out of touch with the times, but both Luna AND Nightmare Moon spoke modern English in their Season 1 debut, so having Luna suddenly talk like it was the year 1600 doesn't really make much sense when her Nightmare Moon counterpart sure didn't. I suppose you could say that Luna's speaking in
Early Modern English could have all been part of her act that she was putting on to appear regal in front of her subjects, but she also spoke that way when confiding to Twilight Sparkle, which makes it appear that she *always* talks that way. If that is true, that breaks the precedent of how Luna/ Nightmare Moon spoke in Season 1.
* I absolutely *loved* Rainbow Dash dressing up as a Shadowbolt! That was such a great idea, and I wish that we could have seen more of her as a Shadowbolt or at least some kind of reaction from Luna from seeing somepony dressed up as one of her old Shadowbolt creations.
* I loved Spike's commenting on the mayor's clown costume throughout the episode! That really made me chuckle!
* I loved the little pony that was dressed-up as a mouse and was frightened when Luna stomped her hoof right by her head! So cute!
* Zecora's retelling of the Mare in the Moon story and her associated green smoke illusions of Nightmare Moon were both pretty cool!
* The appearance of Derpy bobbing for apples and then accidentally coming up with the plug of the large basin draining all of the water out was both funny and endearing, however at the same time I can't help but note that Derpy is becoming ever more of a foreground pony instead of just a random background pony. I think that the Season 1 sport of Derpy-spotting is officially dead-- now she is apparently a full-blown secondary character and is spotlighted in the show front and center. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. Hmmm. At the current rate that Derpy's appearances are growing in significance, how long do you think it is going to be before Derpy gets her first speaking role and then her first full-blown episode?
* When I first saw the statue of Nightmare Moon in the woods when Zecora was telling her story, my first thought was, "Geez, it looks like Luna lost an argument with Celestia again!" LOL! Actually, I have to wonder if this is the first time that we have seen a statue that wasn't one of Princess Celestia's past poor hapless dissenters that was turned into stone!
* There is a new tiny colt named "Pipsqueak" with an overly cute British accent? Just what I needed-- the sickeningly cute character "Lumpy" from the early-2000-era
Winnie the Pooh movies in My Little Pony-form. Argh! I just hope that we don't get overly-deluged with appearances of him! That's the kind of character that can develop into a "Scrappy Doo"-like tumor on a show really fast! Somebody needs to cut that malignant character out of the show and irradiate it before it gets a chance to spread into further episodes-- stat!
* Big Mac giving young ponies hay rides-- LOL!
* No Rarity! *boos*
* I love how Luna could use her magic to make herself look like Nightmare Moon but still had to place a set of false teeth in her mouth while doing so. You would think that her magic could take care of that little detail too!
* Up until now I have been fighting the whole "Trollestia" idea that out of Princess Celestia's boredom all she does is sit around and create an endless string of problems for the citizens of Ponyville to solve, but trying to ignore that concept is getting ever more difficult to do. The whole conflict of this episode could have been resolved before the episode even began if Princess Celestia had just taken 5-minutes out of her day and told Luna the following four points of advice: 1) "We no longer talk like it is the year 1650." 2) "We no longer use an earth-shattering booming voice to terrify our subjects into submission. I have now turned so many of our subjects into stone for crossing me that I can talk to them in a sweet, soft-spoken, and motherly manner and they still are god-fearing of me and do what I say." 3) "We no longer address ourselves in the third-person," and 4) "Don't cover our pony subjects in giant spiders. They tend to be fearful of that." I mean really, has Celestia spent
any one-on-one sister-time with Luna since they have reconciled, or did Celestia just set poor Luna up for the prank of the year like Kaloyan Alett mentioned?
* Is it just me, or has Twilight Sparkle's time spent as Princess Celestia's personal student made her have way too much candor when dealing with princesses? While everyone else bows and is generally awe-struck by the appearance of Celestia, Twilight Sparkle will skip the whole bowing-thing and just walk right on up to her and basically ask her how it's hangin'. While Twilight might be able to get away with that sort of thing (despite how bad it must look in public) with Princess Celestia because of Twilight Sparkle's special status as Celestia's pupil, I am surprised that Twilight was also able to get away with being so informal with Luna, especially since Luna doesn't know Twilight Sparkle very well and was actually expecting respect and formality from the townsfolk (like how Luna wanted the mayor to kiss her hoof, for instance). I swear, one of these days Twilight is going to be overly-informal to the wrong member of Equestria royalty and become the royal castle's next stone garden ornament. I'm just sayin'!
Anyway, there was *a lot* going on with this episode, and a lot to like about it! I didn't want to write another massive waterfall of text reviewing this episode like I have in the past, but with all that happened and was shown in this one I just couldn't help myself. Just like how Pinkie Pie has to eat candy, Rainbow Dash has to prank, and Twilight Sparkle has to lecture, I have to write giant walls of text about MLP. Apparently, it's what I do! Anyway, like Ziel said, it seems like MLP:FiM is getting back to its good 'ol fantastic self with this episode, and I sincerely hope that we see more great episodes like this one soon!
