I was out of town at a vintage computer fair over the weekend, so I didn't get a chance to watch part two of "The Return of Harmony" on my DVR until just a few minutes ago. I will discuss my feelings about the episode in a moment, but first I want to respond to Kaloyan Alett's reply to my earlier post, since I have been wanting to get a chance to do that for some time.
Well Nightmare Moon didn't actually come about due to her resentment, Lauren Faust has stated several tims that it was due to magic. An outside force (I speculate Discord) turned her into Nightmare Moon.
When I had mentioned in my previous post that I had enjoyed the villain Nightmare Moon because she hadn't started out evil but slowly became evil over time because she let her resentfulness towards her sister consume her, I wasn't speculating on Nightmare Moon's creation, but directly referencing an episode of MIL:FiM itself. The narrator stated during the opening of the first episode of MLP:FiM, "Friendship is Magic - Part 1,":
"Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria there were two regal sisters that ruled together and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn. The younger brought out the moon to begin the night. Thus the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all of the different types of ponies. But as time went on, the younger sister became resentful. The ponies relished and played in the day that her sister brought forth but shunned and slept through her beautiful night. One fateful day the younger unicorn refused to lower the moon to make way for the dawn. The elder sister tried to reason with her, but the bitterness in the young one's heart had transformed her into a wicked mare of darkness, Nightmare Moon."So the show itself stated that the reason why Princess Luna slowly transformed into the evil Nightmare Moon was because she allowed her resentment and bitterness towards her consume her. Ms. Faust possibly may have said something contradicting what the episode itself stated in some interview later (I don't know personally, since I haven't read any of her interviews), but when it comes to my own personal interpretation of the Nightmare Moon character I am going to stick with the show itself because what actually appears in the show is canon. If a later episode of MLP:FiM comes along and
retcons the Princess Luna character as always being completely good and only becoming evil after being intentionally transformed by some outside evil magical source like you stated then I will go along with it, but until then I will stick to the what has been shown in the episodes that have aired.
Also Discord is the spirit of Chaos itself so its in his nature to be faily evil and cruel seeming...So I'd say in this episode he isn't evil for the sake of it, he's getting revenge for having his kingdom stolen out from under him and being imprisoned for over a millenium.
I will agree that Discord would have some cause for revenge in the current episodes for being locked in stone for thousands of years, but as I mentioned in my previous post in this thread that still doesn't give him any motivation for his past actions of evil. As Princess Celestia explained to the ponies inside the castle in part 1, Discord kept Equestria in an eternal state of "unrest and unhappiness," and that both her and Princess Luna felt compelled to move against him because of how "miserable" he was making the ponies. What was Discord's reasons for throwing the ancient land of Equestria into misery like this? The show gives no motives for his actions, and instead explains that Discord does what he does because he is the "mischievous spirit of disharmony." Given Discord's past history, I have a feeling that he would have eagerly turned Equestria upside-down like he did in the episode whether he was entrapped in stone by Celestia and Luna beforehand or not. Because of this, I strongly feel that Discord largely fits the TVTropes.org website's trope for
the "Generic Doomsday Villain."As a result, just like I mentioned in my last post, I am still underwhelmed by Discord as I have a personal distaste for villains that are evil "just because" since I can't personally relate to them. To quote part of the article about Generic Doomsday Villains from TVTropes,
"...on an In-Universe level — the level on which the audience relates to the story and suspends disbelief — what matters is whether the character is consistent and coherent and has a compelling reason to do what they do. Just like a good hero, a good villain is someone we care about, either because they're someone we empathize with or because they're someone we love to hate. A Generic Doomsday Villain is neither of these things." I have to agree with this assessment wholeheartedly. I can't get myself to care about Discord because he gives me no reason to empathize with him, hate him, relate to him, etc. He is just some ancient "spirit of disharmony" bringing about the destruction of the world through chocolate rain because, well, because that is just what he enjoys doing. *yawn* If you happened to love the Discord character that's great-- more power to you. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about him. I just happened to be very underwhelmed by him myself, and unless future episodes of the show give me some reason to care about him I don't have any interest in ever seeing him make a reappearance in future episodes either.
About part 2 of "The Return of Harmony," there was once again elements that I enjoyed about the episode and elements that I didn't. To start off with the things that I didn't like, one of the things that I mentioned in my last post that I was concerned about with this story arc was the all-powerful nature of Discord, and how it could possibly force the show's writers to use a "deus ex machina" plot device (the unexpected introduction of a convenient new character, ability, or object) to stop him. This
sort of happened in part 2 with Twilight Sparkle suddenly having a convenient "memory spell" at her disposal that could effortlessly turn each of the other "Mane 6" back to their old normal selves. Now I realize that Twilight Sparkle is the magician of the group, and that she probably has a lot of spells that we haven't seen in the show yet, but since we have never seen the memory spell up until this point where it is surprisingly convenient, it still comes off as a bit of a deus ex machina. Had the writers introduced Twilight Sparkle's memory spell as a
"Chekov's Gun," (a literary technique whereby an unimportant element introduced early in the story becomes significant later on), they could have avoided this.
(As a side note, the scrolls that Twilight Sparkle wrote to the princess about the lessons of friendship that she learned during Season 1 is an excellent example of a Chekov's Gun-- throughout season 1 they were used only as a way to sum up the message of each episode, however they became a key plot element in part 2 of "The Return of Harmony." As a second side note, wasn't Twilight Sparkle's magic shown to be ineffective against Discord's powers when her "fail-safe" spell failed to work in "The Return of Harmony Part 1?" How come her magic, in the form of her memory spell, was suddenly able to work against the spells that Discord had placed on the rest of the Mane 6? Is this a possible continuity error?)
The second thing that I really didn't like about this episode was the nearly suicidal overconfidence that Discord showed towards the Mane 6 when he was confronted by them and the Elements of Harmony the second time after Twilight Sparkle had restored her friends back to normal. Despite the fact that the Mane 6 were no longer under his power, and that they were armed with the same magical artifacts that had defeated him and brought his first reign of chaos to an end thousands of years ago, he shows absolutely no concern about them what-so-ever and even sits, barely interested, yawning in a chair as they blast and defeat him unchallenged. This really disappointed me because this was supposed to be the *climax* of the story arc, and due to Discord's complete dismissal of his foes it was completely lacking in any sort of tension or excitement. Or in other words, the climax was anti-climatic. There was no final struggle and the final battle was completely one-sided. Where was the danger for the heroes? Where was the risk to them? The climax is supposed to be the most exciting part of the story, but instead it was overshadowed by the attempt by the heroes to catch and restore Rainbow Dash. I spent an entire week wondering how the heros were going to defeat an all-powerful villain like Discord, and instead Discord just sat back in a chair and let the ponies defeat him. How disappointing.
As far as what I enjoyed about the episode goes, like Ziel I very much enjoyed how the ponies acted out-of-character when they were gray. Some of the antics of gray-Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity were pretty funny. The funniest moment for me however was the whole scene where Twilight Sparkle finally finds the Elements of Harmony hidden in her book in her Library-- that whole scene is great! I love how she calls her element the "big crown thingie!" I love when she hastily promotes Spike to be "the new Rainbow Dash!" And I also love how she yells "Look out! Here comes Tom!" when she chucks Rarity's bolder out of the library's window with her magic! The before-mentioned chase scene where Twilight and her friends were trying to catch and restore the gray-Rainbow Dash was also very very good. The Star Wars spoof ending was kind of cliche to me, but it didn't really bother me either way. Overall I did like part 2 much better than I liked part 1, but even so the combined "The Return of Harmony" parts 1 and 2 is still one of my least favorite episodes. I have to cast this story arc onto the very bottom of my MLP:FiM list along with "A Dog and Pony Show" as my least favorite episodes. I don't think that any MLP:FiM episode is truly bad mind you-- I just happened to like those less than the rest.
Well.... So where do we go to start a pettition to bring Discord back?
According to part 1, Discord was able to break Luna and Celestia's spell and break free from the statue because Luna and Celestia no longer controlled the Elements of Harmony-- the Mane 6 now control them. Therefore, it begs to reason that if the Mane 6 ever pass control of the Elements of Harmony onto some other ponies the Mane 6's spell over Discord will break as well, and Discord will escape again. So there is an open-ended way for Discord to escape. You're not going to see me signing any petitions to make it happen though.
