HTKKTS 1

How Twilight’s Kingdom Killed the Show
Introduction and Part 1

This is the script for my video series of the same title. It’s a bit rough, as it wasn’t originally written to be read by anyone other than me. I decided to publish these on request from several people, who either didn’t feel like watching hours of video or just had a hard time following my accent.
There might be typos and other mistakes, and it’s also slightly different from what was eventually recorded. Most of it should be video-accurate however. Note that the swearing is censored in the videos.
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If you’ve been on the internet for a while, you probably remember a cartoon show called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic being the hottest new meme of late 2010. You’ve probably heard about the so-called “Bronies,” or the adult fans of said show. You probably haven’t heard much good about them.
Now, I like this show. Or at least I used to. I was one of THOSE people.
In the time since, the pony craze simmered down. You’d be forgiven for not knowing that as of the making of this video in 2017, the show is still going. The 8th season has just been announced; there’s already an entire spin-off movie franchise called Equestria Girls, with so many movies that I honestly didn’t bother keeping count; and a proper pony movie is scheduled for the end of this year. There have been some recent news that the show is contracted to last at least until the end of the decade.
Suffice it to say, ponies are not going anywhere. At least not for a while.
What you probably also don’t know is that the “bronies” are a divided bunch. A lot of things have changed around Ponyville over the years, and after the early departure of the head writers – Lauren Faust and Robert Renzetti – the show has undergone a drastic shift both in theme and tone. A lot of bronies were not happy with that.
I was one of those bronies. So yes: even to THOSE people I’m one of THOSE people.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is… special. It is special to me, as well as fascinating; I’ve spent a long time wondering why I, an ostensible adult, liked this show so much. By all rights I shouldn’t have. Yet I still think that the first two seasons of the show are quality family entertainment, and I will defend them against anyone.
Without Friendship is Magic, I probably would not be a published author today. Had I never discovered this show, I might be a lot more bitter these days. And that’s saying something because I’m usually plenty bitter as it is.
What’s far more fascinating than why I liked the show, though, is why I stopped liking it.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this. Partially because as a wanna-be storyteller myself, I greatly enjoy dissecting movies and shows to see what made them work.
And also because I’m trying to somehow rationalise wasting about half a decade of my life watching a show meant for 5-year-old girls.
Over time, I’ve come to realise that the show’s 3rd season pretty much put it on life support. Then Twilight’s Kingdom, the finale of the 4th season of the show, finally pulled the plug. As far as my enjoyment of the show went, anyway.
Twilight’s Kingdom killed the show.
It did not go out with a bang, but a whimper. It was a slow enervation that has been happening for years, with problems piling on one another until finally, the show just died in my eyes.
It’s not that Twilight’s Kingdom is a terrible episode. Honestly, all things considered, it’s actually kind of decent. Even someone who has never given two shits about ponies could probably sit down and watch it, and be reasonably entertained for forty minutes.
Twilight’s Kingdom has mystery. It’s got intrigue. It’s got deceit. It’s got a cool villain. It’s got goofs. It’s got cute. It’s got John de Lancey. It’s got Celestia, it’s got Luna. It’s got Twilicorn in pain. It’s got conflict. It’s got ‘splosions.
Honestly, this episode’s got everything you could possibly want from an episode of My Little Pony. So what went wrong?
Well, to understand what killed the show, you must first understand why the show was good in the first place. Just how DID this show get a massive adult following? People have been trying to figure that one out literally for almost a decade now.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. I know why I liked the show. And believe me, I liked the show a lot. I used to like this silly cartoon enough to make a frankly embarrassingly long video explaining why I used to like it, years after the fact. That’s how much I liked it.
I hope you brought snacks, ‘cause this is gonna take a while.
Sitting comfortably? Alright then. I’ve wasted too many words on this introduction as it is.
So let’s jump right in, shall we? ( … Twilight says yes.)

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Part 1: The Death of Alicorns, or: The Magic Circle
What made Friendship is Magic so good?
I don’t think it was one thing. It was a lucky combination of many different factors. In a way, the show was like a winning lottery ticket; I can’t imagine that anyone involved ever actually believed it’d do so well, or maybe well at all.
If you’re the average guy who liked the show, you’d probably just say that it was “good” and leave it at that. You might go on to use buzzwords like, the characters were “relatable” or “cute,” or the show was “funny” and “family friendly.” These are not untrue claims, but they are also superficial things. They only scratch the surface of what made this show “good.”
If you’re the pretentious sort, you might call the show a “Gesamtkunstwerk.” “Gesamtkunstwerk” is a word used by hoity-toity, artsy-fartsy people to describe a complex work of art that involves several artforms to form a comprehensive whole. It literally means “Total-art-work” or a “Full work of art.”
For this video, I will arbitrarily use this word to describe a work that becomes greater than the sum of its parts. In this sense, Friendship is Magic is definitely a Gesamtkunstwerk.
But I hate pretentiousness, and I also recognise the ridiculousness of using a word originally used for 19th century German opera to describe My Little Pony. So I’ll avoid using the word. Instead, I’ve come up with another completely arbitrary term.
If you’re detecting a theme, then congratulations; you’re paying attention.
The term I like to use is “the magic circle.”
The “magic circle” is a metaphorical circle drawn in the ground around a metaphorical fire. It is a barrier between the real world and the world of a story, be it a cartoon, a movie, a video game, or a book. When you watch that cartoon, when you watch that movie, play that game, read that book, you enter the magic circle. Entering the circle involves suspending your disbelief, but it also involves actively (or subconsciously) placing yourself into a specific state of mind. When you enter the circle, you become “in sync” with the story.
If this all sounds like vague mumbo-jumbo, or like it has little to do with ponies, then I urge you to stick with me. I promise it’ll make sense in a moment.
To find Friendship is Magic’s magic circle, let’s go back, way back, right to the beginning of the show. The very first scene of the very first episode.
The show begins with the opening of a storybook, and a motherly voice relating the story of two ponies who appear to be, at first glance, pony gods. They control the Sun and the Moon, and they are described as ruling over all the little ponies.
These two ponies, Celestia and Luna, are called “alicorns.” They are physically larger than all the other ponies, and they both have a pair of wings as well as a horn: traits that no other ponies share. They are shown to live atop a mountain and move among the clouds.
Note that the art style of this little storybook segment is much different from the rest of the show. It is even more stylised, but altogether less childish, its color scheme slightly more muted and less garish, and overall the images evoke the style of ancient murals and frescos… still in a distinctly My Little Pony way, of course.
It shouldn’t take long for anyone to begin to notice the various references to ancient Greek myth that exist in the show. So there’s the gods who live on a mountain and move in the skies, but there are also the so-called “pegasus ponies,” and later in the show, even an explicit reference to Tartarus, complete with the three-headed guard dog Cerberus.
If you squint, you might interpret the “magical land of Equestria” as the fields of Elysium… but that’s a bit too deep, even for me, and definitely not intentional.
Notice the very first words ever spoken in the show:
[“Once upon a time…”]
It’s a classic fairy tale opening. This line IS the magic circle. Let me explain.
The show begins with this line for the same reason that Star Wars begins with “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” or that the Lord of the Rings begins with the tale of the One Ring, or why “Enúma Elis,” or “When on high…” has such a strong opening. It’s a storytelling device that’s as old as humanity itself.
These simple phrases prime your mind. They serve to mentally whisk you away to a faraway land where things are different from what you know. They let you slip into an altered state of consciousness and start accepting things that you would not otherwise accept. This is part of what allowed fairy tales and old legends to stay with us for centuries or even millennia.
You may not have noticed… but your brain did.
There is a simple reason that Friendship is Magic frames itself like a fairy tale right out of the gate.
It’s OKAY to like fairy tales.
The earliest stories a child ever hears are often old folklore myths and fairy tales. Adults keep returning to these tales later in their lives, sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes to reinterpret them for fun or art’s sake, and eventually, to read them to their own children. Whether you, yourself, are fond of fairy tales is up to you, but you cannot deny their staying power. They are intertwined with our culture for a reason.
That the show was given this kind of start is brilliant in its simplicity. See, My Little Pony was never going to be Breaking Bad or Westworld. If it wanted to reach people, children and adults alike, it had to be simple, and it had to appeal to something primal inside of us.
Notice that the show doesn’t immediately assault you with the magical purple unicorn Twilight Sparkle’s quest to find out more about friendship. It doesn’t immediately drop you into the garish, explodingly colourful land of Equestria, full of friendship and magic and frolicking ponies.
It starts out nice and tame, talking about mythology, about conflict, envy, jealousy, emotion – primal stuff, the kind of stuff that’s at the core of adult entertainment, too. It’s stuff we can all relate to, regardless of age or background.
The show sloooowly eases you into accepting that you’re watching a cartoon about talking horses.
The various ancient Greek references scattered throughout the show serve the same purpose. They’re the “meat” of the world. They’re the kind of stuff the children won’t necessarily get, making the adult viewer feel like they’re getting away with something, like they’re seeing something hidden.
I remember the first started watching the show, on a late Sunday night in early 2011 with nothing else to do, coping with bout of insomnia and curious about this strange “pony meme” I’ve seen floating around the internet. So I say, “fuck it,” search Youtube, and load up the first episode.
I was expecting to cringe for a few minutes, then go to bed.
Instead I was like, “hey, wait a minute… is this… mythology? My Little Pony has a mythology? But mythology is interesting! I LIKE interesting things!”
Then, by the time the cutesy theme song came on, the show had me. I was determined to watch this damn thing. I didn’t think the show was deep, because it wasn’t. I didn’t think it was the best thing ever, because it wasn’t. It was, however, far better than I expected – far better than My Little Pony had any right to be. The only proof I needed of that was that I was still watching it.
And I didn’t care much about Twilight Sparkle. I didn’t care about this pony world. But I WAS interested in the mythology. I was fascinated that a show that’s this trite, this childish, could pull off something like this with such elegance. As someone who aspires to make a living out of telling good stories, this absolutely blew my mind.
And then, by the time the first episode ended, I absolutely LOVED Twilight Sparkle. I couldn’t be bothered to remember her name yet, but damn, that pony was a great character that I loved to see on screen. But I won’t get into that right now. I’ll talk about her in detail later.
What’s important to notice here is that the initial connection between the adult audience and the show comes in the form of the storybook opening, and that this storybook is about the Alicorns, Celestia and Luna. These character don’t actually turn up often in the show – in fact, after the second episode, Luna didn’t show up until an entire season later – but they are easily among the most important things ABOUT the show.
They were certainly important enough for the creators of the show to put them into the very first scene of the very first episode. This is significant. The Alicorns ARE significant.
And I don’t mean that they’re significant because of their role as pseudo-gods of the pony world.
The Alicorns are important because they represent the magic circle. They are, in and of themselves, the connection between the adult audience and the show. They are possibly the first thing to catch the interest of an adult who otherwise wouldn’t pay attention to this show.
But this connection goes deeper than a superficial “wait, what?” moment in the first minute or so. In fact, throughout the entire show – or, at least the first 2 seasons – there is a consistent, thematic connection between the adult audience and the Alicorns, and Celestia in particular.
So let’s talk about Celestia.
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Part 1.1: Let’s talk about Celestia.
Princess Celestia is the ostensible Sun-Goddess of the pony world. She moves the Sun across the sky every day, bringing life to the land, and she rules over all the little ponies. Her colour scheme is an angelic white-gold palette, she lives in a golden palace atop the tallest mountain, she walks among the clouds and occasionally descends from on high to dispense advice and guidance to the little ones.
I’ve talked a lot about the obvious godlike qualities the show imbues Celestia with. But this is obvious stuff. And in fact, even as someone who loves to over-analyse the simplest things, even I find that looking for religious symbolism in My Little Pony is a bit of a stretch.
Right now, we have to look past the obvious, and past the pretentious. To understand Celestia’s TRUE significance, we have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. We have to go meta.
One of Friendship is Magic’s greatest strengths is hiding meaning in simple concepts, meaning that’s applicable to life regardless of your age, meaning that goes beyond what’s immediately on screen.
Note that, again, I’m not saying that the show is particularly complex, or that it has immense hidden depths. It doesn’t. Not really. What I AM saying is that the show has MEANING, and that this meaning is beautiful in its simplicity.
Think of Celestia not as a character. Think of Celestia as metaphor.
Notice the relationship between Celestia and “her little ponies.” Examine how the little ponies see Celestia, and how Celestia sees them.
To the little ponies, Celestia is both awesome and terrifying. Celestia deals out judgement, as well as reward. Celestia is the final authority on good versus bad, on what is right and what is wrong. To make Celestia proud is the greatest achievement a pony can attain, and to disappoint or hurt Celestia is the single worst act one can commit.
Celestia is physically larger, taller, and generally more imposing than any of the little ponies, imbued with a host of divine qualities. She is immortal, and as such much older and wiser than any of the little ponies. Celestia is a teacher and a ruler, and it is Celestia’s command that sets Twilight off on her quest of learning about friendship. Twilight then has to report to Celestia about everything she learns about friendship, which in turn implies that Celestia already knows all of these things because she’s old enough to have learned all of it before Twilight was even born.
Celestia is a metaphor for an adult.
Then, by extension, all the little ponies are metaphors for children.
It’s really that simple.
The Alicorns are adults in a world of children. Specifically, they are adults the way that small children – like the children who might be watching My Little Pony – see adults. THIS is the role of the Alicorns: they anchor adulthood and maturity in the show by literally becoming a manifestation of these concepts. Being a living, breathing pony, in turn, lets the writers keep the Alicorns separate from the rest of the show.
Notice that Celestia offers guidance, but she never interferes. She’s not there for the grand adventures. The entire show, in a sense, is equivalent to children playing on a playground while the parents sit on a bench, not too close but not too far, observing but never interfering, allowing the children to have their fun.
Then, at the end of the day, the children all come back home, dirty and tired, and the parents wash them off, ask them about their day, and put them to bed. This is all the Alicorns had to be: a stand-in for adults, and the concept of adulthood.
One of the greatest dangers of kids’ shows is being banal and trite. Far too often, shows intended for children teach clichés, which may be well-intentioned, but are ultimately not the lessons children should be learning. It may be beneficial for them to believe some of these things for a while. I mean, some fun with Santa Claus has never hurt anyone. But an inevitable part of growing up is letting go of these beliefs.
No, Santa Claus isn’t real. And no, but the magic of friendship will not save you in any situation. Far too often, friendship is hard work with little reward – but that doesn’t mean that friendship is unimportant. Being a good person is a reward in and of itself… buuut just being a good person will not stop you from becoming homeless, from your significant other cheating on you, from your dog getting hit by a car, from being fired, from flunking out of college, from your mother dying of cancer, from being rejected by your crush, and so on. Life isn’t fair, and life doesn’t play nice. This is the reality we live in, and understanding this reality is what separates an adult from a child.
By having a representation of adulthood physically present inside the show, the show can subconsciously trick you into not rolling your eyes, or at least not as hard, when friendship DOES solve everything, when magic DOES save the day, when love DOES triumph.
So when at the end of the day, when Twilight Sparkle begins writing a letter talking about the insurmountable power of friendship, you don’t groan. You smile. You smile because you know that Twilight is not talking down to you. You smile because you’re right there, with Celestia, reading the innocent letter of a small child who is just now making her first steps towards understanding the world.
Twilight is a personal student of Celestia, and by extension, her quest of learning about friendship, life, and Equestria on the whole, is a metaphor for growing up. It’s a coming of age story… of a 5-year-old.
That is why the Alicorns are important.
Not only are they immediately interesting and attention-grabbing for an adult audience, but over the course of the show, they also become a very literal connection between the adult audience and the show.
Inside the show itself, to the other ponies, the Alicorns are immense and unknowable, terrifying and at once kind and gracious and beautiful. Even if the ponies’ adoration of the Alicorns is played for laughs [“We couldn’t fit it all in”], or if it plays out like a horror movie [Luna’s arrival, Luna Eclipsed] this effect they have on the little ponies is always present. This gives the Alicorns meaning and weight in the story, so that they don’t have to show up often, but still remain just as memorable as any regular character.
So… what went wrong?
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Part 1.2: So, what went wrong?
As of Twilight’s Kingdom, aired in May of 2014, the Alicorns are dead. All of them.
I mean, sure, okay, so they still walk around. They eat and they sleep and ostensibly exhibit all signs of life. But they’re dead. They’re zombies.
As of Twilight’s Kingdom, the Alicorns are just characters with special powers and unique designs. Superficially, they’re the same as ever: Celestia still raises the Sun, Luna still raises the Moon, and Cadence still raises Shining Armor’s dick. And yet, they lack meaning. Everything that I’ve just said, about the importance and significance of the Alicorns as metaphors for adults in a world of children? Gone, all gone, without a trace.
Wait, wait, hold the phone — [Twilight: “Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, who in the hoof is that?!”]
The finale of the show’s second season, A Canterlot Wedding, saw the introduction of one Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, or Cadence for short. She is a character who has never been referenced in any way prior to this episode, and is introduced as soon marrying Twilight Sparkle’s older brother, who has incidentally also never been mentioned or alluded to in any way whatsoever before A Canterlot Wedding.
Cadence’s appearance was abrupt and, let’s be honest, completely stupid. It was an obvious sign of corporate meddling. In short, Hasbro – that is the company who commissioned the show to market the actual MLP toys, in case you’re unaware – has been pushing for a pink pony princess for a while, under the not entirely unfounded presumption that girls love pink toys.
Originally, even Princess Celestia’s toys were made pink rather than the show-accurate white, literally for no other reason than that Hasbro assumed they’d sell better. They didn’t. After a while, they started selling white Celestias.
That didn’t satiate Hasbro’s hunger for a pink princess, so here we were.
It’s important to note that Lauren Faust, the show’s original creator, was absolutely against the idea of having more than two Alicorns in the show. That is because she understood, better than anyone else, the importance and significance of the Alicorns, both as regards to the ponies of the show, and regarding the show’s audience, adult or otherwise.
It was revealed in various interviews and sources that Lauren Faust had only a small involvement in the Canterlot Wedding episode. She KNEW about Cadence as a character, but as far as she was ever told, Cadence was going to be a regular old unicorn, and not a princess, and DEFINITELY not an Alicorn.
In fact, over the first two seasons, Hasbro’s aggressive campaigning in altering Faust’s vision, Faust ultimately stepped down and left the show. By the time Twilight’s Kingdom aired, the show’s other head writer, Robert Renzetti, whom Faust has once described as the Spock to her Captain Kirk, also left the show, most likely for similar reasons.
But let’s not jump ahead just yet. Let’s talk about Cadence.
Cadence is a bit of a conundrum to me. There are things that Cadence’s character gets right, and things that she gets completely wrong.
Disregarding how Cadence was pretty much retconned into the show and into our protagonist’s past, and how her character went directly against the creator’s vision, I still have to commend Meghan McCarthy, the episode’s writer, for how she handled Cadence.
I’m not sure how much of this was intentional, but on the meta level, Cadence actually works really well.
Cadence is a young alicorn – essentially a young adult. She has a sort of “cool older sister” vibe, like maybe a teenage sister that a little girl watching the show might have. She has an alicorn body shape – note the legs and the face – but doesn’t have the swirly-magical mane of Celestia and Luna. She represents a transition between adulthood and childhood both in her character design and on a meta level.
If the metaphor wasn’t obvious enough, they even literally made her Twilight’s old babysitter. It’s as clear as it gets.
So that’s fine and all, but a metaphor is not a character. Symbolism can be used to give meaning to a character, and to elevate a character’s significance to the story or the audience, but a metaphor alone is not a character. A metaphor is a tool, and a tool only works as well as the person using it.
Unfortunately, once we stop over-analysing the show like the God-damn NERDS we are, the problems with Cadence begin to emerge.
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Part 1.3: The problems with Cadence

Cadence works alright as a metaphor for a teenager in a world of adults, but Cadence does not work as an Alicorn in Friendship is Magic.
Throughout the show, Alicorns have always had a huge effect on the ponies around them. When an Alicorn came to visit, it was a big deal. So when we see an Alicorn walk around without anyone around them caring, it feels jarring and leaves the audience scratching their heads.
At one point, Alicorn Twilight literally couldn’t even get a taxi. Nice job, Twilight, on saving the world half a dozen times and achieving what no-one ever had done before by literally ascending to a higher plane of existence! No-one cares! [Half-hearted applause.]
Remember: for two entire seasons, the audience was primed to associate Alicorns with godly powers and divine authority. You can’t just undo that without an explanation and expect your audience to be fine with it. This should be storytelling 101.
Alright, you might be saying, “JawJoe, come on, you’re making too big of a deal out of this.” But I don’t think I am. The ponies themselves have always made a big deal about Alicorns; I’m not making that up. Let me show you what I mean.
First, some groundwork. Before understanding just HOW big a deal an Alicorn has always been, there is a very important thing that you must understand about how the ponies and their world are presented in the show.
Namely, the ponies are absolute CONTROL FREAKS. Time and time again, they are shown to control nature and magic. I’m not just talking about literally making the Sun and Moon move across the sky, I’m also talking about the ponies making the SEASONS happen. The ponies curate storms and rain, they manually make the leaves fall from trees in Autumn, and they manually clean up the snow and bring the southern birds back at the end of Winter. They even go as far as to keep farm animals, despite them being, by all account, sentient and sapient.
These are NOT one-time gags. This is a recurring theme that is prevalent throughout the entire show. Remember that Faust and Renzetti are storytelling veterans; they knew what they were doing. Subtle, recurring images like these are fundamental to the show’s world, and in fact, the ponies’ desperate desire to control their world is the central problem of several early episodes.
You must also understand that, by extension, the ponies are absolutely TERRIFIED of anything they cannot control. Their fear is manifested in the show in the form of the Everfree Forest, a large, dark forest at the edge of Ponyville which cannot be controlled by the ponies’ magic.
Throughout the show, most things that the ponies can’t deal with are from this forest. They could be poisonous plants or strange creatures or monsters, it doesn’t matter; the ponies never really have a plan to deal with them, and attempt to avoid the forest altogether whenever possible.
One of the show’s most memorable jokes, at least for me, is actually a gag that’s a comical payoff to the ponies’ fear of the Everfree.
[Bridle Gossip: “Where the plants grow, clouds move, … ALL ON THEIR OWN!!”]
For literally YEARS of the show’s runtime, the world working by itself, without pony intervention, is presented as ponykind’s possibly greatest fear.
This is important.
One of my favourite scenes from the entire show is Princess Luna’s arrival in Ponyville in the season 2 episode “Luna Eclipsed.”
Luna Eclipsed functions as the show’s first Halloween-themed episode. The ponies celebrate what they call Nightmare Night, in which they remember the old tale of Princess Luna, their essential Moon-Goddess Alicorn, who betrayed Celestia and tried to plunge the world into eternal darkness.
Princess Luna returns to Ponyville, for the first time officially cleansed of her sins by the powers of Jesus Christ— I mean the Elements of Harmony. She quickly finds out that these little ponies have an entire celebration where they make her out to be a complete monster who literally eats babies.
Luna is understandably offended, and declares that Nightmare Night be cancelled for ever. Just watch this scene.
[Scene where Luna cancels Nightmare Night.]
There is something incredibly important going on in this scene, something that you may not have noticed… but your brain did.
It isn’t just that the ponies literally drop to their knees and tremble at Luna’s mere presence. Pay attention to the scene where she rises from the ground. A storm gathers in the sky above Luna. Throughout the episode, the wind picks up when Luna speaks, and lightning strikes when she stomps.
Whenever a pony uses magic, Alicorn or otherwise, their horns glow in a distinct colour. Notice that Luna’s never glows in these scenes. She is not deliberately conjuring a storm or lightning.
The clouds are moving for no other reason than that Luna is angry.
(Jeesh, and some bronies call me crazy when I point out the Alicorns’ divine qualities. Some people just don’t pay attention, do they?)
The important lesson to take away from this is that the Alicorns aren’t just a big deal; they’re a HUMONGOUS deal.
And then you have Cadence, who… doesn’t really do anything, really. She occasionally shows up, says a few nice things, then leaves. She’s really just a bit too perfect for her own good, inasmuch that the writers are hamstrung by it. It’s not that the writer’s CAN’T form Cadence into an interesting character – it’s that they are NOT ALLOWED TO.
Cadence must always be a perfect little angel so that the little girls watching the show will want to buy Cadence toys. That’s her entire purpose.
In the grand scheme of things, Cadence is not an important character. She only shows up in a handful of episodes, and when she does, she doesn’t really do much except stand there and look pretty. She’s a terrible, boring, pointless, character that has no purpose, goal, or meaning, but at least she’s not around a lot.
The real problem with Cadence is the implication that Alicorns are capable of being terrible, boring, pointless, characters. Her very existence hurts the greater Alicorn mythology – because there WAS a mythology there. Something that the writers paid a LOT of attention to, something that was intertwined with the show’s world and the audience’s enjoyment of the show on the whole.
The thing about making an Alicorn who is NOT an adult and is NOT in any way divine, is that you have to ask the question: aside from the obvious, why is she an Alicorn at all? The very IDEA of Alicorns, their very core concept, was that they were divine ponies who therefore metaphorically function as adults in this world of children. This is something that the show was built upon, and built around, for literally years.
If you don’t have these traits in a character, there is no reason to make them an Alicorn. It nullifies the Alicorns’ very existence, and completely erases the magic circle.
To put it simply, Cadence’s existence is proof that the showrunners SOMEHOW managed to get their OWN metaphor wrong. A metaphor that was LITERALLY DESIGNED to be so simplistic, even 5-year-olds can get it.
You can’t just train your audience for years to expect a thematic connection between alicorns and adulthood and divinity, then take it away and expect no-one to care. The problem is further compounded by the fact that they not only took that connection away, but they didn’t replace it with anything. The old meaning of Alicorns is gone, but there’s no new meaning – leaving them without any meaning. They’re more or less ordinary characters now, who just happen to look a bit differently from the others, but there’s no meaning behind this.
The thing about Alicorns is that they were possibly the only interesting thing about the show. Note that I’m not saying they were the only GOOD thing – far from it – but they might have been the only INTERESTING thing.
It honestly boggles my mind that the same team who produced gems as Suited for Success and The Return of Harmony could turn around and create a character like Cadence.
Seriously, it’s like fucking up toast!
[Live action scene where I fuck up toast.]
Seriously! If missing the point actually gave you wings in real life, as it did with Cadence and later Twilight, then Hasbro HQ would be a fucking airport.
Alright, alright. Deep breaths. There’s still a lot to go. It’s time to cool off. Okay.
Alright, so what?
Did Cadence’s appearance ruin the show? No. Not really.
In fact, despite the countless faults of the Canterlot Wedding episode, it remains one of my favourite episodes.
Like I said at the start of this video, the show was a lottery ticket, lightning in a bottle, a crazy combination of countless elements that somehow ended up working really well together.
Hurting the Alicorn mythos, just one small part of the whole, is not enough to destroy the whole. All in all, everything that really WORKED about the Alicorns was a little bit abstract and reasonably far removed from the rest of the show. The existence of more than 2 Alicorns is not inherently a problem, regardless of what Faust thought.
Unfortunately, this only signalled the start of the showrunners consistently getting their own show wrong. Over the years, it only got worse, both for the Alicorns, and basically every other aspect of the show. The series of bad decisions post-season 2 is so long and so incredibly consistent that it’s nothing short of staggering. I can hardly wrap my mind around it.
And when the showrunners managed to misinterpret their own MAIN CHARACTER, well… that’s when things REALLY started going downhill.
Oh boy… look, we were gonna have talk about this at SOME point. There’s no way around it. Better get it out of the way early.
Poor, poor Twilight Sparkle. What have you become?