Episode review: S9E01/02: "The Beginning of the End"

A thrilling image – one that has surprisingly little to do with the main plot

After all the build-up, Friendship is Magic Season 9 is go! With a little tinge of sadness this time around, as "The Beginning of the End" was a pretty spot-on title. This is the last time we will ever see a season premiere for FiM, though (unless something very odd happens) not for My Little Pony as a whole. It was written by the Lady Writers, Joanna Lewis and Kristine Songco, making their first writing appearance since "The Perfect Pear". That was encouraging for many of us. After the break, we'll see whether that confidence was well founded.

One minor tweak to the review format this season: I've stolen one of Present Perfect's ideas and added my nominations for the best and worst moments of the episode. You'll find those near the end, just after the continuing "Best quote" section, though that's now been rechristened "Best line". Right, then – off we go!

For the most part, this was very good stuff. There was a lot to take in, and I'm not going to try to cover every last detail. Feel free to bring up anything I missed in the comments. I said straight after first viewing, and still feel now, that "The Beginning of the End" was my third favourite of the FiM premieres, after the almost inevitable "The Return of Harmony" and "The Cutie Map". I don't think this was an absolute cast-iron classic, but it was often immensely enjoyable.

This will divide opinions, but I was glad to see the focus here firmly on the Mane Six. While I don't want the other characters to be ignored, I do think S9 should mainly be a celebration of the show's central characters. (I'd like a little more for Spike to do, though, as he's also been there since the start.) I appreciated that Lewis and Songco gave all of them at least something to say or do that stuck in the memory. That's something not all writers seem to manage.

A Rainbow of Light seems in keeping with the G1 callbacks in this premiere

I'm really not sure how I feel about the Celestia-and-Luna-retiring-but-not plot. While it's of course true that Lauren Faust intended Twilight to take over from Celestia, she (Faust) hasn't been a part of the show for a long time now. The setup seemed a bit contrived: we never really got an answer to why the princesses felt the need to send an urgent summons for an event that, by their own admission, wouldn't have taken place for a few more days. Or why the ponies ran rather than teleporting from the station.

Still, everypony was overtaken by events at this point, what with Tirek and Cozy's predictable return, Chrysalis returning too, the less foreshadowed restoration (by Grogar, who I'll get to in a minute) of Sombra and the last-named's attack on the Crystal Empire. I have to say that I was a little unimpressed with Cadance and Shining Armor, the latter of whom after all held off a full-scale changeling invasion of Canterlot for quite some while. That said, Sombra did choose his target well: Flurry Heart was always going to be the Royal Couple's weak spot. Also, Cadance's reaction on arriving late for the big battle was amusing.

The big villain reveal, though, was the one who brought Sombra back from the... well, the whatever state he was in: Grogar. His name was mentioned in passing in "A Flurry of Emotions" two seasons ago, as was fellow G1 character Gusty's, but here he was in the flesh at last. I was pretty impressed by Grogar. While it wasn't entirely clear why he was powerful as he was, he really did pack a punch. His reaction to Sombra's... second death (itself pretty brutal) was ice-cold, and Grogar carried a real sense of menace throughout.

"I'm surrounded by idiots!"

The main supporting character this time was Discord. I'm not a massive Discord fan, and I think he's sometimes overused, but he played a pretty solid role in this episode. The way he flung himself in front of Fluttershy to protect her was affecting, even if we later discovered that he hadn't been disabled in the way he pretended. Most intriguing to me, though, was a half-second sad glance he gave when Rainbow mentioned not knowing what they [the Mane Six] would do without him. That screamed foreshadowing.

It's always nice (at least for me) to see the Elements of Harmony again, and we even got a full-on use of them in this episode, too. However, the Elements didn't last very long – and neither, even more shockingly (to those who managed to avoid spoilers!), did the Tree of Harmony itself. (Herself?) But our heroes still won through. Discord's manipulation turned out to be simply a way to get the ponies to believe in themselves as heroes and to remember that, in Equestria, the phrase "friendship is magic" is literally true.

This is where I spend a little time complaining. There isn't that much to seriously quibble about in this premiere, but the breathless pace of most of it did mean that some plot points were rather skated over. As well as the retirement announcement I've already touched on, we never got a real explanation of why Grogar – who Tia and Luna surely knew of – was able to spirit the other villains out of Tartarus. Equestria's prison once again seems rather insecure. Also, "Twilight freaks out" is perhaps happening a little too often these days.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the very first IDW comic

Still, these things are probably going to be most annoying for fans who still expect Friendship is Magic to be the show it was in 2012 – and as I said last year, it's simply not that show any more. I suspect that for most of the rest of us, who've either embraced or at least accepted the modern order of things, "The Beginning of the End" was, if not a triumph, at least a thoroughly entertaining 44 minutes. Right now, I'm feeling pretty darn optimistic about what lies ahead, and that can't be bad.

Finally... what are the odds that the finale will be called "The End of the Beginning"?

Best line: Rainbow (on Celestia and Luna) : "If you think about it, they almost never help."
Best moment: Tirek flicking away Cozy. About time someone did that
Worst moment: Rainbow apparently forgetting about Scootaloo

Yays

• Never a dull moment
• Grogar carried a real sense of menace
• The Mane Six being the focus
• Decent use of Discord
• Celestia and Luna doing something!

Neighs

• Fast pacing did occasionally feel rushed
• Twilght doesn't have to be neurotic every time
• Cadance and Shining were fairly useless

★★★★