Episode review: S9E26: "The Last Problem"

That Young Six window is a fanfic waiting to happen, for a start!

Here we go, then. The very last new episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic we will ever see. Josh Haber was, unsurprisingly, the one who got the final writing credit for the series. After a finale which I found highly watchable, if not exactly perfectly constructed, I was hoping that I'd be able to go out on a high note. After all, FiM has changed my life in oh so many ways and brought me a great deal of happiness. Come past the cut to see what I thought!

Cards on the table time: I am not even going to try to review this epilogue objectively. Why? Because I don't think I can. If you consider this thing simply as an episode of an animated children's show, then I don't think it's especially impressive. Certainly not by the standards of the very best FiM episodes; this is no "Hurricane Fluttershy" or "Amending Fences". However. However. It's not "simply" any such thing, not to me. So no, I can't review this just on what's shown on the screen.

Still, I can certainly talk about that. We're an unspecified (but considerable) number of years on, and Twilight is now a fairly experienced monarch. For no adequately explored reason, she's grown to something like Celestia proportions, although her model doesn't look anything like as graceful. Oddly, though, I found myself more at peace with it the second time through. It was Spike's older, more muscle-bound form that I found really awkward that time, and that's still the case as I write.

Canterlot at night really does look attractive

The actual plot of this episode is, frankly, pretty thin: Twilight's student Luster Dawn* is academically gifted but doesn't really get the whole friendship thing. This is obviously supposed to remind us of Twi herself, though actually Sunset Shimmer was who I first thought of. To illustrate to Luster why the magic of friendship is so important, Twilight tells her (and by extension us) the story of her coronation and the linked story of the rest of her friends.
* What with "Molt Down", Smolder and now this, US spellings have become the bane of my life recently!

This means quite a few flashbacks, in which the other Manes rather unconvincingly claim that their apparent indifference at Twilight's imminent move to Canterlot was a deliberate plan to stop her feeling upset. We've actually had a "learning to say goodbye" plot (albeit from a different angle) already, way back in S4 with "It Isn't Easy Being Breezies". I was still relieved here, though, when the ponies let out their true feelings. (Though I thought Applejack cried on the inside?)

As we go on, Luster Dawn demonstrates a plot-convenient but frankly rather unbelievable continuing attachment to the idea that Twilight's friends must have forgotten about her. Given the importance apparently attached to the moonly Council of Friendship, I find it hard to believe Luster wouldn't even know about it. Okay, she might well think that such a thing does "not seem worth the effort it expends" – but on an academic, bookish level at least, she would surely at least be aware of it.

Quite a scoop for the Foal Free Press to get Lyra and Bon Bon here!

From here on in, we see a lot of the characters as they are now. Shipping? Shipping. I'm not at all fond of this – I think it risks diluting the vital centrality of friendship in the series and implying that romance is a "step up" from that, something I've always disliked. Thankfully only CheesePie (well, and LyraBon) can't be denied. AppleDash and FlutterCord are strongly hinted at, but my ponyficcer's mind can already think of ways around those. The same goes for the likes of YonaBar a little later on, for that matter.

Celestia and Luna, then. Are they really just going to take off to some far-flung retirement community and ignore Equestria's wider needs for the rest of their (probably very long) lives? This doesn't seem to fit with Tia's words to Twilight in the S3 finale, when she promised still to be around to help and guide her. Starlight Glimmer is also somewhat sidelined, as she was at the end of the finale; I suppose this is a case of the focus on the Mane Seven's shared history making it hard to incorporate somepony who wasn't around for half the series.

Having read this far, you may think I strongly disliked this epilogue – and so if your eyes have drifted downwards a bit, you may also be wondering how I could still give it three stars. This goes back to what I said above: I simply can't treat this episode like any other. It is different, and so it is judged by different rules. For me, at least, things really change late on, when the song turns up. Although "The Magic of Friendship Grows" isn't the greatest song Daniel Ingram has ever written, it really fitted for me; it's still running through my head.

AJ wearing Granny Smith's shawl was a nice touch. The eye bags, less so

Then there are those scenes of the Mane Six prancing across the screen to reveal so many of the characters we've seen in the past nine years. (Not all, though: there's no Steven Magnet, for one.) There's been some controversy about Sunset Shimmer's blink-and-you'll-miss-it inclusion, but that honestly doesn't bother me at all. Perhaps that's because she debuted in the IDW FiM comic series way back in issue #9's SDCC variant, more than six years ago. It's not the show itself, of course, but Sunset is not new to official FiM.

These scenes also heavily hint the Young Six equivalents to each of the former Element-Bearers: although not all match the laser colours back in "Uprooted", I'm choosing to treat this epilogue as the final word on the matter. Silverstream is Laughter, Sandbar is Kindness, Smolder is Loyalty, Yona is Honesty, Ocellus is Generosity and Gallus is Magic. I can live with those, with really only Gallus's Element needing anything much in the way of mental gymnastics.

The very end of "The Last Problem" brings us easily the epilogue's best moments. The show's theme tune is satisfyingly incorporated into the end of the song, and then we see the shadows lengthen in front of the Mane Seven as Luster walks off with her friends. The final scene of all is, and quite right too, the storybook we saw in the S1 premiere closing for the very last time. It might have been nice to go back to the distinctive art style of the first moments of the series, but I won't quibble there.

Simple and effective. A shame that phrase wasn't borne in mind more often

And yeah, I'm one of those people who was brought to tears by these last few minutes. This show has been a major part of my life – not just my cartoon preferences, but my life – for well over seven years. It has changed my outlook, and I think overwhelmingly for the better. Friendship is Magic is not and never can be "just a show" to me. Though this epilogue fell short in many ways, right at the end – rather like Flim and Flam last episode – it did choose right. That is why I'm awarding the three stars that mean "Good".

What a wonderful wonder friendship brings.

Best line: Pinkie Pie: "And honestly, I'm not convinced Gummy really took care of the fireworks."
Best moment: The very end
Worst moment: The very end!

Yays

• That very last scene with the book
• The song, especially the character tableaux
• Some fun animation, especially with the spiders on the train
• Twilight has taken Celestia's role, though...

Neighs

• ...Twilight and Spike's older forms are pretty awkward
• Way too much shipping for my taste
• A thin, rather uninvolving plot
• Not the greatest dialogue I've ever heard

★★★