 |
| "It was North Star, you fools, not Gusty!" |
S9E01: "The Beginning of the End, part 1"
6 April 2019My original rating: ★★★★ (for both parts)
IMDb score: 8.6
The one with Protectors of Equestria!Thoughts: And we're back! As, indeed are the Lady Writers, in a very welcome reprise. Celestia and Luna spring their retirement on the Manes. Rainbow rather bluntly reminds Twilight that the Princesses "almost never help". The Legion of Doom takes shape, though knowing now that Grogar is, well, not Grogar can't help but be disappointing. (His eyebrows may be the giveaway...) Sombra conquering the Crystal Empire is dark stuff, though. I loved seeing the Elements of Harmony again, and glad they got to have one last Rainbow of Light before being destroyed. I can't help but bump this down to a high three now I know Grogar was a fake-out, but it was still a solid start to the show's final season.
Choice quote: Twilight: "Twilighting? You... you made me a verb?"
New rating: ★★★
Next up, shockingly enough, will be "The Beginning of the End, part 2". I hope that news doesn't disappoint you too much. :P
Have to admit this one seemed really rough when I watched it way back. King Sombra being ridiculously overpowered, for one thing. Even ignoring the glaring continuity issues, it just seems a bit cheap to make your villain OP just to make the story work. I guess it's supposed to second-hand sell Grogar's power level, but it also operates in conjunction with the weird nerfing of the Main Six's power, when so far the specials managed to make them earn it too. It's just more satisfying that way than to have a game of "I'm stronger than you", "no, I'M stronger than YOU".
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, as much as I really strongly dislike the Grogar reveal later on, I will always remember: "Grogar is just Discord spelled backwards... with all the wrong letters." :D
(I think you missed the "My Little Repeats" label too.)
Deletehttps://louderyay.blogspot.com/search/label/my%20little%20repeats
Very much agreed. This had the trappings of a clever setup but just never did much with it. Like you and Logan, I can't help but factor in things I know now but didn't then. Here, it was twofold: I had virtually no knowledge of prior gens, so I knew nothing about Grogar, and then even prior to the reveal, he never did much, just appeared from time to time and gave his underlings menacing things to do. I never bought into him as much of a threat in the first place, and then the reveal was just dumb. Unlike earlier seasons, I have not rewatched much of the last 2 or 3, so I probably only saw this episode once. Thus I remember zero detail from it and am only vaguely reminded of the Twilight quote highlighted here.
Deleteboooo, Grogar being fake! D: would be the worst decision the show ever made if not for all the other worst decisions the show made!
ReplyDeleteIt was definitely one of their decisions of all time.
DeleteI am curious as to whether or not Grogar being the real deal, and thus staying to become the final boss of the series, would have gone down much better. I think one of the main problems with his role was the wasted potential of bringing back a G4 version of a popular G1 villain and then not having him achieve anything in his own right onscreen. Apart from explaining why his power level is so high, he would've worked well as a sort of supreme sendoff to the season.
DeleteFor one thing, a lot of the complaints about Discord's personal culpability and bewilderingly poor planning would have been wiped out at a stroke, since e.g. he's no longer foolishly responsible for Sombra's recent horrifying actions against the Crystal Empire and Canterlot, but replaced by an actual evil sorcerer who WOULD abet such crimes. And I've seen people who didn't like the twist admit that Grogar as presented was interesting enough at face value that he could've worked in his own right. Apart from Discord's "what have I done?" mini-arc, even the finale wouldn't need much rewriting to have Grogar remain the leader of the Legion of Doom's* attempted coup.
*I lack a better name to refer to the villain team-up, but am open to suggestions. The "Better Way to be Bad" Band?
No, I think you're pretty bang on the money there. A lot of that was cited at the time of the twist as extra reasoning why people were disappointed, and why there was no reason for the twist to be there. Virtually nothing about how "Grogar" acts, speaks or moves feels like Discord at all (he's far too much of a showman to not even have slips of being funny or chaotic, even just ones disguised as fury or that are subtle enough the trio don't pick up on them), and the only reason for Discord to properly act as Grogar is for the writers to make it feel like a twist.
DeleteOf course, they went way too far in "hiding" it, and it thus feels so unearned that people naturally assumed it must have been a last minute change, and that Grogar was written and planned as the real thing until last minute. Alas, Jim Miller confirmed in a tweet that Grogar being Discord was planned all along (something the leaks have also confirmed), as they wanted the final villains of the show to have a prior connection to the heroes, and not just be a new threat. Which… no, a new villain would still have worked great, if they'd leaned into having a season-long one (Cozy excepted, everyone prior was only for the finale), and stressed Grogar as a dark mirror of Twilight or something (a familiar direction, yes, but it would have felt much fresher in the guise of not being a unicorn for once :P).
Would Grogar being real have fixed the season? No, it had too many problems otherwise. But it certainly would have helped, and considering how much of a catastrophic failure the two-part finale was (worse then "The Last Problem", indeed), solving for that and other issues downstream (like having to retrofit a manipulator in Cozy into being a threat in other areas, which doesn't work dramatically at all) could only have helped.
Oh, and Legion of Doom was such a quickly-accepted nickname for the villain team-up, off those establishing shots of their lair used during the season, that it's basically Fanon now, if not to the degree of being a term someone would use in the text of a fanfic, necessarily.
@Ghost Mike I haven't got there yet of course, but as I'm sure you know I don't currently agree with "catastrophic failure" for the finale. I wouldn't go nearly near that negative. I may change my mind when I rewatch it, of course! We'll see.
DeleteAs far as "Grogar" goes, his eyebrows are somewhat reminiscent of Discord's, but G1 Grogar has those so either it's pure coincidence or someone on the show team looked at the two characters early in the planning process and thought "Hmm..." Not a clue.