@Willtheraven01
also discord despite his power is still just a guy, that makes mistakes, whereas the tree is an AI capable of calculating the future

Except Discord’s lessons are about hardships and chaos, and the Tree’s is about harmony and friendship.

@Aperture  
And also how Nightmare moon was handled too.  
And how Luna and Celestia are essentially screwed due to no longer being able to use the Elements..

@CORDZ2000  
thanks. theres even more. In season 8 the tree is shown to strangle the mean 6 to death, when they annoyed it, and trap the student six in a death dungeon, when they doubt friendship, so why didnt it strangle cozy glow, when she set up her magic draining doomsday device? Cause if it did that, chancelor neighsay would still be a dick.  
Cozy enrolled in the school, to drain the magic, but the friendship dungeon didnt exist back then, so she must have planned to create it in a different location, like the everfree of one of the many caves around ponyville, where noone would find it. But when the tree randomly decided to build a dungeon, cozy saw a chance to increase her success chance, by planting her circle directly at the roots of the tree, so the tree basically baited her into making her circle in a place, the student six would find. And then it waited till after the student six teamed up with neighsay, till it saved the day.  
And then theres also the entirety of the equestria girls movies: every movie, the ruleset for the magic of the elements changes. in the first movie, it allows twilight and the others to access its magic wirelessly, so they can defeat sunset, in the second movie, it randomly changes to being activated by music, so twilight has a hard time figuring it out, so sunset, whos better at thinking outside the box, can have her moment to shine and redeem herself, in the third movie, they decide to not use magic, to avoid chaos breaking out, so the rules change again to create as much chaos as possible which just happens to redeem the shadowbolts, dethrone principal cinch, blow up the wondercolt statue and mage sci-twi join the party. in the next movie, the destroyed wonderbolt statue spits out the magic that makes the geodes, which just happens to fly all the way to the camp, which happens to notify the humane 7 of the status of the camp, so they save it, which eventually leads to them being invited to the daring do film set, which sets of the juniper montage thing, who happens to find a magic mirror, which almost takes out the entire human cast. Good thing Starlight happened to be there, good thing the map just happened to call the mane 6 away, when sunset came over to pick up her new journal, otherwise sunset and starlight might not have met, or even if they did, twilight wouldnt have let her into the human world because it would upset the balance of the universe or something.
 
Tree is making them big brain plays

@nightshroud96  
Just saying, it’s generally considered spamming to multipost. Considering the staff here, too…
 
@nightshroud96  
Plus, it’s not hard to just make an extra line then click “Reply” to the next one you want to respond to.

@Eurvos Morgenbrise  
Why?  
I am not duplicating anything.  
I usually reply to people one at a time. Like I reply whenever I see a comment I want to reply to, like right on the spot.  
I am not intending on flooding the whole thread with my comments, I just reply to what I see right on the spot than waiting till I see every comment.  
(And the method of putting it all on one post can get tedious if the comment thread is huge in general.)
 
Also what about what I had actually typed? I feel like that got brushed off instead to focus on how I reply to comments instead..

@nightshroud96  
You should make these all one post and report the copies as duplicates.

@Background Pony #C117  
Sadly Luna and Celestia seems to need the Elements since they can’t stop any major bad guys anymore due to losing them..

@Knackerman  
For me, its the fact Luna and Celestia weren’t included in the rainbow laser despite their cutie marks were on the damn tree.  
They may no longer be connected to the Elements but they should have been acknowledged and included by Twilight in the final rainbow laser.  
It added so much salt to Luna and Celestia’s wounds there

@Aperture  
If that is true, then the tree has screwed Luna and Celestia over even further there.  
They were essentially screwed due to no longer being able to use the Elements.  
The damn thing didn’t even give the sisters a chance of restoring their connection, Luna and Celestia are essentially not allowed to fight alongside the Mane 6 pretty much..

@Aperture  

 
Wow this is the most interesting theory Ive heard in a while I like it

rip Dark theme users

@Background Pony #9BBF  
I think the tree wanted to be destroyed. It teleported sombra to its location  
@Psyga315  
In retrospect, the plundervines might have been brought back by the tree as well. It needed an excuse, to make the mane six return the elements. If the elements hadnt been taken out of the story, discord might have not teamed up with tirek, which means discord wouldnt have gained the character development from the season 4 finale. The whole box thing was supposedly a test for the mane six, but the tests, were mostly things they would have done anyways, even if the box never existed. And the only challenging thing about it was, to realize, that they already got the keys, which only discord could identify. So the tree did the entire thing just to properly reform discord.
 
And in season 5, the tree utilized discord in its scheme to reform starlight. First it sent the mane six to starlights village, to set off the plot. then it gave everyone but twilight cool map adventures, to make her feel jealous, untill discord shows up, and makes her feel even more left out, till she learns a lesson about not having to be perfect, and recognizing jealousy. After she learns those things she gets her map episode. And in the finale, twilight “wins”, first by giving up the fight (not being perfect) and realizing starlights motivation (jealousy).

Nah, Tree of Harmony and Discord are not so different. Both like to give “lessons” and “challenges” very indirectly, and with questionable methods.

Still alive.

@PurpleWonderPower  
I don’t recall What About Discord being cringe.

I think this tree’s spirit is about to go break a certain draconequus’s legs.

Twice. Remember the Plunder Vines?

@Background Pony #DEA8  
You really can’t have it both ways that he did this to prove they didn’t need the tree anymore, especially since said Tree saved them when he messed up and Tirek almost took over, and should be forgiven for all the damage he caused, but also the trio who worked together should be sealed up in stone and not redeemed. You’re saying this is the norm when the series kicked that in the face, and he was the one who told them to wind up. Remember, he did all this, eeeeverrryyyyything about this finale is his fault. Gathering them, them working together, getting the superweapon, everything was his fault, and he still got to say “You know what we should do? You all forgive me for all this, but they get hit by the thing I said was awful in my first appearance.”
 
I mean if you find people calling foul on that unbearable, I don’t know how you made it this far.

From what I;‘ve heard of Discord’s motivations, Sombra destroying the Tree was likely something Discord didn’t expect and probably wasn’t intentional.

@Knackerman  
Yeah that is kind of annoying, but you could argue that the cave system would lead to the Tree’s original resting place since the castle is basically made out of its roots which means the cave system was dug by them. So they did go their but we just never saw it.

The whole point of that was to prove they didn’t need the Tree or Elements to use their power anymore. If eliminating a threat to his power was his goal, he wouldn’t have helped the Mane 6 learn to use it’s power instead.
 
And given the finale made clear Discord isn’t omniscient. He likely didn’t know the Tree was sapient enough to count as murder. Nor what Sombra was planning.
 
And being forgiven for such a mistake is the norm for the series. If you find it so unbearable how did you make it this far?

@Knackerman  
I’m not talking about sappiness and sentimentality. I’m talking about scenes that are so awkward they are unbearable to sit through. Like What About Discord?

@PurpleWonderPower  
I mean, that is a sure and certain bet. But then it was always going to be.
 
It’s a series finale, time to crank out all the cheese and sappy sentimentality.