Celestia miscalculated the date of Nightmare Moon’s release - Twilight was meant to have a whole year to make friends in Ponyville. That she succeeded without that amazed the Princess, who had thankfully informed few enough ponies it wasn’t too hard to keep her error a secret.
I always wished Twilight had more time in that episode. Like maybe a month.
A problem I have with the pilot was that to me Twilight was in the right for not wanting to make friends on the day where the very day Nightmare Moon would rise again. It doesn’t really convey you’re anti social if you avoid making friends one one day to do more research on a potential crisis.
Maybe if the time before facing Nightmare Moon was longer, she’d have more time to juggle multiple things and she would have had less of an excuse to not make friends. Because part of me thinks she saw the Nightmare Moon scenario as a chance to avoid that Friend activity.
Worse of all in that episode, we don’t see what she was like without being in a crisis which forced her to act. I know the pilot was probably more focused on Twilight making friends than her backstory which is fine, but I would have like to have seen more of Twilight before any crisis. What was she like before she read that Mare in the Moon book?
I would have liked it if Spike never took Twilight seriously with that Mare in the Moon because he thought she was trying to make up another “crisis” so she wouldn’t have to socialize.