MLP G5 Discussion and Speculation Thread

Frustration in Excelsis
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Worldbuilding Addict
So! Just to breathe a touch of life into this thread between now and whenever it is that official news will be released, I decided I felt like making a general overview of where we are now in terms of info and reasonable guesses, and what my personal hopes for the new gen will be.
 
The main thing, as I’m sure has been repeated ad nauseam by now, is that most if not all of the leaks we got were little more than a generic collection of concept work, sketches, and explorations for potential themes – there was some really interesting stuff there, but we can’t really know for sure that anything there will actually make it into the final product.
 
So what do we know? Not much. We know that there will be a G5, we know that it will open with a movie and continue with a cartoon, and we know that the movie is planned to air on September 24, 2021. We also know that Tara Strong said that she won’t voice Twilight Sparkle in the next gen. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Twilight won’t appear – but it does make that a more doubtful prospect.
 
We can make some guesses from that, mostly pertaining to what schedule we can expect. We’ll probably be getting more announcements over this coming fall, but I doubt that specific information on the setting, story or characters will be released before 2021 – we’ll probably have to wait until next spring for that. We’ll certainly have concrete info to work with this time next year, though.
 
As for hopes, I’d… honestly be a touch disappointed if the current set of characters will not make it into the next iteration in at least some form. I’m aware that G3 and G1 had different casts from G4 – but that was due more than anything else to legal limitations on trademarks. The original plan for G4 was very much to use the G1 cast, and traces of it still made it in – Twilight, Applejack, Posey-with-wings-on, Spike – together with central characters from G3 – Pinkie Pie, Sweetie Belle – and mixes thereof – see Rainbow Dash. I still fully expect G4 characters to reappear in at least some capacity, even if as secondary characters or as clear inspirations for new ones.
 
Another thing, more generally, has to do with plotting. Friendship is Magic had two big issues, I feel. Firstly, its writing crew cycled out entirely at least twice over its run – the teams working on it in Season 1, Season 5 and Season 9 shared almost no members with one another – which is… not ideal for maintaining solid continuity in story and characterization over a long-running work. I’m not really in the mood for going into the details, but let’s say that it’s pretty clear that late-season writers were clearly not always that familiar with things that happened before their runs. Secondly, the show also underwent a fairly abrupt switch in focus over its run. Early FiM is largely a day-to-day slice of life show with little in the way of overarching narratives and some light adventure here and there; late FiM is much more focused on overarching plots, and on trying to weave narratives across several episodes and seasons. Either of these things, in isolation, would not necessarily be that bad, but trying to juggle a big change in narrative focus while also changing head writers every couple seasons…
 
My point here is that I hope G5 will learn from G4 in this regard – I would hope that either it keeps a consistent core team over its run, or that at least a clear story focus is made evident and stuck to over the show’s course. If the G5 show is meant to follow a long narrative, that’s fine – if shows like DuckTales and She-Ra have proved anything, it’s that it’s entirely possible for good, well-made children’s cartoons to do this – but it probably shouldn’t try to reinvent itself halfway through its run.
 
I’ve also got to say that I’m looking forward to experiencing the new show’s early years. I jumped into FiM about halfway in, well after the early-fandom hype and uncertainty was over and done with, and I’m kind of excited to see what that’s going to be like for its successor.
Background Pony #6F46
@Frustration in Excelsis  
Well, one of the slide-y things that was between the leaked stuff actually mentioned Ducktales 2017 (alongside Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Gravity Falls, Be Cool Scooby-Doo and the current Mickey Mouse shorts) as potential inspirations for G5. So we may actually get an overarching narrative. As for the concept arts, I think it’s more than obvious that none of the styles we saw will be used, although they may have served as inspiration for the final designs.
Rabidcabbit
Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
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Touch Fluffy Tail
@Frustration in Excelsis
 
To be honest, I’d rather not see the mane six in G5, because more likely than not, they probably wouldn’t be the same characters anyway, and G4 was their story, I’d like G5 to be the story of a different set of characters. Though I would like to see something like how it was in G4, with older characters recycled a bit into sort-of-new ones, I’d like them to take some of the new ponies introduced in G4 and re-work them into somewhat different characters, I think that’d be fun, on that note I’d like to see a redesigned Kimono, though I don’t know how likely that would be.
 
Like you said though I’d like it very much if the Writers didn’t change during the shows run the show might stay a bit more Uniform then, though I’m not sure how much it would benefit from it since most Hasbro shows don’t last more than three seasons so FiM was rather unique in that way, G5 then might not last as many seasons as FiM did.
 
All that being said, I am looking forward to what G5 might bring to the table, it could be quite fun.
Background Pony #6F46
full  
Hey, folks! Those obviously fake information pieces were added to the CGI movie’s IMDb. Can anybody with an account there erase it? Can’t do that from my smartphone.
Brass Beau

Howdy from Shimmer Pope
I had a conversation a few hours ago about what a third Avatar series should be like and I think some of it could apply to G5 as well. Sparknotes:  
  1. An episode’s A plot should be adventure of the week with the B plot focusing on a seasonal arc.  
  2. The stories should be character driven. Their active choices should move the plot.  
  3. As many character dynamics as possible should be explored. You get 63 episodes with all possible combinations of six characters. That’s just shy of three seasons.  
  4. The cast should be a mixture of old and new characters. Using the Mane Six again won’t win them any prizes.  
  5. There should be male characters written and treated with the same level of care as the female characters. Bumbling men and exasperated women have been done to death.
     
    Those are my hopes any way. I posted elsewhere that you could probably plant Rarity, Fluttershy and/or Pinkie’s personality onto male characters and make the show stand out from everything else on television.
Background Pony #6F46
@Brass Beau  
I think we’re going to get new characters, since the Mane 6 is in Pony Life. And I like your idea of some episodes having an adventure while others focus on a seasonal arc (the episodes probably are going to be 10-to-12 minutes long, I wonder how it would work).
Brass Beau

Howdy from Shimmer Pope
They really need to give thought to the lineup for the new series. Personally, I think they should use the character templates from G4, reimagine some of the predominantly female cast as male, and as much as I enjoy the character, they should probably move Applejack to a secondary or tertiary character. Keep the B plot and seasonal bookends as adventure stories and set the A plot as slice of life fair. But that’s just marketing estimates.
Rabidcabbit
Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Since the Beginning  -

Touch Fluffy Tail
@Brass Beau
 
Templates are fine, as long as they aren’t the same characters please.
 
I never cared for most of the male ponies in FiM, so I’m not really sure how I’d feel about having more male characters, but I suppose Sunburst and Gallus didn’t annoy me too much. I think as long as the slight majority of the prominent characters were still female it could work, like two out of the “Mane 6” being male with a higher number of prominent side characters being male could work.
 
Actually I really liked some of the brand new characters introduced in G4, so maybe if G5 does what G4 did, and took a lot of the previous gens new characters, and re-worked them into different characters it could be neat.
 
Heck actually even make at least two of the mane 6 be something non-pony could be awesome, I don’t think I’d mind a Gryphon and or something akin to a changeling being main characters for instance, but I’m not sure how likely that would be.
Brass Beau

Howdy from Shimmer Pope
@Littlecabbit  
Okay, this might sound crazy but hear me out.  
  1. Make Rarity an earth pony and Pinkie a unicorn.  
  2. Turn Rarity and Fluttershy into boys.  
  3. Drop Applejack and promote Spike to Main character status.  
    Bam! Completely different show.
Rabidcabbit
Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Since the Beginning  -

Touch Fluffy Tail
@Brass Beau
 
Bleh, I don’t think I could bring myself to watch G5 if the Mane 6 stay as the “same characters”, it would just be a big turn off for me, to re-use the same six characters over again would feel like it would just spit of the “legacy” of FiM, that was their story, let’s end it ta that.
 
I think it would be smarter to have new characters altogether with maybe a few of the “Mane 6” being remixed characters not of the previous mane 6 preferably. I believe g1-3 even had new characters almost entirely, I think G4 was the first to actually re-use older characters outside of Spike and Applejack who were in G1 and G3 cartoons as well.
 
Both Applejack and Spike are basically the “Cid” of MLP, so it’s probably obligatory for them to show up in some form in G5 one way or another.
Rabidcabbit
Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Since the Beginning  -

Touch Fluffy Tail
@Brass Beau
 
We really don’t know where they’re going to be going with g5 do we?, those early leaks hinted at a “More mature” adventure show maybe but in the end we don’t know if that’ll be the route they go in, has there even been any newer leaks I’m unaware of?
 
I might be the one whose in the dark I suppose but I haven’t heard of any, so if those early leaks are the only real bits of info we have to go off of, I don’t think any of us could make anything more than loose guesses of what G5 might or might not be like.
 
I do think it’s likely that Hasbro will want G5 to capture the same popularity as G4 though, so G5 following in FiM’s footsteps in certain ways seems likely, but how that would play out exactly I couldn’t say
Brass Beau

Howdy from Shimmer Pope
I feel like I’m gonna need to whip up a speculation diagram but until then these are the things I’m curious about:
 
Will the episodes be quarter or half hour long?  
Will the episodes primarily be slice of life or adventure stories?  
Will there be a continuing storyline throughout the seasons/series?  
Will they use the G4 character lineup?  
Will other creatures make a return (i.e. Changelings, Griffons, Bat ponies, Yaks, Sea ponies, Hippogriffs, etc.)?  
Will humans be involved?
 
How each one is answered changes my own speculations. We have so very little to go on.
Background Pony #6F46
@Brass Beau  
It probably will be a quarter-hour long, since recent Hasbro cartoons are like that. The Mane 6 are in Pony Life, so G5 may feature different characters! And I do remember seeing in the leaked stuff from December 2017 a series of slides. In one of those slides, DuckTales 2017, “Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Gravity Falls, Be Cool Scooby-Doo and the current Mickey Mouse shorts being used as examples for something, so that probably means it’ll be a mix of slice of life and adventure stories.
Brass Beau

Howdy from Shimmer Pope
@Background Pony #6F46  
Their best bet is to do a quarter hour slice of life with half hour adventure stories. Maybe the reverse every now and then. And Ducktales handled it’s “season arcs as B plot” build up pretty well so I think that would work for G5. The cast does need adjusting.
Latecomer

@Brass Beau  
It is a pity - the current eps were often rushed enough that losing time is worrisome. But I’m not as worried as if I’d never discovered Steven Universe, which pulls off shorter airtime quite well.
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