So, there we go. Misty finally got a redemption arc. And it was genuinely well executed and well written.
I’m aware it’s a bit too late to talk about chapter 4 when there are many episodes in Make your Mark, but I didn’t have extra time to catch on. I’ve seen some spoilers, but, since I have zero context, I can’t talk about them, so I’m going to talk about chapter 4.
The best way to describe this pack of episodes is that it started with the most irrelevant stories and it ended with a bang. Bridlewoodstock was an episode meant to celebrate the 40 years of the My Little Pony franchise, but, for an episode like that, it left much to be desired. It’s very uneventful, it had awkward pacing and it was too long, it’s as long as the season 6 finale of Friendship is Magic. This story could have been more interesting if the Troggles (those nature souls or whatever) weren’t that mentioned, because that had lead to an awkward pacing filled with repetitive warnings. If there was only one warning, that would have been ok.
I’d like to clarify this. I’m not saying that “the troggles were weak, therefore average episode”. I’m saying that the constant warnings about their existence affect the pacing of the episode in a negative way, because, even though the characters have potential to be entertaining and have personality, their only outcome is “they’re actually real” and “no, fake”. Even Zipp, a character who tends to be skeptical in Make your Mark and draws conclusions through factual evidence, ends up not believing in the creatures for a minute, derailing her interest in the troggles to see if they were real or not.
Bridlewoodstock is not bad, but it didn’t have to be a 45 minutes episode. You could have achieved the narrative goals with a 22 minutes length.
Top Remodel has a very interesting idea for a story. It’s slightly better than Bridlewoodstock, but it’s not as good as some of the other episodes of Make your Mark. The story is neat, but I wish it was funnier. Seeing Sprout here demanding things even though he was no power made me chuckle. The song is not very good though.
The third episode, The Jinxie Games, was, again, a little bit better than the previous episodes, but not much. Remember the third act of Sisterhooves Social from Friendship is Magic? This is exactly like that, but with random moments. I’m aware that the joke is that “this is random”, but I wish it was funnier. Also, the constant moments Sparky has kinda prove that this dragon doesn’t work as a baby, because there’s little room to personality when a character is a baby. That’s the reason why I said back in chapter 1 that Sparky should grow up.
One thing I’ll highlight though is the relationship between Queen Haven and Alphabittle and how Pipp and Zipp react to it. I think it’s refreshing to see a single mother, let alone a queen, dating someone who isn’t her husband in a kids show. We haven’t seen him in anything in the whole G5 timeline, so, as far as I know, this king just left. It kinda reminded me of how Steven Universe handled this topic with Onion’s mother (sorry, Steven Universe fans, I don’t remember all their names).
Once again, Sunny Side Up was better than the previous three episodes. It has a very nice message and it has decent pacing. Also, the episode presents some good continuity, something that I can’t say the same about Friendship is Magic.
The Manesquerade Ball, however, has a very weird concept. A masquerade ball party in a kids show seems to be very strange to me. Maybe it’s me, but I associated it with stories targeted at young adults and adults, not necessarily in a kids show. A little horse, in comparison, was more approachable to a kids show, but it was a boring story. It was funny to find Haven couldn’t cook, but the delivery for so much build-up was underwhelming. I think it would have been fine if it lasted 10 minutes instead of 20, because at least you could say “welp, at least I didn’t waste so much time watching this”.
What makes chapter 4 memorable to me though was the segments of Opaline and especially Misty in these episodes. These scenes show an interesting character dynamic that makes the blue pony messy and complicated. And it works because people are usually messy and comlpicated. She goes back and fourth when it comes to trying to kidnap Sparky. The way she’s conflicted on being a good friend and worshipping Opaline makes this character that interesting. Also, kudos to the writers for having Misty saying this line: “But do we have to steal their cutie marks? They’re actually kind of nice ponies”. I think the writers or a certain unicorn, as well as their fanboys, need to realize that.
The final episode Missing the mark, along with these Misty scenes, is the highlight of chapter 4, because everything that was building up since chapter 1 (and even A New Generation) comes together. After seeing so many scenes in many episodes from chapters 2 and 4, where Misty is questioning her own choices she made, it would be logical to assume that it’s gonna have a particular end related to her final choice. And the delivery was great. Helping Sunny and her friends to defeat Opaline was a great step forwards of the character. And the conclusion makes me wanna see the rest of Make your Mark.
Overall, chapter 4 was very decent, but it has a rough start. Out of the 7 episodes it has, 3 of them were very irrelevant, and one of them lasted 40 minutes. The characters have more personality than I expected, but if there’s one thing I had in mind for the whole chapter 4 was that I wish it could have been funnier. There are lots of moments where I thought “I should laugh at this, why I’m not?”, either for the animation or the scene. I chuckled with the Sprout moments because he was making ridiculous demands even though he has no power, but apart from that, it wasn’t as funny as I expected. Despite all that, I enjoyed chapter 4, it’s much better than chapter 2, which felt so random back in 2022. This chapter is leading to a direction I’m interested in, it’s faithful to the spirit of Friendship is Magic, the characters are nice, they don’t do mean stuff out of spite like most episodes of the last 4 seasons of Friendship is Magic, Misty is a great character and there’s a lot of continuity. So I hope things go well for the writers and the show.
Now, speaking about Misty, there’s something I do have to say, and this is very telling of why the G5 is getting criticized all the time since A New Generation: In 2018, Road to Friendship was aired and it was a “road film” with Starlight and Trixie in her wagon in a 22 minutes episode. Back in No second prances, Trixie told her that it was her home, and the reason why she told her this was because she trusted her, even though they just met. What did Starlight do in that episode? She sold her wagon out of spite without her consent, Trixie cried and she got mad at her for crying, because “she cared more about her wagon than herself”. And there’s no backlash. People loved that episode regardless of what Starlight did. Same thing with the rest of her episodes. Everyone justified her actions because either “making mistakes is the point of the character” (even though she’s supposed to learn from this, not keep making the same mistakes) or “she’s learning, give her a break”, not only in Road to Friendship, but also in several episodes.
In Make your Mark, there’s a legitimate redemption arc that took its time to develop one character for several episodes, there’s continuity and the characters are genuinely wholesome, but for some reason this is the one where people are annoyed about. And with a huge chunk of those episodes from Friendship is Magic, you don’t see a lot of that. And I think it’s just interesting, it shows the way people changed their minds towards My Little Pony after A New Generation back in 2021. Not everyone, obviously there are people like me who enjoyed that movie. And even if I didn’t like that film, I can’t imagine being so aggressive towards a whole generation for several years just because “Twilight’s journey has been for nothing” like I’ve been reading over and over again, even in completely unrelated topics, as if this implies that Friendship is Magic was absolutely perfect for 9 years in a row. It kinda reminds me of those Nintendo fanboys who wanted Nintendo to remaster a very niche game known by four people all over the world and then the next second they get mad at the F-Zero fans for asking for an F-Zero GX remaster because “that’s a niche game, people don’t know that game”.
You’re free to disagree, but I genuinely think most of the discourse around the G5 is pretty dumb. You take a look at Road to friendship, Uncommon Bonds, Every little thing she does, A horse shoe-in… They didn’t get all of this. Why is G5 getting all this nonsense? I think it’s because of the G4 purists. I think these people are still salty about Twilight Sparkle after A New Generation and they wanted a reason to get mad at the writers, because they want them to write consistent episodes even though Friendship is Magic is not known for having consistent episodes. Because believe me: If “Twilight’s journey becoming meaningless” was an episode of Friendship is Magic, not only everyone would enjoy it, they would also celebrate it regardless of the quality of the writing.
I don’t want to dismiss everyone’s criticism because I have problems with G5. If you don’t like it because of the music, the story, the characters or the pacing, then that’s 100% fine. But if you go and scream “Twilight’s journey has become meaningless” every single time Sunny is about to speak, then I don’t know what to tell you.
But yeah, I like chapter 4 despite its problems. I kinda wish I didn’t see some spoilers from chapters 5 and 6, but at least I don’t know the context. It’s not like an entire image has automatically all the context in the world. It’s like seeing the Guernica painted by Pablo Picasso and lacking the context of that painting. Hopefully I’ll catch up.
