Opinions on what happened in The Ending of the End

I started this forum because I want to see what the general consensus is on what happened in The Ending of the End regarding the villains not being reformed and Discord not being punished for his plan. Voting is open for two months.

Also, sorry for misspelling ‘redeemed’ in the ‘The villains should’ve been redeemed, but Discord doesn’t need punishment’ option.

My thoughts on this episode are the same as somebody called SaveG4MLP. If you don’t know who they are, check Twitter.

@DarkyBoode32  
Okay.

It’s complicated. The one thing I know for certain is that I didn’t like the series finale and I don’t know what it would take to change that.
 
I’ve seen people suggest that Discord shouldn’t have gotten to decide the punishment for the villains after he was the one who unleashed them to start with, and I agree, but I wouldn’t have the liked the episode more if he hadn’t.
 
Others have said that Discord shouldn’t have gotten his magic back as punishment for what he’d done, and I agree with that too. Whether his magic was lost by accident or withheld from him, it would have been a fitting punishment and I would have liked the episode more, but I don’t know that I’d have liked the finale overall with just that change.
 
I didn’t want to see the villains redeemed, but the show already made it clear in Frenemies that they weren’t beyond the power of friendship and having the plot take a sharp turn away from setting them on the course to rehabilitation was unsatisfying and inconsistent with the show’s core values of friendship, at least it was without any examination about when you have to stop trying to help someone who refuses to be helped or something similar.

@DarkyBoode32  

 
So wrong then.

Other  
It was ruined the moment Grogar was revealed to be Discord

I think the fandom is too focused on redemption. You can still give a completely irredeemable character a satisfying ending; just look at Thanos. What might have been interesting is a sort of “walk away” ending, where Cozy Glow and Tirek decide that conquering Equestria just isn’t worth it, but that their friendship might be.
 
More than anything else, the problem is with structure and perspective. To redeem Cozy Glow, Tirek, and Chrysalis, you would need a scenario where they were the heroes of their own story. And they were for a time. They were the ones with the arc, and all of the tension came from what would happen to them and Grogar. Ultimately, the problem is that The Ending of The End had to act as the conclusion for Tirek, Cozy Glow and Chrysalis’ arc, and it had to serve as the climactic final battle for the series. This is way too much to fit into 44 minutes. If they had focused on completing The Trio’s journey, it would have been weird that The Mane Six weren’t the heroes of the final battle.
 
So we ended up with this weird scenario where their journey isn’t resolved, it just sort of stops. The big “moment of truth” all their episodes had been building up to happens in the first five minutes. You can redeem “The Dragon”, but you can’t redeem “The Big Bad” (At least, the show can’t). The moment they betrayed Grogar, they became “The Big Bad”. This instantly killed all the tension, and any ambiguity on the ending was gone. I still had a good time, but it was a pretty shallow pair of episodes.
 
I think the decision to petrify them works. If you don’t need The Trio to be redeemed, then that’s all you need. If you do, then they’re in stasis with no time limit, and the possibilities for redeeming them are endless.
 
As for the Grogar Twist itself, I kind of like it in a meta sense. Without some kind of contrivance, there wouldn’t have been a final battle in the first place, so it might as well have been an in-universe contrivance that’s in-character. But I don’t actually like it like it. Celestia and Luna deciding to not give Discord his powers back would have been both fitting and hilarious.

@DerpyFast
 
@Kiryu-Chan
 
@Background Pony #E778
 
@Background Pony #94C3  
I understand the opinions of y’all.

Maybe Discord could’ve wanted the villains to think about reforming after their defeat, but since they refused, they got stoned.

The episode isn’t perfect, but I’m satisfied with the result.
 
I think I have a few problems:  
-Pinkie Pie was really annoying.  
-I wanted a duel of Twilight vs Chrysalis, not Starlight vs Chrysalis. The second part of the episode kinda has a little bit of it, but I wish the writer could have made a duel like that.  
-The Discord reveal was an unnecessary, random and baffling twist.
 
Despite the problems, it’s one of my favourite episodes in season 9. Could that episode be consistent? Yeah, but the entire TV show is pretty much inconsistent, so I ended up embracing the jank of Friendship is Magic.

@Andyxdr  
That might have been better. As I touched on earlier, not even trying to reform the Legion of Doom was baffling after the show went out of it’s way to endear them to the audience and hinted that the power of friendship and cooperation could still reach them and it was at odds with the show’s overall themes of friendship, reformation, and second chances. The problem isn’t even that they weren’t forgiven, but that they weren’t forgiven with no examination as to why not; no insight into when it’s too dangerous to try and help someone who’s trying to hurt you and yours, no commentary on not killing yourself trying to help people who don’t want to be helped (who incidentally are also actively trying to kill you).

@Background Pony #94C3  
“Frenemies” was one of the best episodes in the entire show. This tells me that they had plans, but then something happened. I lowkey think they had a proper conclusion for The Trio planned, but decided to drop it for something more open-ended.

Who were there more of, people who thought the Discord Grogar twist ruined Discord or people who didn’t?

@Andyxdr  
I gotta be honest: I’ve seen worse twists. By the time I was finishing season 9, I expected two or three characters doing something petty.
 
There were twists in previous seasons that broke my trust and passion in the show before. In season 5 there was an episode where Rainbow Dash makes a rant about how her turtle doesn’t need rest (even though she should have read about it if she cares so much) and decided to destroy Cloudsdale just for her turtle to not rest. When I saw this I thought “this is not my Rainbow Dash”.
 
In season 6 there was an episode where Pinkie Pie explicitly says that her most important thing in the world is not her family or her friends, it’s her party cannon even though we saw very little of it. Back then I thought “this is not my Pinkie Pie”.
 
And then there’s the big one: An episode where Starlight, after suggesting a positive change in her atittude back in Cutie re-mark, decides to manipulate Twilight’s friends just because “she wants to finish quickly some friendship homework”, which by the way doesn’t fit with her redemption arc.
 
By the time I was finishing season 9, I accepted that the TV show isn’t consistent or coherent and we would eventually see an equivalent of all these scenes I described in two or three characters. If people are annoyed by the fact that Rainbow Dash was a jerk in 2, 4, 6, greaaat is because they expected a coherent story, even though we see worse in the show. If people say that Non-compete clause is the worst episode in the show is because they expected a more coherent story. Same thing with this.
 
If the show was consistent, we wouldn’t get this episodes the way they came out.

@Ring Team  
Okay.

@Andyxdr  
I have no idea. These days I get the sense that more people are at peace with then not, but that might just be people coming to terms with what they might still think was a bad decision. There’s also the fact that people who were truly unhappy with the show, the last season and the finale and it’s plot twists may have since left, or left here anyway. Then there’s the fact that Derpi isn’t the only place MLP fans congregate. Not all fans visit all places, I stopped going to Equestria Daily years ago for instance, a lot of people here would never set foot in /mlp/ and vice versa, so it’s a little difficult to get a sense of what the whole fandom thought of the Grogar twist in what it did to the story and Discord’s character.
 
Sorry that’s not a super helpful answer.

@Background Pony #94C3  
It’s alright. ;)

This finna be long but I hope u read through it.
 
I have seen all points from different sides and while i have come to understand why it was dislike it, i think the hate is exaggerated. I was honestly baffled by all the hate from discord after this finale and this comes from someone understanding the hate in matter of principles.  
For one i feel like the fandom has forgotten discord as a character “spirit of chaos and disharmony hello” ofc he has progressed throughout the show but he still is what he is. This also isn’t really a writing flaw for him to go back on all the things hes learned over the yrs as aj states he hasn’t learned anything as to which he proves her wrong later with her makeup. Id argue shes wrong in the first place as he wouldn’t care so much about helping a friend back in the previous seasons.
 
I dont like the idea of the mane 6 and others punishing discord by taking his magic forever; as he ultimately had his heart in the right place and they NEVER punished starlight the same way. I would have been ok with, if he willingly gave it up not as punishment, but more of him seeing his magic as too dangerous and saying something like “its too dangerous for anycreature, besides friendship is the most powerful magic there is”.
 
I also think discord stoning the final villains is a awesome conclusion to his character on paper and while i found the scene pretty epic i can see the problems others have, for one to be honest, viewers at times need clarity on good or evil unless u have a story that is meant to be morally ambiguous. Therefore to make it even farther known, discord is a better person than they are, have him say something less douchey afterwards like “now Equestria is safe once again” and then everyone cheers or if u still wanna keep his mischievous nature but make it pretty clear whose the good guy here have him say like “Maybe one day yall get to use your magic for good but until then I can’t imagine anything they’ll want less” either metaphorically speaking(not awake) or literally(awake).

@CORDZ2000  
Agreed.

@Andyxdr  
I also think that the villains should have been Redeemed and Discord shouldn’t be punished.

Here’s what I think about the finale.
 
The Ending of the End was a terrible finale, not only because of the Grogar plot twist, but also because Tirek, Cozy Glow, and Chrysalis didn’t even do well in the finale. Starlight and the mane six had Chrysalis and Cozy Glow beat and the only reason they lost was because the writers had to keep the finale going by giving the villains a sudden power boost. What’s really disappointing is that all three villains were much bigger threats when they worked alone than they are put together. Tirek successfully absorbed all the magic in Equestria in season 4 and it seemed as if all was lost. Chrysalis kidnaps every powerful creature and comes closer to winning than any other antagonist in the show. Cozy Glow successfully traps the mane six in Tartarus and absorbs all the magic, rendering everyone powerless. Fuck even King Sombra did more than these three combined and he didn’t even need Grogar’s bell. What do these three do? Turn ponies against eachother? Still not as bad as brainwashing them all, and this was a stupid idea as this backfired when the windigoes returned. They never actually defeat Twilight as she was never imprisoned or lost her magic. There is never a point to where all hope is lost and they have won, and they are nowhere near invincible (Tirek wasn’t even in his final form). I think the writers tried to make these three villains seem like the biggest threat in the entire show’s run, and they failed. Twilight and her friends have faced much worse than this.
 
As for the villains punishments, I think it’s fine that they got turned to stone, though I also think Discord should have been punished. He can’t just keep getting away with shit. I think Tirek and Cozy Glow should have gotten a chance to reform. Chrysalis had her chance but I think she is beyond redemption. I think it’s either all or nothing with these three, so why not just kill them all.

I could go on about the Grogar twist but that seems useless, MisAnthroPony already explained everything perfectly in his video.  
What i wanna talk about how the trio acted like completely different characters. In their individual episodes they had a bond between them even if they did not like to admit it, only then to throw it away in the finale and make them into bickering kids (Cozy Glow is a kid but she supposed to know better). Where did that bond go? Seemed like the writers only did that just because they wanted to make our so called “heroes” look good. But why did they make them bonding with each other in the first place? What was the point of that? Nevermind the fact Applejack and Rainbow Dash bickered too often but they live together in the future. Seriously, season eight and nine are the “seasons of OOC’s”, they managed to make every single character into not themselves.

@Background Pony #94C3  
Seems there are more people who don’t want Discord punished than there are people who do, but only to a marginal degree.

@Background Pony #94C3  

 
This is true discord is a base breaking character there are reviewers who have more kindhearted opinions towards the grogar twist and the s9 finale as a whole like kp, Drwolf, TheNextBigThing. And while a controversial character instead of a base breaking character you’d think discord is the scrappy/ think hes the least popular/most hated mlp character, if u were to only be on derpiboouru all day, while he has his very vocal haters, I still feel like discord is one of the most popular and fan-favorite characters of the series in many other places even with the mostly disliked twist.