>>2268
Though I was still left with a lot of questions some major some minor.

What exactly is Cozy Glow? How would, from what I understand it as, draining all the magic help her? She siad that she'd be able to take over yet wasn't all the other artifacts gone too?
it seemed be that Dolores was having to actively maintain a cloud walking spell, I know this was done to have the drama but it still is a little strange.
I don't understand tartarus. So there is Tirek and a bunch of mid level monsters that sometimes were treated as part of the ecosystem? I understand it from a meta perspective, recycling creatures is easier then making a whole bunch of new villians and it them not wanting to make it a hellish, but it makes little sense from universe, as these monsters were both prevalent in the everfree and had been relegated to a mid level threat at most. There is a potential interesting path with this though; what if Equestria starting locking these monsters/the few monsters who made it out and attacked towns? It could be a good Fluttershy episode though it still seems a bit ridiculous for this to happen in the first place.
Though what is weirdest to me is that Tirek was pin pals with a foal. Why is there even mail to that place?!? How did Cozy Glow get all this knowledge and lust for power? Is she really just a foal? I was kinda expecting her to be good ol' chrissy or some kind of evil creature of some type. Now I'm back to my first question.
They did a good job with the set up, but I do wonder how are they going handle all of this. With so much from previous seasons it seems like something is going to get left out if 9 is indeed the final It seems like they had different things planned at season 7 final with what happened at that end but it seemed to be all pushed aside for the school. The pillars are just in Equestria now. Pony of Shadows is still a thing I guess. I admit, in some ways I could even like the school better over what they could have done, because it just felt wonky to me to have the pillars in equestria alive in the modern day, and I think if they played a larger role they would've been more of a problem from a plot standpoint (hey, you know all these old mysteries and spells that we have always attributed over the years to these old figures, well we can ask them right now!).
As for my thoughts. I loved some of the stuff within this episode, I was even blow away, but it ultimately depends on what happens with the elements introduced in this before I can say that I loved it as a work itself. Tough with all the stuff that was introduced and plenty of time to ponder and wonder, this opinion could easily change, but this is my first impression.