>>5033
I think my overall critical feel for this at this time is that it did nearly everything it had to do as a final, at a possible expense at a better written story. I'm not sure how much of I can really blame or give credit to on the story front as this show was a process between multiple individuals and organizations. Like, for example? Hasbro has final say on everything in the show, even if they are somewhat liberal with it they have intervened at various times, sometimes strangely (a recent QnA by big jim (I think) said that Hasbro was the one who said Diamond Tara's story was through, which seems strange). This is not a total defense of the crew conduct or to say that all of their writing mistakes are 100% just Hasbro meddling, but it's a factor that prevents me from blaming simply one person for something that I find questionable at least easily . There are multiple factors influencing this show. Multiple writers moving in and out, etc. I still have my criticisms and observations. For example, even with above in mind, it seems like the last three seasons before Season 9 were setting up each for something long term then have to put it aside for something else. Dolores being the new character that the audience can relate to and does the adventuring in Season 6, yet her roll gradually got downgraded. Season 7 introduced a big lore set up and had the most cohesive and connected plot with some attempt to tie into the comics and such better, yet in Season 8, we have a school, in Season 9, the school is partly sidelined. With each change it felt like the previous plot points were almost obstacles to the current storyline of the season. I think the blame gets scattered pretty far around and not all the story adjustments were handled poorly (Dolores's role reduction probably being the smoothest) This episode had to be the end to all of it and try to include as many call backs to the mess of the story while focusing primary on the main core of characters. They had numerous callbacks, fit the school in, had Crissy fight Dolores, and even brought back the pillars for a bit part while having the story still primary centered on the mane6. Looking at it on an episode level I think they did what they needed to do.