>>3978
And this leads to a very artificial drama that doesn´t translate all that well to those shortcomings from the actual life.
Here, if you are seeing the students succeed is because they have learnt the lessons that were taught back in season 8. They aren´t ponies (save Sandbar and even him is a stereotype of a typical cheesy pony) but in reality, they are a product of those lessons, just like Spike, Discord and later in season 6, Thorax showed in their attitudes.

If anything, ponies have already won. The reason the students joined and considered that this was an emergency for them is because they care about the same interest that ponies did: the Tree of Harmony. If they didn´t care, then yeah, culturally speaking they would be different and in the short clips, they show how their culture vary from each other.

But here it is the deal, the antics that come from them are strange and the closest thing that happened with such altogether interactions among so many species started with To Where and Back Again, then the movie and finally, in season 8.

They implied that it was an emergency and they came to offer their own vision to rebuild a legacy that was mostly lost. That came from their own will and they could have ignored the tree of harmony if they wanted. Why would they care if they didn´t have these lessons?.
Silver Stream wouldn´t have dreamt about becoming a Wonderbolt, Smolder wouldn´t like tea parties, Yona wouldn´t put her chill side instead of smashing almost all the time, Ocellus wouldn´t have focused on discovering pony´s history after getting redeemed in season 6 nor Gallus would have cared about having a little bit more empathy after feeling loved and valued from his friends....

So yeah, more variety is a mistake... yet they only focus on the visual part. Just another detail to add: When The Place Where We Belong starts, close your eyes and don´t focus on the fact they are different species, can you tell me how many differences there are between being sung by ponies and the students? Because all that I hear is the same Hollywood pop musical act that ponies have delivered over this entire gen and I almost believed for a moment that RD singer was in it.
Well, I have told way more than I expected.

>Despite all these new characters being added and a massive apocalyptic clash we only got six new sets do to Lego wanting to move on to the next thing and prep for it.
yeah probably because of oversaturation in the toy market. They simply don´t feel ready to change the merch and they always sell the same old same because of reliable sales and that implies that the mane 6 are the ones that bring most of the revenue. To an extent, using other characters feels like an anti commercial way to market the toys....