Who hasn´t established a few headcanons in his mind and then, the canon show decides to tear them into pieces? What if the concept that you had implied before didn´t turn out in the way that you expected?
What happens when someone decides to invest some time for characters that need more development but you simply decide to hop on that partial concept that is yet left to be defined?

These questions can be asked for many things about the show and not even the writing staff knew what ideas there were behind and what actually happened in execution, much less the fans who decided to dive into concepts that...while the show was meant to end with 65 episodes, the generation ended up with more than 200 episodes. Considering that there have been 9 seasons in order to define the entire world, for this spotlight, I am venturing into one of the biggest turnarounds that has been delivered in this generation.

The changelings...live up to their name, not only in the practical terms but also, they have turned out to mark one of the least expected twists when it comes to reaching a full transformation that would make them absolutely different from the sample that we had. This has caused very extreme mixed reactions when the season 6 finale: To Where and Back Again, decided to surprise fans and strangers with the butterfly design. Even their own philosophy has been completely subverted, from using the disguises in a tactical way for accomplishing their objectives to display their original true selves.

However, for this change to occur, we need some context. Fans have been used to the old design, not because of the screen time of this species, but because of the huge amount of time between the airing of A Canterlot Wedding and the 6th season (a difference of 4-5 years since the production between ACW and The Times Are A Changeling). The map of Equestria has been expanded because of deeper exploration of said established species and then, use them in a more recurring manner. This didn´t simply happen to the changelings, the dragons suffered this treatment as well (without any change in their designs). All this build-up would lead to what we got in the last two seasons. How did everything manage to happen?


For starters, do you remember any speaking roles from Chrysalis´ minions at the time (without using any disguise)? There is a factor that the community was hungry for cool stuff and the changelings, like many other things at the time, got a lot of hype in the early years of the 2010s. Despite not getting much more information about them, they would gain an incredible amount of popularity...except that there was one big problem with that:

They were a "Show, don´t tell" species. There was some room to subvert their concept and DHX decided to stay 4 years completely silent, except for a little cameo in Slice of Life. (Episode 100). When the staff decided to reintroduce them, they went for a very different direction from the one that everyone was expecting…