>>12658
Well, life has been long and a bit complicated for me, but I am finally here and ready to do a start to this season! Part of what took so long is that I had somewhat elaborate plans for this review, I wanted it to be something long and somewhat high effort. I have partly succeeded. Though I can say with my aforementioned difficulties I am probably going to be more relaxed about things this season compared to last. Anyways, without further ado, onto Season 2!

The Return of Harmony
Confusion
Evil
Chaos!
Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo, respectively, attempting to describe discord, and unknowingly, Discord.

The episode start, that quote was the first thing that stuck out to me, how chaos was something that was an attribute of Discord, rather than the defining one. Don't get me wrong, Discord did represent chaos and that was a major part of his character, but it was much more than that. He was evil and the opposite of harmony and the ponies morality and society.

The opening segment itself was okay. I liked the CMC having a little cameo (though it would have perhaps been nice to see them reacting to this later) and possibly being the reason Discord was released at that moment. The segment wasn't my favorite though, my feelings for it are just average, it lacks something... but I don't have the words right now. This is just me speaking wax poetic (or rather, a lack of wax poetic) on what is a very minor aspect of the episode.

Now, we get to the Mane 6 and their reactions to the chaos that is now just starting to spread. Something that I now appreciate after watching this twice is the partial set up for some of the conflicts we see later. Rainbow Dash saying that she would help them out first before Cloudsdale and Spike suggesting they give up only for Twilight to press on and organize the group.

>>12660
My possible (not 100% certain yet) favorite scene in this episode, Celestia giving the backstory on who Discord is and Discord making his dramatic appearance. From the different angles creating a sense of epicness and dramatic, Celestia's seriousness, and Discord's appearing on the stained glass windows, it was all pretty elaborate and creative by the show's standards and I wonder how complicated it was to pull off. Discord's stained glass form I imagine was pretty easy to rig and make in one afternoon, but the different angled shots (like above, or slightly to the side), I wonder how much of a pain that was in rigging in animation? {Compare to top down shots in Suited For Success}. Again, I stress, I am far from an expert on anything flash or animation in general.

The Fall of the Elements
Now we are in the maze. This is going to sound stupid, but I didn't really click how this directly parallels Friendship is Magic with Nightmare Moon directly tempting and attempting to mislead the Mane 6, expect this time it works... kind of. The morality here is a little complicated.

Applejack
She is the first to fall by believing a lie. I can see Applejack, facing such an great evil, being open to receiving any kind of help and advice. She clearly has an off feeling with the apple creatures but becomes distracted by their vision. Breaking her. Unlike her trial of honesty back in Friendship is Magic Part 2, I don't have a problem with this.

Pinkie Pie
Rather straightforward. Pinkie Pie has insecurities that are already established. If she thinks her friends could abandon her she can be tricked to think her friends would laugh at her. Discord gave a slight push and then she becomes discorded.

Rarity
A little silly how quickly she succumbed, though in her favor, she did put up a fight for a second as opposed to completely folding, which might make her slightly "better" than Applejack and Pinkie Pie. Though, the fact she gave in so quickly to a temptation might reflect worse on her. Albeit, mind control seems to play a part in this. Speaking of mind control...

>>12661
Fluttershy
This is what I mean by the morality being complicated a bit: Fluttershy does not take the bait at all. Discord, impatient, just pokes her and she is cruel now. Fluttershy never gave into anything or was tricked, she was forcibly compelled. It seems like mind control plays a part in most of the ponies when they are discorded, as they not only become detached from their elements but seem evil in other ways (Applejack being possibly greedy when she says that they should split Tom 6 ways between them. All of them working together against Twilight and being weirdly childish, they aren't just acting immoral or corrupt, but a bit out of their minds and out of character. Though with the others, Discord still had to get his foot in the door. Here, I would argue that Fluttershy is innocent. This one might be the weakest as there is no moral lesson or clever writing, but I hold no judgement against this episode and it frankly would be hard to picture Fluttershy being mean via prompting in the way Discord did the others.

Rainbow Dash
I like what they did with this one! Rainbow Dash's loyalty to Cloudsdale versus her loyalty to her friends feels like the perfect moral trickery. Rainbow Dash is technicality acting out of loyalty either way, even if she is clearly making a mistake regarding the situation. Again, the mind control aspect here complicates for me on how much I can render a judgement on their characters.

I'm going to review these two parts as one episode this time as I want to lead more smoothly into the next part here, so rating for this part only at the end. Rainbow Dash departs and thus, Discord wins the game. The maze disappears while Discord gloats and laughs. It leaves Twilight Sparkle confused and hurt, and sets up for...

>>12662
The Fall of Twilight Sparkle
Keep trying, Twilight Sparkle. Maybe the magic of friendship can help you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some chaos to wreak.
Twilight Sparkle's spirit is hurt, but not crushed, as after Discord abandons her and her arguing friends to roam free and spread chaos, she still holds out hope when she deduces that some clue of the Elements of Harmony must be in the book back at the Golden Oaks Library. At the library she finds it, and her friends antics are wearing her thin and she has grown frustrated, but interestingly, she doesn't get discorded nearly as fast as the others, as the others at this point would've cracked, at least judging from the maze.

Anyways, Twilight Sparkle, after much hassle, gets the Elements of Harmony on her friends and they almost activate but fizzle out. One detail I didn't notice till my second watch through of this, Discord when the Elements start to glow and cause them to levitate, briefly looks concerned. I don't recall ever noticing that before. I guess that helps explain his overconfidence later.

Discord though, now is happy, he has won, and he finally breaks Twilight Sparkle's spirit and as er friends separate, Twilight in her anger and sadness finally succumbs to being discorded herself. Curious though, in comparison to the others, Twilight Sparkle is still of sound mind. She is corrupted in a sense, but not crazy. I have two guesses on this: 1):Discord didn't use mind control on Twilight because he wanted to specifically break her spirit and enjoy torturing and messing with her some later on. 2): Discord himself calls the Element of Magic the most powerful and elusive of them. Similar to how Twilight couldn't activate the Elements of Harmony without the other five, Discord maybe couldn't do that as easily to Twilight Sparkle as the others. These aren't mutually exclusive either. I don't have much to say on the antics of her friends to much, humorous except for the fact that I really do feel for Twilight a bit here. I also love the background chaos details!

>>12665
The Return of Harmony
When I say that Twilight Sparkle is not as crazy as the others, case in point, she is mad at her friends, and tosses the Element of Magic in a trash bin, but is still being nice to Spike and appearing to try to flee as opposed to carrying on selfishly doing random crap in the new Ponyville. Celestia sent over dozens of letters and those letters seem quickly undo the chaotic hold upon her. Soon, she is back to her old self and realizes that the key to defeating Discord is friendship itself. I like the memory spell. Like, the only thing I could say here is I wish they could've devoted a bit more time to the others besides Applejack and Rainbow Dash but a montage is still fine!

Speaking of Rainbow Dash, I very much enjoyed the chase. I actually laughed out loud for real when Pinkie and Rarity were suddenly launched off and being dragged by Rainbow Dash. I think my favorite situation with the Mane 6 is them working together to try to solve a problem and tackling it with some mixed results in various ways. Both them in the beginning dealing with the rampaging animals and cotton candy clouds and them trying to get Rainbow Dash illustrate this. One last note on mind control, some of the ponies, compare Applejack, who says that she choose to believe in a comforting lie, versus Rainbow Dash, who is confused and shock, like she was in a dream. They all no doubt have some memories but that almost makes me think that the discording itself has various degrees of consent from all of them. Someone like Rarity and Applejack is acting more rationally while Fluttershy might be a zombie!

Anyways, the Mane 6 reunite and confront Discord, who falls in his overconfidence. It is interesting.. or perhaps not, that he didn't notice the Mane 6 being no longer discorded, but, other than the fact that they had to end this episode, there has been stupider blunders of overconfidence IRL. I think I can buy it.

>>12666
And with that, we celebrate the defeat of Discord, otherwise known as Q, properly with a spoof/homage to the award ceremony at the end of A New Hope. Because Star Trek sucks! Joking aside, I find this funny and always forget about this little scene at the end. I remember seeing someone back in... 2013(?) wondering if the Mane 6 were secret special forces because we didn't seem them acknowledged or recognized much and that theory being deflated when this scene's existence was brought up!

Final verdict:
Return of Harmony Part 1: 7.3/10.
Return of Harmony Part 2: 7.8/10
Quantity wise, this is probably and 8.5 or a 9, but that is my personal enjoyment level.My personal enjoyment levels can feel odd and oftentimes I feel like something is either just past or not quite, which is why I go for arbitrary numbers like 7.3 or whatever.

I will admit, as per normal, it feels like my first review I did (and most of the rest), Friendship is Magic Part 1 and Part 2 were a partly unformulated train wreck. I did try to spot errors and grammatical mistakes but despite having typed this awhile ago in relative comfort there where somethings I found and probably more than slipped through. Still, it is /good/ to be back! Lord willing, we shall ge back into a nice routine. As I stated, I will probably be a lot more laid back with my reviews right now, life stuff is happening that interferes with my normal format (though I still may experiment).

>>12667
Animation and Art Notes
The top down scene when Celestia is explaining the backstory of Discord to the Mane 6. Brief shot, but very advanced compared to the top down shots of Season 1 that I recall. Main thing coming to mind, the cat walk in Suited for Success: >>11297 (gosh, has it really been 2 years!?). We only saw Rarity from a top down perspective and a bunch of very simple background ponies. While here we Rainbow Dash’s wings are animated and so is Celestia’s mane. The walking also seems a little smoother compared to Rarity’s though, it may just look better from a distance. The rest of the Mane 6 could very well be just copies of Rarity’s walk from Suited For Success and the model just works better from a distance. When you zoom in, Celestia and Rainbow look a little goofy with their eyes visible. Still, the new animation they did for a 2 second shot I counts for some effort. Again, I stress, I am no expert on flash!

Twilight Sparkle side mouth! I need to keep track of this season. I have encountered it more than once side mouth expressions like this were mostly a Season 1 thing.

The Statue of Victory flag has a rather poor looking gradient. Not that I hold it against anybody, but for whatever reason, it stood out. Heh, I need to check if anyone has turned this statue and the story behind it into a character with a fanfic. I know that has happened to a certain statue in Ponyville.

Screwball
This one background gag pony had a decent sized fandom back in the day, not huge, but there was some notable stories and a tumblr ask blog or two. I haven’t seen much of her in recent history, especially art. I don’t have time to establish criteria to compare her in art tags, but I did take a glance her FimFiction character tag and yeah, a significant drop off in stories including her minus what was probably some writing contest in 2025. I don’t see her much in art anymore, and honestly, haven’t thought of her much myself. A character I have never really been drawn too.

>>12668
Failsafe Spells
Twilight Sparkle attempts to use a what she calls a failsafe spell of some sort to fix everything in Ponyville from chaos, which of course doesn’t work. I have mild curiosity over the dynamics of such a spell and it’s intended purpose, like, maybe Twilight made it if she messed up in some sort of big way jugging by it’s name.

The Element of Magic’s Power Boost
It seems like the Element of Magic gives Twilight Sparkle a power boost when she has it on, at least when her friends aren’t discorded. Her magical shield leaving a area of normal grass in the checkerboard landscape and her magic being able to pull Discord’s grip on the other five elements. There is all of little things I wonder about this power boost and it’s limitations. Stupid question: had she cast the failsafe spell at that moment, would it have worked against chaos in a local area?

Twilight Not Using Magic
Twilight didn’t use magic at certain instances when it would’ve been convenient. Especially glaring with Tom, she has lifted heavier than Tom.

The Discorded and Mythology
I could still go on the mind control angle here. In a lot of traditional myth and religious thought, from vampires to the demonic, it is YOU who is enticed and let X bad paranormal creature have control over you and this fits save Twilight and Fluttershy for aforementioned reasons.

Discorded Apple Family
These are the only other ponies whom we see discorded outside of the main characters. Granny and Big Mac. Was it corruption? Just Discord messing with the Apple family harder? Just a by product of being in that world? I am so curious!

This episode has a lot more of Discord’s chaos and less of him just outright cheating with his overpowered abilities, so already I enjoy it significantly more than the first part. The arrival into Ponyville, the soap roads and Discord expounding upon his plans are really refreshing, it feels very properly as though the show’s normality has been turned upside-down. I particularly like that in spite of the silliness of Discord’s changes, it’s also clear how they have definite negative impacts on the ponies affected by them, and that this fact amuses Discord. However, we do have some holdovers from the last episode, like the discorded Mane Six, who for some reason turn even greyer as they enter Golden Oak? Perhaps it’s reflective of how Twilight is losing faith in them, after they’ve been forced to lose faith in her, a sort of severing of the other end of the friendship connection. Or maybe it reflects the chaotic nature of Discord’s magic in that it doens’t necessarily make sense, who’s to say! Twilight losing patience with them all I found greatly enjoyable, since she essentially has to drag the whole effort along by herself and doesn’t fare too badly all things considered. That the elements won’t work due to the lack of friendship isn’t her fault, and there’s something cathartic about Twilight being so fed up that she just assigns Spike to be Rainbow Dash in a very cynical approach that makes sense for someone overly used to how magic works who doesn’t necessarily treat it with awed mysticism. Also, funny how she’s irritated enough that she forgets the word ‘tiara’, heh. The fact that discord ‘discords’ twilight (I assume that’s what happens, since she turns grey? It’s kind of hard to tell) by setting things up to dishearten her was a lot more interesting than when he simply overrode the rest of the Mane Six at least, though that’s partly an issue of time constraints I guess. Having said that, however, I do enjoy seeing the Mane Six competing directly, particularly the Rainbow Dash chase, it’s interesting since we typically see them working together rather than against one another. I’m struggling to put it into words, but it’s just fun to see ordinarily allied characters do battle. Kinda makes me think of the last boss battle on the original Lego Star Wars for the Gamecube, where you and the other player fight eachother for the Anakin and Obi-Wan duel, as uninspiring a comparison as that may be. When Celestia sends Twilight her old letters to help her realise that her friendship is the key to defeating Discord and not to lose hope, I am guessing that this also gave Twilight the revelation that something magical had gone wrong with her friends, as it’s only after this that she tries to turn them back to normal, but it’s not very well communicated that she’s come to that realisation. Then again, when it comes time to round up Rainbow Dash, Twilight mentions that it’s a memory spell that she’s casting, so it does make a certain sense that she would get the idea to remind her friends of their friendship the same way that Celestia reminded her. Perhaps Celestia knew how to reverse discording from her previous experience fighting Discord, but couldn’t cast a memory spell in person so did the next best thing. Also, Discord’s throne is awesome, and I love it. I think it’s a real shame that we only truly began to see Discord’s chaotic shenanigans in this episode, because it’s all gold. Once the elements are assembled for the second time and the Mane Six get ready to blast Discord with the friendship beam, Discord seems very confident that his plan still has not gone awry, until it’s too late for him to stop them, which is intriguing: perhaps he was counting on Twilight being relatively new to friendship, so she didn’t realise something had gone wrong with her friends that she needed to fix? Speaking of Star Wars, we get a little medal ceremony parody at the end of this episode. Appropriate in a way, since this is the first major thing that the Six have done as the Elements of Harmony in the public eye since Nightmare Moon.

>>12675
>>12677
>Does the Discord thing bug me? A little, yeah. This is in a lot of ways a ‘solid’ episode. Discord is interesting in most respects, everything leading up to the maze is fantastic, and then the maze itself is fine but just has the things that bug me about it
>From a concept perspective, it makes me sigh for missed opportunities,
>But as much as I lament the perceived loss of more creative shenanigans with Discord, the logistics of actually pulling that all off was not something I'd considered.
Basically, you consider that the episode should've been less harmony versus discord in a moral/spiritual sense and more of fun with a chaos villain? For me, that comes down to the limitations of the show and the context of the show's existence. The show, especially this episode would have still been constrained by the Season 1 attempt to maintain an educational rating (If you don't know, the show tried to conform to E/I US educational standards at first, this was soon dropped, because it had no benefit because E/I standards were only a classification for broadcast stations. It was purely a marketing move to sooth over their toy sales show for potential backlash at it's existence!). I consider Discord a very impressive villain for what the show was going for and certainly something that went above that standard! Albeit I think I actually would’ve liked to lean in that more heavily (though this would pose a problem later for having Discord return).

I think this does raise a valid question though: when does the show merely punching above it's weight shield it from critique? For example, I know it isn't Shakespeare and I wouldn't expect a quality of writing or depth of Shakespeare. Yet, A for effort is also a horrible standard to fall back on. Because you tried doesn't always mean you did a good job! On the standard of what they could have done and what they should have done, I agree this episode might have been better but I am not sure how much better it could be given it's budget and context of existence. I do find myself agreeing with a lot of your points (especially, mind control being sort of weak, though I accept it had to be at some level)


>I feel, if they just threw all the cleverness out the window and went for a fun episode.
I would say it is probably more of a B+ (or B-) in cleverness. Discord kind of *had* to be that way on some level to fit with the theme of the show.


>Cheerilee's seemingly more metaphorical understanding of Discord for Twilight, it would make a neat contrast to her knowing about Nightmare Moon last season, as well as highlighting that there are things Celestia knows about that even Twilight doesn't!
I think your epsiode still works from my lens and episode actually would be very clever itself as opposed to just a fun Discord episode. I think your episode could have still possibly existed, you could still have a moral based around conflict resolution, arguments, maybe trust. So, I don't consider what you ask for naturally absurd at all, just slightly advanced for what the show would've tried to pull off! I would have been just as happy with that. Actually, I often do this for later seasons and maybe some here, myself, lol!

TD:LR, I understand your perspective and I don't think you fall into the territory of unreasonableness with it. It is funny, I do think we are opposites in one way on this episode but we still land on a similar rating for it!

Note, one thing I want to remember for further discussion: how much is the show carried by merely being better in it's wait class (This is amazing for a little girls show!) versus how much is it actually good? I am writing this kind of exhausted and may rephrase this later. Shakespeare could also convincingly be argued to be an apples to orange comparison. I just used it as an illustration of the two extremes I see sometimes.