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Season 6, Episodes 16-17
This post took a little longer than the last few because spent a few days (March 15-18) on a trip to New York City where I met several Internet friends and a friend from school. During that trip, when waiting for things to happen in my hotel room, I wrote the first half of my review of Dungeons & Discords.
Season 6 Episode 16: The Times They Are a Changeling
In five words: First step resolving changeling discrimination.
Premise: The Crystal Empire is under threat by a changeling spy, and when searching for the culprit, Spike discovers a sensitive changeling named Thorax who merely wants to be his friend.
Detailed run-through:
For some reason, pretty much every episode taking place in the Crystal Empire starts with a train ride there.
To start this episode, Twilight Sparkle demonstrates a severe lack of fourth-wall awareness when she says Flurry Heart has grown a lot and she probably won’t even recognize the baby. If she was aware of the fourth wall, she would know that babies in a cartoon NEVER age until the time skip finale. Starlight and Twilight have a friendly discussion that shows good progression in friendship lessons, which makes it surprising that in the next episode focusing on Starlight, she royally screws things up.
Spike keeping a plush of his pony waifu wherever he goes was clearly inspired by bronies doing the same.
Pretty much every episode taking place in the Crystal Empire also has a reminder that the crystal ponies obsessively worship Spike. Spike has a variety of goofy disguises prepared, and I wonder… could this be a hint that he’s soon to befriend a member of the race whose specialty is impersonation?
One difference from pretty much every episode taking place in the Crystal Empire is that this time, it doesn’t feature all of the Mane 6—instead, it’s only Twilight Sparkle, Starlight Glimmer, and Spike who visit. The minimization of the cast helps give supporting characters some spotlight time that would have otherwise been taken by Pinkie Pie gags.
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