(Warning: Spoilers)

It’s hard to believe that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is entering its ninth and final season.

That’s a pretty impressive run for a show about brightly colored ponies learning how to be good friends. But of course, the show was more than that; it’s had a surprising amount of world building and lore; plot lines that have spanned multiple seasons with satisfying and surprising conclusions; characters that have grown and changed; surprising smart humor and some pretty damn good songs.

The show has built up a huge and varied fan following which has been criticized. But I think it should be celebrated; if a show can bring together such different groups of people (little girls and grown men) that should be celebrated, not condemned because of a few crazy, slightly sexually demented people. All fandoms have those.

And so far, the 9th season is off to a pretty decent start with the episodes: The Beginning of the End: Part I and Part II.

I wouldn’t say it’s the best opening; it was very busy. I expected this, since the show needed to address all the dangling plot points and establish the main conflict for the season.

Cause there’s not going to be anything afterwards… At least for now.

The two main conflicts for this season are 1) Princesses Celestia and Luna plan to retire due to Equestria having its longest period of peace ever. Which considering what we’ve seen, must be about a week and a half, two and a half if we’re being generous; and 2) a mysterious goat named Grogar, has reappeared after a couple millennial and has gathered some of the most powerful villains from the past seasons: King Sombra, Queen Chrysalis, Lord Tirek and last season’s My Little Psychopath Cozy Glow, to take over Equestria.

Grogar has seen all their failed attempts but believes that together they may be able to defeat the Mane Six. This has created some very interesting character dynamics, with Cozy actually trying to make friends with the others. (And cowering behind Tirek constantly, who looks like he couldn’t care less.) This could lead to them using some messed up version of friendship in the finale in an attempt to defeat Grogar or actually…becoming friends.

And the Mane Six are handling the prospect of becoming rulers pretty well, except for Twilight, who freaks about not having enough time. (And honestly who can blame her? The princesses were only gonna give them a few days. I’d freak out too.)

But luckily for them, that’s also about when Grogar starts his evil scheme and Sombra decides to try to take over the Crystal Empire. On his own.

That…is difficult but really nothing that the team hasn’t dealt with before. It leads to a pretty decent fight scene where we get to see again how powerful Twilight is. I’m not sure if we’ve seen it before, I think we have, but when they’re using the power of friendship, Twilight’s mane begins to look like Celestia’s and Luna’s. Either way, it’s still pretty cool.

Oh, and then there’s the twist that the Tree of Harmony gets permanently destroyed (as does Sombra, spoiler alert). Which I guess is pretty surprising, but I have feeling the tree might come back later or in a different way.

I think Sombra’s gone for good though.

Overall, while the first two episodes were interesting, action packed and just as funny as ever, I found a lot of the humor a bit too self-referential and more self-aware than in previous seasons.

I wish the pacing could have been better, overall it was an enjoyable and heartfelt beginning of the end. I can’t wait for the rest.

And that’s the scoop!

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Score: 7/10

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Length: 2 episodes; 22 minutes each

Year of release: 2019

Creator: Lauren Faust

Director: Mike Myhre

Writers: Joanna Lewis and Kristine Songco

Voice Actors: Tara Strong, Ashleigh Ball, Andrea Libman, Tabitha St. Germain, Cathy Weseluck, Nicole Oliver, Michelle Creber, Madeleine Peters, Claire Corlett

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If you liked this review read: Adventure Time’s finale shows that the more things change, the more they remain the same.