Well Pony fans, the wait is finally over. Season Two has begun, which means I no longer have any excuse to procrastinate about writing articles for my adoring hundred or so followers. Lets dive right into it shall we?

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The biggest upset to the pony world as of late is, obviously, Discord. As season two rapidly approached us as if we were a limbless overweight sloth on a train track, Discord was a complete mystery, at least as far as his appearance and motivations go.

The biggest thing we had to go on before screenshots and early clips were available was that “Discord escapes from his stone prison”, so we ran with that. “Stone Prison” gave off the kind of big baddie vibe you get from a final boss battle, so people were starting to see Discord as some kind of giant, hulking golem who would probably just trash everything he came into contact with as soon as he broke down the bars. Little did we know that he would turn out to be way more sinister than that.

When we finally had our screenshots and early clips of him, reactions were….mixed to say the least. The way Discord carried himself made him seem like a lame Frankenstein of Steven Magnet. Everything about him seemed to be cute and/or goofy, that little buck tooth, his lame clichéd jokes, he was just a little bit of a letdown.

“WTF are you?” seemed to be the main response.

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Well it would seem that we could not have been more wrong about him. Discord is a very dark, creepy, and quite interesting character. As his stone statue cracked and that horrible little chuckle leaked out…I found myself genuinely worried about him, and apparently so did Celestia.

Up until this point, Celestia has always been calm, cool, and totally in control, even when faced with Nightmare Moon. She was an unquestionable authority without peer, so it was quite refreshing to see her become panicked, desperate, angry and confused when Discord got the upper hand on her by stealing the elements of harmony. She has shown her first signs of actual weakness, and that’s exactly what I think her character needed.

Discord is obviously a much bigger threat to Celestias rule than Nightmare Moon was. While Nightmare was just a facade put on by a hurt and bitter Luna, Discord is a frighteningly real danger whose mere presence causes total chaos in Equestria. He upsets the natural balance for the fun of it, he causes mayhem because he finds it to be much more colourful than normal life, and he does so in macabre, surreal fashion.

Huh…where have I seen a character like that before? And why so serious Celestia?

Anyway, Discords plan to turn the ponies against each other by reversing their personalities is already a bit more cruel than the show is used to, but the way he does it to each one is what gets me. It’s like he operates within his own dream world, and is capable of putting on the weirdest, and frankly, spookiest little carnival of horrors you’ve ever seen. Putting his face in the balloon to upset Pinkie Pie…operating those piles of apples to create loathsome ghoul faces…it was as if Tim Burton and H.R Giger were having simultaneous night terrors.

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As to the episode structure itself….events raced by at Rainboom speed. Characters spoke quickly; things happened quickly….this episode had ALOT to get done. It had to reintroduce the mane characters, introduce a problem, introduce a villain, have the mane six attack that problem, have them fail, and set up the next episode.

All that is not easy to cram into twenty or so minutes, so the episode felt a little schizophrenic and fast paced. All the detail and quality was still there, but it never got a chance to take a breath because it had so much going on. Maybe that is just reflective of Discords presence though.

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But this is ALL stuff you can figure out for yourselves isn’t it? Celestia is a bit of a badass, Discord is a freaky nightmare, the cutie mark crusaders are officially the biggest troublemakers in history….but what’s coming up next? How will they undo what Discord has done, and what is likely to go down?

Well, here are my top three predictions, organised from most likely to least likely.

1:

This is simultaneously the most likely and most disappointing thing that could happen. You know the drill.

Heroes face up against unspeakable evil, hunt for a magical maguffin that will solve all their problems, evil starts winning, all seems lost, but lo and behold the power was within our heroes all along! Chances are they will just…y’know….REALISE that being nice is nice, and being not nice is not nice, they will return to their former selves, unite and shoot Discord down with their magical cannon of friendship.

A tried and true formula but a little dated and predictable.

2:

Rainbow Dash has up and left the maze remember? Without Discords direct influence, it’s entirely likely that she could come back with Celestia, or even Luna in tow, and save the day.

In fact, I’m willing to bet Luna will have something major to do with these events before we move on to more standard episodes. Wasn’t she supposed to be a more exposed character for this season? Who’s up for some reformed Nightmare Moon vs. Discord? Me that’s who.

3:

Discords plans are interrupted by a pony whom his influence of chaos has no effect on. A Pony who is already in a state of semi-permanent chaos.

A pony who likes muffins.