Preliminary Topic

Before I begin my review, I must bring up an essential topic. If you already know why Celestia is a problematic character and what those problems are, then there is no need to read this section. Feel free to skip down to the review at any time.

Season 8 Episode 7 “Horse Play” Review by EpicEnergy

To begin with, I have much to say about the characters, starting with Celestia. There are three things about her that I want to address. Firstly, the writers fixed the area where Celestia’s ability to raise the sun was diminished due to the Hearth’s Warming story that said unicorns could “bring forth day and night”. Now we understand that bringing forth day and night was not as simplistic as the Hearth’s Warming story depicted it to be, because it required multiple unicorns and Starswirl himself to raise the sun, which permanently depletes the other unicorns of their magic in the process. The strength required to raise the sun is now evident, and it makes Celestia more important and unique. I must commend the writers for providing this significant and needed fix. Secondly, this episode reveals and expounds on more of Celestia’s characteristics, making her even more enjoyable and relatable. Thirdly, this episode creates a negative characteristic in Celestia. Throughout this episode, Celestia interprets things too literally. It starts to get very annoying, but at least Celestia makes up for it in the end. Proceeding, I now will address Twilight’s behavior. Twilight acts out-of-character and bluntly lies to Celestia throughout the episode, which is illogical because she should have listened to Applejack in the first place and she should have known that telling the truth to Celestia would be morally correct and not contradictory to everything Twilight learned. Twilight’s actions are unreasonable, so I must deduct a few points off the episode rating.  Lastly, I will briefly refer to the Method Mares. Their involvement in this episode provides even more theatre-related content, adding to this episode’s theatrical theme. The last subject I want to refer to is the moral. It is very basic, and completely unnecessary. It’s also a repeated moral, we obviously heard it before in previous episodes. The focus of the episode was on Celestia and not the moral; consequently, the moral didn’t receive the same treatment, and it is not satisfactory. Everyone already knows not to lie and to tell the truth.

Episode Rating: 5/10

In conclusion, this episode focused on making Celestia a better character, and it succeeded despite not fixing every single one of her problems. However, the episode also made Twilight be unreasonable and gave us a basic moral that was already given in previous episodes. I would say that this episode had a balance of positive and negative features, giving it a “mediocre” rating.

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