Thrond

This is a mess, and I'm totally fine to never see Equestria Girls content longer than 4 minutes again, but there's a lot of moments here. The Trixie stuff starts painful but gets genuinely sweet as it goes on - this is the Trixie I liked in the season 6 finale, not the jerk Trixie of every other appearance - and most of what happens in Equestria is kinda awkwardly paced, but nonetheless fun. I'm glad we got a Sunset/Celestia reunion at all, and I'm totally here for Twilight being the biggest nerd in the whole multiverse. But Equestria Girls has a villain problem, and this one's motivations are barely coherent. I don't think the new "sympathetic antagonists" angle is working for this franchise. Start pacing your stories properly or go back to the cartoon villains. Your goals aren't noble enough to compromise your storytelling. I guess it's a nice moral though. Anyway a lot of the jokes suck, this seems rushed more often than not, and the emotional core is given nowhere near enough breathing room, so this ultimately seems kinda formulaic, and there's also a few cliches and contrivances which make the middle pretty uneven. At least one point seems like it'll be a major plot point, and then just... isn't, giving this the same unfinished feel as Friendship Games. But this still has a lot of solid moments, and those help keep this relatively entertaining even with all of its sloppiness. Far from my favourite thing Equestria Girls has ever done, but hey, it's better than whatever those "Magic" specials were last year.