How did Queen Chrysalis capture the Mane 6, Spike, and the Royal Family in the Season 6 finale, anyway?

[heavens-champion 1,893]

Seriously, any ideas?

[Techno Universal 2,575]

She probably used an undercover Changling army infiltration team to do it.

[heavens-champion 1,893]

4 minutes ago, Techno Universal said:

She probably used an undercover Changling army infiltration team to do it.

How did they capture them? All I can think of is either sneaking up behind them and dragging them into the dark, or Changelings disguised as mailponies using boxes full of knockout gas to incapacitate them.

[Techno Universal 2,575]

9 minutes ago, heavens-champion said:

How did they capture them? All I can think of is either sneaking up behind them and dragging them into the dark, or Changelings disguised as mailponies using boxes full of knockout gas to incapacitate them.

They probably snuck into the homes and maybe they teleported the ponies straight back to Chrysalis. Or maybe Chrysalis teleported them to the castle herself.

[heavens-champion 1,893]

Just now, Techno Universal said:

They probably snuck into the homes and maybe they teleported the ponies straight back to Chrysalis. Or maybe Chrysalis teleported them to the castle herself.

Well they could have shown at least Twilight getting captured.

[cmarston1 5,952]

 By the power of plot convenience of course.

[heavens-champion 1,893]

38 minutes ago, cmarston1 said:

 By the power of plot convenience of course.

What's the matter? Too lazy to come up with a theory?

[Will Guide 21,326]

My Head Canon to this:

The Mane 6 and Spike were replaced first in the middle of the day while Starlight and Trixie were at the village. Spike was enjoying a bowl of gemstones when someone snuck up from behind and bagged him

As for the Crystal Empire Royal Family, this time it's Shining Armor who's replaced first. Around sunset time, The real Cadance and Flurry Heart came in to have him kiss his daughter goodnight, only for Flurry to sense that's NOT her father and cry to alert her mother. (Flurry didn't cry at all with Thorax, Changeling or disguised, so I figured she can sense a pony's good or bad intentions) Cadance's guard was down for a moment and so she was ambushed. Luckily, Sunburst saw the whole thing and managed to tell Thorax to get help.

As for the Royal Sisters, they were unaware of what's going on until after they brought the moon up and Starlight went to bed. From the Changelings POV, when they chased after Luna, they found her in a sleeping state. In the dream world, the Changelings that grabbed Luna from within the moon were just representations of them and so they didn't actually hear Luna warned Starlight!

Feel free to imagine the other little details, but what I have up there is all I need to know. To me, it's not really all that important to know every tiny, little, detail. Just following the law of conservation vs. detail here.

[碇 シンジン 27,427]

Well if they got one of the mane 6 somehow they could pose as her to get the others though as seen in the episode their acting wasnt very convincing so 

[Megas 27,095]

Plot convenience and bullshit

1 hour ago, heavens-champion said:

What's the matter? Too lazy to come up with a theory?

Not as lazy as the episode was

[heavens-champion 1,893]

1 hour ago, Hot Rod said:

Plot convenience and bullshit

Not as lazy as the episode was

You do have a point there. Too much slow pacing.

Edited July 6, 2017 by heavens-champion

[Unlikeable Pony 2,698]

PLOT ARMOR.
No, seriously, that's it, fullstop. They needed to make a plot dedicated solely to Glimmer being the sole hope for equestria and forming a group of her own to save everyone in order to lead to her final scene of giving a giant friendship speech.

That is literally the end all be all of the reasons.

 

 

Past that, its pure fanwank. The best theory given forth so far has been chrysalis having amulets or chunks of the throne handed out to her minions that act as mini-antimagic cancelers (Such as those rocks the changelings were using to contact chrysalis in the throne room) . The BIG problem here is that if pieces of the throne removed from it still retain their anti-magic capabilities, the throne's destruction should have done NOTHING-- if the anti-magic is a trait of the material itself and not the throne specifically, breaking it into little pieces would still have left a giant pile of anti-magic stone lying there with the exact same anti-magic field as before.
This ALSO would run into the logical problem of why they didn't take these anti-magic rocks with them when they invaded canterlot the first time, since they're such an OP "I win" button.

[CypherHoof 26,479]

Or possibly a simpler explanation would be that Chrysalis is just very good at pretending to be someone else - she was able to fool Shining Armour after all, who you would think would notice if his beloved were swapped out for an evil twin (although the lack of a goatee may have been confusing)

That is the danger of a Changeling of course - that they could gain access to the inner chambers of the palaces by looking like someone who has every reason to be there, then drain and cocoon their targets while they are sleeping. Watch Celestia leave with a number of guards, then an hour or so later "return" as Celestia and those guards, overpower Luna, then wait until Celestia turns in for the night and overpower her too.  Similarly, they could arrive at the castle looking like the remain 5, overpower Twi, then wait for the "real" remain 5 to turn up and ambush them individually.

But yeah, it's a plot device - so for the same reason why everyone but the mane 6 seem to be out of the picture (especially the older Alicorns) whenever a crisis hits... it's so Twi and Crew HAVE to step up, because there is nopony else.

[GrimGrimoire 4,970]

Chloroform gets my vote.

Other than that a silly plot device honestly that I really wish they had either used a 3 parter to explain or show, or had made the whole Starlight & Trixie  going back to SG's old town a separate episode, that way they could have fit the explanation into the 2 parter. They could have paced it much better that way if they had done so.

[Unlikeable Pony 2,698]

26 minutes ago, CypherHoof said:

Or possibly a simpler explanation would be that Chrysalis is just very good at pretending to be someone else

 

26 minutes ago, CypherHoof said:

 very good

>goes and rewatches canterlot wedding's example of chrysalis's Impersonations of cadence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

Edited July 6, 2017 by Unlikeable Pony

[KH7672 1,604]

While I'm not going to make assumptions on exactly how they were captured/kidnapped etc...I do want to point out reasons it's possible the Changelings could have pulled this off.

Starting with the Mane 6 and Spike: everyone says it's impossible to think they couldn't fight off a changeling attack due to what was showcased in a Canterlot Wedding, Princess Twilight Sparkle, and Twilight's Kimgdom. They can definitely hold their own.......when they're on the offensive. Sneak attacks have always and I mean always been the downfall of these six. Think of the Mane-iac or Starlight's cutie mark cave, or even simple instances like Scare Master, when they think they're safe and just going through their lives their guards are down. That's how many a battles have worked. If the enemy knows you're coming they are smart enough to plan your defeat. But unless they are always wary of every move they won't see you coming.

Now for Cadance and Shining Armor: People want to point out how could changelings invade the city when they've got shields and have shown in TTAaC to be on high alert when a changeling is spotted just in the area. That's they key though "spotted." Thorax of course was spotted because it was not his mission to sneak in there. He was just a little curious of the ponies' lives and understandably got a little careless. Then you say well how about A Canterlot Wedding, if they are so sneaky how come they carelessly let their threat be known? Because that was the tactical decision. It became clear Chrysalis wanted the kingdom to know of their presence so that One: on top of the wedding now they had this possible invasion to worry about and keep suspicion off of her and Two: it was clear she was purposely draining Shining Armor and in order to do that faster she not only drained some love but also expended his energy with his shield spell. It would still not be hard to catch them off guard especially from many a sleepless nights taking care of a baby.

As for the Princesses............I'll stop for now because that is a little hard to see. Although A Royal Problem did show us how crammed their schedules are. It would only take one staged Celestia meeting or one sleepy morning to get Luna (then again it seemed was captured at night so I still can't really say).

 

 

As an aside after following this forum for a couple months it's great to finally find a topic I had something to say about.

[Thrond 3,257]

Very carefully. 

14 hours ago, heavens-champion said:

All I can think of is either sneaking up behind them and dragging them into the dark

In all seriousness, this is what I imagine happened. They were picked off, one by one, by really sneaky Changelings. The Changelings replaced Cadance before, so I imagine they're pretty good at that part, and if they were really careful, I can see how they might be able to get past Canterlot and the Crystal Empire's defenses. The mane six are the easiest to explain, because I don't think Twilight has guards, and the other five just sort of do their thing. Starlight might have been replaced as well had she not been away and had Chrysalis somehow determined her not a threat.

Which isn't to say that it's not a little contrived, but it's still happening in the Crystal Empire and Canterlot by the time Starlight gets back, so it clearly didn't just happen in a snap of Chrysalis's metaphorical fingers. We didn't see the plan because it's irrelevant. Haber's not the best storyteller, but I'm a huge fan of his character work, and that made the contrivance feel worth it to me. I just don't feel like it matters how the princesses+mane six were captured, so I'm confused that so many people are bothered by this.

What I'm more curious about is why the Changelings didn't have better impressions, since making it so easy for them to be found out seems like a pretty obvious flaw in whatever plan they would have. Then again, Chrysalis is a hothead warmonger, so it makes perfect sense to me that she would just assume that victory is hers the moment she captured what she considered her biggest threats. 

 

[bwrosas 252]

So the redemption story arc for Starlight for the season could come full circle.

[Lambdadelta 1,462]

Never play Fallout!? That call sneak attack, works everytime ;).

It not that hard to capture ponies one by one. In direct combat, ponies can kick your ass, even Rarity can be a fighter when she need to but they can be sneaked easily, well let say, if i was a changeling, how can i capture the mane 6, the 6 elements!? Easy, i can kidnap Pinkie by using distracting balloon (Three a Crowd reference), and then make pancakes with sleeping pill to make every other member go to sleep, profit???

How to capture the royal princess? Choose the best actor to disguise Twilight, then do the same thing with Royal Sisters, i am sure Celestia love cakes, then kipnap Luna in her sleep, because she sleeps during the day, done.

Crystal Empire. They let their guard down after Thorax incident, its easy to capture them by the same method.

All this sneak attacks can be committed during a day or it already HAPPENed before the episode begins. 

The keyword is Stealth, whenever you bring up the fact the mane can kick ass or even use elements to defeat any villain of the show, i will keep saying STEALTH ATTACKs. 

 

 

 

[Eggy0 101]

I'm on the boat with everyone bringing up stealth and ambushing. My theory is that the Changeling ambush didn't happen within the episode's timeframe; long story short, it began to take place long before the finale even started. I can imagine a couple of Changelings disguising as a few background ponies nobody cares about early in the season and then slowly working their way up to the more important ponies by spying on them so that they gain enough knowledge about them to be able to replicate their behavior and subvert them at just the right time to avoid any and all suspicions while their targets are carted off in secret. Their first target was most likely the Crystal Empire a day or two prior to the finale in which they efficiently disguised as normal Crystal ponies and got close enough to the royal family to replace and imprison them without letting the residents know of the ruse (after all, Thorax's Crystal Hoof disguise worked pretty well even though he may have disguised as some random pony he saw and knew next to nothing about), but during a quiet hour when nopony else was present Sunburst and Thorax quietly saw through a barely open door that Shining Armor, Cadance and Flurry Heart have been replaced by Changelings (and those that imitate the three well, too). Certain that the other Crystal ponies won't believe them, Sunburst instead sent Thorax to Ponyville to get Twilight's help, also telling that he can't come because the impostors have locked down all transportation leading to the Crystal Empire (also using various excuses to back them up) and he can't go on foot (hoof?) while Thorax, as a Changeling, is able to sustain during the long flight to Ponyville. But during Thorax's flight to Ponyville (along with Trixie's and Starlight's trip to Our Town and back), the Changelings that were in Canterlot and Ponyville earlier have already advanced with their disguises far enough to be able to start replacing the Mane 6 and the Canterlot princesses, and with well-placed deception and timing they managed to replace all of them without anypony looking by the time Trixie and Starlight returned and Thorax arrived close to Ponyville. Of the Canterlot princesses and the Mane 6, Luna was probably replaced first and had no power until Starlight's nightmare about the "Mane 6" calling her out on returning to Our Town alerted her at night and gave her just enough willpower and strength to get into it and warn Starlight about the threat.

This is just my own guess, anyway.

[SugarCoatxMarblePie 701]

Simple, ambushing. No one notices the background doubles anyways, which are obviously changelings. They wouldn't begin to suspect strangers only friends who act weird.

[Luminance 2,181]

This was the major flaw about the season 6 finale (and no inclusion of a song too). I say she brought a segment or piece of her throne with her thus granting everpony's magic useless against her. The Changeling swarm has strength in numbers too and without magic the ponies can't outrun them either. Seeing that Chrysalis replaced assumingly everpony in Ponyville and Canterlot she wasn't worried enough to replace Starlight (who happens to be a loose end) or even care and yet that was the part of her plan that failed. 

[Sonic5421 423]

All I can say is that this little plot hole is one big head-scratching problem that I'm sure a lot of Bronies are still wondering about, especially considering the lack of paranoid or fear the Mane Six or Royal Family have shown since then since this was the second time Equestria nearly fell to Chrysalis because she caught them off-guard again.

I can only assume that she must have sent the drones that impersonated the Mane Six to kidnap them at some point in the few hours that Starlight and Trixie were gone to Starlight's old village. Then when night had fallen and the Royal Guard patrols were at their minimum since most were asleep in their barracks, Chrysalis made her move to kidnap the Royal Family. Luna got lucky in warning Starlight before being subdued, along with Sunburst seeing what happened in the Crystal Empire and sending Thorax out to seek help. Also, seeing that Starlight could not risk asking for more help in case Chrysalis had kidnapped more than just the Mane Six and Royal Family, she couldn't risk calling in the heavy guns in the likes of Prince Rutherford, Gilda, and Princess Ember to help with the rescue.

[heavens-champion 1,893]

3 hours ago, Star Trail said:

Seeing that Chrysalis replaced assumingly everpony in Ponyville and Canterlot she wasn't worried enough to replace Starlight (who happens to be a loose end) or even care and yet that was the part of her plan that failed. 

Like I said: Chrysalis thinks less with her brain, and more with her ego.

23 hours ago, Unlikeable Pony said:

PLOT ARMOR.
No, seriously, that's it, fullstop. They needed to make a plot dedicated solely to Glimmer being the sole hope for equestria and forming a group of her own to save everyone in order to lead to her final scene of giving a giant friendship speech.

That is literally the end all be all of the reasons.

 

 

Past that, its pure fanwank. The best theory given forth so far has been chrysalis having amulets or chunks of the throne handed out to her minions that act as mini-antimagic cancelers (Such as those rocks the changelings were using to contact chrysalis in the throne room) . The BIG problem here is that if pieces of the throne removed from it still retain their anti-magic capabilities, the throne's destruction should have done NOTHING-- if the anti-magic is a trait of the material itself and not the throne specifically, breaking it into little pieces would still have left a giant pile of anti-magic stone lying there with the exact same anti-magic field as before.
This ALSO would run into the logical problem of why they didn't take these anti-magic rocks with them when they invaded canterlot the first time, since they're such an OP "I win" button.

We get it. You don't wanna come up with an in-universe theory for what happens in the show.

[Hierok 11,829]

Cartoonlogic? Lazyness?