Discrepancies Between the Nightmare Moon Flashback and the First Episode

[Music Chart Fan 819]

I noticed a few discrepancies between the flashback of the banishment of Nightmare Moon in Season 4, Episodes 1 and 2 (Princess Twilight Sparkle) and the story of that event as told in the narration at the very beginning of Season 1, Episode 1 (Friendship Is Magic).

 

First, the Episode 1 narration says that "one fateful day, the younger unicorn [Luna] refused to lower the moon to make way for the dawn"; that is, it's nighttime and Luna refuses to lower the moon and allow daytime to come. However, this is not the way it's portrayed in the flashback. When the window/wall is blasted away, the sun is already up, as though it's daytime, and Luna raises the moon to block out the sun.

 

In the flashback (and elsewhere in "Princess Twilight Sparkle"), the Elements of Harmony are portrayed as 5 "rupee"-shaped gems, with the sixth being in the shape of Twilight's cutie mark. However, in the Episode 1 narration, the Elements of Harmony are portrayed in two different ways, neither of which completely match the flashback, as seen below. In the picture on the left, the five Elements of Harmony each have a unique shape, while in the picture on the right, the six Elements of Harmony all have the same "rupee" shape.

 

 

In the flashback, Princess Celestia looks like she does in the present, with a flowing multi-colored mane and tail and white wings to match the rest of her body, whereas in the Episode 1 narration, Celestia has a pink curly mane, pink tail, and pink wings. Also, when Celestia is fighting Nightmare Moon, in the flashback, she uses the physical Elements of Harmony and has a pink-purple spherical aura around her when she's doing so. In the narration, however, neither the physical Elements nor the aura are present, as seen below.

 

 

I also noticed a few other oddities with the flashback itself. The way the flashback seems to work is that the characters in the flashback (i.e. Celestia and Luna) are not supposed to see Twilight, talk directly to her, or acknowledge her. So, in the beginning of the flashback, from when Luna says "Not another step!" through her transformation and blasting the ceiling, who is Luna supposed to be talking to and interacting with? It's not supposed to be Twilight, and it appears that Celestia only walks in the room immediately after Twilight jumps back from the collapsing ceiling that Nightmare Moon blasted. When Twilight first enters the flashback, a wide-angle shot of the room shows it to be empty. Further, Twilight looks around for several seconds before Luna steps out from behind the throne; if Celestia were standing there, wouldn't Twilight have seen her and tried to talk to her?

 

Also, whenever Twilight is talking, Celestia and Luna conveniently stay silent, even for several seconds at a time, despite the fact that the scene is supposed to be playing out as though Twilight isn't there. Such long pauses in the talking and action would be unnatural if Twilight weren't there to talk over them.

 

Finally, when Celestia is blasted by Nightmare Moon and falls down, Twilight seems to simply assume that she's dead (or gravely injured) and just sits down and cries, rather than, say, checking her vital signs or looking for injuries.

 

What do you think of these discrepancies and oddities? Did you notice any other ones that I didn't mention here? Thanks for reading!

[Scootalove 10,689]

The flashbacks did hold some questions that could have been solved, like there were some moments where your questioning on what's going on in the flashback and why. It's weird how they act like Twilight is in the flashback herself.

[Discount_Flunky 75]

I think the differences in the look of the elements is simply do to the redesigning them for the two parter to make them look cooler.  Creators often times give props, backgrounds, or even characters a face lift and hope no one will notice.  Or it's a simply a lack of fact checking.

 

Though I do have to agree that the way they were acting in the flash back was weird.  The "Not another step" line made no sense.  I'm not even sure who she was referring to right now.  The line "There's only room for one princess."  Also bugged me.  Feeling unwanted was supposed to be her trigger, not power lust.  Overall it doesn't match the lore like it should.

 

Pauses in talking so Twilight could say her lines was probably an over sight.  Although you'd think they'd realize it looked weird.

Edited November 23, 2013 by Discount_Flunky

[Champion RD92 8,658]

Everything you said is pretty true. I just don't think the writers expect people to nitpick like that lol.

 

But yeah, also, Luna's whole design changed after season 1 as well, and they didn't really explain that.

[IridscentNionios 1,420]

Here's what i thought of today's episode.

What we learned today... 1)Discord is a d... 2)No changelings in the past of Equestria 3)The Everfree Forest grew tentacle monster weed 4)Discord had a backup plan 5)Luna and Celestia are pretty much useless when it comes to facing major plot villains.

Questions right now... 1)Where did the Element of Harmony tree come from? How did it grow? 2)Why did the Elements Banish Luna to the moon instead of ridding her of the evil she was possesed from? 3)Season 1 Luna in Season 1 but before that she was Seson 2 Luna? Did she change during her banishment as an effect of the elements of harmony? 4)Why did Celestia and Luna allow themselves to be taken by surprise by the weed? ((shows how useless they are in fighting in major plot events)) 5)Why did nopony consider using FIRE on the weed? You know even pokemon nerds know FIRE>GRASS. 6)Why did the weed affect magic in general? I can understand it smothering the tree and all but why? 7)If Luna and Celestia knew as they suggested in this episode what was growing within why didn't they try to cleanse it with the elements before all this BS happenned? 

Yea i am a nerd... good episode.

[Veggiebrony 18]

I think that the lore is just that, lore, legends are altered to make them seem better, celestia's appearance change from the book to the actual thing could be down to a bad artist in the book, the elements of harmony have changed shape from gems to necklaces, is it really so hard to believe that they changed shape before. Of course it could all be down to an animation error or something, sorry for rambling.

[Grumpy Enchantress 586]

Wait, I just noticed something, are they ignoring Luna ever having a different design at all? Was an official explanation on why she looked different ever given because, now we actually have a flashback of her looking like her current self. It doesn't make much sense.

[Sunny Fox 5,950]

The flashback was shown as a series of illustrations from a book that Twilight was reading. So any discrepancies can be blamed on the author of that book, presumably writing it many years (up to 1000) after the actual events. Even in real life, what gets recorded in a history book is not always 100% identical to what actually did happen.

 

By the way, this premiere just killed the "Pink Mane Celestia" theory.

Edited November 24, 2013 by SolarFox

[Creamy Arty 6,252]

I just removed several posts. Keep in mind that this is not a general discussion thread for the season premier. If you want to discuss that in detail, please see the episode discussion thread.

 

This thread is for citing any continuity errors one may have noticed based on what was shown in this episode versus what had been established earlier in the series. Please read the original post for an example.

[Music Chart Fan 819]

The flashback was shown as a series of illustrations from a book that Twilight was reading. So any discrepancies can be blamed on the author of that book, presumably writing it many years (up to 1000) after the actual events. Even in real life, what gets recorded in a history book is not always 100% identical to what actually did happen.

 

You make a good point that the discrepancies between the flashback and the Season 1, Episode 1 narration can be considered from two different angles. One angle is from our positions as real-world viewers, i.e., the show's creators didn't ensure consistency between the two accounts of the night Nightmare Moon was banished. The other angle, as you point out, is from an in-world perspective, i.e., the book's author couldn't or didn't make the book's account of that night reflect what actually happened.

 

From the in-world perspective, though, there is reason to think that this event (the banishment of Nightmare Moon to the moon) is somewhat different from human attempts to make accounts of historical events. The big difference is that Princess Celestia, who was the major participant in the event and the primary source for learning what happened, was still living whenever the author wrote the book. This fact raises a few questions about why the book still doesn't recount the event correctly.

 

Was the author unable to ask Celestia to recount what happened or all the details of what happened? If not, why not? This is a very important event; after all, the annual Summer Sun Celebration was celebrating the defeat of Nightmare Moon. Considering that, plus Celestia's likely desire to note the lessons from this ordeal to make sure such an event doesn't have to happen again, I would think that Celestia would want an accurate account of the event to be made.

 

Was the author able to ask Celestia about the event, but she didn't remember all the details correctly? That raises the question of how good a memory Celestia has, particularly given that she's an immortal being who has lived for over a thousand years. But even if Celestia has a fallible memory, this event would surely be one of the most memorable she's had in her lifetime, especially when the annual Summer Sun Celebration serves as a recurring reminder. Further, many things that the book's account gets wrong are relatively simple details that should be easy to get right. On that day, did Celestia look any different than the present? Did Luna raise the moon to block out the daytime sun or did she refuse to lower the moon at the end of the night? Were the physical Elements of Harmony used to blast Nightmare Moon to the moon? These seem like pretty basic questions that, with a decent memory of the event, Celestia should be able to answer.

 

And in the unlikely case that any account of the event from Celestia is unavailable, that raises still different questions about the inaccuracies of the book's account of the event. First, what are the secondary sources of the event, if Celestia doesn't provide the information? In the flashback, we don't see any other ponies around who would serve as direct witnesses and who would have, say, written their recollections of the event for the author to use as sources afterward. Did their former castle have staff who might have overheard or seen a few things and written them down? Was anything that happened visible to other ponies unrelated to the castle? In those cases, I can make the same point I made before about being able to get simple details correct. What did Celestia look like at the time? Was the moon raised to block the daytime sun or was the moon just not lowered at the end of the night? Again, even secondary sources of this information should be able to get it right.

 

With regard to the color and type of Celestia's mane, tail, and wings, even if the author were unable to get an account of the event from Celestia, why would the author change those things from how Celestia looks in the present? I would think that there would be many accounts over the centuries of Celestia's appearance (descriptions, paintings, pictures, etc.) which would match the way she looks in the present. So what reason would the author have to think that Celestia's mane, tail, and wings were different at the time of the event, and if they were different, that they were the specific color and type depicted in the book?

 

In conclusion, from the in-world perspective, it is still puzzling to me why the narration from the book in Season 1, Episode 1 is inconsistent with the flashback, and why the inconsistencies include basic details which I would think that sources of information about the event should have gotten right.

[aoEAF2FBvC0MIo2Q 3,673]

First thing I noticed about Nightmare Moon in the season 4 premiere is that her voice is different from NMM in the pilot just like how I noticed that princess Luna's voice was different from NMM in the pilot. The immediate answer I had to that being that the corruption into NMM changed princess Luna's being and also her voice; much like how people would think that Nightmare Rarity would sound different from Rarity. Here... I see the corruption into NMM happen and she still sounded like Princess Luna. That one kinda bothered me.

 

Yeah, what did happen to pink-maned princess Celestia? Or for that matter, the first design we saw princess Luna with as she was reunited with princess Celestia. Hm... Then again, this isn't the first time that this issue got brought up. Remember that brief flashback when both princesses banished king Sombra? Both were shown in their present forms indicating that they've been this way for a while now. It could be that whoever illustrated the history book only illustrated them in their "previous forms" and just went on with that out of laziness, methinks.

[Koelath 445]

I noticed a few discrepancies between the flashback of the banishment of Nightmare Moon in Season 4, Episodes 1 and 2 (Princess Twilight Sparkle) and the story of that event as told in the narration at the very beginning of Season 1, Episode 1 (Friendship Is Magic).

 

First, the Episode 1 narration says that "one fateful day, the younger unicorn [Luna] refused to lower the moon to make way for the dawn"; that is, it's nighttime and Luna refuses to lower the moon and allow daytime to come. However, this is not the way it's portrayed in the flashback. When the window/wall is blasted away, the sun is already up, as though it's daytime, and Luna raises the moon to block out the sun.

 

In the flashback (and elsewhere in "Princess Twilight Sparkle"), the Elements of Harmony are portrayed as 5 "rupee"-shaped gems, with the sixth being in the shape of Twilight's cutie mark. However, in the Episode 1 narration, the Elements of Harmony are portrayed in two different ways, neither of which completely match the flashback, as seen below. In the picture on the left, the five Elements of Harmony each have a unique shape, while in the picture on the right, the six Elements of Harmony all have the same "rupee" shape.

 

Elements of Harmony Episode 1.png

 

In the flashback, Princess Celestia looks like she does in the present, with a flowing multi-colored mane and tail and white wings to match the rest of her body, whereas in the Episode 1 narration, Celestia has a pink curly mane, pink tail, and pink wings. Also, when Celestia is fighting Nightmare Moon, in the flashback, she uses the physical Elements of Harmony and has a pink-purple spherical aura around her when she's doing so. In the narration, however, neither the physical Elements nor the aura are present, as seen below.

 

Nightmare Moon Banishment.png

 

I also noticed a few other oddities with the flashback itself. The way the flashback seems to work is that the characters in the flashback (i.e. Celestia and Luna) are not supposed to see Twilight, talk directly to her, or acknowledge her. So, in the beginning of the flashback, from when Luna says "Not another step!" through her transformation and blasting the ceiling, who is Luna supposed to be talking to and interacting with? It's not supposed to be Twilight, and it appears that Celestia only walks in the room immediately after Twilight jumps back from the collapsing ceiling that Nightmare Moon blasted. When Twilight first enters the flashback, a wide-angle shot of the room shows it to be empty. Further, Twilight looks around for several seconds before Luna steps out from behind the throne; if Celestia were standing there, wouldn't Twilight have seen her and tried to talk to her?

 

Also, whenever Twilight is talking, Celestia and Luna conveniently stay silent, even for several seconds at a time, despite the fact that the scene is supposed to be playing out as though Twilight isn't there. Such long pauses in the talking and action would be unnatural if Twilight weren't there to talk over them.

 

Finally, when Celestia is blasted by Nightmare Moon and falls down, Twilight seems to simply assume that she's dead (or gravely injured) and just sits down and cries, rather than, say, checking her vital signs or looking for injuries.

 

What do you think of these discrepancies and oddities? Did you notice any other ones that I didn't mention here? Thanks for reading!

 

1) "Luna refuses to lower the moon and allow daytime..." That happens in the flashback. Not exactly a discrepancy.

 

2) The original story in season one is told from a book or something, so the teller's memory is key. Probably just got fuzzy on the details.

 

3) The image there appears to be a stylized drawing, not an actual depiction of the events as they occur, so calling it discrepancy is a stretch.

 

4) It's a flashback brought on by magical potion. I'd cut it some slack just on account of we don't really know how that potion is meant to work, or if it was brewed quite right.

 

5) In tense confrontations, long pauses and silent contemplation are not exactly uncommon.

 

6) If you saw your beloved mentor, teacher and friend get shot down, even if it was just a re-enactment, you'd get emotional too.

 

Ultimately, as this was a magical flashback to the past rather than some book (or faulty-memoried old pony), I'd look to the latest episode for what actually happened.

[Koelath 445]

Or for that matter, the first design we saw princess Luna with as she was reunited with princess Celestia.

 

I've always gone with the idea that Luna's corruption and imprisonment had a toll on her physical body and her current form is her proper form. She just needed to recuperate for a while.

[A lot of words that say Celestia should've gotten it right and proofread the books]

 

Who's to say how long after the events that book was written? Celestia doesn't have a flawless memory, I'm sure. And the book didn't look terribly ancient so it could've been a good time between the events and the writing.

 

As for the changes to her look in the illustration...Artist's privilege. Maybe the illustrator thought pink looked nicer on her.

[Galen 1,354]

The flashback was shown as a series of illustrations from a book that Twilight was reading. So any discrepancies can be blamed on the author of that book, presumably writing it many years (up to 1000) after the actual events. Even in real life, what gets recorded in a history book is not always 100% identical to what actually did happen.

 

By the way, this premiere just killed the "Pink Mane Celestia" theory.

 

This. It's one thing to read it from a book. It's another to totally relive the events. Anyone who's played Assassin's Creed knows that as well

 

In all seriousness, I don't think it really does matter whether or not there are some discrepancies here and there. What matters the most is why the flashbacks were used, and clearly it was to indicate what Twilight must do in order to stop the Everfree Forest from growing wildly. How detailed the flashbacks were isn't all too important.

[Gary S. 102]

Nightmare Moon went from "I refuse to let the sun rise. Deal with it!" to "There can be only one princess and you shall DIE!!!"

 

It looked as if Luna even thought this way before becoming Nightmare Moon. It's hardly surprising that the book tells the story in a more harmless way.

[Sunny Fox 5,950]

<Snip>

 

In conclusion, from the in-world perspective, it is still puzzling to me why the narration from the book in Season 1, Episode 1 is inconsistent with the flashback, and why the inconsistencies include basic details which I would think that sources of information about the event should have gotten right.

Most of these questions are predicated on the assumption that the introduction shown in the pilot is supposed to be an accurate representation of the past. I have always been of the opinion that this is in fact not the case. It's made pretty clear during Twilight's discussion with Spike that all these events have long since faded into myth and legends, not unlike the Greek legends of Troy, Odysseus and so on. "The Mare in the Moon: myth from olden pony times", "The mythical mare in the Moon". The pilot also indicates that despite having read the story, Twilight was not able to make the connection that her teacher was one of the Royal Sisters spoken of in the legend, until Celestia actually called Luna "sister". I think one has to admit that this latest episode really does shake the assumption of the pilot's introduction being any attempt at historical accuracy.

 

Basically, I submit these things are not "discrepancies" because a discrepancy assumes that two conflicting sources are equally historically accurate, which is not the case here.

 

@@Koelath, 

As for the suggestion that the vision from the potion is somehow flawed, that becomes exceedingly unlikely when you consider that the vision of the Tree of Harmony is entirely accurate, despite the fact that Twilight had never seen it before, and indeed had no notion of its existence prior to that.

Vision version

Real life version

 

 

So, in the beginning of the flashback, from when Luna says "Not another step!" through her transformation and blasting the ceiling, who is Luna supposed to be talking to and interacting with? It's not supposed to be Twilight, and it appears that Celestia only walks in the room immediately after Twilight jumps back from the collapsing ceiling that Nightmare Moon blasted. When Twilight first enters the flashback, a wide-angle shot of the room shows it to be empty. Further, Twilight looks around for several seconds before Luna steps out from behind the throne; if Celestia were standing there, wouldn't Twilight have seen her and tried to talk to her?

 

Nightmare Moon was aiming at a Celestia statue, not at Twilight.

 

After the ceiling falls, Twilight is on the other side of the room from where we first see her.

 

When Twilight first sees her, there's no indication that Celestia has only then entered the room. She is stepping forward, true, but without seeing a doorway, the best conclusion is that she was in the room all along. The entire time, Luna IS talking to Celestia , who is "behind the camera", as it were, so Twilight (and we the audience) will be tricked into thinking Luna is talking to Twilight. 

 

I think the scene was edited clumsily, which leads to these problems. But I also think it doesn't require this much analysis. Simplest explanation, Celestia was there the whole time, Twilight just didn't see her.

 

Edited November 25, 2013 by SolarFox

[Koelath 445]

As for the suggestion that the vision from the potion is somehow flawed, that becomes exceedingly unlikely when you consider that the vision of the Tree of Harmony is entirely accurate, despite the fact that Twilight had never seen it before, and indeed had no notion of its existence prior to that.

 

I wasn't saying it was flawed (in fact, it's the more accurate version of the story). I'm saying the rules behind that particular magic trick are not explicitly stated so we can't really know for sure how it's meant to work.

[Music Chart Fan 819]

When Twilight first sees her, there's no indication that Celestia has only then entered the room. She is stepping forward, true, but without seeing a doorway, the best conclusion is that she was in the room all along. The entire time, Luna IS talking to Celestia , who is "behind the camera", as it were, so Twilight (and we the audience) will be tricked into thinking Luna is talking to Twilight.

 

I think the scene was edited clumsily, which leads to these problems. But I also think it doesn't require this much analysis. Simplest explanation, Celestia was there the whole time, Twilight just didn't see her.

 

I still see a few issues with this explanation. For one thing, if Celestia was in the room the whole time, then not only did Twilight (and the camera) not see her, she also must not have said a word or made a single sound that would have alerted Twilight for the whole first part of the flashback. We don't hear Celestia walking in the room at the very beginning, even though the big room has an amplifying effect and hoofsteps are heard elsewhere in the scene. Was Celestia supposedly standing silent and still for several seconds before Luna stepped out? If so, then Luna's proclamation of "Not another step!" wouldn't make much sense. We also don't hear Celestia say anything (or make any other noise) even though there were silent gaps in Luna's speech where she might naturally say something.

 

Furthermore, if Luna were addressing a distant Celestia across the room, wouldn't we expect Luna to focus on her when she's addressing her? When I watch the first part of the flashback, it seems more like Luna is looking down at where Twilight is most of the time (except that during the actual event she would be looking at empty space), rather than across the giant room. And if Luna did focus back at Celestia, wouldn't Twilight be curious about what Luna was looking at and turn around to see? If someone were ostensibly talking to you, but was actually focusing somewhere behind you, wouldn't you instinctually turn and see what he or she was looking at?

 

Most of these questions are predicated on the assumption that the introduction shown in the pilot is supposed to be an accurate representation of the past. I have always been of the opinion that this is in fact not the case. It's made pretty clear during Twilight's discussion with Spike that all these events have long since faded into myth and legends, not unlike the Greek legends of Troy, Odysseus and so on. "The Mare in the Moon: myth from olden pony times", "The mythical mare in the Moon". The pilot also indicates that despite having read the story, Twilight was not able to make the connection that her teacher was one of the Royal Sisters spoken of in the legend, until Celestia actually called Luna "sister". I think one has to admit that this latest episode really does shake the assumption of the pilot's introduction being any attempt at historical accuracy.

 

How did these events fade into myth and legends when Celestia, the primary source and major participant in the events, is still living, and furthermore, when she oversees an annual Summer Sun Celebration where, in Celestia's words, "for my subjects, it has always been a celebration of my defeat of Nightmare Moon"? Where did the inaccurate version of events in the book originate, and how did it go uncorrected, given the above? Was the book's author just not curious enough or interested enough in accuracy to know that the legend is about Celestia and to run the legend by her to see what she thought about it? Was no one over the centuries interested enough in the actual story behind the annual Summer Sun Celebration to ask Celestia what really happened?

 

Celestia's statement quoted above (coupled with the fact that she oversees the Summer Sun Celebration) would seem to indicate that it should be common knowledge that it was Celestia who defeated Nightmare Moon, rather than some unknown made-up pony who exists only in a legend. For that not to be the case would seem to imply that Celestia has overseen the Summer Sun Celebration for centuries without letting anyone know that the basis of the celebration was her banishment of her sister who had transformed into Nightmare Moon, and moreover, that Celestia is unaware of or doesn't care that no one knows the real story.

 

Simply saying "Oh well, the book is inaccurate. It was just telling a myth anyway." misses some interesting questions and concerns about how that would come to pass, given the unique situation of this story, which differentiates it from the typical myths and legends.