First, not a bad or good thing, but I couldn't help but notice that in the Crystal Fair Anthem, they edited it so that Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, and Fluttershy's lips down move, so it doesn't look like they're singing... Not sure why they changed that...
King Sombra... What. A. Freaking. Let-Down. Here you have a badass-looking villain, and we don't find out ANYTHING about him! You don't know who he is, where he came from, how he became king... He barely even TALKS in the two-parter. Just a few sentences then a "NOOOOOOOOOOOO" when he's defeated! He's treated more like an obstacle that needed to be overcome than an actual antagonist. Which is fine, I suppose, this is part of Twilight's test, but then again, characters are supposed to have, you know, character to them. I DID notice that when he was defeated, his horn remained and was blown away. Perhaps the writers aren't quite finished with him yet... If the tip of his horn slowly invading the Crystal Empire showed us anything is that he can survive even blown apart. Given how there's hope for a future with this series, maybe they will follow up on it. I'd rather see King Sombra return than Queen Chrysalis, honestly, because while she IS pretty cool herself, we basically found out everything we needed to know about her in her debut. With Sombra, there's just SO MUCH POTENTIAL that we didn't get out of this two-parter.
The "test" element was actually pretty crucial to this story, so it seems. At first I thought Twilight was overreacting to the idea of a "test", nor did I really think much of "in the end, it's up to you and you alone" from Celestia... turns out Twilight took BOTH those words to heart. Then again, I suppose it IS in her character to take the words of Celestia literally or misinterpret them. I was a LITTLE annoyed when Twilight assumed that the "test" was creating a research report to Shining Armor. Her giddiness was kind of funny, but it just felt dumb to me. I also thought it was weird that, even until the end, she, and even Spike and their friends, thought of the supposed "test", when I would have been more focused on, you know, an entire population being saved from this evil creature. Then again, I guess that was kind of the point, Twilight learned to put the needs of the many over her own personal problems. Also, the "next level of her studies" really intrigues me, and if the promos for this season are anything to go by, I'm guessing we'll see just what they are later on... That book Luna had intrigued me, too.
Also, was it just me, or did Rainbow Dash seem a bit too aggressive in this episode. Harassing the Crystal Ponies for information, scaring them away from the the fake crystal heart, it all just felt a little forced... Pardon the pun.
So, is Cadence to true heir to the Crystal Empire or what? I think she and Shining Armor stayed behind, I guess that's their new home from now on. That's cool, though I do feel bad we didn't get much development from either of them here. I don't know if that's a bad thing or a good thing, honestly, I love Cadence and Shining Armor, and it's not like King Sombra where we literally got nothing, but still, some people don't seem to like them for their lack of character, and I'd like to see a bit more out of them. Then again, there wasn't much else they could have done with them here...
I almost thought the slight wrinkle in the rug that Spike spotted was a chekov's gun, but I guess it was just a scene to show that Twilight didn't want Spike interfering. I guess Twilight was defaulting back on her loner instinct, mostly because she thought she had to do this by herself... Maybe this will teach her to not go in it alone, always make sure you have someone with you, just in case. Friendship and reliability are main themes in this series. Actually, that might have been another good point.
The Crystal Ponies... I honestly thought most of them were more appealing when they were depressed. When they lightened up, I didn't like how some of their manes looked. And when everybody was crystallized... Yeah, that looked pretty awesome, I suppose.
