MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #25/26 - A Canterlot Wedding

Here we are, the final stretch! Anticipation builds as the long-awaited season finale of Friendship is Magic season two is finally here! Hasbro has been hyping this one up like there's no tomorrow, but will it stand up to the advertisements and celebrity spotlights Hasbro has granted to it?

Let me just start this up with a bit of a disclaimer: when going into this episode, I had no real idea of what to expect. I knew of the two ponies to be wed, and I knew that Cadance was an alicorn, and I knew that this annoyed me greatly. I knew that it was a two-parter, of course, but besides that I had no real idea of what the 40 minutes of plot had in store for us!

As will become plainly evident in my review, I was very pleasantly surprised. As per usual, spoilers lie within! In fact, they will be particularly prominent due to the nature of this episode. So definitely don't try to read this before watching the episode!

--- Part One ---

The episode immediately starts off on a high note - quickly getting us into the meat of things while not feeling rushed and not forsaking explanations, either! And best of all, it uses a song sung by Twilight to do it! Twilight doesn't get enough songs, and this one is a real joy. Importantly, we also start off with our first sign of contention: the fact that Twilight's brother, Shining Armor, didn't tell Twilight in person (in pony?) that he was getting married. Twilight is less-than happy about this, and if you guessed that a substantial part of the episode was going to be some kind of contention between the siblings, you'd be right!

The six ponies quickly head to Canterlot, and we quickly are introduced to the ponies to be wed: the aforementioned Shining Armor, and his bride whose full name I refuse to try to spell, Princess Cadance. Shining Armor is quickly established to be awesome as well as protective of his little sister, and he's even the captain of the royal guard. Apparently greatness runs in Twilight's family!

But Cadance is the one who created a lot of contention amongst certain people, myself included. But... well, we'll talk about her later. If you have watched the episode (and I must reiterate that you should), you'll know why.

Perhaps more importantly is that we're nicely introduced to what will become the main issue throughout the episode: Canterlot has had a threat made against it by an unknown source, and so Celestia, Luna, and the royal guard have been redoubling their efforts to keep everyone safe.

And yes, I did say Luna! Luna doesn't get a very big role in this episode pair, but she makes a few cameos. Considering I wasn't expecting her to show up at all, I'm very happy to see her at least recognized by the writers! Hopefully she'll make her presence a little more known in season 3.

The big plot of Part One focuses on Cadance and Twilight's feelings about her. While Twilight used to really like her as a foalsitter, Cadance has, apparently, grown into a rather unpleasant mare to be around! The way the contention is paced is done very well - everything is kept in perfect balance so that there is support for both sides of Twilight's arguments in the audience's mind. Even as the episode reaches its climax with Twilight accusing Cadance of brain-washing her brother, Shining Armor offers a perfectly viable explanation to Twilight's accusations, and the episode very nearly ends with Twilight once again jumping to the worst possible explanation and losing a possible friendship and joyful occasion because of it.

Until the reveal, that is. And let me just say that I would have probably gone crazy if Hasbro had split up the two parts into two different weeks like they did with Discord's arc. The cliffhanger is that evil.

...so, before we go on to part two, I'll do a quick opinion: part one is an excellent introduction to the contention that will occur in part two, and is a generally great way of introducing the overarching plot while leaving lots of excellent hints along the way. Did you notice that the flashback Cadance had different colored magic than the present Cadance?

--- Part Two ---

So it turns out Cadance is evil and the real Cadance is actually trapped with Twilight in the catacombs under Canterlot castle (there are catacombs under Canterlot castle??). Dun dun dunnn!

So now that we have the real Cadance, let's talk about her. I went into this episode biased against her because, well, she's a pink alicorn. Thankfully, her personality is quite likeable - she's kind of dorky and cute, and even if she's a pink alicorn she still has a really nice color scheme. So, overall, she manages to be a really great character alongside Shining Armor, and for that I'm glad.

Some aspects of her still seem like unnecessary meddling, though. Based on her role in the episode, it seems clear that she was originally written to be just a unicorn, and I would guess that she wasn't originally meant to be a princess either. She only ever actually uses her wings once, and it's mostly off-screen. As for her princess title, it's mentioned a single time during Twilight's flashback but it's never elaborated as to what she's a princess of. I guess she's probably something like Blueblood in that sense, but at least Blueblood had a reason to be a prince.

But there's no time to ponder such things, because we get our first villain song, delivered as a Cadance/Fake!Cadance duet! And it is brilliant, and out of the three main songs in this episode is it easily my favorite. And I know I'm not the only one that's happy we finally got a villain song!

After a bit, Twilight and Cadance get out of the catacombs and crash the wedding between Fake!Cadance and Shining Armor (who is very clearly mind controlled at this point), and Cadance confronts Fake!Cadance, revealing her to actually be a changeling! But not just a changeling, she's the queen of the changelings! Her name isn't revealed within the episode, but Word of God says it's Chrysalis so we'll go with that.

And Queen Chrysalis is awesome. Changelings in Friendship is Magic morph into creatures that are loved, and proceed to feed off of that love and use it as magical energy. Chrysalis reveals her plan, like all children's villains are required to do by some obscure villainy law, which is to feed off of Shining Armor's love and keep him from giving his barrier upkeep so that her changeling minions can break through and take over Canterlot and then Equestria, using the bountiful love within to fuel themselves.

Then Celestia is like "lol no" and then Chrysalis is like "haha yes" and Celestia gets totaled in a generally-disappointing display of goddess-princess strength. Or perhaps an impressive display of the Power of Love. Either way, it's a tad bit disappointing that the one time Celestia actually steps up to take down the evil villain she nearly breaks her horn.

Then the Mane 6 go off to get the Elements of Harmony to take on the changelings and have a really great fight scene with a bunch of them. That's right, the Mane 6 actually fight something. I was impressed and very pleased! It's not exactly often that we get to see the Mane 6 really stick it too some baddies. And they're cool baddies, too, as they morph into the Mane 6 to create confusion. It's a great fight scene, I gotta say!

Unfortunately, a whole hoard of changelings beat them to the Elements and the Mane 6 get captured and taken back to Chrysalis so she can gloat some more. And gloat she does! Just when it seems all is lost, Cadance un-possesses Shining Armor with her patented love spell that was foreshadowed in part one and the two of them throw out one last gambit - using the power of love to repel the changelings with their combined magic.

All while Chrysalis just watches and scoffs. I know that they have to take out the baddies somehow, but her idiot ball is every bit as bad as Discord's! I mean, she just took advantage of their love-power to blow up Celestia, so how can she legitimately think that they can't use it to take her out?

Anyway, the gambit works as planned and all is well. Cadance and Shining Armor redo the wedding and get married, and everypony gets a great happy ending. And Luna pops back in, asking if she missed anything. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

So, all in all, "A Canterlot Wedding" is a huge success. I have a few qualms with it, primarily Queen Chrysalis' rather lame downfall, but all in all it's a great episode. Out of all the two-parters we've had, it's easily my favorite, and it definitely surpasses the rather lackluster finale of season one.

So, all-in-all, I'll give A Canterlot Wedding a...

9/10

Pros:
-Really well put together, with a really compelling plotline
-Cadance and Shining Armor are portrayed very well
-Changelings make for amazing villains
-Practically everything "crazy" is foreshadowed quite well

Cons:
-Queen Chrysalis really shouldn't have been defeated that easily
-Cadance seems to be an alicorn and a princess purely due to executive meddling

---

And that's that. The final episode of Friendship is Magic until fall, and boy was it a good one! Like I said, I completely expected to hate Cadance, but she's actually a pretty great character. And I've already got some great headcanon to explain away her being an alicorn, so there's that!

And with the last of Friendship is Magic's second season, I also suppose I'm saying goodbye to my season two episode reviews. It's been a really eye-opening experience for me about keeping a consistent schedule, and I'm really glad I went ahead and gave it a shot! I'm not sure if I'll continue doing Friendship is Magic reviews when season three starts up again, but I've got a lot of time to think before that happens, so I can't say either way quite yet.

But anyway, thanks a bunch for reading! Right before doing this review, I had the eye-opening experience of looking at my page view stats and seeing, to my surprise, that I actually have a fairly reasonable amount of people that care enough about my opinions to read them. So, seriously, thanks a bunch! I may have said this before, but if I can bring a little entertainment to a single person's day through my blog, any effort I put into it will be worth it.

So with that said, I'll see everyone later! I hope you enjoyed going through My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic season two as much as I did.

~C.O

~ Jameson ~