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> And that’s how Equestria was made!
Iconic.

In Sugarcube corner, Rainbow Dash tells her story and the Mane Six all realize that their stories were interconnected. I love the way they all react to it, and Twilight’s letter to Celestia about it at the end. It’s an interesting early example of a literal connection between friendship and magic in this world, after the pilot that is. Fate linking these six ponies together is an idea which perhaps takes some of the wind out of the sails of them befriending eachother earlier, and I feel as though I’ve heard it said that this sort of fateful connection between them all is perhaps a little too convenient, but in a world where fate and magic are intertwined with all aspects of reality and fate itself doesn’t feel too overused in the show as a whole, I think it works well (provided we don’t assume that these six becoming the Elements of Harmony was also predestined, that I do agree would be a little overly convenient. I prefer to think that this sort of thing happens for a lot of ponies, fateful friendships – in this case it just so happened to be extra significant). It’s not necessarily much of a lesson – moreso an idea of hope, that perhaps good things are fated for the future, a sort of lesson of optimism. I really like this episode a lot, mainly because it solidifies the idea of the Mane Six all being really close friends with one another. Much like the famous Kirk-Spock-Bones trio of 60s Star Trek, the bread and butter of this show really is these six and their relationships to one another. There are a lot of shows, particularly western cartoons, where if you think about what each character thinks of every other character, there are lots of gaps where you’re not really sure what two characters would think of one another, and they just don’t interact that much – and I believe I’ve brought this up before in terms of it being really quite impressive to me that this show juggles six characters all having strong, explored relationships with each and every one of the other six. I also like the CMC in this episode, they’re used perfectly as a framing device, it’s very well conceived and executed all round. I’m going to give it a 9.2 – in my mind it’s comparable to the pilot, coming close to that great group dynamic we got to see there but not quite reaching the same level, with a couple of rough patches in terms of how you interpret this episode compared to the pilot too.