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Subversion... Now that I am onto the topic of the true three main villains. Our expectations were subverted. Was it a good subversion though? That is where I am slightly mixed. Thematically, the whole, let's use friendship to destroy Equestria for all it was built up wasn't really brought fully into the picture in the final. It was just the reason they were working together. It was an element that wa introduced only to trick us and in The Ending of The End, they just acted like generic evil for the sake of being evil villains for the most part. It feels like the Hollywood version of subversion/plot twist: "See we implied it was this the whole time but it's really not!" It feels like their was potential for something more here with this dynamic they set up. Like a full exploration of what Cozy Glow represents. It was a dynamic partly explored in the season 8 final and it felt clever but could use some more work. There could have been a much more interesting personal conflict other than Twilight losing hope do to the situation being dim from sheer power of villeins and having no elements of harmony. More of an ideological or philosophical bend to it, like TS having doubts on what friendship is if it can be used for evil or something that I think would be easier to set up with what we had: Cozy Glow, Crystalis and Tirek having discovered the bounds of friendship but still being an evil threat that needs to be naturalized. Even if they couldn't go that far it felt like there could have been a little bit more. ...or could there have? I still think there is a couple of lines of defense on this. First of all, it does feel pretty reasonable that they formed a somewhat shaky alliance and it really did not go much beyond that. I think though this defense is somewhat weak from a story telling angle with the fact of them having hinted at this dynamic pretty strongly, but it is something to consider. Secondly I think too there is a point to be made with the nature of the fact that this was the final itself. They were going to try to squeeze as much in as possible. Would exploring such a theme draw too much time away from the main cast? This is the stronger line. Anywhere to just have a giant battle and tons of fanservice in a checklist style format the final is probably the most justified. Putting too much of an overarching theme could've messed that intention up and this choice may not be best to view as a screw up on the writers but a conscious choice on the writers to do it like this. This is why I say I am only slightly conflicted. They still fit in some interesting stuff with the trio (Chrissy vs Dolores, Tirek's father). Even if it's a thematic element that I think should have been explored better I'm not sure how critical I can be on it