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Before I get into Swarm of the Century, I want to quickly go and rank the episodes I’ve already watched:
Ep1+2, Friendship is Magic – 9.4
Ep3, The Ticket Master – 6.5
Ep4, Applebuck Season – 8
Ep5, Griffon The Brush-Off – 7.6
Ep6, Boast Busters – 8
Ep7, Dragonshy – 8.5
Ep8, Look Before You Sleep - 8
Ep9, Bridle Gossip – 7.5
You see, when I saw the word “swarm” I instantly remembered that this was the real first episode that I ever watched. I saw it first as Friendship is Witchcraft, yes, but after watching the two-parter, my memory at least is that I skipped straight to this episode because it felt like a more natural “first episode” to me back then. So, I wanted to establish how good this episode actually was to me now before I even went into it, as in my mind this is the fondly-recalled first experience, and honestly I have at times forgotten that it isn’t actually the first post-pilot episode in the show. So I set out to revisit what I’d written about the previous episodes so far. At first I was thinking of doing a ranked list of my favourite episodes so far on rewatching, but it occurred to me that this would be a tricky process to keep track of, and if I score the episodes, I could simply go back at the end of a season or something and see what rank they fell into based on what score I gave them. So I played around with ideas of different scoring systems, but I decided I’d go with the same one Bridge has gone with.
So there it is, albeit a bit influenced by hindsight. I’m ranking episodes based on a criteria primarily of personal enjoyment, including guilty pleasure without deducting points for the ‘guilt’, and on comfiness factor. Other things may factor in, but only really if they stand out to me as especially good or especially bad. And as I was saying previously, I’m not a great ranking person, so I may drop it later on in the show, but I felt a need with this episode to compare it, so here it is for now!
So, into the episode!
I like that the visit of Princess Celestia is set up straight away, it makes it so that this first line in this establishing scene is serving a quite neat purpose, very little time is being wasted here. Right after Fluttershy mentions Celestia to the squirrel, we’re introduced to the Parasprite. Fluttershy is timid to an extreme, I realise, but I found it somehow a little silly that out in nature, a small noise and rustle makes her jump with fear. Surely normal animals would be spooking her all the time like that? It’s always a bit of a selective fear and perhaps she’s in different states of fear day-by-day, but it just stood out to me a little.
I liked the gag where she crushes the apple for the Parasprite to easily consume, only for the Parasprite to ignore it and go straight for the basket of apples. It’s both funny and, like everything else in this first scene, efficiently establishes future events in the episode. Even from just this gag I think adult audiences can probably surmise where the episode is most likely going. Finally having him nestle in her hair, Fluttershy saying she’ll show the ‘sprite off to her friends, and a sting on a close-up of the barrel, and we’ve got everything we need to know for the episode. Superb first scene, great cliffhanger before the theme song.
Twilight panicking here about the arrival of Celestia is great, but I can’t help but think ahead to future episodes where this type of panic goes into absolute overdrive. So far it’s quite tame by comparison, and a believable sort of anxiety that’s very relatable. Throwing off the responsibility of cleaning onto Spike seems very in-character for current-era Twilight, but I could see people disagreeing so I think it’s also good that you can interpret it as a certain obliviousness, which is also in character for Twilight. Somehow though I kind of like the slightly mischievous element of Twilight running off to do something more fun while Spike does the work, a likeable character flaw you might say.