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@river mines
well Celestia was training her to take over the whole time, and with her ruling for a 1000 years, she might’ve started that unicorn school just to find a successor, and shockingly twilight wasn’t her first choice, it was sunset shimmer, and sunset would’ve been on the same path as twilight was, if she wasn’t being all greedy like in wanting to be a princess.

In the first chapter she was letting the Earth Ponies destroy Maretime Bay with magic…they learn so quickly

@river mines
Now it’s Sunny’s turn. The cycle repeats.

@Background Pony #B68A
much like how Celistia did.

Spike should be a recurring character in G5, as a wise old mentor who occasionally gives the Mane Six advice.

@TheQuietMan
That’s why Celestia ran away at the first opportunity and threw everything at Twilight

@CloudMistDragon
The big problem is that making the ponies dependent on the crystals is a terrible idea, they were greatly harmed by this in the long run

@CloudMistDragon
To be fair, I would be very tired and exhausted having to babysit a billion surrogate children. And they aren’t even actually children anymore.

@river mines
It was the best idea at the time because Twilight needed to protect the magic from Opaline in a way that would still allow the ponies to use the magic. I was not referring to the last two minutes of the movie. I was referring to this.

I know I’ve posted this before, but again, it’s because we’ve been through this before. It wasn’t Twilight that made the magic leave Equestria, it was the ponies’ choice to divide.

Imagine all the ponies with their winter coats. Aww, so fluffy

One question, how strong was Opaline just before the Rainbow of Light attacked her?

She had stolen a lot of magic from the dragons, taken all the cutie marks in the three cities (certainly tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands) and finally took Sunny’s alicorn powers - and when she smashed the protection spell around the Unity crystals…

I think she was 3x alicorn strength, three times as strong as an average alicorn. Only Twilight who had magic from four alicorns in her when she fought Tirek could have been stronger or as strong.

That makes Rainbow of Light from the rainbow locket perhaps the strongest magical artifact ever in G4/G5, with the exception of Grogar’s bell. It was able to attack and hold an alicorn that could theoretically annihilate an entire country as Twilight had demonstrated in her encounter with Tirek, and it happened so easily!

So Sunny might have the strongest magical weapon in all of MLP since Megan Williams. So strong, that the alicorns in Skyros can stand no chance against this. And as we’ve seen in G1, Rainbow of Light is very lethal. In S9, we saw the Mane 6 combine their elemental magic through Twilight, who used it to recreate rainbow magic that pulverized Sombra. (he survives) And when Twilight did the same - this time with three groups - she was able to overcome Grogar’s bell which had maybe four alicorn strength in it, if not more, Discord’s magic was in it.

What was witnessed in S9 revealed that the Rainbow of Light has its origin in pony magic because rainbow magic that came from the ponies (and non-ponies) had the same characteristics.

Already in the movie it was discovered that the magic in Equestria/Equus is layered, the unity crystals block active pony magic from the ponies that can normally generate this - but this does not affect the internal and “inactive” magic that gives the ponies grip ability, cutie marks and creation of magical mana/essence in them. Chimeric creatures and creatures with appendages such as horns and wings have been able to exist by having internal magic. The ponies are slightly different from the other species in Equus in that they have externally active magic and are more “magically active” than the others with few exceptions.

The new information about the dragons revealed that this principle of external active magic and internal magic not being touched also applies to non-ponies. When Opaline stole the Dragon Stone, she was able to tap out dragon magic in addition to stealing fire magic. She couldn’t use it until she got hold of a dragon, that explains why Sparky was so important, he was the “key” to “open” the channel into the dragon magic. She uses the same method by stealing cutie marks and integrating them into her together tree, to drain the magic from them, and the unity crystals themselves.

But the internal magic of all living creatures in a magical world could not be stolen. Think it’s soul binding magic related to instincts and basic emotions, emotional magic seemed to be very important because it can’t be destroyed. It could explain why ponies and others become so emaciated and near death when the changelings sucked too much out of them. Emotions are magic in Equus, and friendship is magic. In comparison, other magic is more artificially based and easy to steal.

Magic can be stored in crystals and inorganic objects such as amulets and lockets, but perhaps it works like electricity in our world, with a “transformer” from an organic life form to an inorganic object. Tirek and Opaline couldn’t take magic from them. With this ulterior motive then it becomes easy to understand why Twilight came up with this idea of making magic impossible to steal. But Opaline found the solution by growing a together tree that can transform magic and makes this available to her. And when she took the cutie marks, she could just put them into the tree for the same purpose. The tree was her key.

Early on, she had likely only been able to steal magic from the dragons by utilizing her elemental talent linked to her cutie mark, and that made her so formidable, Twilight probably had her hardest fight when she confronted and defeated Opaline. We don’t know how much Twilight and her friends had to pay to defeat Opaline who may have drained fire magic from many dragons. Judging by Spike’s reactions, a lot. And since Opaline could take cutie marks with her spell, she had been able to use the same ability as Tirek.

Basically, Twilight had been very thoughtful, but unfortunately she hadn’t anticipated that the three crystals would be separated from each other for too long (perhaps a time limit of several months or a moon/year) and that Opaline could be solution-oriented in addition to her cunning. As the magic disappeared - and then returned - the plan, as the dragons mentioned, began to fall apart.

@northern haste
That’s the problem, putting all the magic into crystals is a bad idea for reasons previously mentioned

@river mines
They might mean putting magic in the crystals isn’t why they lost magic.
The crystals just stopped giving them magic

@CloudMistDragon
in the film this didn’t happen until the last 2 minutes.

@river mines
We’ve been over this before, the ponies always had access to the magic.

@Zabilac
I think it’s just you. Sort of. Opaline’s endgame had always been the magic stored in the crystals, and once she figured out what they were, her entire plan became about countering the protection spell.

The first three chapters are about the ponies getting to grips with magic, while Opaline tries to figure out exactly what Twilight did while she was banished. The ponies mostly have magic figured out by the start of Chapter 4, and the last three chapters are about Opaline’s side quest. So the crystals don’t get a lot of focus again until Chapter 6. Plus, unlike The Elements of Harmony, which are more about offense, The Unity Crystals are more defensive in nature.

So they’re still important, but it seems like they’ve run their course as a plot device.

Haha, true. I feel that groundwork has sort-of been laid out. When they talk about the crystals, they tend to focus more on the protection spell to protect Equestria’s magic. You could say the two are so connected so the writers didn’t feel the need to emphasize both, but it strikes me a bit like a super-powerful shield than protecting the magic battery.

The reveal that the ponies power the Together Trees rather than the Together Trees just take it from the ponies. And to me, even after the crystals fell apart and Opaline had all the cutie mark magic, I think they could still somehow use magic? At the very least, the royal family could still fly, which makes me think the other ponies could also still use magic.

@Zabilac
a natural evolution of the crystals’ narrative would be at some point the Mane Six having to sacrifice the crystals to defeat a big villain and luckily, as the real magic is the friends we made along the way, the magic works again without the crystals.

Maybe it’s just me, but I kind-of feel like the writers have been trying to move away from the whole “ponykind’s magic is dependent on the unity crystals” thing. Not really a complete retcon, but maybe trying to lessen the importance on how dependent they are on the crystals. Or maybe I’m just imagining things because that’s possible. XD

Ohh, okay.

Depending on how much you want to count TYT as canon, technically they have showed another city, like that vacation resort.

pretty sure at least right now nothing from that leak about 2024 has actually been officially announced.

@Zabilac
only 4 specials will be, the normal eps will still be 5 minutes

Wait TYT is 20 minutes long now??

I have had a theory rattling in my brain that TYT being moved to Netflix could be them trying to fulfill a content contract with Netflix so that the next 3D series can be on a different platform that doesn’t cause scheduling issues like Netflix’s release patterns do / did.