This was a terrible comic.

@Background Pony #876B  
nope this a pony of shadows is not same!
 
siege of the crystal empire: idw cannot smash crystal heart, sombra no matter what he hurts umbrum  
so batch episodes show in (the crystalling) hurt crystal heart, sombra not here now in crystal empire

SO. MANY. WASTED. OPPORTUNITIES!!!!!!!!!!! >:(

@CronoM  
Canon =/= Good

@CronoM  

@aza191  
“Baby alicorn after random tantrum destroys lynch pin that keeps entire kingdom from self destructing with ice and all 4 princesses are helpless without some random spells only the world’s best magic chronicler knows but nobody thought a magic chronicler would be useful ever until then”
 
being canon rather then
 
“Epic sombra return story that needs polishing and more then 4 comics that shows villainy and heroism from both the side of demons and the side of old and new princesses.”
 
…doesn’t seem like a fair trade does it?

…so, in other words, yet another batch of IDW comics are not canon. Good to know.

@Mortis  
I still say Spike At Your Service is one of the funniest episodes of the series.

@Mortis  
You’re right the show is not perfect just look at season 6 and especially it’s finale, and I actually like quite a lot of the IDW comics but the villain arcs are almost always pretty bad and this one killed the villain comics for me, it was easily one of the worst right up there with the western arc. The other comics are mostly fine though.

@Pagan  
People who don’t read the comics really miss out on some good stories and explanations the show never addressed. Sure there are some bad comics but the good outweigh the bad. The show isn’t perfect either. Ahem, spike at your service

@CronoM
 
Agreed on the premiere.
 
|| As for Hope I’ll agree on the middle ground since I think the show desperately needs more middle ground characters. It shows too many time whenever Twilight has any sort of focus except like once and the black and white mentality the show keeps on referring to makes me think it’s strangling itself sometimes with those limitations. Not saying the show doesn’t have middlegrounds but it rarely if ever happens.
 
So based on that Hope is a breath of fresh air for a character. Just wished they developed her character more but maybe that’ll come in a future comic. I don’t know because the one thing the comics seem to do is that if something is established in the comics they’re rarely referred to again. ||

@Jades  
Me too. The show gets a lot of leway solely because its the show, but the comics were a ton better in how ‘things actually happened’. Tourists confusing lasers coming out of the castle walls as fireworks was way dumber then anything in the comic story, and that’s not even mentioning how lame the premier’s plot was.
 
 
||  
To be quite honest, I liked the middle ground they took with her.
 
She was a revolutionist. And not a sociopathic, cultist like Glimmer, (although Glimmer did had a few justified concerns considering how many in her villagers came originally and stayed away from the rest of society). She was destined to be a princess just like Cadence, but her best friend had a kind heart but his very being as an Umbra Pony was an abomination the princesses deigned unworthy of help. For years he lay sick because the crystal heart was killing him, until the Umbra’s call became too strong to ignore.
 
Radiant Hope didn’t know about the umbra. No one but Amore and her bloodline could see through their glamour.
 
In the 1000 years of near timeless exile, all she saw was that her best friend was ignored by the princesses and tortured by the crystal heart, while she was being overly praised, until Sombra went mad with pain and dark power.
 
She saw Sombra as a best friend and more who was never given a chance to be good because of the princesses cause, like changelings, saw umbra ponies as predisposed to evil even though he personally isn’t. Instead of becoming a princess, once she escaped exile she decided to right the wrongs and give Sombra back his first chance, even if she had to break a few laws. She rounded up mostly harmless troublemakers and a villain weaker but evil enough that Sombra wouldn’t want anything to do with her(chysalis) as a distraction to free Sombra and revive his body as well. And no matter how many things went south(Twilight’s trigger magic finger escalated things to 100x worse when Sombra initially started to consider giving up on conquest) she decided to stay by his side and convince him he was still worthy of redemption, and more importantly, choice. That he was worthy of a second chance even when he was never given a first due to the princesses like Amore back then.
 
And in the end, her quiet support in Sombra’s good side made him banish the Umbra that created him for all eternity.
 
And, to finish their redemption, they decided to not be hypocrites and give Princess Amore a second chance on life when she was the main pony that ignored Sombra’s childhood and escalated this the original mess.
 
Radiant Hope discarded her destiny as princess and managed to completely reform a guy destined to be the lord of all monsters. Not bad for comic-only character.
 
Was radiant hope a villain? Was Radiant Hope a true hero? That’s the beauty of it, in Celestia and Amore’s perfect society which had no place for a kind soul like young Sombra, she was inevitably both. A very good ‘partially-disillusioned, partially-never giving up on someone’ character.  
||

@Pagan  
Well, it has to after the point where Twilight was willing to let her friends get hurt because she’d be breaking rules if she did anything about it… only to later break another rule.

So… just who REALLY is Flurry Heart’s father???

Just shows that the comics will never be canon yay

Would be cool if they bring this up in a later issue.

Would’ve preferred the Umbrum than some weather honestly.

@LuminoZero  
To be fair, from what I’ve read (which may or may not be true itself), he had a lot more planned for the story arc, but the higher ups told him, “It has to be this length and no more,” resulting in things ending up rushed, and a disaster. Had he been given even two more books to work with, things could have been a lot better. (Not saying they would have been for sure, but the possibility is there)

I’m more interested in what the Crystal Heart’s temporary destruction might have had to do with that Changeling at the end. What if the Heart was the only thing keeping the Hive from returning? What if… the Heart’s reflection of love and harmony across Equestria was allowing the Hive to live peacefully in exile, without having to gank love directly from innocent victims?  
>>111720t (merged)  
@Digitalgame  
@IceKitsune  
@LanceOmikron  
@Digitalgame  
@LuminoZero  
You all knew it was coming.
 
The show and the comics are both canon. They are two separate continuities that use the same basic characters and settings to tell different stories that have a one-way interaction, with the comics taking direction from the show, but the show taking nothing of any significance from the comics.
 
@moonlightaveger

YEEESSS, THIS THE PROPER ATTITUDE FOR ANYONE WHO DISLIKES THE COMICS, THANK YOU
 
Seriously, if the comics piss somebody off– for whatever reason– they can be safely and easily ignored, because the show has repeatedly demonstrated that it is going to keep doing its own thing without taking any significant cues from the comics whatsoever. Aside from fluffery like background OCs, if any element of a story appears in both show and comics, it’s either because the comics are following in the show’s hoofsteps or because Hasbro Corporate gave them both the same marching orders, and Hasbro is always going to be the one with final say.
 
@Background Pony #322F  
and I’d like to add that the ‘‘storm’’ that was unleashed by the heart’s destruction can easily be seen as the result of the brief liberation of the umbrum, thereby indirectly referencing the comics.  

@Background Pony #2D4F
 
In fairness, some of the comics are actually worth reading. In fact, many of them are. Just don’t let Katie Cook write an adventure story. She’s HORRIBLE at it. I like her as a SoL writier (She did both the Luna and Rarity Micro Comics, as well as the two Big Mac comics) but my God, her adventure stories are painfully amateurish.
 
Jeremy Whitley, who wrote this comic, did just as badly. What a train wreck.
 
-Lumino

@Background Pony #2D4F  
Trust me I’m not.

@Pagan  
You say that like it’s a bad thing.

Chalk up yet another episode not giving a fuck about the comics.

@Background Pony #3BB9  
They give us stories we wouldn’t WANT to experience in the show, because we want the show to be well written.