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Description

Srsly. A little filly (now ex) bully makes a better “villian” than the season premiere villain. That’s just sad.

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Background Pony #A58A
Personally, I think it is because Babs was a character that had a role in her episode and Sombra just seemed like more of a … force.
 
He was the unicorn equivalent of a tornado. (And had the same amount of characterization as one).
Disharmony
The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

I liked Babs and Sombra honestly, though I’d hesitate to call Babs a ‘villain’ by any stretch of the imagination. I think the problem with Sombra is they tried to go in two different directions with him and, as a result, they didn’t get either effect that they wanted.
 
  1. Mysterious force: This is a great approach to take and one that hasn’t been taken by a MLP villain yet. Trickquestion gives a great example of how to make it work. Even if they insist on pointing out that he used to be a unicorn, don’t expound on much more then that, just leave lots of hints at what he /could/ have been. The problem…they /did/ give him a back story and, at the end, tried to give him a few speaking lines as well. This damages the ‘mysterious force’ approach by giving Sombra the barest traces of a personality after he got turned into a living shadow.
     
    2: Evil King/Schemer/Dark Magician aspect: This is another good approach they could have taken! With the right back story, Sombra could have been an /amazing/ foil for Twilight or the heroes period! They even give hints of this with his back story, traps, and a decidedly ‘in it for the evulz’ voice and line about his slaves…but they didn’t give him /enough/ lines or back story to make this approach work right. We know very little about Discord, but he had that raw charisma going for him that made it work. Sombra isn’t given a chance to develop that charisma.
     
    I’m not unhappy with Sombra…I just think the writers tried to do two different things with him and didn’t quite nail either, which is to be expected in a 44 minute time frame where he’s /not/ the main character. What I really want is for Sombra to come back so we can learn more about him or, at least, establish why he was such a danger/mysterious force.
gingerninja666
The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

Kaze ni Nare
Well I happened to love Sombra. He was a competent villain for one. And the most genre savvy. I thought NMM as a villain was FAR more boring than SOmbra
Trickquestion
The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

@Draewa
 
He has the atheistic of a mysterious villain, but they tried to give him a backstory anyway, and it wasn’t a very good one to boot. If you tell us he’s an evil king, then have him be an evil king when we encounter him in person. How did he get to be a shadow monster anyway? Did the Princesses cause that? Becuase that would mean their efforts actually made an enemy more powerful. Imagine if the hologram scene had been cut. Everyone arrives at the Crystal Empire, and all the while this evil THING is haunting them relentlessly. The Crystal Ponies know something about him, but it’s dark magic keeps them silent. Finally, after terrorizing everypony and slowly sapping the life from Cadence, the thing reveals its true form.
 
A mere man (well, stallion).
 
That would have made Sombre at atmospheric threat. Instead, h’s just confusing and uninteresting.
shockroach

@Draewa  
I really don’t care for him either. I prefer Chrysalis and Discord over him, but I just love how he was utilized in the episodes
Draewa

@watermelonpoop  
I didn’t say that I want to know his lore. Knowing the background of an antagonist actually is often the worst way of making him more interesting. Just think about the monster from Amnesia or Slenderman (Damn, I really should get better examples, but you get my point). The mystery surrounding them is a huge part of the characterization and one of the main reasons why they are scary.  
I dunno, but with Sombra this mystery thing seems set up the wrong way. He’s not mysterious enough for the mystery to be part of his character, he’s not interesting in any other aspect, and antagonists who are evil for the sake of being evil… Meh. I didn’t like him, that’s my point.
shockroach

@Draewa  
Sauron had a couple hundred pages  
The episodes had 44 minutes  
I’m not trying to insinuate that they a perfect matches of each other or that Sombra is better - that would be ridiculous.  
Do you immediately need to know more about him? Knowing he is a huge threat is enough.
Draewa

@HamburgerTime  
I know, it’s like that thing with the repaired table. You’d think the fandom would be done with it by now, but then someone opens a thread about it and everyone’s on it again.
Trickquestion
The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

@CottonTales
 
The Smooze had the witches to provide personality. Really, they were the real villains, and the Smooze was just a mindless weapon. Sombra could be considered what happens when you take away the Witches and just leave the weapon.
 
As he appeared in the show, Sombra’s song would be a five minutes of guttereal, incomprehensible yelling. If he had stayed in his Dictator form, I’d think some badass marching theme, like The Imperial March.
Trickquestion
The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

@soundtea
 
That was kinda what I was expecting to be honest. I imagined Sombra as some kind of foil to Twilight, an example of what could happen if Twilight paranoia and obsessiveness got the better of her.
Draewa

@watermelonpoop  
I think that every villain is just a symbolic figure for the protagonists internal conflicts. Discord was exactly that. But Sombra just did a bad job at this. I’m sure that every fanfic writer out there could come up with a more interesting interaction between the protagonist and an malevolent force.  
And if you insist on comparing Sauron to Sombra then look at what makes Sauron interesting. Even if I completely ignore all the books of LOTR and just look at the movies there are plenty of scenes in which Sauron builds up way more tension and menace than Sombra does.
soundtea
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The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

Ocellus is best buggo
@Trickquestion  
Agreed, he was revealed like months ago on the wedding quiz thing, so we were hyped for months.
 
What we got a a vauge thing that had little to no personality whatsoever. Hell just saying that he was a student of Celestia’s that got led to the dark arts or something would have been nice.
Background Pony #9E21
Sombra wasn’t a villain, he was basically just a plot point inserted to cause stress for Twilight and make her work harder.
Trickquestion
The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

The leaks of this guy were extremely misleading, so our expectations were also wildly different from what was planned.
 
The early images made us think of this full  
When they planned to give us this full