Unpopular opinion time

@gingerninja666  
Agreed. The action was nice to watch but it went on a little too long.
 
As for it versus S5’s finale, the finale was cool for the flashiness and all but, for a show about teaching and spreading the values of friendship, the last 10 mins of Cutie Remark alone emphasized the show’s overall message better than both eps of Twilight’s kingdom ever did.

@Ring Team
 
I’m one of the rare people who likes the stuff between Starlight and Twilight in Cloudsdale more than the alternate timeline stuff, so my standards are pretty weird already, I suppose.

Wasn’t one of the problems people had with Starlight was that the montage made her seem forgiven way too easily and looking like she got away with everything though? They’d be ending the show focused on the questionable redemption of the most divisive character ever. Plus if it was the series finale, there wouldn’t be any chance to (or try to) redeem Starlight in the viewer’s eyes so they’d just end the show when she was at her most hated.

@Background Pony #01EC  
Discord’s redemption happened in the last few mins of his ep in S3 so I wouldn’t complain if starlight got something like that.

@Background Pony #563A  
tbf, Discord’s redemption was also a really big mistake lol

Honestly, The Last Problem was pretty much how I expected the series to end and I don’t really see any major problems with it. The Mane 6 are still friends, the world is at peace, we get a musical number and Twilight continues the cycle that started everything. How else could it have ended?

@Ring Team  
Strongly disagree - the CMC aren’t the stars, and even their stories didn’t end with their marks. And a TV show can end in a lot of ways, some more satisfying than others.
 
 
@Background Pony #563A  
In some ways you could say it’s kind of suitable…but in others it’s emphatically not. Really, the Season 4 finale would arguably be better…but I wouldn’t want to lose all the good later episodes.

Twilight staying in Ponyville, no implying that she’ll outlive her friends, maybe better “future” designs, and taking out the AppleDash and Fluttercord implications would have been nice.

@Background Pony #01EC  
For some fans - but there are also many fans with the exact opposite opinions. Can’t please everyone…
 
Last Problem wasn’t the best imaginable finale, but Season 9 lowered my expectations enough to accept it as better than what we coukd have got.

@Kiryu-Chan  

 
I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but Discord is the perfect villain for a lighthearted work such as MLP: Tons of fun to see in action, powerful enough to give the heroes a hard time, but not interested in causing any permanent harm.
 
@Brass Beau  
My only real problem with The Last Problem was that it felt like it was just trying to show the grown-up versions of the child characters somewhere, as opposed to intelligently speculating on where they might go. It would have been way cooler to see the CMC using the talents they had been developing over the series, as opposed to shoving them all in the school as teachers.
 
As for the Student Six, when the only real employment option for graduates of a particular school is teaching at that school, that has unfortunate implications about the quality of education offered therein.

@Latecomer  
Like I said earlier, S4’s finale is great for big, flashy and epic in ways the other finales aside from S9’s was but for the overall message of the show ‘teaching and spreading friendship’, S4’s finale wasn’t that. It was about Twilight feeling out of place as a princess, magic rainbow powers we never saw again (outside of a dream and merchandizing) and that stupid mystery box they spent all season making us guess over. Its a big grand epic finale but one more suited to an action/adventure show. Fine for a season finale but not for a series finale for a show like FiM.

@Background Pony #01EC  
Outside of a horrible accident, almost all of them were gonna outlive at least one friend.
 
@DoctorWTF  
Pretty sure at least half of the student six weren’t teachers and the CMC teaching at the school seemed pretty logical since they were already friendship tutors.
 
I will say a little less time could have been spent on the flashback, though.

@Background Pony #01EC  
Finale Appledash hinting was nice though. A good way to wash the taste of the absolute oversaturation of rarijack implications the eqg staff kept churning out

@DoctorWTF  
I’d say that he had kind of too strong a debut though - after that, no-one coukd really be considered safe as long as he was loose. And if he was re-sealed every time he appeared, he’d quickly become pathetic.
 
As for the epilouge… yeah, there’s only so much you can do with one song sequnce.
 
 
@Background Pony #563A  
I somewhat agree, but I don’t consider an episode focused solely on Twilight and Spike without her friends suitable either. (Plus, I just kind of hate the ep in general.)

@Background Pony #01EC  

 
It’s alright, I get you. I do agree with you overall that they should’ve hung out and appreciated the little things in life.

@Background Pony #01EC  
Okay, now thinking about that, that would’ve been awful if it ended right there.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders aren’t the stars of the TV show.
 
Neither Starlight or Trixie are.

@Ring Team  
I kinda wish more background ponies got focus episodes.

@Dex Stewart  
I get what you mean by that (Derpy Hooves, Octavia, Vinyl Scratch and Lyra are great), but I think we got enough with the episode Slice of Life. It’s not a perfect episode, but it has some scenes totally dedicated to our favourite background characters.
 
I think the only problem I have with the episode is that it’s about making a wedding, which is a bit strange. I think you can do it like a Simpsons episode, where the background characters have their own stories. I’m pretty sure you could do it with the background ponies, kinda like Campfire Tales, where each story is its own story.
 
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like that episode. In fact, it’s one of my favourites in season 5. It has one of my favourite scenes in the entire show.
 

 
Moments like that are reasons why I don’t think seasons 4 or 6 aren’t that special.

@Ring Team  
I think it was kinda weird they built up an enormous cast of characters,and then Starlight and Trixie are the only ones aside from the main characters they give whole episodes too.  
I like those,but it feels like a waste to throw them all away.  
That’s one reason I feel they’re going to revisit G4 in the future.

Yeah, it’s a bit strange.
 
One of the strangest reasons I’ve heard about why Starlight and Trixie are there is that “the Mane 6 have too many episodes, you can’t do anything special with them anymore”, which I disagree. I think they should receive very interesting and creative episodes. Besides, many of the filler episodes where the Mane 6 are the main characters (especially in season 6) only perpetuates the problem and it reinforces that defensive attitude from the people who like or love Starlight and Trixie.
 
The only episode where Starlight was the main character and I kinda cared was A Hearth’s Warming Tail, from season 6. When I finished the episode I thought “maybe Starlight wouldn’t be a strange addition to the main cast”. She would get interesting episodes where she would learn from her mistakes.
 
Then I watched Every little thing she does and I changed my mind.
 
But nowadays I don’t mind that too much. I admit I get a bit intense with two episodes: That one and the season 6 finale. But other than that, not too much. I tend to say that the inconsistency of Friendship is Magic is more than enough reason to not take it seriously.
 
Besides, if the show was actually consistent, Starlight would have been an interesting character instead of one of the most toxic characters I’ve seen in a modern TV show in many many years.

@Ring Team  
The Mane 6’s individual goals, around which their arcs were built, were achieved by Season 7, so…snore.

@Dex Stewart  
The cast was bloated enough as is by S8. The main 6 + spike + starlight + the crusaders and now the student 6 thrown into the mix. There were too many characters as is to focus on, more bg pony eps would have just made that problem even worse.

@Vivace  
But does an episode centered on a character has to focus on their Life Goal?

@Latecomer  
No, but those that don’t may qualify for “filler.”