@Nightweaver20xx  
I’m more willing to accept that everyone’s basically immortal like the Simpsons with cartoon logic because I highly doubt Hasbro would actually demand they be realistic with time.
 
If the show were to go on longer, babies MIGHT have episodes where they get older, but no one else really ages.

@Nightweaver20xx  
I think five is too short. What gets me is how after S4, the pace seems to slow down, as events are referenced as happening farther and farther in the past. I think seven years is the absolute minimum amount of time passed, and I lean towards one season being about a year on average.

I’ve love to know that as well.

@GenericArchangel  
I’m of the belief that only about five years have passed total. Many of the episodes happen literally one or two weeks after the previous, and you can squeeze a whole season into a single year or even less than one. So if Twilight started out maybe 18 in S1, she’s only about 23 now. Though I would like to hear what the official word is about the chronology, if they have one.

@Fwelin  
I’m of the opinion that S1-3 all occurred over two years or so, given how much they change in that time and the number of apple harvests that are referred to. S4-7 are much slower, occurring over three or four years at least, as many as five or six given how spread out events seem to be- remember how long S5 sounds when they talk about Starlight at the beginning of “The Cutie Re-Mark”. I don’t currently have an opinion on S8, but given the movie between S7 and S8 I’d say that’s at least a few months. If S8 is at least eighteen months, then all told somewhere between seven and twelve years have passed. I lean towards nine or ten years to the start of S9.
 
@Ryodraco  
I don’t think there’s any way it was just one semester in our terms, that’s only four or five months. There’s no way a single season happened that fast. I think a full school year is reasonable.

@Fwelin  
I don’t think we can take the Fluttershy “teacher of the month” pictures too seriously, i.e. I think that so many were shown for the sake of the joke rather than to imply that nine to seventeen months had passed. I mean the first time it showed nine months having passed, and yet by the end of season eight Twilight tells the Young Six that they’ve only been enrolled for one semester. So unless their semesters are incredibly long there is no way that many months could have passed.

@Meanlucario  
Yeah…yeah you’re right. :)
 
Plus, maybe the idw comics could officially continue the story? Other shows got that treatment. Both Avatars for example.

@Applelight Limited  
There’s gen 5, and the episodes and fan art isn’t goin anywhere.

@Meanlucario  
I remember when I first saw twilight with her wings…I thought “uh no…it’s ending”…but we got 6 more years of pony.
 
I guess we can’t complain. 9 years is a very long time for a tv show…but sweet celestia I’m going to miss these little ponies. :(

@noradtwo  
Mine too! :)

And to think that people wanted the series to end at season 3.

@Applelight Limited  
No problem, lore discussions are my jam!

Thanks guys. It makes sense that the first three seasons are more ‘condensed’ than the later ones on account of the friendship lessons.
 
Either way, twilight’s come a long way over the years. And I knew it had to come to an end eventually…but I knew I’d never be ready when it did. :(

@Applelight Limited  
4 to 9 years, as only the Season 8 Hearthswarming and Hearthswarming could have taken place in the same year.

@Applelight Limited  
The minimum possible length of time is about 3-4 years.
 
Seasons 1-3: 1 year (Celestia states so in Princess Twilight Sparkle).  
Seasons 4-7: Unknown  
Season 8: ~2 years (Fluttershy has won Teacher of the Month 17 times in the special, and it’s stated that there’s no school during the summer).
 
We don’t really have concrete information about how long seasons 4-7 lasted. The number of Hearth’s Warming Eves is one metric to get a rough feel, but it’s not exact like the other pieces of evidence.
 
My personal opinion is that it’s been about 6 years in total.

@Applelight Limited  
It’s open to interpretation

@noradtwo  
So literally any time from 1 year to 9 years?

@Applelight Limited  
That is debated. Some just round it off to 1 show season = 1 year. Some count the number of Hearthwarming episodes as 1 year.
 
I lean towards the latter. Mostly because some of Celestia’s line in the season 4 opener imply that this is the first Summer Sun Celebration since season 1, meaning it was one year between the beginning of season 1 and the beginning of season 4.
 
But even that isn’t a perfect estimate, as some Hearthwarmings could have been skipped over or taken place in the same year (season 8 and the special).

@Ardashir  
Character development.
 
How much time has passed within the show itself?

And this mare used to be the shut-in who had a nervous breakdown at the thought of missing a single letter to her mentor.
 
You’ve come a long way, Twilight.

@Fibriel  
That’s kind of the point. By not showing the recoil of the rest of her body, it emphasizes the ease of the action.

@Lollipony  
Those things might even be a problem if they were actually horses like in G1 and not magical aliens that resemble horses in some ways.

@Lollipony
 
Well, yes and no.
 
The show has a higher frame rate (maybe?) and the raw assets are of higher quality, especially backgrounds. They also apply lighting filters, particle effects, and other fancy touches they didn’t have before. Most importantly, they do a lot less copy-pasting.
 
However, the show has always had a serious animation problem: trying to get horses to do un-horse-ish things. This has gotten worse the more “serious” the show has gotten because fights to the death are highly incompatible with clumsy fat unarmed cartoon horses (as opposed to knights with two legs and swords and stuff.)
 
The un-horse-ish thing Twilight is trying to emulate here is the master wizard swiping their hand or magic staff to knock a spell aside. Of all the body parts they could have used to illustrate this - such as stabbing her wings forward or even just a gleam in her eye and a consequent manifestation in front of her - she does this by neck-Kermiting and it looks completely ridiculous.
 
Not only is the concept laughable - unicorns swinging their heads around like the wavy tube men outside of car dealerships - but none of the rest of her body responds or adds in any way to hurling at least a third of her weight from one side to the other. She doesn’t even break stride. They chose the most powerful physical motion Twilight could possibly perform to counter a spell, and did not do a single thing to sell the weight of it except make her hair bob a little bit. (But not her tail or wings, which are still as a cat.)
 
She’s even still talking as her head swings back around. It’s positively goofy.

@Great Azyrite  
Only one way to find out

So does this mean She can beat Starlight now?