The exclamation mark seems a little too cheerful for that’ive popped several of veins’ expresison sombras giving here. Feel like ‘Litttleee ponnniesss….my little ponies…’ or something Gollumish along those lines would have worked better.
I feel like this comic series could play out a bit like the plot of Super Paper Mario.
Sombra and Hope would play the parts of Count Bleck and Timpani respectively. While I feel that Chrysalis will end up being the Dimentio and steal the villain spotlight while the other “villains” bail! Both stories even involve powerful hearts as plot deviced!
I really, REALLY hope, uh, Hope has a plan of some kind. Because regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the old queen’s actions she still just brought a tyrannical shadowcaster back into the world with a chip on his shoulder and a very serious vendetta against everyone around him.
…what guarantee does she even have that Sombra won’t turn on her in rage?
Nah I also hate how she’s treated in the premieres and finales after season 2 premiere and I never stated I hate Celestia I just stopped being a Celestia fan because apparently the show writers can’t stop using her as either an idiot when she gets a chance to show her leadership or just irresponsible or even worse just something to show how powerful the villains are.
I guess a better explanation is I hate how she’s written after season 2. She starting to remind me of Cadence a completely dissapointing character that keeps getting underutilized with alot of potential. Heck she still the only princess without a freaking focus episode.
I remember that the point of his character in show was that he wasn’t to be treated as a villain to stop but rather a disaster to prevent. Now the disaster has come. Being that much of a threat, I look forward to seeing how dark they let this arc get.
Too bad throughout the whole episode she was literally stupid enough to actually do it until she literally had almost no choice not to. Celestia must not know how much Twilight values her word.
After reading the issue from front to back, here is what I’ve gathered so far. SPOILERS ahead.
IDW Comic #34 Radiant Hope has somehow survived the thousand years of time passed. She was a potential alicorn like Sunset and Twilight, and even without the boon of the Element of Magic like Sunset didn’t, but it was most likely the ‘new spell’ that Sombra referred to, to keep her alive while the Kingdom remained banished..
Radiant Hope has appeared, and has become good with deception, so we initially consider her a straight-up villain. She coaxes the Flim Flam Brothers, Iron Will, and Lightning Dust. These three seem to be patsies, although they have varying degrees of ‘evil’. Iron Will seems simply misguided into doing something reckless to get what he wants(respect and picking his life back up), the Flim Flam Brothers are more morally ambivalent about their wants(money and scamming), and Lightning Dust has far more destructive motivations(hurting all those who trampled on her path to success). Just guesses, but while all three of them seem to be patsies, Lightning Dust would be the first to join the hidden phase of Radiant Hope’s power play, while Iron Will would be the first to regret the severity of his part, while the Flim Flam brothers would just opt out completely. (con men and evil overlords don’t mix) Then again, we don’t know how much they were told, so that part is up in the air.
Chrysalis, on the other hand, was brought in separately. She appeared with a lot more understanding of the situation then the other 4, and as a distraction, she challenged Twilight to a fake duel on the grounds of ‘just to take another shot at you’. Radiant Hope’s plan nearly turned from bloodless to bloody when Twilight’s unwarranted and over-confident douchiness pissed Chrysalis off so great she immediately broke through Twilight’s strongest attack to kill her, but Iron Will was knocked into her.
What was noteworthy was that instead of razing hell after that, or even ordering her changelings to attack the populace from the beginning, she had them mostly fly around the fair causing panic, which must of taken the ponies quite some time to round up. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Chrysalis reveals their capture was part of the plan all along to get everyone away from the castle.
Then the final scene with Radiant Hope…
The morality conflict from Sombra’s comic comes in at full force. Radiant Hope was indeed the person who warned the Two Sisters of Sombra’s rise to power, but after time she learned how much of a colossal failure Princess Amore had brought onto Sombra’s life. Perhaps she’s even learned more about Princess Amore. In many ways, Sombra was Amore’s failure the same way Luna’s descent was Celestia’s failure as well. If not infinitely more so. Sombra’s very existence was dark in nature, but not necessarily evil, yet the Crystal Heart was slowly killing him every year. In such an unbalanced moral world, evil and dark powers are often labeled the same thing indiscriminately. Princess Amore gave up on helping him when, as a freakin’ child, Sombra was too scared to be honest with her.
The Crystal Ponies celebrated the overwhelming light and hope they were born with in their kingdom, but Umbra Ponies are the exact opposite. A classic case of when you try to improve something that’s already good, you end up with something at the opposite end. Princess Amore’s ideals were completely inflexible, Sombra had to somehow stop himself from being an Umbra Pony, or be tortured into madness.
(Reminds me a lot of the alternate future “Neo Crystal Tokyo arc” in Sailor Moon, how the hypocrisy of absolute purity could justify terrible deeds with tons of collateral damage, and how karma always bit the so called ‘alternate good guys’ in the butt)
Back to the present, Radiant Hope uses as much magic as she can muster, and she manages to bring Sombra’s body back in full flesh.
Its hard to consider Radiant Hope a real villain because this was basically a huge mess Amore and the Crystal Empire made and Celestia and Luna just sweeped under the rug. A peace based off a great injustice that could of easily been avoided had people like Amore and Celestia gave a crap. When Sombra said those lines “She’s not the saint you think she is. Inside she is…BROKEN”, it had a huge amount of meaning to not just Amore. Maybe Radiant Hope feels some justice needs to be done to create some balance.
