MLP:FiM S3E5 Magic Duel Review

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic S3E5 "Magic Duel" Review


Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way first; I found this episode enjoyable, if a bit lacking in certain areas, and no, Trixie's return had nothing to do with King Sombra from the season premiere. I was a little bummed about this too, but there ya go. Now I owe someone five bits in an ill-concieved wager.

Anyway, onto the review.

*SPOILER WARNING! READ NO FURTHER IF YOU HAVE YET TO SEE THE EPISODE IN QUESTION!*

This episode is the one die-hard Trixie fans have been waiting for since the end of Season 1; the return of The Great and Powerful Trixie as a serious antagonist to the show. What I'm pretty sure will also set them off is how a lot of fanon got incorporated into her character this time around. There have been so many Trixie theories, headcanons, and fanfics rolling around trying to explain what she has been doing since she was run out of Ponyville. Some say she became a laughingstock, others say that she was accepted by a nice family in some other city, and others say that she got a job doing… well, let's not go there. This is a SFW blog, after all.

Anyway, they did do their best to satiate all the fan theories concerning Trixie's fate. She did become a serious laughingstock after the Ponyville incident, being laughed out of every town she tried to do her show in. In addition to that, she was forced to take up work on the rock farm that Pinkie's folks run just to earn a living, and let her deep set hatred for Twilight fester into full blown loathing. All of this is told in flashback form by Trixie as the episode itself picks up in medias res, as this show is so want to do, with Trixie returning and challenging Twilight to a magical duel. Unfortunately, Twilight loses this duel pretty spectacularly because Trixie has an ace up her sleeve; a mystical artifact she picked up known as the Alicorn Amulet (this being the first time that they have ever used the term "Alicorn" in the show, yet another sign that the people at Studio B and Hasbro listen to their audience.) This amulet gives her unfathomable power, but slowly corrupts her personality and makes her even more of an unrepentant jerk than she was before.

After losing the Duel, Twilight is forced to leave Ponyville and take up residence with Zecora in the Everfree forest while Trixie turns Ponyville into a veritable dictatorship. Her friends eventually devise a way to get Twilight back into town and get the amulet off of Trixie, but there is a catch; only Trixie can remove the amulet herself. After a series of shenanigans that I won't go into here, Twilight challenges Trixie to another duel, this time with an amulet of her own. Twilight then proceeds to mop the floor with Trixie as well as convincing her that it is Twilight's amulet that has given her the edge. When Trixie takes the amulet and replaces the Alicorn Amulet with it, Twilight reveals that the amulet she had was a hunk of junk, and what really did all of those spells was actually her friends jumping in and making it look like she was doing all of them while conveniently covered up by smoke. You could say that she took a page out of Trixie's old playbook, but it is enough to get the amulet off of Trixie and get her to leave.

Now, when I say that I found this episode enjoyable, I mean that as far as this series is concerned it was a good episode. If this were a standalone episode from another series, I would call it average, and here's why. While I was all for Trixie's return, I feel that they could have done more with her character. What I really was itching to see is an episode where Trixie comes back to Ponyville repentant for what she did last time, and having Twilight doubting her good intentions throughout it. Instead she came back bigger and badder than last time with a shiny new MacGuffin, and it almost felt like they were rehashing the episode they had done the last time. I'm not saying that it was horrible, but it could have used some more character development for Trixie.

What's that I hear you shriek? "But she is good now! Didn't you see the last bit where Trixie said she was sorry? How could you be so thick as to not catch that?!" Well, cool your jets ye Trixie fanboys. I did see the end scene, and I honestly thought that it was a bit of an ass pull to placate the Trixie fans who wanted her to be sympathetic instead of a complete dick blister. If you have a character that you have set up as a villain and you have fans that want them to be sympathetic, then more power to you. The way to make them sympathetic, though, is not to just have them come up at the end of the episode and have her say sorry. You need to show that she is sorry through her actions, like say taking down all those Trixie banners she forced Rarity to make, or apologizing to the townsfolk instead of to the one mare that she had a grudge against.

Maybe I'm being too mean here, but there were just too many rookie mistakes with this episode to make me really enjoy it. "One Bad Apple" still holds the position for best of Season 3, and frankly I rank this episode below "Too Many Pinkies" as well. Let's hope the Scootaloo episode next week will get the wind back in this season's sails. See ya next time, and be sure to stay tuned to criticisms-r-us.tumblr.com for more reviewing goodness!