Villain Lameness in Later Seasons of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic

If you had asked me after Season 3 of Friendship is Magic if it had great villains I would have said, yes, but there are too few of them, and I’m not much of a fan of Discord, mostly due to his episodes feeling depressing, rather than him as a character.

I was A Canterlot Wedding nut, I loved Nightmare Moon, and Sombra was great in my opinion (I know some people were disappointed with him).  Later, we got Tirek, returned from G1. It sort of all starts to fall apart after that, although I didn’t realise it at the time. 

To summarise villains either became reformed, and nearly always unconvincingly, or were made lamer upon their return. Let’s take my most hated episode where Chrysalis returns. She is utterly incompetent to put it mildly. Yes, she does better later on, but she’s already been retconned into much less of a threat. 

Discord, reformed but with personality intact, acts more like a toxic friend when the plot demands it, making him the only character to bridge the gap between the reformed and lame villain. Not to mention what comes out in the Season 9 finale. 

While in character and convincing for Discord – assuming you know what I’m referring to – it does make Grogar the lamest MLP villain on a whole other level. A pity, given that the Grogar with Gusty the Great could have been one of the greats among villains, not to mention a waste of a G1 remade villain. Sombra I'll go into more detail another time as I have written a whole thing on him. I will say though that his quick defeat and the slightly moronic edge added to his personality really takes him down a few levels on the villain scale. Then there is the Pony of Shadows who might as well not exist as a villain despite a promising set up. It really didn’t help that villains started disappearing from season finales too.

The villains do their villain thing when the plot demands it, but their return setup has already given their whole character another angle from which you are looking at them from, and of course, the lameness has to be reinstated every so often. One exception to this whole thing is Cozy Glow. She came along so late that she was lame from the start, and that’s in spite of her being a really good villain when you pull her apart. It’s the approach, rather than the facts a lot of the time that’s the problem. If you describe what each villain does it sounds great, but when you watch them do it it doesn’t hit nearly as hard as it should. 

Of course this is normal to a certain extent. When I read the summaries of the Kimba The White Lion episodes before I bought the box set to watch them I really was into it. When I watched the episodes, I was largely disappointed. I had filled in the gaps, the voices, the animation, the pacing and so on. To sum up, the version in my head was a lot better. The difference with MLP villains here, though, is that the gap is much, much wider between the concepts and characters, and the execution, and that the gap becomes wider over time, rather than staying the same.

As a final remark, I’m sure it’s deliberate, not creator incompetence.