My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S2/E01 The Return of Harmony Part 1

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


"I got tired of tormenting Starfleet captains, so now I'm playing with ponies instead."

Discord: You should see the looks on your faces! Priceless!

Written by M.A. Larson

Cheerilee and the kids are visiting the world famous Canterlot Sculpture Garden, where there are statues representing friendship, victory, and... a tall slender fellow with a head of a pony and a body made of many different animals, like a lion's paw and a snake's tail. Cheerilee asks the class what that represents, and Cutie Mark Crusaders respond with a variety of answers, calling Scootaloo a dodo in the process.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders begin to fight amongst each other until Cheerilee explains that, in a way, they're all right. The statue represents discord, and because they demonstrated it so well they have to write an essay. Cheerilee and the kids head off and did that statue just laugh?

Back in Ponyville, Rainbow Dash is flying around when she is hit by a low-flying pink cloud. Now, we know this is a Sugar Bowl, but it's been established that clouds do not move on their own outside the Everfree Forest. They are also not made of cotton candy. Suddenly, cotton candy clouds are everywhere. And they pour out rain made of chocolate milk.

Soon the rest of the Mane Six meet up at Sweet Apple Acres, where cornfields are turning into popcorn, apples are growing to mammoth sizes, and rabbits are growing deer legs. The girls manage to calm the candy storm and the mutated animals through teamwork, only for Spike to burp up an emergency letter from Princess Celestia.

At the palace, Celestia informs the girls that an old foe has returned...Discord, the mischievous Spirit of Disharmony... and gives some backstory on Equestria. Discord once ruled the land in eternal chaos and unhappiness, until Celestia and Luna discovered the Elements of Harmony and turned him into a garden ornament. However, since Celestia and Luna are no longer connected to the Elements (probably because of that whole Nightmare Moon business), the spell on Discord has lifted. It is now up to our heroines, the champions who defeated Nightmare Moon and redeemed Princess Luna, to wield the Elements of Harmony once again to defeat this dark god of chaos.

...But they're missing! Who could have stolen the Elements of Harmony? The stained-glass windows begin to move by themselves, all handiwork of the culprit, Discord.

It seems Discord has "borrowed" the Elements, and he already knows all about our heroines and which Element of Harmony they represent. Celestia is getting impatient with Discord's escapades, and let us remind you that she usually has the patience of a saint. Discord gives our girls a riddle.

Discord: To retrieve your missing Elements, just make sense of this change of events. Twists and turns are my master plan, then find the Elements back where you began.

Twilight believes Discord is referring to the hedge maze out back... where the children were arguing earlier. Surely with the magic of flight Rainbow Dash will find the Elements in no time. That is, if her wings were still on her. Fluttershy's wings and the unicorns' horns disappear as well, and Discord appears! He says that it's time to play a game. The first rule is no flying or magic. The second rule is everypony has to play, or the game is over.

The girls enter the maze and, with their first united step, are instantly divided by Discord's magic. He then takes the time to manipulate all of Twilight's friends to reject the elements that they represent, finishing the job with magic and causing their colors to desaturate.

  • Discord uses piles of talking apples claiming to be the "Keepers of the Grove of Truths" to show Applejack the "honest truth" of what will happen; the Circle of Friendship will be broken. After facing her with how much the truth can hurt and the idea that lies might be easier, he makes her chronically dishonest (that is, lying through her teeth).
  • He uses balloons with the faces of Pinkie's friends to laugh at her, suggesting that her friends don't really like her. After a brief "torture" session consisting of all the balloons laughing at her, Discord hypnotizes Pinkie, making her unhappy and unfriendly.
  • He tempts Rarity with a beautiful shiny something, and she becomes enchanted as soon as she succumbs to the temptation to dig it out. It turns out to be a diamond bigger than herself that she becomes extremely possessive of. However, the "diamond" is actually a giant rock; Rarity is brainwashed into seeing it as a jewel.
  • He tries to turn Fluttershy against her friends, but she has too much trust to think they abandoned her, and too little ego to mind being thought of as weak or being criticized... so he just goes ahead and magics her into being cruel anyway.
  • He presents Rainbow Dash with conflicting loyalties: stay in the maze and continue searching for her friends and the Elements, or take back her wings and go save Cloudsdale from destruction, betraying something she cares about regardless of what choice she makes. Of course, he hypnotizes her before she can make the choice.

Twilight meets up with all her friends, who are all now the opposite of their Elements, and they spot the disloyal Rainbow Dash flying away. The game is over and Discord has won! Black clouds and lightning abound! All is lost, a storm of chaos has arrived! Equestria is doomed!

Discord: Looks like we might be due for a big old storm of chaos! (Evil Laugh accompanied by Dramatic Thunder)

TO BE CONTINUED

*cue happy credits music*

Continued in "The Return of Harmony Part 2".

Tropes (YMMV items can be found here)

  • Actually Pretty Funny: When Discord stands on the head of an image of Twilight Sparkle and does a little dance, Pinkie Pie can't help but laugh. She does represent the Element of Laughter, after all.
  • Apple of Discord: Played quite literally with Applejack by Discord himself, and more figuratively with everypony else.
  • Art Shift: A minor one. Everypony else remains the same, but Discord's first appearance takes place as he magically slinks around the stained glass windows of Canterlot Tower.
  • As You Know: Celestia and Discord take a few moments to remind the viewers of the series premiere and what Element each pony represents.
  • Ascended Meme: In "Stare Master", Apple Bloom calls Scootaloo a chicken. Naturally, the fandom took this and made it into a meme. In this episode, she gets called a dodo, another flightless bird.

Scootaloo: Don't call me things I don't know the meaning of!

  • Awful Truth: Discord's manipulation of Applejack starts by telling her that the truth can hurt, and there are some truths she'd rather not know.
  • Bad Bad Acting: Fluttershy using "reverse psychology" on the animals to get them to eat away the candy clouds and popcorn.
  • Bad Liar: Applejack was always a bad liar, but this episode takes it to a new extreme. Corrupted Applejack, in addition to her lies being obvious, bites her lip and makes shifty eyes every time she lies. Her "poker face" became a meme within a few hours of the episode being aired.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Discord may bring the sensibilities of Q in prankster mode, Large Ham and all, but he has a very cruel sense of humor and the competence to carry it out.
  • Big Bad: Discord.
  • Big Ball of Violence: Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo form one when they can't agree on what the body structure of the Draconequus represents.
  • Big Ham: Discord.
  • Big No: Rainbow Dash lets loose with one when Discord shows her a vision of Cloudsdale being destroyed.
  • Body Horror: Think about it, being a pegasus or unicorn and having a perfectly good part of you (wings; horn) dissappear would have to be pretty upsetting.
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:

Applejack: Rainbow Dash, what's going on with this rain? I mean, chocolate milk? I mean, chocolate milk rain?

  • Break the Cutie: Discord's goal behind his little "game" was pretty much to do this to everyone (except Twilight). And he succeeds, although he has to cheat with Fluttershy.
    • Twilight gets this by proxy, as Discord reunites Twilight with her friends one by one after breaking them. She can't figure out what's wrong with them, and she has to suffer through her friends treating her like dirt. The look on her face after getting verbally assaulted by the corrupted Fluttershy paints a clear picture that she's been broken, too...
  • Brick Joke: In an earlier interview with Jayson Thiessen, Season 2's executive producer, he explicitly said that Salvador Dali would not appear in the show, and the interviewers laughed it off as a non-sequitur.
  • Brought Down to Normal: Discord has the power to instantly take away pegasus wings and unicorn horns, though he at least gives them back eventually.
  • Call Back: Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle make a subtle one to their respective sisters' behavior in "Look Before You Sleep".

Apple Bloom: (to Scootaloo) Cool... if you were actually victoryful at somethin'.
Sweetie Belle: That's not a word!

  • Cassandra Truth: Rainbow Dash flying away and leaving everypony behind turns out to be the only thing Applejack wasn't lying about.
  • Circle of Shame: Discord sets up a garden of balloons that circle and laugh at Pinkie Pie. She doesn't take it very well.
  • Conflicting Loyalty: How Discord breaks Rainbow Dash. She is forced to choose between her loyalty to her friends and her loyalty to Cloudsdale. She chooses Cloudsdale after Discord puts the whammy on her, which ends Discord's twisted game in his favor.
  • Continuity Nod
  • Covered in Mud: Pinkie, as precursor to Discord twisting her.
  • Cutting the Knot: When Discord fails to talk Fluttershy into being mean, he just brainwashes her into doing so.
  • The Dark Times: Celestia refers to an era in which Discord ruled and caused endless suffering for Equestria. It is depicted in a stained-glass window as Discord holding ponies by puppet strings over a pit of fire.
  • Darkest Hour: The episode ends with Discord standing victorious, all but one of the cast broken and brainwashed, the Elements Of Harmony... the only thing strong enough to defeat him... in Discord's clutches, Twilight Sparkle all alone with the others brainwashed to be jerks, and a prediction that their friendship is going break for real looming ahead.
  • Delicious Distraction: Pinkie Pie kind of overlooks the whole Crapsack World aspect of Discord's rule in favor of the fact that it has chocolate rain. "Chocolate. Rain!"
  • Deus Ex Machina: Lampshaded and averted when Twilight arrives with a "spell that will fix everything". It doesn't work, possibly because of the influence of the God of Chaos himself.
  • Divide and Conquer: Discord manages to physically split the group up so he can pick them off one by one. In the end, Twilight Sparkle was the only one he didn't get to. That doesn't matter, though, because she's nothing without the others.
  • Doomed Hometown: Discord uses an image of this to convince Rainbow Dash to abandon her friends.
  • Downer Ending: Discord wins this round, and has successfully brainwashed nearly the entire mane cast. The final shot of the episode is Twilight Sparkle watching in shock and despair as he lets loose a storm of chaos on Equestria.
  • Dramatic Irony: We know what Discord is trying to do after he gets to Applejack, but the rest of the characters don't, leaving us to watch helplessly as they fall victim to Discord one by one.
  • Dramatic Thunder: Discord doing his Evil Laugh. Since he's a Reality Warper with a flair for the dramatic, this is probably intentional on his part. Happens again at the end as he stands posed to plunge Equestria into never-ending chaos.
  • Eldritch Location: The hedge maze gets really weird, to the point that it's once shown as an Escherian structure with ground level of varying orientations. The rest of Equestria is liable to go this way too, if Discord gets his way.
  • Emotion Eater: Implied with Discord. The Cutie Mark Crusaders fighting in his presence evidently provides him with the power to escape, and his engineering of a Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure is likely for the same reason.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Discord might have no issues tormenting ponies with his mind games and insane challenges, but turning them to stone is right out.
  • Everything's Better with Chocolate

Pinkie Pie: Hold on a second! Eternal chaos comes with chocolate rain, you guys! Chocolate! Rain!

  • Evil Counterpart: Discord's hypnosis of the mane cast essentially turns them into their own evil counterparts, complete with color fading. Applejack becomes a chronic Bad Liar, Pinkie Pie becomes deadly serious and perpetually angry, Rarity becomes self-absorbed, Fluttershy becomes a total Jerkass, and Rainbow Dash abandons her friends.
    • Discord himself is a complete antithesis of the Elements Of Harmony. He represents chaos and was awakened by a conflict between friends instead of the bond between them that activated the Elements Of Harmony.
  • Establishing Character Moment: The Mane cast each gets one in the first scene to refresh everyone of their personalities. Discord also gets one saying there's no fun in making sense.
  • Evil Laugh: Discord has a great one.
  • The Eyes Have It: Discord first introduces himself to the ponies by manifesting himself as part of the stained-glass windows in Celestia's castle.
  • Flaw Exploitation: How Discord breaks the Mane Cast and turns them against their Elements of Harmony.
  • Failsafe Failure: Borders on Lampshade Hanging, even. Twilight learns a "failsafe spell", which she believes will counter the wacky weather plaguing Ponyville. It fails. She even says, "My failsafe spell... failed!"
  • Fallen Heroines: What the discorded mane ponies become after Discord brainwashes them.
  • Foreshadowing: The scene where Celestia fills out Discord's backstory drops quite a few hints that he's far more evil and dangerous than he seems. Including Celestia being nervous and taking Discord dead seriously. There's also the fact that when she discusses what it was like under Discord, the screams of suffering ponies can be heard in the background...
    • And for those careful listeners:

Rainbow Dash: I'll always be loyal to the princess!
Discord: We'll see about that...

    • When it rains chocolate milk on Ponyville, Rainbow Dash tells Applejack that it is simultaneously raining cola on Cloudsdale, but not to worry because she will help her friends before going off to help her town. This mirrors the choice she is given later on.
  • The GM Is a Cheating Bastard: Discord stacks the deck heavily against the mane six by taking away their magic and wings, separates them the instant they step into the forest maze, and proceeds to turn all of them against each other through hypnosis. He likes to soften them up before using it, but when it doesn't work with Fluttershy, he just zaps her with magic. To top it off, he gives Rainbow Dash her wings back, then uses her as an excuse to end the game prematurely.
  • Gold Fever: Rarity's love of gems is used by Discord to break her.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Somewhat more benign than most examples, but still counts. Discord breaks Applejack by showing her a vision of the Mane Six dismissing each other as friends. The idea is so upsetting that Discord is able to convince her that lying is better.
  • Gratuitous Italian: Discord's angry yell of "Arriverderci!" after trying and failing to break Fluttershy's (almost) permanently sunny disposition.
  • Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: When Rainbow's wings vanish.
  • Half Truth: When Applejack asks the pool that shows the truth what will come of their mission, she sees the Mane Six's friendship ending. What was true... as far as it goes.
  • Heart Light: The first sign that the Draconequus statue is coming alive.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Discord is unsuccessful in his attempts to break Fluttershy, forcing him to simply hypnotize her the old fashioned way.
  • Insult Backfire: Discord tries to make it seem like Fluttershy's friends are insulting her, but she interprets it as them trying to help her improve herself.
  • Jaw Drop: The mane cast and Celestia when it's revealed that the Elements of Harmony have been stolen.
  • Just Toying with Them: Without the Elements, the ponies wouldn't stand a chance against Discord if he didn't choose to play the maze game with them... nor do they, as it turns out, even then, as he doesn't follow any rules himself.
  • Knighting: Princess Celestia does this to Twilight just before everypony goes off to retrieve the Elements from Discord. There's no ceremony involved, just the shoulder-to-shoulder motion with her horn as a stand-in for a sword.
  • Knight of Cerebus: After a season of mostly A Slice of Life episodes, we get a villain who is dangerously competent despite his silliness. Even Nightmare Moon was a relatively manageable threat in comparison. By the end of the episode, he has subjected nearly the entire mane cast to Mind Control Eyes and Break the Cutie in a truly frightening fashion.
  • Lecture as Exposition: Cheerilee in her role as teacher explaining just what "discord" means, which, while a vocabulary question, is highly relevant for the plot. The Cutie Mark Crusaders are put to do even more of the exposition for the audience by coming up with more common related words and acting discordantly, but Cheerilee is the one to point this out, too.
  • Mass Hypnosis: Everyone (except Twilight, Spike and probably Princess Celestia), courtesy of Discord.
  • Mass "Oh Crap": The looks on everypony's faces (even Pinkie, though it doesn't last long) when the chest containing the Elements turns out to be empty. The look of abject horror on the normally placid-faced Celestia really underscores how bad this is.
  • Meekness Is Weakness: Discord tries to use this trope to hypnotize and corrupt Fluttershy, but it doesn't work.
  • Mind Control Eyes: Anyone in the process of coming under Discord's influence gets these, as extra insurance in his More Than Mind Control act.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • Discord goes from his evil laugh to making fun of the ponies for their reaction.
    • Like the pilot episode, the cliffhanger suddenly cuts to the upbeat end credits.
    • Discord in general is a good use of this trope. Part of the thing that makes him brainwashing the mane cast till they break so horrific is you never see it coming considering how silly he looked and acted when we first see him...
  • More Than Mind Control: Discord on Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash, though he uses more magic than is usual for this trope. He tries it on Fluttershy, but it doesn't affect her (at first, anyway), much to his frustration.
  • Mythology Gag: By taking away their wings, Discord effectively turned Rainbow Dash into her G3 incarnation and Fluttershy into Posey.[1]
  • Never Split the Party: Twilight declares (more than once, in fact) that they're at their strongest when they stick together. So of course they get split up the literal second they step foot in the maze.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: The preview footage released made it seem like Discord would be powerful, but more silly and lighthearted, which disappointed a few people expecting a more Darker and Edgier villain. As such, many were taken off-guard by how sadistic and cruel he really is.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Cutie Mark Crusaders, by fighting in the presence of Discord's statue prison (i.e., creating discord), provide the means for his escape. Though, in their defense, his prison had already weakened enough that all he needed was a little bit of discord to break free.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: It's explained that 1000 years ago, Celestia and Luna rose up against Discord's reign of chaos and terror and brought it to a halt by turning him to stone with the Elements Of Harmony. We don't know much about what happened, but it certainly sounds epic.
  • OOC Is Serious Business: Princess Celestia paces nervously and acts grave. Then she's surprised and shocked. Then she has no patience for fooling around with Discord. Until now, we'd never seen her any other way than calmly in control of the situation, with an appreciation for mischief and idiosyncrasy to boot. The simple fact she takes Discord so seriously and is so unnerved by his reappearance is the first sign he's a lot more dangerous than he appears to be.
  • Order Versus Chaos: In a world where Harmony is evidently the most powerful force for good, it's not surprising Discord would be embodied with similar strength.
  • Perfectly Cromulent Word: "Victoryful".
  • Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Courtesy of Discord.
  • Popcorn on the Cob: Applejack's corn field.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: The Keepers of the Grove talk like this.
    • Discord himself has a tendency to slip into rhyme when telling riddles.
  • Sadistic Choice: How Discord gets to Rainbow Dash. He makes her choose between abandoning her friends or letting Cloudsdale be destroyed. No matter which she chooses, she goes against her Element because she's betraying something she cares about.
  • Sanity Slippage: The discord mane ponies spends the two part episode having their misbehavior made worse every passing minute.
  • Scenery Gorn: The spectacular city of Cloudsdale is spectacularly crumbled in Discord's vision for brainwashing Rainbow Dash.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Played for laughs when Pinkie's reaction to the Elements of Harmony being stolen is to go drink some more chocolate milk rain. [2]
    • Played for Drama when Rainbow Dash takes her wings back and leaves for Cloudsdale
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Discord had been imprisoned in a stone statue by Celestia and Luna in ancient times. The Cutie Mark Crusaders release him by creating discord (fighting) in front of it, giving him the power to break free from his weakened prison.
  • Self-Deprecation: Taken to comedic lengths with Fluttershy.

Discord: Well... it must be so upsetting to know how weak and helpless [your friends] think you are.
Fluttershy: Not at all. I am weak and helpless and I appreciate their understanding.

  1. ↑ There was a G3 earth pony Fluttershy, but only as a toy and with a completely different color scheme.
  2. ↑ She's back again after the commercial break
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