Dismiss My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic at your own peril!
The show knows how to deploy classic fantasy tropes to tell epic stories.
My Little Ponycomes with a lot of baggage.
To many its a cutesy children show, which it is.
It has magical creatures like gryphons, dragons, and insectlike ponies called breezies.
Sisters Luna and Celestia ruled the land peacefully until Luna became jealous and created eternal night.
The use of weather as a driving force has shades ofThe Chronicles of NarniaandA Song of Ice and Fire.
The six young ponies each have their own worries and talents.
Rainbow Dash is a talented racer, but can be pushy and too competitive for her own good.
Twilight Sparkle is different from many fantasy heroes in a major way she has parents.
They are shown to be alive and well, at least in flashbacks.
Like Arthur, she doesnt know that shes destined to become royal until after shes already had several adventures.
Rainbow Dash is the warrior figure, prone to using physical prowess like Aragorn or Conan the Barbarian.
Of course, with the less warlike tone of the show shes usually winning races instead of swordfights.
She has regular lessons with Princess Celestia, and her biggest challenge is finding friends.
But as the series goes on, she grows and changes.
Her home becomes a castle, she grows wings, and tangles with ever bigger and badder monsters.
The box is this seasons Holy Grail.
Characters who interpret dreams and signs, like Luna can do, also feature in Arthurian myths.
The magical objects are, as usual, ultimately symbolic of personal power.
The quest begins in Princess Twilight Sparkle Part 2, the second episode of the season.
Her powers arent presented as a remnant of any forgotten order, like Kenobis, though.
More on that a bit later…
The princesses are just one trapping of this setting, which also has its darker elements.
The viewer gets to see the castle in both disrepair and when it was full of finery.
This also brings us back to that catchy, cutesy title Friendship is Magic and Equestrias creation story.
Magic being based on emotion is just another unremarked upon underpinning of Equestrias world.
Season four also sees the return of Equestrias underworld, Tartarus, and its guardian Cerberus.
In myth, Tartarus is a deeper realm than Hades, and imprisons monsters like the Cyclops.
In the myths, Cerberus guards Hades.
This is actually one of the less magical events in the season.
It also tells us that Equestria has magic book shops, as Spike realizes at the end.
SomeMy Little Ponyepisodes can be repetitive.
They wrap up with neat lessons, although not always the ones one would expect.
Each of the main characters has a moment of revelation in which they see a rainbow flash or reflection.
If you like daring adventures and systems of magic, you might find that Equestria looks familiar.
