Hello & welcome back to Trotting Through Life and today, we continue our Great and Powerful Mini-Retrospective as we conclude our look at Trixie's current appearances in the show as we look at her appearance from season 6 as we look at No Second Prances.
The Plot
It's fascinating to see in this retrospective how much Trixie has affected Twilight Sparkle. As we saw in the first appearance as Twilight was just a young timid student that was afraid to show off her skills. In Magic Duel, she was more comfortable in her skills and would do whatever it took to stop Trixie and here, Twilight is now a teacher to a reformed Starlight Glimmer from season 5, and bringing in Trixie as the first friend that a reformed Starlight would make and it is interesting to see the position that this puts Twilight in as the audience both wants to side with her as we've seen Trixie's past but at the same time, we know that Twilight needs to be a good teacher to Starlight and let Starlight make her own choices, even if that means failing or getting hurt.
This episode really does a great job of showing what Starlight is going through as Twilight's student. It starts off simply enough as we see that Starlight is excellent at magic but she lacks in friendship and through various attempts at making friends with Big Mac, Mrs. Cake, and Dash, it goes nowhere. Because again, Starlight relies too much on magic and that is her crutch. I will admit that a big flaw of last season was the under utilization of Starlight and her lessons as Twilight's student. However, the three episodes (4 if you count A Hearth's Warming Tale) did a good job focusing on Starlight and her weaknesses. In this case, it happens to be Starlight has a hard time making friends as she feels that no one will give her a second chance. And in many regards, one could look at this as the foundation for the anxiety that Glim Glam felt in season 6 finale, when she had the fears of returning to Our Town. This episodes helps to show how Starlight can relate to Trixie and why they have such a strong bond as they both did awful things in their past and they fear that no one will forgive them. I do have one small point of contention with this though, and it's more a nitpick really. Why would Trixie return to Ponyville after last time? Sure, it's convenient for the story but she should have known that the ponies wouldn't have exactly welcomed her with open hooves. With Starlight, the show is able to get around this by the fact that she lives with Twilight as her new student. Still, Trixie's re-introduction is great as you get the sense that Twilight is very leery of Starlight becoming friends with Trixie and it's understandable and to a point, you can agree with Twilight. But at the same time as Starlight tries to help Trixie with her magic show, you do see that these two are truly bonding. And with Twilight's subplot, one could almost argue that the show almost puts Twi in antagonistic light by trying to force Starlight to be friends with other ponies and well, Cranky. But it never pushes her over the edge into not being redeemable as Twilight does finally come around after Starlight runs off as Trixie accidentally slips out that becoming friends with Twilight's student was just a bonus in beating her and that made Starlight feel like no one wanted to be her friend.
This is when Twilight finally becomes a good teacher and lets Starlight make the decision to make her own friends and give her the room that Celestia gave her former student to make her own choices. And so, the episode ends with Starlight having one new friend as she helps Trixie with the big and dangerous Manticore trick that only Trixie's idol had been able to pull off. At the same time though, while Starlight and Trixie are now friends, Twilight still doesn't like Trixie all that much but she is okay with her student being friends with one of her former rivals.
Characters
Main Character
Starlight Glimmer voiced by Kelly Sheridan
Season 6 had an uphill battle in getting me to like Starlight after the disastrous reveal in the season 5 finale of why she became the villain that she was. Seriously, that finale is the worst episode of the series. However, I'm not exactly a Starlight fan just yet but I do like what season 6 did with her but I do wish that the show had used her more and I honestly think that out of all the episodes that focused on Starlight, this was the best one as it gave her the full range of emotion to be a fully fleshed out character and you felt for her with everything that she went through in this episode. From when she felt betrayed by Twilight not trusting her to make her own choices to her breaking down at the end of the episode, this was one of the few times that I actually felt bad for Starlight. In my opinion, of all the Starlight Glimmer episodes with a reformed Glim Glam, this is the best one.
Supporting Characters
Trixie voiced by Kathleen Barr
Just as this was a good episode for Starlight, the same was true for Trixie and the bond that developed between the two of them felt natural. And you were able to easily buy into the friendship that blossomed between the two reformed baddies. It was honestly, a very sweet friendship and one that I enjoyed and hope to see more of in the future.
Twilight Sparkle voiced by Tara Strong
The only one that you could argue that comes out looking a little bad in this episode is Twilight but as I've said throughout this review, it is very understandable why she would feel the way she does about Starlight becoming friends with Trixie considering her past with THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE. But at the same time, this episode also shows how Twilight still has some learning to do as a teacher and needs to let her student have the space to grow and make her own choices.
My Final Thoughts
This episode is a lot better than I remembered and I enjoyed quite a bit and as I said, I think is the best Starlight episode from season 6 and most importantly, it makes the friendship between Starlight and Trixie believable. Join me next time as we enter the world of IDW Comics as we look at...
Manehattan Mysteries
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