(This is a review I wrote for my school on season three's premiere ep's.)
Good things:
1.The Crystal Empire and ponies. I've always been a fan of world building
episodes,and this is one of the best examples of that. The design of the Crystal Castle and all the little houses that reside in the empire are just beautiful. It made me want to live there! I also love that fact that such a marvellous Empire is more or less a prison for our main characters, considering the fact that King Sombra is waiting just outside of the empire. The Crystal ponies also make this episode shine (no pun intended) in my opinion. they just have really cool designs,and you end up feeling really sorry for them,but are also kind of unnerved by them. I especially love the ballad of the Crystal Empire,since it we got to learn about even More of the culture and some of it's historical aspects.
when he's on screen. Heck, he has a great presence off screen as well,since the Crystal ponies talk about him so much. You can really feel the dread when this guy finnaly makesh is way into the Empire at the end of the ep.
Honourable mention:
That friggin door scene. What an emotional moment for both Spike and Twilight. The part where you see Twilight's fear was simple but affective. I say simple only because I feel like we have already established this scene in other episodes like Lesson zero. The plot device where she feels like she failed Celestia is nothing new. But when it looks like Celestia disowns her, That really hits you hard. it doesn't help that immediately after we get a pretty dark vision of Twilight actually failing her test via stain glass window. But while Twilight's scene was sad,spikes scene was friggin tragic. It was just Spike begging Twilight not to send him away. We didn't even actually see his vision,but his sincere and heartbroken reaction is enough to make an impression. This scene also ended beautifully,showing us just how close Spike and Twilight have become over the past two seasons and it let's us reflect on just what it took for them to get here. It's simply a beautiful moment to a wonderful scene.
Bad things:
1. Most of the things about King Sombra. Now don't get me wrong,King Sombra had a purpose to be in this episode, and he served his purpose well. But unfortunately,he's not that memorable as a villain. Whereas the prevouse villains are what made people love the episodes they were in because of their personalities, King Sombra is just…evil. And that's pretty much al there is to it. His backstory's not that interesting, his motivations aren't that interesting, even his design,which I praised earlier,gets less interesting because for most of the episode he's just a big dark cloud with a paper-looking king Sombra head. (Or sometimes just his eyes.) And after all that,what can they possibly do to make this guy even More cliched? How 'bout defeating his the Exact Same Way you defeated all the other villains!? I'll admit,it's always epic looking to go out in a big explosion, but come on,this is the fourth time in a row that they did this! (and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon,Sunset Shimmer in Equestria girls was defeated the same kind of way.) it's just lazy writing in my opinion. And for a show that I often praise as being creatively written,that's disappointing.