Hello ponies, around a couple of weeks ago I published an article (https://ponypurist.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1019) that listed the MLP:FiM episodes for Seasons 1 through 7 and indicated whether they were canon as well as rated them, but I didn’t provide much of an explanation as to what that means. Whereas my individual ratings of each episode have a significant aspect of personal preference involved, the canonicity of an episode should not have nearly as much leeway. So, what makes an episode canon?
To begin with, let’s consider what the default idea of canon is: It’s simply whatever episode Hasbro produces. But as we all know, Hasbro is a corporation and may not have the show’s (or the ponies’) best interests in mind when they make a new episode. So, we need to figure out a better way to tell if an episode is canon.
One possibility is to figure out who was responsible for the show and declare anything created by this person to be canon. Lauren Faust is the pony who revived the show, and if it hadn’t been for her, BronyCon (and other big-name pony conventions) would have likely never existed. Therefore, we might be tempted to say that anything created by her is canon and everything else not — mere fanfic. But Lauren Faust had a team of writers to help her write stores; indeed, she only actually wrote the first two episodes of the series. But as she felt she had 90% creative control (said by her in an interview) of the show, it can be safely assumed that anything created while she had that control can be considered canon. This creative control lasted throughout all of Season 1 and then partway through Season 2 (Lauren Faust and her team worked on both Season 1 and parts of Season 2 at the same time). After this, Hasbro began to take creative control away from Lauren Faust, such that she felt like she wasn’t being true to herself in continuing work on the series and left the show (essentially, she was fired). So after this, things get a little more tricky.
Lauren Faust’s team, in an interview, said that they felt like they were guardians of Lauren’s Faust vision. Given the close creative bond that Lauren Faust had with her team, then, we can surmise that some of the episodes that appear after Lauren Faust was fired may be considered as canon. At any rate, after Lauren Faust had left, the team and Hasbro became aware of bronies, resulting in Hasbro having a vested interest in keeping them watching (although their abilities to actually carry this out without Lauren Faust guiding the way is questionable — as we all eventually saw in Season 9 (and I haven’t finished watching it because of that)).
Furthermore, Lauren Faust was inspired by the original creator of My Little Pony, Bonnie Zacherle. Surely, this would mean that some of the early generation episodes must be canon, as well. Lastly, we know that each episode was independently written, that the people working on it were often not even in the same geographical location, and that as additional writers were brought on (having never met Lauren Faust and thus being less able to carry on her vision) and old ones left, that less and less of the original creative force behind Season 1 would proceed forward — into the later seasons.
Therefore, what initially seemed like a straightforward and easy task thus becomes much more difficult. So, we need some tools to help us figure it out. Some questions to ask when considering if an episode is canon or not include:
Consider the episodes that Lauren Faust worked on. We know that she had 90% creative control over the whole first season. Therefore, the entire first season (not also taking into consideration Bonnie Zacherle’s vision, which would require additional nuance and study) must be canon. Of particular importance, as well, is the episode Lauren Faust wrote herself — the two-part Season 1 opening. This will be very helpful in determining if an episode is canon, as we can refer back to them when in doubt. So, for example, in one of Season 2’s most controversial episodes, “The Mysterious Mare Do Well,” the first episode which most certainly fails the test of canonicity, we have (and my memory is a bit fuzzy) the Mane 6-minus-Rainbow pretending to be one superhero in order to try to secretly teach Rainbow Dash a friendship lesson. This is a departure from the previous episodes because Rainbow Dash’s friends thought that teaming up to teach the errant Rainbow Dash was ethical, and the ethical gray area of this was never addressed in the episode. (Compare this to this wisdom of Twilight Sparkle in the Season 1 episode, “Boast Busters,” when she just let Trixie run away after she had been exposed as a fraud, simply saying that she would eventually learn her lesson on her own. Another question about the episode (which I think was less serious of an error but a complaint of ponybros at the time) was that Ponyville suddenly and for no explicable reason took on a metropolis vibe and turned into a place where all sorts of accidents seemed to occur. We also know from Lauren Faust’s interviews that one of the reasons she left is that she had wanted to write more adventure stories — and, while this story did have superhero-story vibes, it was certainly not an adventure story. This episode lacks continuity from a world-building perspective. Thus, by using the known canon episodes (and what we know Lauren Faust wanted), we were able to figure out that Season 2, Episode 8 — “The Mysterious Mare Do Well,” cannot possibly be canon.
Consider the intent of Lauren Faust. In addition to considering known canon episodes, we can also consider the intent of the creator of the show, Lauren Faust. Obviously, this will be somewhat subjective, but that’s why we have multiple tools — to get as accurate of an idea as possible of what is canon. In the previous example, we knew that Lauren Faust had wanted to create more adventure stories for the ponies. Knowing this, if a pony story is not an adventure story, then it is less likely to be canon. We can thus take this kind of information and insight into consideration. For example, applying these rules to the Season 2 episode, “The Cutie Pox,” although it’s anything but an adventure story and focuses way too much on repetitive triviality, it nonetheless still fits with the spirit of of the show and is therefore just a really bad canon episode. The Season 2 episode, “Baby Cakes,” however, which involves Pinkie Pie obsessing over trying to appease a couple of babies is not only not an adventure but obnoxious; I can’t imagine Season 1 Pinkie Pie going to such lengths. It feels as though the writer simply appropriated Pinkie Pie’s free-spirited character to appeasing some babies, with little real reason given — I mean, she could have asked her friends for help, at least — and that would have made for a much better episode.
Is Applejack Applejack? In Season 1, we can assume that everything (or nearly everything) that each character does is them being true to themselves — that these qualities represent the character in their deepest respects. (Remember, there’s still the 10% that Lauren Faust didn’t have control over.) But as the seasons progress, we begin to see characters stray from their core selves. This really starts to become noticeable in Season 4, but because Season 4 was stylistically different from Season 1 and many of the episodes were packed with happenings, these changes were overshadowed and can mostly be overlooked. Generally-speaking, it seemed like the ponies were a lot quicker to agree on things than before — often for no explicable reason emoting as a group, which rarely (or never happened in Season 1 or even really Season 2). Again — not necessarily a bad thing, but it was a notable stylistic difference and departure from Lauren Faust’s style. While a stylistic change doesn’t necessarily make a pony episode non-canon (and I quite enjoyed many Season 4 episodes, and many ponybros consider it to be the greatest MLP:FiM season), for canonicity purposes, it does still need to be taken into consideration. An example of an episode that is very true to the spirit of the show but completely different stylistically is: “Pinkie Apple Pie,” one of the best episodes in the entire series. Here’s an example of a non-canon episode that was awesome stylistically-speaking but which turned Twilight Sparkle into an alicorn (I think every ponybro knows this one) too early (with six seasons left — and some would say that she should have never been turned into an alicorn*) in the series so can’t be canon: Magical Mystery Cure.
*This is an interesting point of discussion. If we consider earlier generations of pony, there is a G3 episode in which everypony becomes a princess. Following this logic, either everypony in Equestria should have eventually become a princess, or Princess Celestia and Princess Luna should have become ordinary unicorns, making everypony equal and loved. But making Twilight Sparkle an alicorn without eventually doing either of those two things is just Hasbro playing to the “princess” concept in order to try to sell more toys.
As the series progresses, characters begin to increasingly say and do non-canon things. Whereas this hardly happened at all in Season 1, Season 4 was mostly stylistic changes (or could be interpreted as such), and it occasionally happened in Season 5 — by the time Season 7 rolls around, it was happening nearly every episode, and by Season 8, the characters were saying and doing so many out-of-character things in each episode that in many of the episodes they started to feel like different characters entirely. (And I won’t mention Season 9, since I haven’t watched all of it yet, but it’s my understanding that by then, the spirit of the show was all but dead.)
So, the third thing to consider when deciding on the canonicity of a MLP:FiM episode is whether Applejack is really Applejack, Rarity is really Rarity, Pinkie Pie is really Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy is really Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash is really Rainbow Dash, and Twilight Sparkle is really Twilight Sparkle. And it’s the same for all the other ponies.
Apply MLP:FiM values and ethics to real-world values and ethics. Although MLP:FiM was originally intended as a children’s show, the creator was a human being like everypony else. What real-world values and ethics was Lauren Faust imparting (whether consciously or subconsciously) by creating Season 1? What are their analogous real-world values and ethics? And do subsequent seasons impart these values and ethics or other ones that Hasbro may be more interested in imparting through the show (such as a desire to watch more shows or buy more toys)? Or, is Hasbro not paying their new writers enough so that they don’t have time to do the necessary research to in order to write good episodes? (I highly doubt they would pay a writer to binge-watch the entire show up the point that they wrote the episode and to do independent research on the original intent of Lauren Faust, especially considering they were the ones who fired Lauren Faust to begin with in order to try to make more money as quickly as possible.)
Additional Considerations: Is there anything else that needs to be taken into consideration when evaluating the canonicity of a MLP:FiM episode? (What do you think?)
By emphasizing the importance of Season 1, the intent of Lauren Faust, whether the character really is the character, and the real-world values and ethics to which Lauren Faust and the show refer, we have a beginning framework for determining the canonicity of any given MLP:FiM episode. While it may get a little trickier when we consider other generations and may need to broaden our social perspective a bit, I think that the same general framework applies. For example, is the G1 episode “Rescue at Midnight Castle” canon? Apply the rules: 1. How does it compare to Season 1 of MLP:FiM? Lauren Faust based her creation of Season 1 off of the ponies she watched as a child, so there must be some connection between the two. So long as this connection exists in any given episode of a previous generation of MLP:FiM, then it may be canon. 2. What was the intent of the writer of “Rescue at Midnight Castle?” and how does it compare to Lauren Faust’s? We know that Lauren Faust had wanted to write more adventure stories and this one is certainly an adventure story — thus, it’s more likely to be canon. 3. Are the characters themselves? While this is harder to discern given that the G4 characters’ don’t exist in previous generations, but we can get around the question of, “Is Applejack Applejack?” by asking instead, “Is Applejack’s Great Grandmother Applejack’s Great Grandmother?” Hypothetically-speaking, would the characters depicted in “Rescue at Midnight Castle” be good depictions of the great-grandmothers of the MLP:FiM ponies? Or, more scientifically-speaking, can you see how they would be good precursors, or are the characters so ill-defined and ambiguous in the episode that they could be the precursors to almost any generic western animation in production today? In the episode, “Rescue at Midnight Castle,” I think it’s clear that we have a well-defined ponyworld and characters, so it passes this test. 4. What real-world universal ethics are being conveyed in the episode? Is their direction in the same direction as what is conveyed through MLP:FiM by Lauren Faust? If so, then this is a good indicator that the episode is probably canon. If we really think about the preceding, I believe that the G1 pony episode, “Rescue at Midnight Castle” has a good argument for being considered canon — not in the MLP:FiM sense, but as a G1 My Little Pony episode. (What do you think?)