"One of you must have done this! But... why would any of you want to sabotage Hearth's Warming Eve?"
Written by Brian Hohlfeld
As the students at the School of Friendship get ready to leave for winter break, a blast of purple goo ruins the Hearth's Warming Eve decorations in the common room. Rainbow Dash finds evidence of a prank being pulled, and she, Twilight Sparkle, and Spike detain Gallus, Ocellus, Sandbar, Silverstream, Smolder, and Yona on suspicion that one or more of them may be responsible. Twilight orders them to stay behind for questioning and to clean up the mess. The guilty party will have to stay on campus over the break for extra friendship lessons; if none of them confesses, all six will have to stay and miss the holidays.
As the students start cleaning up and going in for questioning one by one, they begin to describe their own holiday traditions. Ocellus and the changelings in Thorax's hive celebrate based on an overly literal reading of Twilight's idiomatic descriptions of pony Hearth's Warming parties. Yona describes Snildar Fest, in which yak families get together to smash things, and remembers having her hair braided for the first time at the previous year's gathering. Smolder tells of the Feast of Fire, a time for dragons to tell stories in the hope of winning a pile of gemstones, and regales them with the previous year's winning tale of a dragon who overthrew the Dragon Lord in a moment of weakness. Sandbar relates the story of how he nearly dropped his Hearth's Warming doll in the fire at home. Finally, Silverstream describes the "Three Days of Freedom" festival, a chance for hippogriffs and seaponies to celebrate the defeat of the Storm King.
Suspicion grows among the six as the tales are told, but none of them confesses to Twilight and Rainbow. As the bad feelings boil over into a shouting match, Gallus yells for them to stop, distraught over how this fight goes against the spirit of all the holidays they've described. He confesses to pulling the prank, saying that he doesn't have a family and he wanted to spend some extra time with his friends instead of going home to the dreary celebrations in Griffonstone. Twilight overhears the confession and thanks Gallus for his honesty, but tells him that he must still remain on campus for the extra lessons as punishment. The rest of his friends offer to stay as well so he won't have to be alone, prompting Twilight to invite them to join her and her friends for their Hearth's Warming celebration - once they finish cleaning up the common room, that is.
Tropes:
- An Aesop:
- Just because you feel down during the holidays doesn't mean you should stop your friends from enjoying them.
- It doesn't matter how you celebrate the holidays so much as you appreciate the loved ones who celebrate it with you.
- Anti-Climax: Sandbar's story ends this way. He tells how he put his doll too close to the edge and it fell, and after a dramatic pause just says it hit the floor but could have gone in the fire.
- Art Shift: The animation changes to more of a storybook style during Silverstream's story.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Yona is explaining what Yaks do during Snildar Fest, the first two activities she describes are smashing things, when she explains the third part is gathering perfect accessories for the perfect moss pile, and everyone else guesses that they smash it too. Yona says the moss pile is actually for special rituals, like when Yona's family braided her hair for the first time the previous year.Yona: What you think Yaks are, barbarians?
- Batman Gambit: When Gallus finally confesses to pulling the prank after the others start accusing each other, Twilight and Rainbow Dash admit that they knew he was the culprit all along. It's heavily implied that Twilight was just bluffing, but she needed to make the students think that she wasn't in order to make the former confess.
- Big "NO!": With slo-mo, even, during Sandbar's story, when his doll nearly falls in the fire.
- Bookends: The episode begins and ends with someone singing a line from "Hearth's Warming Eve Is Here Once Again".
- Bottle Episode: The majority of the episode is set at the School of Friendship.
- Call-Back:
- The story of Earth Ponies, Unicorns and Pegasi coming together for the the first Hearth's Warming is referenced once more.
- Silverstream's story calls back to events around and after the movie, with Queen Novo expanding their holiday from a single one day event to a three-day celebration over the Storm King's defeat.
- The Cameo:
- The Storm King and Queen Novo both briefly appear during Silverstream's story.
- Gilda, Gabby, and Grampa Gruff briefly appear in Gallus's story.
- Christmas Episode: The fourth, after "Hearth's Warming Eve", "Hearthbreakers" and "A Hearth's Warming Tail".
- Clueless Mystery: The audience isn't given any hints as to who could have caused the mess before Gallus confesses. There is a brief image of the hand/hoof/talon of the culprit for a moment, but it is impossible to tell whom it belongs to as it doesn't match the coloring of the Student Six.
- Continuity Nod:
- Both Sandbar and Silverstream sing "Hearth's Warming Eve Is Here Once Again".
- The pony tradition of crafting hoof-made dolls to hang near the fireplace comes up again.
- The Dragon Lord's Bloodstone Scepter (last seen in "School Daze -- Part 2") plays a major role in Smolder's story.
- The Feast of Fire was briefly mentioned in "Celestial Advice" as a dragon holiday.
- Silverstream briefly mentions her mother, Ocean Flow, who was introduced in "Surf and/or Turf".
- Covered in Gunge: Happens to Spike when he's caught in the blast from the slime explosion.
- Deadpan Snarker: Gallus is on fine form this episode, teasing Ocellus by asking how she'll "survive" two weeks without classes, and sarcastically asking Silverstream how long the Hippogriffs' "Three Days of Freedom" celebration lasts.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Smolder's story is about a poor and lonely dragon who becomes Dragon Lord... by taking advantage of the kindness and generosity of the previous Dragon Lord, stealing his scepter, and then banishing him from the Dragon Lands. As Smolder explains, dragons like stories about "weak, kind creatures getting defeated". Ocellus thinks this story is horrible.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Courtesy of Spike.Spike: I love Hearth's Warming Eve! It's all about friends and presents and family and... presents!
- Detention Episode: Very much so considering the episode's premise and title is based off The Breakfast Club.
- Downer Ending: Smolder's story ends with Scales seizing power as the new Dragon Lord and banishing the previous one, despite his kindness to her. Discussed at the end of the episode; when Sandbar remembers another story he can tell, Smolder excitedly asks if it has a depressing ending.
- Dreadlock Rasta: Sandbar's father has his mane styled this way in Sandbar's story.
- The Farmer and the Viper: In Smolder's tale, the Dragon Lord rescues a lonely dragon living in the wilderness by herself, brings her to the dragon lands and feeds her a feast of delicious gems... and the dragon repays him by stealing his scepter, taking his title and banishing him to the wilderness. Smolder then states that dragons value this sort of behavior.
- Foreshadowing:
- At one point Gallus questions what a cousin is. While the others think he's joking it foreshadows that he knows very little about families.
- Gallus is also the only student who isn't happy about leaving the school and going home.
- Gone Horribly Right: Gallus pulled the prank to avoid going home a little longer because he has no family to return to for the holidays, and when Twilight and Rainbow threaten to keep all the students over the break if nobody confesses, he thinks it worked even better since he gets to stay with his friends. But when nobody confesses and the other students all start accusing each other over who actually did it, Gallus finally comes clean since he doesn't want to see them fight.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Twilight and Rainbow Dash pull this routine with the Student Six; Dash aggressively threatens the students while Twilight treats them fairly, yet firmly.
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Gallus reveals that Grampa Gruff's first name is actually "Grampa", he isn't actually Gallus's grampa because Gallus has no family (though Jim Miller has stated
that Gruff acts as Gallus's guardian). - Important Haircut: In Yona's story, we learn that a yak's hair being braided for the first time is a special ritual, and that Yona's hair was braided during the last Snilldar Fest.
- Karma Houdini:
- Zigzagged. On one hand, Gallus needs to clean up the mess he made and stay in Ponyville for extra friendship lessons. On the other hand, his friends decide to stay for the holidays, which was exactly what he wanted, and he's invited to Twilight's holiday table later that night.
- Played straight in Smolder's story of the impoverished dragon who repaid the Dragon Lord's kindness by stealing the Bloodstone Scepter.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: During Yona's story, she mentions having both a brother and a sister. However, both her siblings have facial hair, something that the few female yaks seen so far are lacking.
- Literal-Minded: How Ocellus and the other reformed changelings take Twilight's instructions for celebrating Hearth's Warming. They "put up the tree" by suspending one in midair using a rope and pulley, jump into a pool of fruit punch at Twilight's suggestion that they "dive in" if they're thirsty, "exchange gifts" by passing them around in a circle without opening them, "build and light a fire" by constructing a wooden prop fire and holding up lanterns around it, and "sing carols" by singing a song that consists of the word "carols" repeated over and over. Sandbar lampshades that they may have misinterpreted the instructions.
- Long List: Twilight's instructions for Hearth's Warming Eve are about ten feet long.
- Miniscule Rocking: The song the yaks sing for Snilldar Fest.Yak song! Yak song! Not very long! Sing again!
- Motive Rant: Downplayed. Gallus does spell out his motives, but he's portrayed with sympathy, and his motives are understandable enough, even if he's responsible for the mess.
- Mundane Made Awesome:
- Silverstream mentions that she likes most days, and finds Tuesdays especially to be "great".
- In contrast to the other student's stories, Sandbar's tale of his Hearth's Warming doll falling off a hearth and nearly getting caught in the fire is rather boring, but he acts as if it's as amazing as the other stories. He later offers to tell another story of how he almost spilled grape juice on a white couch.
- Mundane Utility: The school's tree uses a miniature Fire of Friendship as its tree topper. As in, the thing that one-shot the Windigos. Rainbow Dash admits part of this is Rule of Cool.
- Non-Standard Character Design: The changelings seen in Ocellus's story all have unique color schemes, none of which have been seen before.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: During her brief appearance in Gallus's flashback, Gabby is just as sour-tempered as the other griffons, in contrast to her usual personality. This shows just how miserable the griffon holiday is and why Gallus would go so far as to sabotage his friends' holidays to avoid it.
- Palette Swap: In Smolder's story, the dragons attending the Dragon Lord's feast are depicted with the same models used for the background dragons in the rest of the show, but rendered with different colors.
- Parental Abandonment: Gallus says he has no family to spend the holidays with, which is why he pulled the prank, so he could avoid going home a little longer.
- Rats in a Box: The Student Six start to turn on each other after none of them initially confess to causing the mess in the common room. It's only when Gallus yells at them to stop fighting and admits it that they listen to him.
- Rewatch Bonus: Knowing that Gallus is the culprit and has no family adds another layer to his appearance here, notably in the cold open where, unlike the rest of his friends who head to their rooms with smiles and laughter, he puts on a pout and is silent.
- Sarcasm-Blind: Sandbar, after telling his Hearth's Warming story.Smolder: That's a great story. And you told it really well.
Sandbar: Yeah. It was a Hearthswarming miracle. - Ship Tease: Silverstream is the first of the Young Six to offer to stay with Gallus over the winter break.
- Shout-Out: To The Breakfast Club, both in title and fundamental plot setup (the Student Six forced to clean up the mess, equivalent to the use of detention in the film).
- Slow "NO!": During Sandbar's story, Sandbar yells, "Nooooo!" during an Overcrank as his doll falls off the mantle.
- Sticky Situation: The slime covering Spike proves very sticky, Twilight having to try several times with her telekinesis to pull it off of him.
- Touché: After his confession, Gallus admits that he couldn't stand to see his friends fighting, since it was the opposite of what their holidays are about... except for Smolder's. Smolder raises a claw in protest for a moment, then shrugs it off.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Scales, the dragon in Smolder's story, repays the Dragon Lord's kindness with greed-driven betrayal and exile.
- Wham Line: A minor one, but while discussing the Griffon holiday, and how Griffon families basically just try not to yell at each other, Gallus reveals how he can't even celebrate that himself.Silverstream: Well, at least you get to be with your family.
Gallus: No... because I don't have a family. - Worldbuilding: Focus is given to the traditions and holidays celebrated by the Young Six's species, with some having their families introduced.
