The final battle against Team Shadow begins, with the heralds of Alicormony contacting Flash, Twilight, and Doc telepathically and reveal the identity of Team Shadow's leader to them.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Played with for Team Shadow again. Chrysalis sucessfully steals the artifacts from the Crystal Empire, meaning Team Shadow can finally continue with the final stage of their plan. But it can only be considered a Pyrrhic Victory at best, since the heralds managed to escape and are taking Flash, Twilight, Doc, and Spike to Team Shadow to stop them once and for all, and Sombra's identity as Team Shadow's leader has been exposed.
- Chekhov's Gun: The hacked warp tiles in the Crystal Empire become important. After Flash, Twilight, and Doc contact everyone in the Crystal Empire and reveal Sombra's secret, they instruct Doc to reconfigure the Pokémon transporters to connect them to the warp tiles in the Crystal Empire, allowing them all to transport back to the Empire immediately without needing to travel back the long way. This unfortunately also works for Team Shadow, since Celestia gave Sombra the specs for their warp tile control system, allowing him to transport Chrysalis to the Empire and steal the artifacts.
- Energy Donation: The three heralds asks for their respective chosen ones to donate their energy to them, which will give them the strength to break free from the Energy Traps they're in but leave the three humans physically exhausted for awhile. The three immediately agree, giving the Legendaries the boost they need to escape.
- Evil Gloating: When Sombra sees the heralds of Alicormony captured, he takes a moment to gloat to them how he knows they are sworn to obey their master no matter what order they are given, so once Alicormony is under his control he will be their new master. This comes back to bite him when the three Legendaries contact Flash, Twilight, and Doc's consciousnesses via a Psychic Link set up by Mysticorn and they show them this very moment to reveal Sombra's identity to them.
- How We Got Here: The opening scene has Flash, his friends, the professor sisters, Sunset Shimmer, all the Gym Leaders he faced, and all of their Pokémon, laying in the snow covered in bruises as Flash struggles to get up and keep fighting against a massive humanoid figure. Just as Flash wonders if this is the end, the scene changes to one day earlier.
- Internal Reveal: Sombra's identity as the leader of Team Shadow, which has been known to the reader for a long time, is finally revealed to the other characters. Flash, Twilight, and Doc learn it from the heralds, they pass it on to Spike, the professors, Shining Armor, and Grand, and before Chrysalis escapes with the artifacts they reveal they know Sombra is her leader.
- My Master, Right or Wrong: Sombra knows that the heralds are sworn to follow any command Alicormony gives them, so once he controls Alicormony they will need to accept him as their new master and follow all his orders. They don't confirm or deny if it works that way, but they still rush to stop his plans.
- NOT!: When everyone manages to corner Chrysalis in the temple as she grabs the artifacts, Grand tells her to surrender. She holds up the spear and case with the Heart Fragment and replies "Sure... NOT!" before throwing the spear through the window depicting Horsearth, shattering it and jumping through it to escape.
- Oh, Crap!: Once Chrysalis hears that everyone knows Sombra is the leader of Team Shadow, she gets a terrified look under her gas-mask, and later nervously reports the news to Sombra.
- Tempting Fate: When the transporter activates and a strange device suddenly appears on it, everyone thinks it is a bomb when it starts beeping. When it becomes just a long flat beep and there is no explosion, Spike asks "Aren't we supposed to be blowing up?" and Twilight just tells him not to jinx it. As Flash wonders if it is a dud and Doc moves to examine it, they realize it isn't an explosive device but a gas device, with it deploying a special Stun Spore that paralyzes everyone, including Androrg and the Guardroid.
- Wham Episode: This marks the beginning of the final Team Shadow arc. Sombra's identity as the leader of Team Shadow is revealed to everyone and Chrysalis sucessfully steals the Heart Fragment and Shadow Spear from the Crystal Empire. Plus there is the opening scene, showing everyone struggling against an unseen enemy, before flashing back to one day earlier.
