YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S3 E2 "The Crystal Empire – Part 2"

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Some fans have interpreted King Sombra as having been Driven to Madness by his previous defeat and imprisonment, thus explaining his animalistic personality when it's made very clear he was The Chessmaster a thousand years ago.
• Awesome Music:
  • Three songs! Well, two songs and a Triumphant Reprise.
  • King Sombra's overall Leitmotif (a repetitive, droning blast), but especially during his advance on the Crystal Tower, is both awesome and terrifying.
• Base-Breaking Character: The fandom is fractured over whether King Sombra is a bad Generic Doomsday Villain because of his untapped backstory potential and how one-dimensional his portrayal was, a decent villain because of how uber-prepared and savvy he was in the past, or a great villain because of his Sauron-esque physicality and aura of mystery unfortunately relegated to an episode already overfull with characters.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: An object, not a character. Sombra's door is easily his most-popular trap; it's rigged with multiple complex and interesting magics at once (thus proving Sombra's might as an evil Archmage, Present Absence or not), and it causes the Signature Scene where Twilight and Spike are Mind Raped to near-Despair Event Horizon. Some fans even see it as a Mouth of Sauron to Sombra's, well, Sauron.
• Fanfic Fuel: An entire nation is introduced, including another ancient conflict involving Celestia and Luna, and King Sombra has so much left unrevealed about him he's prime material for expansion.
• Genius Bonus: The idea of a divine spark/light within everypony responsible for maintaining love and unity in the world is a legitimate Hellenistic metaphysical concept, in keeping with the Crystal Empire's Greek flavor. Though it's pretty vague, it seems Hermetic^note which had a lot of sun, moon, and stars symbolism and also introduced the idea of "As Above, So Below", i.e. that changes in one place, like the Crystal Empire, are reflected everywhere, Stoic (not that stoic), Valentinian, or Neo-Platonic (making this article Hilarious in Hindsight).
• He's Just Hiding: Some think Sombra's horn surviving his destruction is setting up a future plot, possibly as a way for him to come back in some way. This comes up in My Little Pony: FIENDship Is Magic.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Spike's greatest fear makes a scene particularly harsh in "Spike at Your Service".
  • Applejack's comment below about things being better when they're a Rarity is either hilarious or harsh considering that Rarity got no focus episode in the third season. It's made even more better/worse considering that she had a spotlight episode, but Executive Meddling resulted in Applejack to take her place instead.
• Ho Yay:
  • AJ states "All good things are better when they're... a Rarity." and winks at Rarity, who awws, and the ending song provides some for Rarity and Twilight
  • The jousting match between Dash and Fluttershy. Freud would have interesting theories about two females charging at each other long spears in hand...
• Memetic Mutation: Epic Wife Tossing.
• Narm Charm: Throwing Your Wife Always Works, right Shining Armor? It was pretty awesome, though.
• Nightmare Fuel: King Sombra.
  • The implications behind his reign imply it was absolute hell.
  • He enchanted a door that shows your worst nightmares and plays on your deepest fears.
  • He licks his lips in anticipation of whatever it was he intended to do to Spike if he'd gotten his hooves on him while in the process of aiming a jagged crystal pillar moving at high speeds directly at the little guy.
  • Just how thorough he is. Even when Celestia and Luna defeated him in the past, his backup curse on the Empire negated that and gave him the last laugh. And he gets a Near-Villain Victory in the present, too - courtesy of his Morton's Fork traps. Minor screentime or not, he's The Dreaded for a reason.
• Questionable Casting: Sombra's few lines are not provided by a traditional voice actor, but by storyboard artist Jim Miller. While the show's staff have sneaked in by voicing background ponies before, this is a major villain, regardless of how many lines he had.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: King Sombra was an Evil Overlord and so powerful that Celestia and Luna had to team up just to banish him, not to mention the most-Crazy-Prepared villain in Equestrian history. We don't know much else about him and he dies at the end of the two-parter.
• Vindicated by History: Despite King Sombra's underwhelming reception at first, more and more fans would come to appreciate him as a unique No-Nonsense Nemesis compared to the other villains. This would come to a head in the Season 9 premiere, "The Beginning of the End"... While it did see him come Back from the Dead and finally get more lines and screentime - it also saw him get a sudden overhaul in the form of a Laughably Evil new personality that many criticized as too clichéd/stereotypical, and too inconsistent with his actions here. Many were also displeased with his new role as a Big Bad Wannabe (which certainly did no favors for his Memetic Loser reputation among some), arguing that at least this premiere treated him as a proper Dreaded.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • King Sombra's shadow form.
  • The Crystal Empire.
  • The true form of the crystalline ponies.
• The Woobie:
  • Cadance, just like in the last two-parter. She hasn't been able to sleep at all or eat much of anything since coming to the Crystal Kingdom.
  • Twilight is put through the wringer thanks to her Adorkable nature. She's constantly stressed out over Celestia's test and by extension the well-being of her friends and brother, has to witness her worst fear of Celestia disowning her and losing all her companions, and when returning to Canterlot, is absolutely crushed because of her apparent "failure".
  • A lot of fans see Spike as this given his reaction to the "Worst Fears" door. After only a few seconds, he's driven to tears and pleading towards the image of Twilight, which told him she didn't need him anymore and was sending him away.
  • The Crystal Ponies in general! Spending all of King Sombra's reign as a Slave Race under such horrible conditions they're absolutely terrified of him. Then to make it worse, he's made it so that's all they can remember about their entire lives!

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