YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S4 E24 "Equestria Games"

• Broken Base: The infamous Cloudsdale Anthem scene: A Funny Moment, painfully cringe-inducing, or a Cringe Comedy.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Who are the delegates from other lands, and what are their kingdoms like? Plus, all the characters on the other teams, and what events the other ponies from Ponyville were participating in, and how the parts of the games that we didn't see (which were most of them) went, and Equestria's relationship with the griffon kingdom that sent a team (assuming it wasn't a griffon-majority territory located in Equestrian boundaries), and how the actual anthems of Ponyville and Cloudsdale go...
  • The security guard telling Rarity to go through the disabling spell is told "Unicorns will no longer be allowed through" otherwise, implying that this was a recent development. What possible cheating scandal happened to prompt this new measure?
• Fridge Brilliance: A good explanation for Cadance having explicitly not invited Spike to the preparations for the games? Why, the statue they were sculpting in his honor was most likely not finished. It also explains why Twilight wasn't surprised at said statue; she could very well have seen it beforehand offscreen.
• Informed Wrongness: Spike's Heroic Self-Deprecation was meant to be him unfairly failing to realize his worth. But Spike failed the important task of lighting the torch and didn't know the anthem of the winning team with his improvisations being seen as offensive, embarrassing himself in front of thousands during a very important event. His saving the day which was supposed to prove his worth amount to being in the right place at the right time with Spike rightfully saying anyone who had his powers could have done it.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Fans who reviled Princess Cadance for not inviting Spike to the Equestria Games inspection were won back when she showed Spike how thankful the Crystal Empire was for saving them.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The Cloudsdale anthem sounds an awful lot like The Canada Song from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The synopsis and subsequent airing of this episode has led to complaints of the Equestria Games arc culminating in a Spike episode rather than putting the focus on the games themselves. This is somewhat ironic, considering that the complaints to the first episode of the Games arc were that Spike wasn't getting enough focus in the form of him not being invited back to the Crystal Empire.
  • Considering the tourist mustang's speed and stamina in "Games Ponies Play" - not to mention the fact that Shining Armor was training a Crystal Empire team on a steeplechase course - it's a shame that no hoof races were shown.
  • The episode had a subplot about Ponyville lagging behind in points, but this also didn't amount to much since the audience barely saw the games and thus wouldn't be invested. Some believe that if even one or two events were shown in full, it would've given this plot more relevance.
• Unexpected Character: Cherry Jubilee of all ponies sits among the princesses and delegates.
• Vindicated by History: The episode was widely panned when it first came out for focusing less time on the games, a plot point that was built up since Season Three, in favor of following Spike’s dilemma, leading to many disowning it altogether as a blatant example of the writers lying to the fans (despite the fact that the writer isn't at fault for how episodes would be advertised), condemning it as one of the season's weakest episodes. While there’s still some criticism about not focusing on the games, many have been able to look past it in subsequent rewatches and view it on its own merits as a Spike episode, with praise going to the fact that it didn't follow the same issues his previous episodes suffered from and saw it as a good step forward for his Character Development. Nowadays, many fans see it as both one of his and the season's better episodes.
• The Woobie: Spike, after his cringe-worthy rendition of the Cloudsdale anthem brings him down even further. At least everyone else was embarrassed for him and not laughing at or booing him.

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