YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S8 E26 "School Raze – Part 2"

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • What was Cozy Glow's true motivation for wanting to drain Equestria's magic and trying to take over the School of Friendship? And does she have hidden insecurities like Diamond Tiara did?
  • Did everypony really approve of the decision to imprison Cozy Glow in Tartarus, or did the Princesses do so unilaterally without others knowing or questioning it? Notably, all Celestia told Twilight was that she was somewhere that she couldn't make any trouble, so it's likely that Twilight didn't know the details.
• Broken Base:
  • The decision to imprison Cozy Glow in Tartarus. Justifiable since she nearly drained all of Equestria's magic, or should she have been given a more lenient punishment since she's just a child? The strong implication that the Princesses never made any attempt to contact her parents doesn't help. On the other hand, she wasn't given a backstory or a Freudian Excuse to explain her behavior or to confirm that she even had any canon parents or guardians watching over her, as Word of God confirmed that Cozy has no canon parents.
  • The fact that the main villain of the finale was Cozy Glow, a child of all things, has divided the fandom. Some loved that the writers subverted expectations and appreciate the change in status quo, showcasing that anypony could become evil regardless of age. Others hated it as they felt it was lousily executed with very little payoff to the season as a whole. Some even felt cheated that it wasn’t Chancellor Neighsay since he fit in with the overarching story of proving that the School of Friendship is a good cause, or Queen Chrysalis in disguise given she infiltrated the School of Friendship undetected previously this season.
  • Chancellor Neighsay turning over a new leaf is also divisive. There are those who think he got off too easy, and those who think he has a strong enough motivation and redemption arc that it doesn't matter.
  • Cozy Glow's master plan to gain the ultimate power of Friendship by draining all of Equestria’s magic. Was it a clever and devilish plan with legitimate forward thinking, or was it incredibly nonsensical and poorly planned out considering that, by that logic, her magic would be drained too? No one seems to agree.
• Catharsis Factor: Admit it, you cheered when Chancellor Neighsay was chained up in Twilight's office and rebuked by the students of the School of Friendship.
• Common Knowledge:
  • A lot of fans think that Cozy Glow's plan was the same as Tirek's from Season 4, which was to drain Equestria of its magic and use it all for herself to rule over Equestria. But actually, her plan was to drain Equestira of its magic and then banish that magic to another dimension (Along with Starlight and the Young Six since they were the ones in the way of her plan), all the while tricking the Mane Six into getting locked in Tartarus.
  • Due to the episode leaking in foreign languages, many interpreted the ending as Cozy Glow allowing themselves to get sent to Tartarus for some plan. It persisted even after the English release and subsequent final season failed to show any such plan.
• Contested Sequel: To "Shadow Play", and to some extent Season Eight as a whole. Some fans enjoyed this finale for its subversion of fan expectations, giving more focus on the Student Six saving the day as opposed to the Mane 6 again, and were relieved that the show finally averted the Easily Forgiven cliché for once. At the same time, there were others who felt that it was an anticlimactic end to the overarching plot of Season Eight that came off too contrived for all the plot elements to work and didn’t cap said season off properly, felt the Student Six were a Spotlight-Stealing Squad just as bad as, if not worse than Starlight Glimmer, and were turned away by the idea of Cozy Glow being the main bad guy all along, especially given the potential of Chancellor Neighsay or Queen Chrysalis being more interesting villains considering they had much closer connections to the Mane 6 this season. The decision to have her imprisoned in Tartarus has also become a point of content for fans with some, as mentioned above, relieved that the writers didn’t reuse the same trope of redeeming the bad guy again after it happened so many times, while others feel that this was the one time Easily Forgiven would’ve been justified considering she’s just a child, as opposed to subverting it.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • When the Tree of Harmony saved the Young Six, they were glowing as if the elements of harmony were being used. Next element bearers, perhaps.
  • Cozy Glow has no Origin Story. How did she become so twisted at such a young age? And where are her parents?
  • There are also Fix Fics like "Cozy Glow's Punish-...er, ...Reformation", about trying to reform Cozy Glow instead of sealing her in Tartarus.
• I Knew It!: Some viewers speculated about why Cozy Glow would have a rook for a cutie mark when she never plays chess. This episode confirms that she's quite a Chessmaster, easily manipulating the pony students, chancellor, and creatures against each other.
• Jerkass Woobie: Chancellor Neighsay becomes this when Cozy Glow turns all of the School of Friendship's students against him, leading to them restraining him to a chair with chains. In the end, after learning the error of his ways, he apologizes to Twilight.
• Karmic Overkill: Cozy Glow committed the same crimes as Tirek and was wholly unrepentant despite being a child, thus she got the same punishment of being imprisoned in Tartarus. Many found this excessive, unable to buy a child being so irredeemable and evil without explanation in such an idealistic and forgiving series, and believing adult villains have been given more leniency by the heroes^explanation Queen Chrysalis was allowed to flee despite being equally unrepentant and vengeful, Starlight Glimmer and the Pony of Shadows had them go out of their way to question why they turned evil and set them right. and without powers she wasn't dangerous enough to justify such extreme actions instead of regular prison. Jim Miller stated that "It seemed fun and subversive at the time" but acknowledged how some would take offense.
• Strawman Has a Point: Back in "School Daze", Twilight said her school would help Equestria, whereas Chancellor Neighsay predicted it would be Equestria's undoing. In a sense, he was partially right: Without knowing, poor Twilight's teachings were exploited by one of her students (granted, her teachings also created heroes to counteract said student). What Neighsay didn't anticipate was that this student would be a pony herself, not another creature.

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