YMMV / Recall the Time of No Return

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Had Twilight Sparkle actually changed enough over one thousand years that Empress Twilight's actions weren't as suspicious as it appeared to readers?
• Awesome Art: The art in this comic looks good enough to be mistaken for official.
• Complete Monster: Brotonia, the queen of the Crimson Changelings, took Empress Twilight Sparkle's identity after defeating her 1000 years from the present day. As "Twilight", she quickly became a tyrannical ruler who pretended to have become paranoid about the Crimson Changelings invading Equestria in disguise. She had tens of thousands of ponies executed under "suspicion" of being Changelings, along with several thousand more who dared oppose her, and still more were killed by her monstrous Iron Wolves. At the same time, she herself had been replacing ponies for years with her Changelings, keeping the real ones underground in hundreds of cocoons. She had kept the real Twilight, along with Sterling, the young Alicorn meant to take the place of Princess Luna, in cocoons to act as sort of magic battery chargers, and attempted to doom Sterling's sister Gold Lily to the same fate. When Twilight's friends arrive in the future, she attempts to have them imprisoned in cocoons as well, and when Fluttershy attacks her, she has the guard who let go of her brutally killed by an Iron Wolf. She later mounts a deadly attack against Spike's rebel group, and during a fight with the real Twilight, sends a massive energy blast at Ponyville..
• Tear Jerker: The very premise of the comic. Mane Five decide to visit Twilight Sparkle in far future — reasoning that she must feel lonely due to outliving all of them — only to find out that she has (apparently) turned into a cruel tyrant responsible for death and misery of thousands of innocent ponies. It appears that they arrived there, with intention of throwing Twilight a party, only to end up having to help either depose or outright kill someone who used to be their best friend.
  • Pinkie Pie (who came out with crazy idea of visiting future Twilight in the first place) takes it particularly hard. She storms out of the meeting in resistance headquarters in tears, frantically running ahead throughout the entire hideout, until she finally just sits down in an empty chamber, sobbing quietly. She has to be comforted by Applejack afterwards.
  • We learn that both Celestia and Luna are long dead in the future. It is not revealed how they actually died nor are their bodies shown, but we get to see a scene from their funeral, where their coffins are put on a display. The sight of all those ponies we got to know in the series, mourning the death of their beloved princesses, is heartwrenching in itself.
  • Twilight's Heroic Sacrifice in the finale, when she takes a magic blast meant to destroy entire city, and later uses her remaining strength to finally wipe out Queen Brotonia at the cost of her own life. Afterwards, she only lives long enough to bid final farewell to Mane Five and apologize to Spike and Gold Lily for failing them... all while she is literally fading away on their own eyes.
• The Un-Twist: The twist that the real Twilight Sparkle actually lost to Queen Brotonia instead of winning when the backstory of the Crimson Changeling War was revealed to the protagonists and readers. Savvy readers even if they are non-Whovians saw the twist coming hundreds of pages ahead of the reveal.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The REAL Twilight Sparkle. Some readers felt that outside of a few flashbacks that precede the Crimson Changeling War, we never really got to see what she was really like after a millennium of solitude as the one we have been looking at for most of the pages was Queen Brotonia. After Brotonia's death, Twilight dies shortly after from her wounds.