Heartwarming / My Little Pony: A New Generation

• Despite being surrounded by peers who view unicorns and pegasus ponies as bullies and monsters, Sunny (and by extension her father) still holds out on the belief that the three pony races can be friends and unify once again. She's a breath of fresh air in a sea of ponies who have easily forgotten the days when all three ponies of Equestria lived in harmony.
  • Twilight's speech about "others who will continue our mission after we are gone." In "The Ending of the End – Part 2" becomes this thanks to Sunny who has dedicated her life to doing just that, millennia after Twilight gave that speech.
  • Her open-mindedness is established during a playdate with Sprout and Hitch, whilst playing with dolls of the Mane 6. As opposed to Sprout who so readily depicts the non-Earth ponies as bad guys, young Sunny wants to depict them as being best friends. Somehow, she knows the accurate depiction: Twilight and her companions formed their legendary friendship despite their differences.
    • A sweet moment for Hitch in the aforementioned playdate. He's willing to play Sunny's way despite not agreeing with her simply because he sees that Sprout's method of play is upsetting to Sunny; he values Sunny's happiness too much to force his way on her, despite all evidence he has access to painting her as wrong.
• Argyle's tender moments with Sunny are quite heartwarming to see.
• Hitch never wavers in his friendship with Sunny. Even after warning her about his problem "associating" with her at the start, and all the trouble she puts him through during the events of the movie for apparently no gain, Hitch still comforts her in her Darkest Hour, telling her she did everything she could, and that she can come talk to him anytime. Reading between the lines, his whole quest to track down and "arrest" Sunny is actually him worrying for her well-being and wanting to bring her back home safe.
  • One cute friendship moment near the beginning of the movie is Hitch indulging Sunny in a Secret Hoofshake. Much like Rainbow Dash and Gilda in the last series, it's obvious he's not as into it as Sunny, but even when warning her off of her annual law-breaking, he's willing to indulge her.
    Sunny & Hitch: Up high! Down low! Hitch it to a post! Flip it Sunny-side up and on a piece of toast!
  • The sweetest part is that, after the last line, Sunny brushes up against Hitch affectionately, then they both chuckle and smile at each other.
• Nearly every scene with both Sunny and Izzy is liable to melt your heart. Izzy clearly values Sunny as a friend more than most anything, even before learning that Sunny was the one who sent out the letter filly Izzy found that inspired her to find her way to Maretime Bay in the first place.
  • Heck, the aforementioned letter unto itself is heartwarming. The seed for the whole beautiful adventure was planted when one filly decided to extend a hoof in friendship to any unicorn or pegasus who found her letter inviting them to visit Maretime Bay. Years later, that same letter would bring Izzy to the town because she was willing to accept Sunny's offer at face value.
• Sunny and Izzy share a song as soon as they decide to head to Zephyr Heights, a song all about how they're going to look out for each other on this journey, and Sunny puts up with Izzy's antics all throughout with some amused expressions that are full of affection.
• Zipp giving Sunny her journal back and freeing both her and Izzy after they were sent the dungeon by her mother.
  • Really, Zipp and Pipp are arguably the least bigoted characters in the film. Hitch is initially a Noble Bigot with a Badge and Sunny and Izzy are initially Not So Above It All in terms of prejudice. Meanwhile Zipp and Pipp are never shown to be afraid of the other main characters nor do they ever mention the insulting stereotypes surrounding the other pony types. And this is despite growing up with a bigoted mother in a society where racism is shown to be common.
• The whole campfire scene qualifies as this, first with Zipp and Sunny inviting Hitch to join the group, followed by Izzy revealing she received Sunny's lantern message, all of which finally inspires Hitch to support Sunny's cause. The whole scene is a masterwork in screenwriting d'aww.
  • This line makes it extra heartwarming:
    Hitch: Hey, um... I want to do my part.
  • In the same scene, Hitch thinks it would be better if he returned to Maretime Bay. Sunny tells him that he can go if he wants, but she and the other mares are glad to have him along.
• That might be just force of a habit, but The Pegasus Guards following after Queen Haven to arrest her were quick to defend her when Alphabittle began insulting her. Perhaps Haven was a competent ruler after all.
• During "Fit Right In", when Hitch isn't being a walking Funny Background Event, he pessimistically reminds the others of the stakes of their quest. Whenever he does, though, Sunny immediately takes action to tell him that they know what the consequences are, and reassure him that they won't fail.
• Before following Sunny back to Maretime Bay, Hitch quietly but wholeheartedly calls Izzy, Zipp and Pipp "friends", proving that he has truly left all his old suspicions and hostilities behind.
• When Hitch and Sunny come back to Maretime Bay to find Sprout about to start a race war, they try to convince both him and the locals that the pegasi and unicorns can be their friends and that there's no need to fight or fear them. The locals seem relieved at the idea of not having to fight...and then they snap right back as they were once Sprout convinces them that Sunny and Hitch have been brainwashed.
• Even after failing to bring back magic to Equestria, Zipp, Pipp and Izzy still want to remain friends with Sunny, and even decide to go after her when she walks off dejected, albeit with a slight delay as they, too, processed the sorrow of the crystals not working.
• Uniting the three crystals has failed to work and her lighthouse has been destroyed. One might expect Sunny to be even more dejected than she was before. But this time, Sunny realizes that it's the ponies, not the crystals, that need to be reunited in harmony. One by one, Haven, Alphabittle, and Phyllis step forward and nudge together the broken pieces of the frame for Sunny's treasured photo of herself and Argyle to show their silent agreement.
• What restores balance to Equestria isn't just gathering some pretty rocks. It's the same thing that always saved the day. It might have been thousands of years and a completely new generation, but Friendship is still magic.
• Because she finally reunited the ponies with the Power of Friendship, returning magic to Equestria, Sunny (who has never had any expectation of ever being able to use magic herself) is turned into an alicorn so that she can share in the magic she brought to so many others.
• The sheer joy of Pipp, Zipp, and Sunny's first flight together, and Izzy's palpable excitement from feeling magic for the first time as it gathers in her horn, followed by the rest of the Unicorns feeling the return of magic themselves, which puts an end to their race-wide depression, and the Pegasi still in Zephyr Heights experiencing flight for their own first times too, alongside all their little winged critters.
  • In the aftermath Izzy and another unicorn use their magic to put Maretime Bay's trolley back into place, since Sprout's war machine had knocked it over earlier, proving to the earth ponies just how helpful unicorn friends can be. Meanwhile Pipp uses her phone to snap a photo of her sister alongside several earth ponies and a unicorn.
• A tiny detail: During the "Gonna Be My Day" sequence, Sunny makes a unicorn-shaped balloon model to cheer up small filly, who seems to like it, though her parents are horrified. At the very end of the movie we see that very same filly still happily holding onto the balloon unicorn as she watches Izzy perform magic.
• In the middle of the credits, we get one last scene: three foals, an Earth Pony, a Unicorn, and a Pegasus, all playing together happily, with and without the use of their newly restored magic.
  • There's a beautiful element of Book Ends to this scene. The movie began with three Earth ponies arguing about whether or not they could ever befriend Pegasus or Unicorn ponies. And it ends with just that happening: Earth ponies, Pegasus Ponies, and Unicorn Ponies befriending one another like the days of yore.
  • A minor note; the foals are singing the lyrics from "Glowin' Up" at the beginning of the scene. Not only does it appear that Pipp (and by extension, her family) got her popularity back, but also that her music is now being shared with the Pegasi's new friends.

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