I hope people have liked this at least a little. I might do some other things for other characters, but I don't know.
Twilight Sparkle
As the main protagonist of the series, Twilight has more combined screen time and character focus than any other character in the series. As such it’s pretty easy to assume that she has had the most character development of any character in the series, and some ways she has. However, looking at Twilight’s character arc I can’t help but find her overall development from the beginning to the end of the series to be rather strange. I’ll go into why I feel that way in more detail as I continue on, but while I am still quite confused as to why her development occurred the way it did but I did find a rather interesting theme to Twilight’s arc. Twilight, for all of her desire to learn about things including friendship, she is very slow to learn things from her own flaws or mistakes. Now I understand that this doesn’t sound like something that is particularly surprising or even unique to Twilight but as we look through Twilight’s character arc I think you will understand why I point this out with her.
When we are first introduced to Twilight Sparkle in the pilot episode she is very different than the one we follow throughout the series. In the pilot she is very studious, no non-sense, snarky, and asocial. Some of these character aspects would remain (studious being the most obvious) but others would be quickly cast by the wayside in favor of other aspects that would fit the shows direction much better. Where she was once snarky and asocial, she becomes social and more awkward. Where she was more goal-oriented and messy, she becomes detail-oriented and organized (this will become important later), and where she once seemed casual with Princess Celestia she became more deferential and fearful of her (this will also be important later). Some of these things develop naturally as the first season progresses, others are introduced as the season goes on and by the late first season we have a protagonist that has already changed quite a bit from her (not so) humble origins. Now it was established in the first episode that she remains in Ponyville so that she can learn about friendship, which she does . . . sort of. The strange thing is that while she writes all of the friendship reports in the first season she very rarely rights about things that she directly learned for herself, most of what she writes about is problems her friends and others had to deal with or things that the rest of the group had to deal with together (and in the case of Dragonshy and Bridle Gossip she was already kind of in the right anyway). Even in episodes like Winter Wrap Up, where she supposedly learns about team work, she does so by solving a problem that the entire town was having and any failure on her part was rendered irrelevant. The only episode where she actually learns anything directly from another pony or because of her own failure is Feeling Pinkie Keen, which is a rather interesting since it’s probably the last episode where we see her more haughty characterization from the pilot. The fact that she doesn’t face a lot of personal challenge or consequences, likely has to do with her role as the leader and guiding force of the Mane Six, which is a bit odd considering she’s the one supposed to be learning. While the pattern of her development and learning does provide some explanation for her changes from early in season one to late season one, what comes next is more than little harder to explain.
Lesson Zero is the first episode in season two to star Twilight, and it’s probably one of her (and the show in general’s) most important episodes, though not really for positive reasons. The first season was not only building Twilight as a leader but also as a pony who was extremely organized, academically focused, and not always the best situations that involve Celestia, but this episode takes those aspects, cranks them up to eleven and adds an unhealthy dose of neuroses. It’s probably one of the few episodes where one can genuinely call one of the characters sanity into question as well as her ability to lead the rest of the Mane Six (or anything for that matter). Honestly it’s a character development that I really don’t understand. While the aspects were not completely absent in Twilight’s character to develop into what we see in this episode, I can’t see how they became so extreme in such a short amount of time. I’ve seen some theorize that it is the left over effects of her dealing with Discord in the last episode, but frankly I don’t feel she suffered any worse than any of the others and their characters did not suffer such a radical shift in character. It frankly feels less like character evolution and more like character mutation, so to speak. What’s worse from a character perspective is that despite the damage she wrought she ultimately did not have to accept responsibility for her actions. Celestia was sympathetic enough with her concerns and her friends were more than willing to accept the blame that the episode ends up enabling more of this behavior from Twilight, which is reflected in the rest of the season. While she does still perform her leadership role throughout season two, Lesson Zero frankly makes it less believable then it was in season one, especially with all of the allusions to obsessive compulsive nature. I can somewhat accept it though since she, as I implied in the beginning, she is much better at dealing with other ponies’ problems then her own. In fact her next episode, It’s About Time, has her dealing with pretty much the exact same issues. In that episode she apparently learns her lesson for real, though later episodes would suggest otherwise. The last episode that Twilight stars in is Canterlot Wedding, which while developing the relationship between her and the new characters (as well as some very odd moral priorities from her friends and Celestia) it really doesn’t do much to develop her character outside of that. So by the end of season two, Twilight, while still a leader at times, has been mostly reduced to an extreme neurotic who can’t handle or learn from any of her own problems. So the question now becomes, can Twilight hope to recover from this. The answer from season three seems to be yes, but perhaps not in the best way.
Season three was touted early on as the season of Twilight and it shows with it’s opening two-parter The Crystal Empire. At the start we see that Twilight continues to be neurotic, academically obsessed and fearful of Celestia’s judgment. She is apparently so fearful of her academic success and Celestia’s view of her that the image she see’s at the “nightmare door” has everything to do with finding out that she failed Celestia’s test and no longer being her student rather then something bad happening to her friends or family at the Crystal Empire. This is not looking good, especially since it’s made more than obvious that Celestia has something big planned for Twilight in the near future and Twilight is still having a lot of trouble dealing with her own problems.Still, she managed ignore Celestia’s “you’re the only one who can do this” statement which allowed Spike and Cadance to save the day. It honestly doesn’t sound like much when I say it like that, but with how Twilight has been the past season it’s a step in the right direction. Her next starring episode Magic Duel really doesn’t do anything in the way of character development or elaboration; however some of the episodes she has a secondary role in do actually have a few bits of character development. In Keep Calm And Flutter On she demonstrates that she actually can stand up to Celestia when she makes questionable decisions, and in Games Ponies Play she shows that she finally getting some control over her anxiety issues. All of these are good signs for Twilight Sparkle’s might actually be learning from her own mistakes and setting out to fix her flaws. And then we get to the season finale Magical Mystery Cure.
Magical Mystery Cure is a series defining episode for Twilight and one that is rife with controversy, and not without reason. It is meant to be the culmination of three seasons of character development and is meant to demonstrate that Twilight is now ready to be elevated to the same status of the other Alicorn Princesses. I am just going to come out and say that the episode failed to accomplish that goal. I say this because the event that is supposed to demonstrate her readiness is really nothing special in the grand scheme of things. Hell, it’s something she did back in Return of Harmony, in the face of a much greater conflict and higher stakes; though admittedly she needed another’s prompting to do so. And from outside the episode itself, I think I have made a fair case that Twilight is not ready for the responsibilities of being a Princess, not yet. While she has shown the ability to lead and help others, she has only recently demonstrated some ability at dealing with her own problems and flaws before she can really hope to fulfill such duties. She needs more character development before I can believe what the episode is trying to tell me, until then I think Celestia has made a big mistake in promoting Twilight before her time, and so has the writing staff for that matter.
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