YMMV / Spirit: Riding Free

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Maricela lonely because she looks down on the other kids, or does she look down on the other kids because she legitimately doesn't know how to relate to them, and thus finds it difficult to make friends with them? After all, Maricela seems ecstatic to meet Lucky in the pilot, and tries desperately throughout season one to befriend Lucky, and it's Lucky who decides to push Maricela away for being snotty and stuck up towards Pru and Abigail. It legitimately comes across like Maricela was excited because Lucky, due to being the granddaughter of the guy that owns the freaking railroad in 1870s-1910s-ish America, was rich, and therefore, on her level socially and someone she could relate to. There's also the fact that in Lucky and the Role Reversal, she seems to relate to the villain of the play the class is putting on to such an extent that she seems to legitimately believe that that character is the protagonist of the story. Not even an anti-heroine either, the main, pure-of-heart tragic heroine.
• Cliché Storm: The beginning of the series follows the typical Pony Tale formula pretty closely. City girl unwillingly moves to the countryside with her father. She's lonely and initially nobody likes her, but she somehow manages to catch the affection of a local horse that no one else could wrangle because he's a rebel, thus making her special. And then the rest of the series is a Slice of Life about how she and her new friends deal with the troubles of being a growing girl in a small town where everyone knows each other.
• So Okay, It's Average: On its own terms, the show is actually pretty great with some surprisingly excellent writing. It's just the link with the original movie that puts a lot of people off.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The beloved Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron being turned into a generic "girl and her horse" story for a Merchandise-Driven Spin-Off and missing how the original film's message was about freedom and nature. The trailer for Spirit Untamed immediately revived the backlash — in addition to the aforementioned offenses, it was also criticized over its Limited Animation (an improvement on the series but well below the usual standards for DreamWorks) and accused of erasing the original film’s indigenous focus.
• Toy Ship: Lucky and Javier.

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