I was NEVER looking forward to this, because of EXACTLY what happened.
Powerless heroes, relying on normality and cunning to see them through. I HATE those storylines.
I understand not trying to outdo the S4 finale, because how COULD you, but this feels like the weakest opener of the show, hands down. Yeah, it sets up what will HOPEFULLY be a better season for the elements introduced, but it feels like this PREMIERE got equalized along with everyone else.
And worse, there’s no DRAMA, because we’ve SEEN images from later in the season, where they all CLEARLY still have their cutie marks. So we KNOW this will only be a delay, jerking us around, so that a bunch of random-ass ponies can save the day FOR them.
Season 3 might have had the worst written premiere of any of them, and the writing HERE isn’t bad, but at least Crystal Empire felt BIG, it felt IMPORTANT. It felt like a real adventure with real stakes to it.
Depowering your heroes is something in writing you have to make EXTREMELY temporary, because nobody wants to see the goal of a story to be the return to a character’s personal status quo.
Imagine if the Avengers had a MOVIE where everyone’s powers for whatever reason were removed, and they spent the whole movie trying to get them back from a villain they could otherwise punk-out in seconds?
I really hope we see the six putting some effort in to capture her in later episodes. Last season really rubbed me the wrong way when the keys fell into their laps with no effort.