Episode Name: "Twilight's Seven" Air Date: April 20th, 2019 @ 10:30 AM (ET) Where You Can Watch Live: Spazz Otaku Ascended Live Brony Network Brony State Brony TV S&B Network Summary: Twilight and Shining Armor pit their wits against each other to settle a long-standing sibling rivalry, but they soon discover they are not the only competitors. Ruminations: This is the 200th episode of MLP:FIM! That means we're going to get something pretty awesome (I hope), as the writers asked the voice actors what they wanted their characters to do, something their characters had never had the chance to do, and so what we'll see will be the result of that input!
So it was essentially Ocean's 11, but with ponies breaking into the castle rather than a casino. Shining Armor has implemented new policies to protect the castle, since Sombra managed to breach security so easily. Princess Celestia has arranged for better reinforcements to prevent entry, while Luna disagrees with her plan and has other ideas for better protecting the castle. Anyway, in an effort to get Twilight involved, Shining Armor presents the chance for her to win back the "crown" they used to compete for back when they were kids. See, their parents had an ongoing competition where the "best" sibling (got the best grades, behaved the best, and so on) got to wear a crown and gain bragging rights from it for a year. It was a very friendly competition, but Shining had won it right before leaving for the guard academy, and never offered Twilight the chance to win it back. Now, in an effort to show how well he's reinforced security, he offers Twilight the chance to break in and if she can reach the throne room, she wins the crown forever. Naturally she accepts. She forms a plan with the rest of the Mane Six (and Spike) to break into the castle, bypass the security, and obtain the crown. She finds out quickly, however, that Shining expects her to do just that, and so Rarity offers her a way to win: don't plan anything, and let the other ponies do the work. It would throw him off and he wouldn't expect it to happen. So they set about with their individual plans. Unfortunately, everything seems to go wrong: Spike and Fluttershy end up trapped beneath the throne room, Rarity and Dash are lost inside the castle catacombs, Pinkie Pie doesn't make it into space. Applejack's distraction is undercut by Pinkie by accident. When they regroup, Spike tells Twilight to go ahead with her own plan. This time she does, and it works. They manage to bypass all of the security traps, make it into the castle, and the throne room. Right before she reaches the crown, though, she is stopped by Shining Armor, who says he expected her to do exactly what she had. Celestia follows Shining, and is about to declare Spike the greatest sibling of all time, that is, until Spike calls their attention to the fact that the crown is sitting on his own head. How did it happen? Collusion, friends. Turns out, Spike hashed out a deal with Luna. She agreed to help him from the inside, so he could get to the crown when everyone else wasn't looking, and why? Because Celestia had ignored her suggestions for better internal security. Because neither Twilight nor Shining technically won, Spike wonders who gets the crown. Before he can hand it over, Twilight takes it and places it right back on his head, and they declare Spike the best sibling, and that he had been all along. This episode gave everyone a chance to have a part in it. Between Rarity's hamming it up as a private investigator (with Dash as her muscle) to find clues to the hidden entrance into the castle, Pinkie's plan to go into space, Fluttershy and Spike's plan to sneak in through the Throne room windows, even Zephyr Breeze being placed on guard duty, where Dash has to flirt with him to distract him from Rarity finding the entrance (that part had me laughing, because she Dash was trying so hard not to vomit), it was some great character moments. We even get to see Maud! It was also nice to see some solid horse faces, especially when Luna pouts. It's so cute! This was a solid entry for the 200th episode, and I'm glad we're getting to see a few things we hadn't yet seen, and I know I'm going to miss this show so much when it's gone, so savor these episodes! This one gets a solid A from me.