A Hearth's Warming Tail (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic)
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"A Hearth's Warming Tail" is the eighth episode of the sixth season of the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the 125th episode of the series overall. Directed by Denny Lu and Tim Stuby, written by Michael Vogel and produced by Devon Cody, it first aired on May 14, 2016, on Discovery Family.
In "A Hearth's Warming Tail", as Ponyville gets ready to celebrate Hearth's Warming (the series' lore equivalent to Christmas) in Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong)'s castle, Starlight Glimmer (Kelly Sheridan) prefers not to be a part of the festivities. To convince her of the importance of Hearth's Warming, Twilight and Spike (Cathy Weseluck) tell her the tale of Snowfall Frost, a cold-hearted unicorn who despises Hearth's Warming and swears to erase it magically.
The episode mainly consists of a depiction of the tale itself, with its characters being represented by the main characters of the show; the story is adapted from Charles Dickens' classic 1843 Christmas novel A Christmas Carol, with Snowfall Frost representing Ebenezer Scrooge and being visited by three spirits who wish to teach her the importance of the holiday. "A Hearth's Warming Tail" has been described as one of the series' "musical episodes", and features six songs composed by Daniel Ingram and orchestrated by Caleb Chan, with lyrics by Vogel and Ingram.
The episode received acclaim from critics and fans; its pacing and songs were widely praised, in particular, "Luna's Future" (the first solo song for Princess Luna), sung by Princess Luna (voiced by Aloma Steele).
Plot
Starlight Glimmer has a case of the holiday blues, so Twilight tries to help cure her by reading one of her favorite Hearth Warming's Eve stories, "A Hearth's Warming Tale."
Why It Rocks
- The episode is a pretty good follow up to Season 5, with it showing how much Starlight Glimmer is when she joined the heroes.
- Splendid and talented songs to listen to;
- "Luna's Future", the first solo song for Princess Luna is very heart-wrenching to hear. Aloma Steele also does a great job as Luna's singing voice.
- "Say Goodbye to the Holidays", a great villain song for Starlight Glimmer, and her voice actress, Kelly Sheridan sure did a good job as her.
- "Pinkie's Present", TBD.
- Very good pacing.
Bad Qualities
- While many people praised Starlight's characterization, some felt that her villain song was too dark.
- Friendship is Magic had already done a version of A Christmas Carol a couple of seasons earlier with "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils", and compared to that episode, which takes a unique twist to the formula by having Sweetie Belle be the Scrooge character (with her receiving this treatment to learn to appreciate her sister after assuming she's trying to steal her spotlight), this one feels more like a generic take of the story
- Snowfall Frost's motives in the stories fall victim to the common misconception that some stories based on A Christmas Carol have, in which the writers think that Scrooge is like the Grinch and would be someone who would stop Christmas from even happening if he had the chance. Scrooge, in reality, finds Christmas as more of a hindrance when it comes to making, with his grouchiness stemming due to the lack him not really having anyone to love (his parents died when he was a kid; his engagement to his fiance was broken off due to her feeling he was more focused about his financial future than to her) and him falling back on money to make up for this loss (whereas the Grinch's hatred for Christmas was due to all the materialism that has affected the holiday).