@Acres
I think I’ve stated this elsewhere but the strenths of the first two seasons is that its simple child friendly storytelling, however it hints and implies at a larger, deeper more adult world that exists. Season three was a rushed mess but it would of been OK apart from the fact it ends with Twilight ascending to god hood.
This is the tipping point where the show has to grow, expand and age with its protaganist. After this point the show needed to take a wider and more adult view of the world to accomidate the growth of the protagnist. Which is not to say it suddenly becomes LoTR, She-ra does this perfectly with the story adding depth, widening its scope and dealing with incresingly mature subjects as your audience of little kids grows up into being pre-teens.
However this natural growth did not happen, come season 4 instead of the story matureing to acomidate this new scope, instead everything is brought down instead of Twilight rising up. Celestia and Luna are reduced to be more childish, mundane and small minded so that Twilight can hold this higer station but not change in any meaningful way. The world is shrunk down so Twilights expanded infulance actually doesn’t mean anything, Griffonstone goes from another kingdom to the poor side of town.
So we have S4 to Glimmerdom, which is really just re-hashing the first three seasons but now we’ve seen behind the curtain to the fact their’s nothing there, so when they nudge and wink at the audience no one buys it any more. People like Larson realise this problem so focus on interpersonal stories instead and these episode are the best because its the most mature and deep material that can be handled inside the confines of the story, but this is doing the best you can under a unnecessary restriction.
Then we have Glimmer, at which point its a soft reset, the writing staff didn’t give a shit about what had been done before and only paraded out the original cast because they were contractually required and pressured by the audience to do so, but they clearly wanted to write a completely different show. It’s not bad but it should of just been its own thing and they should of just put the original series to bed.
Pony Life is Teen Titans Go, a deliberate attempt to drive off an unwanted demographic.