Something that I've found rather strange about MLP:FIM is that most episodes centering around dragons tend to be the lesser episodes of the series. This is particularly perplexing as dragons are supposed to be really cool, but, with the exception of Dragonshy, I can't think of a single good dragon episode. Sadly, Gauntlet Of Fire continues that unlucky streak.
In this episode, we see Spike receiving a call from the Dragon Lord to take part in a challenge with other dragons to choose the Dragon Lord's successor. Also taking part in the challenge are antagonistic Garble and the Lord's daughter, Princess Ember, against her father's wishes. Yup. It's that kind of episode. Along the way, Twilight and Rarity offer support to Spike and all three of them even manage to get on good terms with Ember.
So many of you have probably guessed where this episode will go just by reading that last paragraph. This episode is pretty heavily predictable in several areas. From Princess Ember competing in the challenge against her father's orders to Ember going from being the cold, unfeeling character to having a more accepting, friendly personality to who eventually becomes the new Dragon Lord. Oh yeah, and Garble is still the same 1-dimensional bully he was from several seasons ago.
Even with that said, though, I still found several things to enjoy about it. The challenge itself is definitely fun to watch (though seriously how were Twilight and Rarity able to get past the challenges soo easily?) and I really like the design of Princess Ember. Additionally, I enjoyed the concept of Spike possibly being shipped with Ember in the future as I feel it will finally allow people to move past shipping Spike with Rarity.
Finally, I liked how this episode properly portrayed Spike as an admirable character. He starts off wanting absolutely nothing to do with the challenge and even gets permission from the Dragon Lord to leave, but, when he hears about Garble's plans to launch an attack on the ponies should he become Dragon Lord, he decides to compete anyways even though he knows his chances of actually winning are slim. This is the kind of Spike I love to see and the ending of the episode even leaves a potentially bright future for the ponies.
To sum it all up, Gauntlet Of Fire is my least favorite episode of the season, but even then it still has some good things about it and I don't consider it to be anywhere near the worst of the series (that title clearly belongs to Princess Spike IMO). Is it flawed? Yes. Can it be predictable? Definitely. But I still think that it's decent enough to at least have one or two viewings.
And that was my review of last week's episode of MLP:FIM and I'd like to know your thoughts about the episode if you've seen it. Just a couple of side-notes here. To start off, I don't hate the pairing of Spike with Rarity. In fact, I fully supported it from the beginning. The problem that I came across with it though was about a year or so ago when one of the staff members stated that Spike and Rarity are never going to be a couple, which I would've been fine with except for the fact that, since then, there have been many episodes that continue to cock-tease the relationship between them after we've already been told it's never going to happen, so it's literally just provoking the audience the more it's brought up and it's starting to get annoying. So yeah. I'm hoping that with the possibility of Spike being shipped with Princess Ember that we'll be able to move past that and that it'll never be brought up in anymore future episodes again. On a lesser note, I know that some of you might be frustrated that I haven't put out any new reviews of Empire yet, but I promise that I've just finished watching the most recent episode last night and I'll get around to reviewing the 2 most recent episodes tomorrow followed by a double review of Once Upon A Time on Monday and a review of last Monday's Gotham on Tuesday. So until then, feel free to comment below, keep loving movies and TV Shows and I'll see y'all on the next post. Take care.
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