Music Used: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeXCCk1Mahc
Q Analysis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3LDaaIVd5M

Discord Season Premiere Thoughts and Musings
*Warning: This video contains spoilers from the Season 4 Premiere. If spoilers aren't your thing, then don't watch the video.
Thank you" *

Well ladies and gentlemen, the 9 month long wait is over, and the fourth season of the show about magical talking technicolor horses is back!

The two part Premiere "Princess Twilight Sparkle" essentially continues the story right where we left off from "Magical Mystery Cure", and right from the bat the episode was destined for greatness. Why may that be? It didn't open up with a song (just kidding, I was looking forward greatly to Discord's song for this premiere, but alas that's destined for some other episode later this season).

This is the best episode of MLP I've seen since I was first introduced to the show through "The Return of Harmony" back in 2011 because it carried all the elements of what hooked me on the show in the first place. Tremendous animation, good and well placed writing, great voice-acting, and of course, John De Lancie as Discord.

Discord, in my opinion, is the best part of the episode. From the moment he's introduced via the convenient summoning spell, the draconeques dominates every scene he's in. I was watching Digi-Curious's review of the episode, and they raised a solid point that the reformation of the character we saw in "Keep Calm and Flutter On" seems to be going for a subtle reboot. At the end of the episode, Discord seemed to have undergone a genuine and sappy reformation. This quick paced and sporadic change of heart left some of the fans (myself included) curious as to what this would to do to the chaotic and bombastic fan-favorite.

Thankfully Discord is just as sarcastic, and delightfully mischievous as ever. He's not the malicious god of chaos (at least for now) that we saw in "Return of Harmony", instead he's now a chaotic neutral observer, one who gleefully watches the events that unfold, and offers only riddles and sarcasm to advance the protagonist. This is an even greater homage to Q, the character that inspired Discord (also played by John De Lancie).

You can see a good example of this chaotic neutrality just by watching a Star Trek episode where Q is a dominant character. Ilovekimpossible also made a pretty good video about it, which is linked in the description. I think Megan McCarthy, one of the head writers for the series, summed it up perfectly in the Element of Harmony Guidebook ""I don't think I'd want to reform all of our villains. I don't think that would be realistic. No matter how hard you try, some people (or evil alicorns) just aren't going to change their ways. But for a character like Discord, 'reforming' him allows us to tell more stories with his character. He gets to be the not-always-reliable ally instead of the known enemy."

This brings me to Mr. John De Lancie himself. De Lancie is no longer just a celebrity guess star, he's a full time recurring cast member. The king of spoilers let slip a little while ago at a Star Trek con that he had recorded "4-5 episodes" for the show. While initially I thought this included the previous three episodes he had done previously plus this two episode season premiere, It now means we're going to get three more great episodes that feature Discord in a major role in season 4. As mentioned earlier, Discord will also sing one of the 16 songs that have been confirmed for this season.

One final little aspect is the acting De Lancie did for Discord in this particular episode. Discord is just the slightest bit more grovel-toned, and controlled. Sounds like De Lancie was either closer to the microphone, or the recording booth had a lot more acoustic foam than usual, or they didn't speed up the recording to lose the bass like they usually do for Discord. I dunno why, but I love it.