Finale (Friendship in Disguise!)

From MediaWiki
Jump to navigationJump to search
This article is about the My Little Pony/Transformers story. For the Of Masters and Mayhem story, see Finale (Of Masters and Mayhem).
« My Little Pony/Transformers #4
"Finale"
Publisher IDW Publishing
Published in My Little Pony/Transformers #4
First published November 4, 2020
Cover date November 2020
Written by James Asmus
Art by Tony Fleecs
Colors by Lauren Perry
Letters by Neil Uyetake
Editor Megan Brown, David Mariotte, and Bobby Curnow

The heroes of two worlds unite for the final showdown against Megatron and Queen Chrysalis!

Synopsis

In the Crystal Empire, Smolder the dragon and her friends report to Princess Cadance: the Decepticons across Equestria have gone missing, and Twilight Sparkle suspects that they must be up to something. They're right—before Cadance can finish her question, Megatron blasts through the wall of her crystal castle, followed by Queen Chrysalis and the other members of their alliance! The two leaders make their demands: turn over all magic items so that the Cybertronians can create a new variety of powerful energon... and surrender their territory to the changeling swarm. But Cadance isn't going down without a fight, and neither are her friends Twilight Sparkle and Optimus Prime, who arrive just in time to explain that they've been travelling Equestria and gathering allies in anticipation of this final showdown. The Autobot leader makes one last attempt to convince Megatron to stand down, but when he refuses, the Autobots and their Equestrian friends charge into battle!

Amidst the mayhem, Twilight battles Chrysalis, Optimus takes out Starscream, Discord dodges Megatron, Rarity and Arcee take out Skrapnel, and Pinkie Pie incapacitates Soundwave with a well-thrown pastry. Megatron orders Shockwave to shoot his way into the crystal castle and steal whatever magic he can find, but when he blasts his way into the palace, he finds Cadance, Bumblebee, and still more ponies blocking his path! Shockwave arrogantly dismisses this display as mere sentimentality... but he soon eats those words when their combined unicorn magic first shields them from his fire, then blows the Decepticon scientist out of the castle in a blinding beam of light. As Optimus battles the changelings outside the castle walls, Megatron taunts his old nemesis's sense of compassion until Twilight intervenes, magically disables his fusion cannon, and warns the Decepticon leader: compassion is never a weakness. Twilight has friends and allies all across Equestria, and the Equestrians here are just a fraction of the forces she will bring to bear against him if the fight continues. Megatron realizes that Chrysalis has deceived him about the level of resistance they'd face and demands an explanation, but the changeling queen doesn't care. Even if they lose this fight, the Cybertronians are still stranded in her dimension and she's more than happy to sit back and watch as their war destroys Equestria piece by piece. Indeed, Chrysalis vows that she will never cast the spell that will reopen the bridge between their two worlds... moments before a glowing portal heralds the arrival of Grimlock and Spike, who have repaired the spacebridge!

Chrysalis orders her changelings to retreat and warns them to avoid the glowing portal, but before she can do the same, Megatron grabs the queen and demands the power she promised him. After all, Megatron's certain there's no magic capable of defeating them... but as Twilight Sparkle combines her own magic with the power of Optimus's Matrix of Leadership, the pony princess explains that Megatron's biggest error was underestimating the most powerful magic of all—the magic of friendship. Their combined attack envelops all of the Decepticons in a burst of energy, forces them back through the space bridge, and finally ends the threat to Equestria. With the villains vanquished, Optimus takes a moment to apologize to Twilight for the behavior of his fellow Cybertronians, but Twilight explains that while ponies don't judge appearance, they do judge choices, and she's glad that the Autobots chose kindness.

After a final farewell party, Optimus and the other Autobots bid their friends goodbye, then return to Cybertron—and to ensure that the Decepticons will never trouble the citizens of Equestria again, Optimus destroys the malfunctioning spacebridge once the last Autobot is through. Gauge is sad at the prospect of never seeing their pony friends again, but Optimus points out that they'll always remember their true friends.

Elsewhere on Cybertron, however, the battered Decepticons take stock of their recent defeat. A furious Megatron demands to know if Shockwave succeeded in his mission to steal Equestrian magic, but the scientist is as empty-handed as the rest of them. He did, however, manage to retrieve the spacebridge coordinates before Optimus destroyed the tower; what if, he asks, the Decepticons could somehow bring the magic of Equestria to Cybertron...?

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots Decepticons Others

Quotes

"Autobots and ponies... TRANSFORM AND TROT OUT!"
"TIL EVERYPONY ARE ONE!"

—Optimus Prime and Twilight Sparkle say it's on


"Operation: Melee—initiate. Eject."
"Ha! More like reject, am I right?"

—Soundwave takes a pie, courtesy of Pinkie Pie


"Compassion is never a weakness. And I'll have you know—you're up against just a tiny fraction of our magical friends. But we put out the call for more. And soon, you'll be glad we offer forgiveness to anypony willing to admit their mistakes."

—Twilight Sparkle


"Oh... did you... have to do that? They were so... nice."
"When you make a good friend, Gauge—and you're made better by the experience—that friend is always with you."

—Gauge and Optimus Prime

Notes

Continuity notes

Transformers references

  • Twilight Sparkle incapacitates Megatron by magically blocking his fusion cannon shut; the orange cap at the end of his barrel references the orange safety plug that most modern gun-mode Megatron toys must incorporate in accordance with US gun safety laws.
  • Sneaking into the crossover at the eleventh hour, Crasher makes a surprise one-panel appearance, fighting Arcee! This might not be a surprise if you've been following IDW's recent output, however—she did recently cameo in issue #19 of IDW's current Transformers ongoing, and may even have been slated to star in "The Flyin' Fox Trot" at some point before Misfire replaced her. Visually, she takes inspiration from the 2007 "Fracture" toy, who was conceived as a reference to the GoBots character, and attacks Arcee with an axe based on that toy's accessory.
  • Spike pilots a transforming exosuit identical to the model Spike and Daniel Witwicky used in The Transformers: The Movie. When the baby dragon introduces himself to Bumblebee, he wonders if they've met before in reference to how the original The Transformers cartoon depicted Bumblebee and Spike (the human, that is) as best friends.
  • The series signs off by incorporating a version of the classic scene transitions from the original Transformers cartoon that superimposes Twilight Sparkle's cutie mark over the Autobot insignia.

My Little Pony references

  • In anticipation of their fight against the Cybertronians, several of the changelings appear to have transformed into giant cragadiles, crocodlie-like monsters that menaced Twilight in the episode "Princess Twilight Sparkle - Part 2".

Other trivia

  • Though the Young Six note that all of the Decepticons in Equestria have gone missing in anticipation for their big push on the Crystal Empire, several do not appear in the final battle—Thundercracker, Skywarp, Misfire, the Rainmakers, and the four deluxe Insecticons are all absent from the proceedings (though we can probably assume that Soundwave brought Ravage and the other cassettes with him).
  • Ironhide and Prowl show up in a combined shot of the pony-Autobot force, but Ironhide does not appear in any subsequent panels.
Retrieved from "https://tfwiki.duckdns.org/index.php?title=Finale_(Friendship_in_Disguise!)&oldid=1456482"