This is an interesting Q&A overall, bad transcript aside, and Bonnie got a decent amount of questions too, even if I got a real, "... I don't know what to ask her," vibe from them. Still, she made the most of those questions. However, the thing I imagine most people will find most interesting is the bit below.
Lauren Faust: I think for me, I had no idea that the show would ever last this long. And I stayed for the first two seasons. I wish I had on that second season I decided let's just tread water, because I had a ending in mind, and I didn't know is the second season going to be our last season, or are we going to have a third? They're like, we don't know. We don't know yet. So I just decided to tread water and I wish that I had taken into it to my ending. I think that's my ... and then it could've lived on after that. That's actually a big regret for me. I wish I could have told the whole story the way and the way I wanted to.
TJ Carson: I assuming you get this question a lot. You can answer if you want. How would you have ended it?
Lauren Faust: Oh my goodness. I think I've talked to some people about it and I think it's leaked, so I might not be getting a whole lot of information. But I wanted ... I have this idea for elements of discord that characters like Trixie and other characters knew more kind of bad guy characters would come into and the girls would have to go off on like this bigger adventure to find the elements of discord, and then eventually find out that discord himself was the one who put them around, and he's back. And during this whole time they would've still thought that he's stone.
Lauren Faust: This kind of bigger, grander adventure where their relationships went on as they went on this adventure and grew, and what were those elements of discord? What are the offices of the elements of harmony? Ultimately culminating in a big battle. Discord versus Celestia who wins. That was the vague sort of concept that I wanted to take it to like the beginnings of the ideas. And with ultimately Twilight becoming the [inaudible 00:19:52]. That was like another rough baseline of what I was interested in doing.
Note these plans would have been from before "The Return of Harmony" was even made. I have to imagine if they chose to go this route, that story would have gone differently too. So this isn't as simple as remove "A Canterlot Wedding", insert this. Plus she's at least somewhat being influenced by later events, as shown by her saying the show would continue from there, after Twilight becomes the [inaudible].
Still, it would have been neat to see a season long story like this. I assume the idea is that they'd journey around and come across different people with Elements of Discord, like Trixie in one episode, Gilda in another, etc. Well I say etc., but it would basically just be Diamond Tiara after that. I suppose you could have a good episode with Luna being targeted but rejecting it. I'm surprised they didn't do an evil Elements thing for the entire run of the show, excluding them maybe showing up in the last episodes.
Who knows if this story would have happened even if she chose to do it, though. Or at least as a season long story. It could have been forced to become a two parter.
Twilight becoming the [inaudible] would have been better received if handled this way than how it initially was when it actually happened. I like "Magical Mystery Cure", but it more or less happened out of nowhere.
I imagine if the story did happen in season 2 and as planned, that would have had a huge influence on how later seasons were handled. So much so that you can't really go, "Under this plan, this episode would have been like this."