Do you remember where you were on the morning of September 17, 2011? I sure do, and it means a lot to me.
Contrary to uneasy fears, pony didn't go away with the inter-season hiatus. If anything, that hiatus was the greatest thing that could have happened for the show, while Equestria Daily surpassed 40,000,000 hits just two days before the season premiere. With so many of us coming to the show in the summer, The Return of Harmony, Part 1 was the very first episode of MLP we watched live -- me included.
And wasn't it something? When Rainbow Dash corralled those cotton candy clouds, you could tell the animators had really stepped up their game. When Celestia mentioned Luna in her exposition, everyone cheered in some degree for their favorite neglected-until-now moonbutt of the night. If only we knew what was in store for her three weeks later!
Then we had Discord. Hypotheses and spoiler images of his appearance before the episode aired sowed just as much chaos in IRC channels and dA groups as the master draconequus himself! Recruiting Q to voice his cartoon counterpart just went to show how much noise this show made back then, and its fans were only getting #LOUDER (go 'Hawks). How could we not love the show after they threw this in? Or this?
Sure, it hurt to wait for Part 2 to air the following week. If anything, though, that just gave everyone time to update and reinforce their headcanons, and it wasn't long until 300 lucky people in a hot Chinatown, Manhattan room joined Jayson Thiessen and Seth in celebrating the triumph of these little horses over the forces of chaos two hours ahead of the rest of the world. The success of that gathering alone gave people ideas -- but that's a story for another time.
Everything changed with this episode, including the passing of the HD ripping baton to a foxy little outfit named Xyro. Find a non-taken-down rip below the break, and remember where you were all that time ago.
Everyday I'm shuffling.
