In the season finale, Sunset Shimmer Starlight Glimmer returns to mess with the timeline.  Rip Hunter would be very disappointed.

Starlight Glimmer shows up at Twilight’s castle and uses a spell that opens up a time portal.  Twilight follows and finds herself in Cloudsdale on the day that Rainbow Dash performs her first Sonic Rainboom.  This is the event that caused the Mane 6 to simultaneously get their Cutie Marks as foals, leading them to becoming friends later in life.  Starlight prevents Rainbow Dash from pulling it off, and Twilight is sucked back to the present, where things have turned out VERY different.

King Sombra  was never defeated, so he has taken over half of Equestria with his army of enslaved and brainwashed Crystal Ponies.  Twilight realizes she needs to go back to the past and prevent Starlight from changing the past.  Unfortunately, Starlight rigged her spell so that if Twilight goes to the past, she goes to the past ahead of her.

This time, Starlight tries a different approach, and this leads to a vastly different future: Queen Chrysalis and her Changelings have conquered Equestria, and only a small resistance led by Zecora is left to oppose her.

Twilight returns and goes for the direct approach: TRY TO LASER STARLIGHT’S FACE OFF.

The fight distracts Rainbow Dash from her race, meaning she never performs the Rainboom.  Another failure.

This time, Twilight ends up in a timeline where Nightmare Moon defeated Princess Celestia and banished her to the moon.  Twilight gets out of there, and we get a mini montage of her trying and failing to stop Starlight time and time again.  Finally, she gives up and tries showing Starlight the kind of future that comes from wrecking Twilight’s friendships.

Finally, Starlight tells Twilight about why she hates Cutie Marks so much: When she was a foal, her best friend got a Cutie Mark and left her.

Okay.

That was fucking stupid.

So, Twilight gets Starlight to give friendship a chance again, and boom, she’s reformed.

dm29/judacris/Julian Yeo started out the season with this:

And added and added and added until we got the final product:

And that is why “The Story So Far of Season 5” was always going to be the finale’s meme of the week.

huussii’s “Lost in Time, Lost in Space” is a downright breathtaking, perfect representation of everything awesome about this finale.

This one was a bit of a toughie, especially considering how the finale ended, but overall, I still want to give this one to Starlight Glimmer.  When she went full villain, she was the best ever.

She was magically Twilight’s equal, or quite possibly her better.  Honestly, it makes one wonder more about her, and hopefully Season 6 doesn’t completely waste whatever potential is still left untapped with her.

Well, that wraps up the season.  Between now and the start of the next season, I’ll probably just go over some Equestria Girls content whenever.