But “Magical Mystery Cure” was just as bad, if not worse, than the season 9 finale.

@Dark Dash
 
As someone who also rewatched S2 just recently as well (mostly to see if my opinion of it has changed), I can safely say that my opinion of it has completely stayed exactly the same. The episodes I liked, I still like, while the episodes I disliked have only gotten worse with time.
 
The only episode I’ve warmed to is MMMystery on the Friendship Express, which I derided at the time due to how derivative it’s premise was, even for this show.
 
Put it this way: I was looking forward to rewatching season 1, and am looking forward to rewatching seasons 3 and beyond. I was dreading rewatching season 2, due to what felt like whole blocks of sub-par episodes that were a chore to watch originally.

OP is far too generous. Middle of Season 2 at most.
 
There were a handful of good episodes in the first half of Season 2, but I don’t remember anything that stood out as good between Hearth’s Warming and when I gave up after episode 19.

Far too many amazing episodes came post s3.

Season 2 had some lows, but had more highs than season 1, I would say its below seasons 4, 5, 7 and 9 while slightly better then seasons 6 and 1. I admit I love all the seasons, even my least favorite.

@Ebalosus
 
As I said to them, I think it ultimately comes down to personal tastes. As someone who recently went back to watch all of Season 2 again, with the worry that it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered it being, I was pleasantly surprised by it and still enjoyed it a lot more than I have when I’ve gone back to binge something like Season 7 for the opposite reason (i.e. felt like I was being too hard on it only to be disappointed again). Looking back at the list of episodes from Season 2, I enjoyed 19 out of the 26 episodes from S2.
 
I enjoy the earlier Seasons a lot because they were so simple, they weren’t trying to tell a larger story like the later seasons were. Where we got to spend more time getting to know the Mane Six and see them in their day-to-day lives, and that’s what got me into the show. By the later Seasons, I felt like their characters had already been played out and we were juggling far too many additional characters even before they added the School of Friendship in S8. Mind that I don’t hate Seasons 6, 7, 8, and 9 like some people do, but I definitely feel like the show went downhill after Season 5.

@Ebalosus  
Too right. Season 2 was so boring!

@Smitty1991
 
Glad to meet another critic of S2, as to this day it boggles my mind why people look back fondly upon the season as a whole. Yes, the fandom was pretty good, and yes there were good episodes contained within, but overall it was a massive chore to get through.
 

@Dark Dash  
Twilight was my favorite out of the Mane Six too. As for seasons one and two, I liked maybe eleven episodes from season one and six from season two.

@Smitty1991
 
With the first two Seasons, when I went back to watch it again a couple of weeks back, I felt that I wouldn’t enjoy it as much since I thought maybe it was just the nostalgia I had for it. But no, I really did enjoy them and I’d completely forgotten about a lot of things in those first two seasons that I found myself enjoying all over again. I think my love for the first two Seasons stems partially from how simple they are, little bottle episodes that have some charm to them. I also am very fond of the original Unicorn Twilight since I related to her the most of all the characters, though I don’t have a problem with Alicorn Twilight either, for the record.
 
As for Season 7, I just didn’t enjoy it that much. I loved the Episodes with Thorax, with him being my favorite of the characters added after Season 5. Looking at the list of episodes from Season 7, here are the episodes I liked: “Celestial Advice”, “A Rock Solid Friendship”, “A Royal Problem”, “The Perfect Pear”, “Triple Threat”, “Campfire Tales”, “To Change a Changeling”, and “A Health of Information”. So that’s 8 out of 26 episodes, just under 1/3 of the Season. I really don’t care much for the other episodes that Season, just looking over the others and remembering them… I’m just not interested in seeing any of the other episodes in that Season again. Side note, I was tempted to include “It Isn’t the Mane Thing About You”, but I don’t care for the episode that much outside of the moral and Rarity’s design.

@Background Pony #CC62  

 
God, yes! I absolutely hated season two and still consider it to be the show’s worst season, with season one not far behind. I rank the seasons as follows, from best to worst:  
Season 7  
Season 5  
Season 4  
Season 9  
Season 3  
Season 8  
Season 6  
Season 1  
Season 2
 
@Dark Dash  
Personally, I absolutely hated the first two seasons of the show. They just weren’t that interesting. Most long-time fans agree that the season 4 finale is what officially killed their interest in the show. While I do agree that the season 7 finale was a big letdown, what exactly was wrong with the rest of the season? It had some of the show’s best episodes.

@Background Pony #CC62
 
No. I went back and watched the first four seasons again about a month or two ago and my opinion stands. I genuinely love the first two Seasons for what they were, and I don’t care for most of Season 4 outside of the Finale and a handful of other episodes. The only reason I came back to the show at all was due to how much I enjoyed the S5 Premiere when I got around to watching it.
 
I think this is more of a case of personal tastes, because I think Seasons 4 and 7 are two of the Seasons that I enjoyed the least. With most of Season 7 leaving me disappointed, and most of Season 4 just not being that interesting to me. I remember finishing “Shadow Play” when it came out and at the time the only thing I had to say was “That was it?”. I even went back and watched the episode again a couple of days ago to give it another shot, since I thought maybe I was being a bit hard on it, and it still bores me as much as it did when it came out. Much like how Season 4 left me drifting away from the show, so did Season 7. And just like how Season 5 pulled me back in, so did Season 8 (though S8 definitely isn’t perfect by any means).
 
As I said though, I do think it comes down to personal tastes. I have a friend in the fandom who loves Season 7 the most out of the entire show, while its probably the Season I liked the least. So I think it really is a matter of opinions. I don’t know how you feel about Season 5, my personal favorite, but I do still hold Seasons 1 and 2 as close seconds to Season 5.

@Smitty1991  
Oh thank God finally, someone I can relate to. S6 was probably the roughest patch, but the second half of the show’s life is underrated. S7 was really really good. I only just watched the movie and was surprised how much I enjoyed it.
 
@Dark Dash: you and the anon gotta be kidding me. S2 is easily the most overrated one of the series and it’s aging the worst. The writers clearly didn’t know what to do. Worst finale too. S4 was probably the show’s best season.

@BJ-1104  
Yeah, because having the Student Six be the main characters and making the Mane Six the background characters certainly wouldn’t piss people off. And if you think that seasons 4-9 and the 2017 movie were a waste of time, don’t bother. I for one thoroughly enjoyed them.
 
@Background Pony #6229  
This show was always about promoting toys! Where have you been for the past nine years? Personally, I liked seasons 8 and 9. Sure, some eposodes could’ve been sone better, but I think we got more good episodes than bad ones.

@Background Pony #6477
 
I disagree personally. I’ve been watching the show since December 2010, so I have very fond memories of Seasons 1 and 2. Went back and watched them a couple of months ago and they’re still great. Definitely among my Top 3 Seasons for the show. Nevertheless, I was left pretty unimpressed by Season 3 as a whole, and going further I began to lose interest in the show during Season 4.
 
That in mind, Season 5 stands out to me as the only Season that has any room to compete with Seasons 1 and 2 for me personally. It was the Season that revitalized my interest in the show. I can’t really think of an episode in Season 5 that I disliked in any serious way. For me, Season 5’s Finale would’ve been the ideal place to stop. We wrapped up virtually all of the loose ends in the show with the CMC getting their marks, Diamond Tiara and Gilda being reformed, Twilight reconciling with the friends she left behind in Canterlot, et cetera. Can’t forget that we also had “Slice of Life”, which I think is an episode that I think we’re all happy with.
 
Then we had a season-long villain that, still to this day, posed the greatest threat to Equestria by far. With a final battle that raged across various timelines, giving us some of the darkest imagery in the show by far, and showing just how grave the threat that Starlight posed was. Beyond that, we’d seen Twilight accept her role as a Princess in Season 4. So I think it would’ve been a fitting end to have her take on her own pupil and start a new cycle as she had done in the Season 5 Finale.
 
As it stands, if Season 3 had ended the series, there would’ve been several unfinished story arcs and unanswered questions. Namely, the CMC’s quest to get their marks, Rainbow Dash’s journey to become a Wonderbolt, what lands existed beyond the places of Ponies, and so on.
 
While I do have my own reservations about Season 4, since it almost had me stepping away from the show permanently, Season 5 makes it worth it in my mind because it wrapped up all the loose ends the show had left behind up until that point, gave us a great villain, and a satisfying ending.
 
That’s my two cents on the matter, with my favorite Seasons being 1, 2, and 5. I have enjoyed parts of Seasons 6 through 9, but I wouldn’t have been bothered if they never came.

@Background Pony #6477  
Glad we’re on the same page.

S3 really was the best point to end the series.
 
There were quite a few good episodes and good ideas past season 3, but competitively to the previous seasons, s4-9 bad episodes are in the overwhelming majority. I even like some of the student 6 even though I hate Twilight’s School.
 
And I get that a good amount of the fandom is autistic (like me) to the point where they put their whole lives into the show and didn’t want to accept that maybe the water was getting bad because that meant leaving what we put our lives into, but truth is truth, and objectivity is objectivity. If you enjoyed the latter seasons, fine, but you cannot call them objectively good in any way, and you especially can’t hide behind “but it’s a kid’s show so who cares” because for a kid’s show, s1-3 did above and beyond what other western cartoons were doing at the time.

@genervt
 
I would be okay with it as long as they didn’t change her character, and I just don’t see the writers puling it off, so I am glad that she didn’t have a rushed reformation. To each their own.

@gato
 
I agree with what you’re saying, because it confirms my thesis. What you and others are saying about S5 (or any previous season than the most recent one) will change in time to the point where the entirety of G4 will be looked back upon fondly. Even if the latter seasons are less fondly remembered than the former seasons, they’ll be remembered fondly nonetheless. Not that I’m criticising mind you, just that I know that the people bitching now wont be bitching in 5-10 years. Hell, if G5 shits the bed, it’ll be much sooner.

@KSLDRDPL  
They would still be rivals, just on good terms.

@genervt
 
I kinda glad we didn’t get the last one, I like LD but I prefer her the she is.  
Its impossible to write every idea, at least it can be explored by the fans.

I agree unironically, it was

@genervt  

 
Ahem.  

@KSLDRDPL  
So many things we will never see.  

I still say that Season 5’s Finale would’ve been the ideal place to stop. The magnitude of the threat Starlight posed by manipulating the timelines has yet to really be topped, and the ending song and final shot of that Season always felt like it would be the best place to end the story.
 
That said, I really don’t have too much of a problem with the ending to Season 9. Twilight’s new look isn’t the best, and there are some choices I wouldn’t have made, but overall I think what we’ve seen is a fine ending to the show. Twilight’s ascension to the throne is the logical and expected way to end the show, all the villains are no longer being a threat, and all of the other characters are moving on to start a new chapter in their lives. It’s a bittersweet ending, and I’m okay with it.
 
I’ve been with this fandom since December of 2010 (first episode I watched was “Bridal Gossip”), and I intend on sticking with it for many years to come. I’ll be looking forward to see what G5 brings, and even if its bad we can all have a bit of banter about it now and then. For now though, lets just ride it out through these last few episodes and see where we go from here.