@Background Pony #4FA5
Opaline succeeded where every villain before her failed. But I think the real Grogar would still be more cunning and powerful than she ever was.
That’s the thing… we don’t know what had happened.
Opaline admitted that she lost her magic, was banned from Equestria and based on what we’ve seen of her and her home, likely under house arrest in chains. Hologram-Twilight had said she salvaged the magic from her but didn’t remove it. Until now, Opaline had refused to say whether she had succeeded, instead we see a bitterness and deep jealousy towards Twilight as when she exploded on seeing the Wishing Star in TYT. She truly has strong inferiority complexes towards Twilight. The only sentence came out in a random children’s book, when she noted that Twilight ruled over an empire - which must be much larger than Equestria - and that it “glitched out”. That’s a strange statement from someone who was supposed to be behind Equestria’s collapse according to you.
It’s as we’ve seen between Tirek and his father, Opaline must have had a close relationship with Twilight that we don’t yet know about, and that she considered herself to be in Twilight’s shadow until now. According to Discord - we don’t know yet if the arc from the IDW comics will be canon - Opaline wants a “perfect Equestria” by having full control over all magic that she believed to be the alicorns’ domain and establishing her power over the Ponykind . This does not indicate evil or destructive ambitions, it is more about a violent seizure of power, she is simply a usurper. But there are clear signs that the bitterness over the centuries has corrupted Opaline, who is only a few steps away from being completely corrupted, which could explain her treatment of Misty who may have greatly deteriorated after the return of magic. Misty doesn’t think Opaline is evil.
Since Twilight is gone, Opaline now has a free path towards her goal - all she needs to do is remove the Mane 5 and gain control over the ponies, after stealing the Mane 5’s cutie marks she wants to go to Zephyr Heights and subjugate the pegasi , and will then take the Unity Crystals in Maretime Bay. But then it is possible that Misty will save the situation for the Mane 5. Also, the G5 ponies have forgotten the rule of never standing in the way of an alicorn and will probably team up against her.
We know what the berserker button is for Twilight, as Tirek figured out - if Sunny sees Opaline attacking ponies that she feels an instinctive urge to protect, it might make her go berserk if she’s got her alicorn powers back. But Opaline will be stronger and more experienced, so Sunny must enlist the magical help of her friends to hold out against the older alicorn. Only an alicorn can stop an alicorn.
Maybe the fight can lead Sunny and Opaline to the meadow with the ex-Harmony Tree.
Regardless of the outcome of the initial clash between Opaline and Sunny over Twilight’s legacy and the Ponykind’s future, we can hope for more revelations about whether or not she was responsible for Equestria’s collapse. But logically - very unlikely.
“But I think the real Grogar would still be more cunning and powerful than she ever was.”
I think so too. If the G1 Grogar is the same as the G4 Grogar with slight changes, he is in a different league than most of the supervillains in G4. If he had ruled for centuries, created powerful magic, been able to steal and store magic in his bell - it contained more magic than three to four full-grown alicorns - and built civilizations, created his subjects and then monsters to terrorize in them and all he subordinated, it means that he was crafty, cunning and shrewd to stay with the power. Tirek, Chrysalis and Sombra were in part terrified of the fake Grogar based on what they know about the legendary ram.
Gusty the Great had not only defeated him, she also took away his bell to ensure he could never return and banished him from probably the entire world. We don’t know how it happened, but the story of the bells and Tambelon in G1 can be used. In my opinion, Grogar was so powerful that Gusty stole and used his own magic by turning the bell against him and banished him and Tambelon to the Limbo. Grogar may have returned to Equestria and then launched his attack by taking control of the hordes of monsters he had created.
Don’t think Bridlewood is the Everfree forest, but we have learned in the last seasons of G4 that dark and terrifying magic that struck fear in anyone who came there had existed there and had to be held back by both the Harmony tree and the ponies. Everfree was full of monsters that only alicorns and Discord could confront, these are gone.
Not a single monster has been discovered in G5. It is as if they had all completely disappeared. Or been expelled, as only Twilight could have done. We also know that there were monsters that even alicorns could have trouble with, with the possible exception of Luna and Celestia who were both very powerful magical beings. These monsters like the tatzelwurm are of the kaiju class, which the G5 ponies will be powerless against.
Where are the monsters? We know they were created by Grogar. And we have seen Grogar’s bell in the movie, it cannot have been placed there just by chance.