Season 3 Spoilers Summary (Look here first!)

[BartonFink]

I'll be updating this post when new info comes out if you don't feel like reading the whole forum.
For an upcoming episode, clips released the day of can be seen in the relevant episode thread, which should be posted several day in advance.

NEW SHIT/EPISODE RUNDOWN - Little new info but hey I updated
Extended episode descriptions through the end of the year:


No synopsis:
Ep 308 - ??? - ??? AFR is confirmed 309, airdates going from 307 -> 309 seem confirmed at this point. Speculation: if Discord indeed does return, this could be that relevant episode, which they might be airing out of production order. Again, pure speculation.


- McCarthy interview on Dustykat's show (thanks Headless for the writeup):

Among the interesting tidbits:
- The "1000 years ago" thing isn't supposed to be indicative of any huge interconnected series of events; it was just a convenient number
- "Who do we have to bribe to get an Applejack episode with her own song?" "Nobody!" (i.e. "that totally won't be necessary")
- Definitely lots more Luna stuff coming
- She gave a rather cryptic statement (about 39:00) about Sombra having more to his motivation than just enslaving ponies—like he wants to take over the world and darken it and stuff, nothing too groundbreaking there, but she used phrases like "we set it up in TCE" and "good place to start".
- She likes doing the two-parters, but it sounds like she'd be more comfortable doing longer-form (i.e. movie-length), largely because the two-parters just aren't long enough to fully establish the concepts that typically get introduced
- There are some scripted moments coming up that "reference some classic sci-fi"

CLIP ZONE
By and large, unless there's one released way in advanced, these will be handled in the relevant episode discussion threads.



- Season 3 might have an overarching plot to at least some extent, based on some telling tweets: http://i.imgur.com/WQXfP.jpg
- Between the Comic Con clips, the overarching plot rumors, Tweets like this from Larson, and Hasbro's newest marketing, it's probably a safe assumption that the "Crystal Ponies" will be showing up again (Not confirmed, but again, likely). Also there was similar speculation that Twilight is becoming an alicorn, or something to that effect - oh wait they're denying this??? who fukken knows

- William Anderson speaks in riddles - some have speculated this may mean a musical episode, but there's a lot of interpretations here.
- McCarthy strongly hinted at a Celestia/Luna "history" episode at New York Comic Con; grain of salt, etc
- PICTURES



Spike's status remains unknown.
Some more background stuff here, from (possibly) Phil Caesar's site: http://philsportfolio-pip.blogspot.co.n ... st_22.html
- - Notes from the NY Comic Con panel
(compiled from a few posts from PictishBeast, old info removed)

Return visit to Manehattan strongly hinted
Meghan all but confirmed an upcoming episode that explores the ancient Celestia/Luna conflict
...
Team all but confirmed the return of Discord (not just DeLancie).
I'm pretty sure Jayson and Meghan were just speculating for this one (so watch fans label it confirmed) but Jayson said he'd really like to visit the griffon kingdom in an upcoming ep, and Meghan said she'd like to see "Luna's abandoned moon colony."
...
Meghan said she really wants to explore how the monarchy works in an upcoming episode. Not as a joke answer either, she really seemed history-nerd about it. Maybe this will be the Celestia/Luna ep.

Behind the Scenes Stuff
- Writer status:
Meghan McCarthy has been promoted to story editor (taking over for Rob Renzetti)
Returning: MA Larson, Merriweather Williams, Cindy Morrow (though expect her to be gone by season 4)
Coming back from season one: Dave Polsky
~New~: Corey Powell
Gone: Amy Keating Rogers, Charlotte Fullerton


Returning Characters
- Larson wrote a "bigger role for Zecora" episode, without much more info: http://i.imgur.com/oMheu.jpg - there's a roughly 90% chance this was referring to "Magic Duel", but it might (emphasis: might) be indicative of some more Zecora from him in the future
- Discord is probably returning; either that or they thought up a new character for De Lancie (but really, "Discord back" seems much more likely).

Other small tidbits:
- Larson posted this: https://twitter.com/M_A_Larson/status/2 ... to/1/large (it's a joke, of course, but hey, Mayor is coming back!)
12/11 update - I still don't think she's showed up actually to this point. At least not in a speaking role

- Larson wrote a song and he's happy about it: http://i.imgur.com/A9mWl.jpg - note this didn't show up in 'Magic Duel'
- Ingram isn't taking the season off: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dx1ABBQnLHM/T_6AdEAg5qI/AAAAAAAAv3o/FKPn79kuDAQ/s1600/Capture.PNG
- So uh Twilight had wings on some new toys they were showing at a convention. Does this mean anything? 'I dunno lol'. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_JCE19p1r1g/U ... oard01.jpg (this seems likely to correlate to the season long arc discussed earlier)


Side note regarding s4:
- While I won't detail it as much here (and it hasn't officially been announced), there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that season 4 is happening and will involve some writer changes (namely new people being hired). But that's for a later thread down the line, so try not to get too caught up in it here.


This thread will to the best of my ability be regularly updated in the OP, so feel free to just check here periodically for a rundown of the new info.