| Twilight Sparkle | |
|---|---|
| My Little Pony character | |
 Twilight Sparkle as she appears in "Twilight's Kingdom" | |
| First appearance | "Friendship Is Magic – Part 1" (2010) |
| Created by | Lauren Faust |
| Based on | Twilight from theMy Little Pony toyline'sfirst incarnation[1] |
| Voiced by |
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| In-universe information | |
| Nicknames | Twi Twily |
| Species |
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| Title | |
| Occupation |
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| Affiliation | Mane Six |
| Family |
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| Relatives |
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Princess Twilight Sparkle is a fictional character who appears in thefourth incarnation ofHasbro'sMy Little Pony toyline andmedia franchise, beginning withMy Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (2010–2019), and later in the franchise's fifth incarnation as well. She is voiced byTara Strong, and her singing voice is provided byRebecca Shoichet.
Twilight Sparkle is depicted as a studious andbibliophilicanthropomorphicunicorn (later analicorn) with exceptional magical abilities. In thefirst season of the show, her mentor and royal patron,Princess Celestia, guides her to learn about friendship in the town ofPonyville, where she and her dragon assistantSpike become close friends with five other ponies:Applejack,Rarity,Fluttershy,Rainbow Dash, andPinkie Pie. The six friends collectively are referred to as theMane Six. Twilight represents the Element of Magic in theElements of Harmony.
Created byLauren Faust, Twilight is based on the unicorn toy Twilight from thefirst incarnation ofMy Little Pony toyline. The creative team also incorporated Twilight's personality into her design, such as her purple color andcutie mark. Twilight garnered praise for her relatability and complexity.
At the start of the series, Twilight is a bookworm unicorn with a talent for magic and Princess Celestia's protégée. She travels to the town of Ponyville with her dragon assistant Spike due to Celestia's request for her to make friends. There, she becomes close friends with five other ponies:Applejack,Rarity,Fluttershy,Rainbow Dash, andPinkie Pie. The six defeat a villain known as "Nightmare Moon", who is Celestia's sisterLuna, and discover they represent artifacts known as the "Elements of Harmony", with Twilight representing the element of magic. Twilight decides to stay in Ponyville and sends letters to Celestia about the challenges she and her new friends overcome. In season two and three, she continues learning about friendship and travels to other parts of Equestria. Twilight also helps to defeat villains such asDiscord—the spirit of chaos—Queen Chrysalis—the leader of the changelings—andKing Sombra—a dark unicorn seeking to take over theCrystal Empire. In the episode "Magical Mystery Cure", she fixes a spell by famed wizardStar Swirl the Bearded, resulting in her becoming analicorn and a princess, and graduating from her studies with Celestia. In the fourth season, she questions her role as a princess before becoming the "Princess of Friendship", with the responsibility to spread friendship across Equestria, in "Twilight's Kingdom". In the fifth season premiere, "The Cutie Map", Twilight stopsStarlight Glimmer'scult, and convinces her to be friends in the season finale, becoming her teacher on friendship. Throughout the sixth season, Twilight teaches Starlight about friendship; Starlight later saves her from an attack by Chrysalis, resulting in her graduating from her studies on friendship. In the seventh season, Twilight releases Starswirl and other pony legends, referred to as "the Pillars of Old Equestria" fromlimbo, which accidentally releases an evil being known as "the Pony of Shadows". Together with her friends, Starlight and the Pillars, vanquishes the Pony of Shadows back to limbo.
After meeting new creatures beyond Equestria in the movie, Twilight and her friends open a private vocational school of friendship that accepts all creatures, includinghippogriffs, changelings,griffins,yaks, and dragons. In the ninth season, Celestia and Luna decide to abdicate from the throne, letting Twilight take over leadership of Equestria. Though initially panicked, Twilight gains more confidence over the season, especially after defeating her past enemies. After her coronation, she starts the Council of Friendship, which consists of her and her friends, who meet once amoon.
While Twilight and her friends are preparing Equestria's first Friendship Festival in Canterlot, the city comes under attack by the army of an evil conqueror called the Storm King, led by his second-in-command, Tempest Shadow, a unicorn with a broken horn. Twilight and her friends journey beyond Equestria to defeat the Storm King and make new allies in the process. However, after a heated argument with her friends, Twilight is captured by Tempest and drained of her magic. Twilight's friends return to Equestria with the help of their new allies and they save her and Equestria with the help of Tempest.
Twilight appears as a main character in the first twoMy Little Pony: Equestria Girls films.
In thefirst film, Twilight travels through a magic mirror to the human world with Spike whenSunset Shimmer steals her crown containing the Element of Magic. There, she poses as a new student at Canterlot High School and befriends the human counterparts of her friends in Equestria. They help her win the election for Princess of the school's Fall Formal, and together they defeat and reform Sunset when she tries to use the crown to brainwash the students into becoming her personal army to invade Equestria.
In thesecond film, Twilight returns to the human world with Spike when Sunset uses her magic book to warn her of the emergence of the Dazzlings, creatures from Equestria who have the ability to use their singing voices to manipulate others. She is then recruited to join her Canterlot High School friends' band, the Rainbooms, as the temporary lead singer to compete in the school's Battle of the Bands. As they prepare for the contest, she works on a counter-spell to break the mind-control spell the Dazzlings placed on the students. With Sunset's help, the Rainbooms defeat the Dazzlings and leave them powerless. After she returns to Equestria with Spike, Sunset keeps in touch with her using her magic book.
In thepre-credits scene of thethird film, Twilight returns to the human world after the events of "The Cutie Re-Mark" and meets her human counterpart.
Twilight occasionally makes appearances in subsequent Equestria Girls media, often for guidance on Equestrian magic.
After Twilight stresses out aboutHearth's Warming presents andPrincess Cadance,Shining Armor, andFlurry Heart's visit, her friends decide to do a "Hearth's Warming Helper". As part of it, Twilight needs to get a gift for Pinkie Pie. Twilight finds a recipe for a legendary magic pudding that is dangerous if prepared incorrectly. She becomes stressed trying to both prepare it and entertain Shining Armor and Princess Cadence. Unbeknownst to them, Flurry Heart adds extra ingredients that cause the pudding to boil over. After the pudding floods Twilight's castle, Pinkie Pie uses her present to stabilize it.
Twilight and her friends travel to the town of Hope Hollow to attend their annual Rainbow Festival after Rainbow Dash had been invited as a guest of honor. When they arrive, they find that the town's color had faded away. Twilight and her friends start working to restore the town's color and bring the Rainbow Festival back.
Twilight appears alongside the rest of the Mane Six in the seriesMy Little Pony: Pony Life. The show features a different animation technique and focuses more onslice of life-style stories thanFriendship Is Magic.[3] InPony Life, she appears as an alicorn from the beginning of the series, but is never referred to as a princess.
Twilight makes a cameo appearance at the start of the film, during an imaginary sequence depicting a playtime session between Sunny Starscout, Hitch Trailblazer, and Sprout Cloverleaf that goes awry when Sprout acts as if Rarity were an evil unicorn due to prejudices between the three pony races having resurfaced following Twilight's implied passing. Her cutie mark appears in the film as the symbol in both Sunny's diary and a window in an abandoned Zephyr Heights airport.
Twilight makes a cameo appearance in "Growing Pains" where she appears to Sunny Starscout and her friends via a message through the Unity Crystals. She warns them about an "evil pony" that tried to steal all of Equestria's magic years ago.
The firstMy Little Pony IDW Comic, "The Return of Queen Chrysalis", was published in 2012,[4][5] in which Twilight and her friends find the ponies inPonyville replaced by undercoverChangelings, similar to "A Canterlot Wedding". Twilight appears as aunicorn in the comics at first.[6] She is seen as awinged unicorn from issue #13 onwards, published on November 20, 2013.[7] The comics were set in the same world as the television show, but featured original stories about Twilight and her friends unrelated to it until issue #89, after which the TV show ended.[8] From this issue onwards, the comics picked up where the show left off and were officially described as "Season 10".[9] The comics ended after issue #102, published on October 13, 2021, where Twilight and her friends have to protect the Elements of Harmony from the attacks of the Knights of Harmony.[9][10]
Following the end of "Season 10", a new five-issue miniseries called "My Little Pony: Generations" was announced,[8][9] in which theMane Six meet ponies fromthe firstMy Little Pony show.[11] The first issue was published on October 20, 2021, the fifth and final issue is expected to be published in February 2022.[12]
In the four-issuecrossovercomic betweenMy Little Pony andTransformers called "My Little Pony/Transformers: Friendship in Disguise" published from July to November 2020,[13] characters from theTransformers franchise team up with the Mane Six in Equestria to fight off villains from both franchises, who have also formed an alliance with each other.[14] A sequel four-issue miniseries called "My Little Pony/Transformers: The Magic of Cybertron" with a similar plot was published from April to July 2021.[15][16]
An alternate version of Twilight appears in the post-credits scene ofMy Little Pony: Equestria Girls — Rainbow Rocks. She is fully introduced inMy Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games and becomes one of the main characters of theEquestria Girls franchise in other subsequent media. In the next film,My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree she is revealed to have become a backup vocalist in the Rainbooms and obtains telekinesis as her geode power.
Hasbro, Inc. produced several incarnations of theMy Little Pony franchise, often labeled by collectors as "generations".[17][18] Hasbro wanted to retool the My Little Pony franchise to better suit the current demographic of young girls, similar to howMichael Bay's filmTransformers had helped boost the newTransformers toy line[19] According toMargaret Loesch, CEO of Hub Network, revisiting properties that had worked in the past was an important programming decision, which was somewhat influenced by the opinions of the network's programming executives, several of whom were once fans of such shows.[20] Hasbro's senior vice president, Linda Steiner, stated the company "intended to have the show appeal to a largerdemographic", with the concept of parents "co-viewing" with their children being a central theme of the Hub Network's programming.[21] Central themes that Hasbro sought for the show included friendship and working together, factors they determined from market research in how girls played with their toys.[22] Outside help was sought to make the characters and stories.[23]
Animator and writerLauren Faust approached Hasbro to develop her girls' toys property "Galaxy Girls" into an animated series.[24] Faust, who had previously worked onCartoon Network'sThe Powerpuff Girls andFoster's Home for Imaginary Friends, had been unsuccessfully pitching animation aimed at girls for years, as cartoons for girls were considered unsuccessful.[25] When she pitched to Lisa Licht of Hasbro Studios, the latter was not very interested, but she showed Faust one of the company's recent My Little Pony animated works,Princess Promenade, "completelyon the fly". Licht thought Faust's style was well suited to that line, and asked her to consider "some ideas [on] where to take a new version of the franchise".[19][24][26]
Faust agreed to take the job as long as she was able to move away from the "silliness of [My Little Pony's] predecessors and their patronizing attitudes towards young girls".[27] She regarded girls' entertainment as too sweet, plain, and obvious which did not fit their intelligence and "talk[ed] down to [them]".[27] Unlike most girls' shows, in which, according to Faust, the characters have "onearchetype" and "the only difference between any of them is this one likes pink and this one likes blue", she insisted on characters with dimensions who were different from one another and had their own flaws.[28] Faust aimed for the characters to be "relatable" characters, using "icons of girliness" (such as the bookworm) to broaden the appeal of the characters for the young female audience.[29] She based many characters of the principal cast on how she had envisioned the original ponies, including Twilight Sparkle on Twilight from Generation 1,[30][31] as well as Twilight Twinkle from Generation 3, first introduced in 2005.
Tara Strong and Faust first met onThe Powerpuff Girls. After developingFriendship Is Magic'spitch bible, Faust asked Strong to help her complete it by voicing Twilight, Pinkie Pie, and Applejack or Rainbow Dash. Faust had expected Strong to book the role of Pinkie Pie as she was similar toBubbles, who the actress had voiced inThe Powerpuff Girls. Faust offered her the role of Twilight after hearing her voice the character. Strong viewed Twilight as "authentic and conscientious and sweet but strong and a little bit nerdy".[32] To voice Twilight, Strong made her voice higher.[32]
Rebecca Shoichet initially became involved with the series through frequent collaboratorDaniel Ingram, who composed the songs for the show. She performed a number of song demos for him, including for the PBS animated seriesMartha Speaks.[33] During the show's casting phase, Shoichet was cast as Twilight's singing voice after recording a demo for the series' theme song because she sounded similar to Strong.[34]
Kira Buckland voiced Twilight in the video gamesMy Little Pony: Power Ponies andMy Little Pony: Luna Eclipsed.[2]
Each of the main characters had expressions and mannerisms distinctive to them as well as general expressions they shared. According to the DHX Media team, they "avoid[ed] certain expressions if it [went] outside [the ponies'] personality".[35] The creative team incorporated each character's personality into their mannerisms, facial expressions, props, and home environment.[35] Twilight had a different cutie mark and hair color when she was first created. Originally, she had an cutie mark with an heavenly design that highlighted her royalty and mystical knowledge, which were later reflected in her purple color. Her cutie mark was changed to convey that she is "a vibrant and special star in the universe of pony". Twilight's hard, angular edges personify her as a tidy pony.[36] Like other ponies, Twilight's body does not feature shading; hermane and tail lack depth and are generally fixed shapes, animated by bending and stretching them in curves in three dimensions and giving them a sense of movement without the cost of individual hairs.[24] Twilight also influenced the design of Golden Oak Library, her home for the first four seasons. It represents her various hobbies, and its numerous hooks, storage cubbies, and stairways, the tree's curving, organic interior is representative of her mind.[37]
According to a study published in 2019, theFriendship Is Magic fandom usually cite Twilight as the character with whom they most relate. Isabelle Licari-Guillaume insisted that Twilight is a "convincing figurehead" for nerd culture and a major factor in the success of the series.[38] According to Pavol Kosnáč, Twilight connects the Mane 6 together.[39] Theresia Sitinjak, a writer atDiponegoro University, stated Twilight represents the Americancultural values of individualism, altruism, and industry[40]—reflected in several of her character traits, including her optimism, friendships, and high standards.[41] Ethan Lewis, fromDen of Geek, asserted she is "one of the more complex characters of this show" because she "embodies many contradictions"; for example, he wrote that despite being scientific, logical, and reasonable, Twilight's element of harmony is magic.[42]The Mary Sue described Twilight as mature and praised her nerdy aspects.[43]Comic Book Resources ranked Twilight as the second best character Strong had voiced.[44]
Anna Dobbie ofDen of Geek said that Twilight's reserved demeanour implies that she hasavoidant personality disorder andobsessive–compulsive disorder.[45] Supervising directorJayson Thiessen stated Twilight is "kind of aneurotic perfectionist ... [with] a touch of OCD".[36]
In March 2020, Twilight Sparkle was among the first character voices implemented in15.ai, atext-to-speech website that generates voice lines of fictional characters usinggenerative artificial intelligence.[46] In January 2022, it was discovered that acryptocurrency company calledVoiceverse had generated voice clips of Twilight Sparkle (along with those ofRainbow Dash) using 15.ai, pitched them up to sound unrecognizable, and sold them asNFTs.[47]
In 2021, researchers fromUniversitas Trisakti analyzedvisual character design inMy Little Pony: The Movie and concluded that Twilight Sparkle's predominantly purple colors correspond to qualities like imagination, spirituality, and wisdom that visually separate her from the rest of the Mane Six.[48]
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