One of the big questions raised by My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is this: why the heck does Princess Celestia let Twilight Sparkle stay in Ponyville? I mean, we’ve seen that Twilight is a fluke on the power scale with regards to magical ponies and, worse yet, has serious control problems. She’s basically munitions-grade unicorn, a pony Akira if you will, and Neo-Equestria is about to explode.

I  had wondered about this for a while, but it wasn’t until a couple of episodes ago that I got an answer.

Equestria is pretty heavily infested with some of the more sordid entries from the Monster Manual. Our intrepid equines have faced off against hydras, manticores, cockatrices, the odd dragon… A nice selection from the Gygax Rogue’s Gallery, in other words.

For god’s sake, they have Wendigos, and I actually had to look up what those WERE.  An obvious deficiency in my education.

These are all pretty heavy hitters, in their own rights, but they kind of pale in comparison to Cerberus breaking off his lease and winding up in Ponyville.

Let me point out what this means: There Is A Pony Hell. Specifically, Tartarus, a place wikipedia describes as ” a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering”.

Pretty heady stuff for a show about big-eyed unicorns.

Furthermore, after Cerberus has been subdued, Twilight leads him back to his post guarding the gates to Tartarus and is back in a matter of hours. Ponyville, then, is built very near to – if not directly ON – Pony Hell.

Looking at things like that, it makes a certain amount of sense to keep Twilight in Ponyville. Sure, she’s the sparkly purple equivalent of a hydrogen bomb and that’s bad, but if Pony Hell ever bursts open, spilling hordes of the damned across Sweet Apple Acres, that’s the kind of firepower you’re going to need to bring to bear.

I suppose that it is vaguely possible that I may be overthinking this.