Country of origin United States
Canada Original network Discovery Family | No. of episodes 26 | |
Original release March 26 (2016-03-26) – October 22, 2016 (2016-10-22) | ||
The sixth season of the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, developed by Lauren Faust, originally aired on the Discovery Family channel in the United States. The series is based on Hasbro's My Little Pony line of toys and animated works and is often referred by collectors to be the fourth generation or "G4" of the My Little Pony franchise. Season 6 of the series premiered on March 26, 2016 on Discovery Family, an American pay television channel partly owned by Hasbro.
Contents
The show follows Princess Twilight Sparkle, a studious alicorn pony, as her mentor Princess Celestia guides her to learn about friendship in the town of Ponyville. Twilight continues to learn with her close friends Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. Each represents a different face of friendship, and Twilight discovers herself to be a key part of the magical artifacts, the "Elements of Harmony". The ponies share adventures and help out other residents of Ponyville, while working out the troublesome moments in their own friendships.
Development
On March 31, 2015, Discovery Family announced via press release a sixth season for the series. On January 28, 2016, Yahoo Entertainment released an exclusive clip from the show's upcoming sixth season depicting the baby daughter of Princess Cadance and Shining Armor, Flurry Heart, who will be introduced into the season as a new character. On March 7, 2016, a Game of Thrones-style teaser trailer for the season was released, hinting several locations of that season. Ed Valentine, writer of the Season 4 episodes "Flight to the Finish" and "Three's a Crowd" with the latter being a collaboration alongside headwriter Meghan McCarthy, confirmed via Twitter that he wrote two episodes for Season 6.
Season 6 is the first season of the show without Jayson Thiessen, the supervising director who stepped down after the show's first half of its fifth season to focus on the upcoming 2017 theatrical film adaptation. However, he was a consulting director in its second half. Production was then overseen by Jim Miller, with Josh Haber promoted as the show's new Story Editor, while Tim Stuby serves as the show's director alongside Denny Lu. Season 6 is also the first season of the show to be executive produced by Nerd Corps Entertainment's co-founder Asaph Fipke, who was associate producer in Beast Wars: Transformers and producer and supervising production designer in Beast Machines: Transformers, having previously co-executive produced by Thiessen and McCarthy in the fourth and fifth seasons.
Promotion
At the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con, while the show was in its fifth season, it was revealed that there will be an episode involving Fluttershy having a brother. However, in regards to whether Fluttershy's brother would be appearing in season five or not, director Jim Miller simply responded via Twitter "not [season five]".
One of the songs from the season's Christmas-themed episode was first previewed at the 2016 American Toy Fair in New York City.