Spirit Riding Free: Pony Tales – Parent Review

Dad's Take

I’m not going to lie. This latest release of Spirit content has me scratching my head. What’s up with releasing just shy of 30 minutes of content Netflix? All I can say is thank God my daughter is not as into Spirit any more, or rewatching this sh*t would get old real fast.

Let’s start with the music video, Unstoppable. I’m all for girl power. I want my daughter to have strong, female role models in TV, books, movies, etc she can look up to. But the animation of the music video down right made Lucky and gang look sadistic at times.

Come… Join us… We know where you live…

Even my wife points out that instead of the girls looking “fierce” they look sort of scary. And when I first heard the song and shared it with her, she was less than impressed with the girl power theme. I found her reaction odd. She loves the scene in Avengers: End Game when all the female superheros assemble together in a show of girl power force.

And both Unstoppable and the other song (which was meh at best) added nothing to the Pony Tales stories except time. Even still, the only add about seven minutes of time to the new content.

Pony Tales presents itself as several short stories of Lucky, Spirit, and the rest of the gang. But, the four short stories are basically a full episode of Spirit cut into four pieces.

This got me thinking. Was the content of these stories originally cut from a Spirit season? The episode was mediocre at best, which, if my theory is correct, is why they likely cut the content in the first place. But hell, if TV and movie productions have learned anything over the years, they know they can rebrand crap and present it as new and the audience will almost always welcome more.

My four year old (who admittedly is on a My Little Pony kick at the moment that as I write this is shifting back to Princess Sofia for some reason) was not all that enthralled with the new material either. She basically watched it without pulling out her riding horse. She normally likes to ride the horse (she named Chica Linda) when watching Spirit.

All of which makes me wonder… why did they bother with this? Were they even trying? Is Netflix trying to gauge fan interest in Spirit and maybe bring in more episodes? Will fans of Spirit get to see more short stories of Spirit on Netflix? I guess we’ll see soon enough.

It seems pretty obvious that Spirit has a loyal fan base. If Netflix renewed and produced additional seasons of Spirit or the Pony Tales concept, it may even help their falling stocks. Or perhaps convince a few more people to keep the service and not switch to Disney+ when it comes out. After all, Stranger Things can’t carry the entire Netflix service by itself… or can it? I suppose stranger things have happened.