Rainbow Dash

Rainbow Dash is a pegasus pony and one of the main characters of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. She is responsible for keeping the skies clear in Ponyville. She is also a huge admirer of The Wonderbolts and dreams of joining their flying group. She possesses the element of loyalty.

Personality
Rainbow Dash is shown to have a very boisterous attitude and often brags about her abilities. Other than that, she is loyal to her friends, which earned her the element of loyalty. She is incredibly enthusiastic and athletic, but is surprisingly lazy, often shown or mentioned to be sleeping in, napping, or slacking off. While she is often somewhat caustic and impatient with her friends, Rainbow Dash enthusiastically boasts about her friends' unique talents.

Despite her confidence, she reacts poorly to failure, or even the possibility of failure. In Fall Weather Friends, Rainbow Dash got extremely upset over losing a simple game of horse shoes to Applejack, stating that she 'hates losing'. Later on during the Iron Pony Competition, she eventually resorted to cheating when she felt she was about to lose. In Sonic Rainboom, she initially put on a face of overwhelming bravado about the Best Young Flyer's Competition but soon revealed she was absolutely terrified of making a fool of herself, to the point where she almost refused to perform and messed up several of her routines.

Skills
Rainbow Dash is a very accomplished flyer, shown to be both agile and fast in the air. She can clear the skies of Ponyville "in ten seconds flat" (a popular meme now). Besides these practical abilities, she has spent much time honing impressive and flashy aerial acrobatic maneuvers, including the Rainblow Dry (a mini-tornado that seems to suck away moisture), Super Speed Strut (during which she pantomimes running on the ground while flying at high speeds), the Fantastic Filly Flash (an impressive nose-dive followed by a swift recovery) and the Buccaneer Blaze (which is apparently far too amazing to show onscreen, and produces an incredible explosion of light somehow).

She can fly fast enough to conjure up small tornadoes and rip water droplets from their clouds. She uses this ability for another feat by flying through clouds and using the rain to create a rainbow against herself on landing, although this trick has no known name.

Her most spectacular move is the Sonic Rainboom, depicted in the aptly-titled episode Sonic Rainboom. This is technically the second time she has performed this (the first was in The Cutie Mark Chronicles, which deals with the main characters' past), but is the first time it is shown. In-setting, before Dash did it, the maneuver was considered only theoretical.

History
When she was younger, Rainbow Dash attended the Junior Speedster flight camp. As recounted in The Cutie Mark Chronicles, Rainbow Dash defended Fluttershy from a pair of bullies by challenging the two to a race. In the ensuing contest, Rainbow Dash performed her first Sonic Rainboom, not only gaining her cutie mark, but setting in motion the events that would cause Fluttershy and their future friends to gain their cutie marks.

Rainbow Dash first appeared in Friendship is Magic, part 1, accidentally crashing into Twilight Sparkle. She then joined Twilight and the other ponies in Friendship is Magic, part 2, on the quest for the Elements of Harmony. On the way, Nightmare Moon took on the form of The Shadowbolts, a dark copy of her personal heroes, The Wonderbolts, and solicited Dash into joining them and abandon her friends. Rainbow Dash declined the offer in order to help her friends, which earned her the element of loyalty.

In The Ticket Master, she was one of several ponies pestering Twilight for the extra ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala. Dash's reason being a chance to audition for The Wonderbolts who would perform there.

She and Pinkie Pie decided to play pranks on others in Griffon the Brush Off. An old friend of Dash comes for a visit, a griffon named Gilda, who has known her since her days in the Junior Speedsters flight team. At the time when Gilda is visiting Ponyville, Dash was unaware that the griffon was being mean and rude to the other ponies behind her back. After seeing how the griffon acted towards her new friends at Pinkie Pie's party in Gilda's honor, Rainbow Dash realized that Gilda isn't her true friend, and broke off their friendship.

Relationships
Twilight Sparkle - As someone who admires physical skill, Rainbow Dash doesn't have a lot of respect for Twilight's intellectual nature and is quite openly mocking on occasions, however Twilight takes this with grace and Rainbow Dash has admitted that Twilight’s magical skills are very impressive.

Fluttershy – Despite both being pegasi, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy couldn’t be more different and Rainbow Dash can often be short tempered with Fluttershy’s meekness and cowardice. Despite this, the two are good friends, and Rainbow Dash obviously appreciates Fluttershy’s patience and support. It is also worth noting that they have known each other since youth, having both hailed from Cloudsdale.

Applejack - Applejack and Rainbow Dash are fierce rivals and firm friends, who are often seen together and even more often seen fighting and bickering. They enjoy a lot of friendly competition and their feuding can get quite intense, both have engaged in trash talk, cheating and outright brawls but always end up laughing it off when the dust settles.

Pinkie Pie – Rainbow Dash is the most open of the ponies in not understanding Pinkie Pie at all, and indeed in Griffon the Brush Off, she went to extreme lengths to avoid spending time with Pinkie. The two eventually ended up bonding however and Rainbow Dash has ended up enjoying Pinkie’s odd personality and sense of humor, even if her hyperactivity and weirdness often irritates her.

Rarity- Rarity and Rainbow Dash are also almost complete opposites; whereas Rainbow Dash is tomboyish, Rarity is very ladylike and therefore they don't always see eye-to-eye. However, the two otherwise hold a fairly strong respect for each other and tolerate each other's differences. In Sonic Rainboom when the two participated in the Young Flyers' Competition (With Rarity having acquired temporary wings thanks to Twilight), Rainbow saved Rarity's life when the latter ruined her wings in the sun above Cloudsdale where she otherwise couldn't walk on the clouds; Rarity declared Rainbow the best flier, with Rainbow quickly forgiving Rarity for upstaging her in return.

In The Cutie Mark Chronicles, it's revealed that Rainbow Dash's first Sonic Rainboom ever attempted allowed all the other main character ponies to gain their own cutie marks, symbolizing that Rainbow Dash and the others had a magical bond before they even met.

Appearances

 * See also: Appearances

Rainbow Dash appears in all episodes so far except episodes eight, fifteen, and seventeen, with only a background appearance in episodes eighteen and twenty.

Trivia

 * Rainbow Dash is based on the G3 earth pony of the same name, but her personality resembles more of Firefly, an adventurous pegasus pony from the G1 line.
 * Rainbow Dash's home is shown in Griffon the Brush Off. She lives in a white cloud-house hanging low to the ground somewhere near Ponyville. It features not only a clearly defined door and cloud columns in a classical style but rainbow-colored curves and a "stream." In Dragonshy, Dash is able to use this stream to make rainbow-colored facepaint.
 * Her home is shown again in Party of One, with a different design.
 * Rainbow Dash states that she was the first pony in her class to gain her cutie mark in Call of the Cutie.
 * In Sonic Rainboom, Rainbow Dash's hometown is revealed to be Cloudsdale.
 * As of Episode 24, Rainbow Dash seems to be the only pony of the main cast that does not yet have a pet. (Applejack's Winona, Pinkie Pie's Gummy, Rarity's Opalescence, Twilight Sparkle's Owlowiscious, and Fluttershy's Angel (as well as many others))