Discord

Discord is the former ruler of Equestria, and the main antagonist of The Return of Harmony Part 1 and Part 2. Once Discord escapes from his stone prison, Twilight Sparkle and her friends must act quickly to retrieve the Elements of Harmony in order to stop him.

Physical appearance
"This creature is called a draconequus. He has the head of a pony and a body of all sorts of other things."

- Cheerilee

Discord has a horse-like head with a right deer antler, a left goat horn, a fang and a beard. He has a lion right arm, an eagle's talon for a left arm, a lizard right leg, a goat left leg, a bat right wing, a pegasus left wing, a snake tail and tongue and different sized pupils.

Personality
In The Return of Harmony Part 1 and Part 2, Discord is shown to be a mischievous, manipulative trickster who uses powerful magic and illusions to alter reality and control others. During the two episodes, he seeks revenge against Celestia and Luna for imprisoning him in stone, by stealing the Elements of Harmony and causing disorder all across Equestria.

Made clear during the episodes, he has a sense of showmanship and drama, preferring to be playful towards his victims before getting down to business, even mocking and bantering with Celestia and the six main ponies in Canterlot Tower, after he first appears. He delights in chaos and confusion at the expense of others and believes that there's "no fun in making sense." While attempting to corrupt Fluttershy, he shows his lack of patience, when he finds he can't corrupt her as easily as he did with the others.

Discord delights in causing others to act almost like their total opposites. In The Return of Harmony Part 2, he relishes in breaking Twilight's spirit and her belief in the power of friendship, believing that he has now won, and that he and his chaos are unstoppable, due to Twilight's belief in friendship being the key to defeating him. He even torments her by showing Twilight how he has changed Ponyville with his chaos, and to finish it off, he makes a small cotton candy cloud raining chocolate rain to follow her and rain on her constantly, adding to her defeat. When she acts indifferent to the changes, he celebrates with a mocking dance.

During the two episodes, Discord underestimates the ponies' ability to restore their friendship and wield the Elements of Harmony. During their final confrontation, he still believes that their friendship is broken, which leads him to sit idly by while the ponies use the magic of the Elements to turn him back into stone.

History
Discord first appears in The Return of Harmony Part 1. Before he is introduced, the effects of his presence are seen, with clouds made out of cotton candy that move of their own accord, chocolate milk pouring down from the sky as if like rain, and animals that behave uncharacteristically and spontaneously change shape. Princess Celestia explains to Twilight and her friends that Discord preceded her as ruler of Equestria and caused unrest and unhappiness throughout all of Equestria for earth ponies, unicorns and pegasi alike. Celestia and her sister Luna rose up against Discord and used the Elements of Harmony to turn him to stone. Celestia continues, explaining that since she and Luna are no longer connected to the Elements of Harmony, the spell imprisoning Discord broke and he has escaped from his stone prison. When the Elements of Harmony go missing, Celestia accuses Discord of stealing them, because they were held in a chamber protected by a spell that she believed only she could break. Discord appears in the stained-glass windows of the palace and replies with a riddle, which Twilight connects with the Canterlot castle labyrinth.

When Twilight and her friends venture into the palace labyrinth, Discord magically removes the ponies' wings and horns so that they would be unable to use their magic or be able to fly to "cheat" in the "game" he forces them to take part in. He also separates them by raising sections of the labyrinth's walls. Discord uses representations of the cast's cutie marks to subtly manipulate them into behaving in discordance with the element they represent, with the exception of Fluttershy who doesn't fall for Discord's manipulation, leading him to snap and simply convert her by touch.

He eventually plays with Rainbow Dash's loyalty to her friends by showing her a vision that her hometown of Cloudsale would be destroyed without her. He offers her a choice: she can either have her wings back and go to the aid of Cloudsdale, or continue seeking the Elements. This tricks her into flying out of the labyrinth, breaking Discord's second rule that all of the ponies must participate, or he wins. Discord then causes the entire labyrinth to collapse, and standing before the five remaining ponies, gleefully states that Equestria will now be thrust into eternal chaos.

When Twilight lashes at him, Discord warps them back in time to help out Twilight with the riddle he spoke of earlier, but he has turned Ponyville into what appears to be the 'capital of chaos'. When Twilight forcefully puts the elements on the corrupted ponies and Spike for substituting as Rainbow Dash, the Elements didn't work so Discord continued his chaos. Finally when Twilight cured all her corrupted friends, Discord was acting calm and content until he figured out, too late, that all the ponies were back to their normal selves, thus had reawakened the powers of the Elements. With this, he was ultimately defeated after being struck with a rainbow similar to what was used previously on Nightmare Moon and was turned back into stone, but this time with an expression of horror frozen onto his face.

Gallery



 * Discord image gallery

Trivia

 * See also the corresponding episode sections on the animation errors page. 
 * See also the corresponding episode sections on the animation errors page. 


 * A creature composed of several different animals is called a chimera. While Discord is technically a chimera in that sense, this term is not used in the show. He resembles a Chinese dragon.
 * The word "draconequus" is composed of Greek "drakon" and Latin "equus", meaning "lizard horse".
 * Much like John de Lancie's popular character Q on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Discord appears with a bright white flash, and the two even share some mannerisms, including a fondness for "games" and snapping his fingers to use his powers.
 * When Discord manipulates Rainbow Dash, his horns are backwards.
 * After his encounter with Fluttershy, he says "arrivederci", which means "goodbye" in Italian.