Chris Cocks is a terrorist

• The G5-G4 tie-in was already established. It was strange to follow up FIM’s popularity with the implication that they failed offscreen and left Equestria unrecognizable. Also, if the “Discovery Family has rights to G4’s lore” rumor is true, I feel like Hasbro should’ve known by then.
• Some of the main cast felt too pander-y. Pipp seemed to pander to some impression that modern kids can’t relate without modern technology and social media (and IMO she’s just flat-out a bad influence to kids but I digress). Hitch felt like a token character when they first showed him off, going with “look, a male main character!” rather than focusing on cross-gender appeal in the content itself. And Sunny, at least in the movie, pandered to bronies. And yet, none of them had strong characterization in the movie. They all felt lab-grown.
• The greenlight for MYM and TYT would’ve been given by this point. While these aired post-Goldner, it was a strange strategy. Surrendering your main series to irregular Netflix releases, while also having an easily-accessible side series with very little appeal to older viewers.
• IMO, the “three little segregated nations with no knowledge of each other” isn’t a good basis for lore. While this set up an easy “integrating the ponies” storyline for followup material, early MYM didn’t really attempt this, though I don’t know when the MYM scripts and such were decided on.