Upcoming Episode “Luna Eclipsed” (S02E04)

Prospective air date: October 22, 2011, 14:00 UTC (10 a.m. EDT)

Synopses:

• “It’s Nightmare Night and the macabre celebrations are in full swing when Luna herself shows up in Ponyville, determined to change her frightening public image.” (Equestria Daily)
• “Luna shows up in Ponyville to try dispelling her frightening public image during the spookiest celebration of the year, Nightmare Night.” (tv.com)
• “As Nightmare Night falls, and the spooky celebrations are well under way and Luna herself makes a special appearance in Ponyville, causing many to be frightened, but she is determined to change her gruesome public image.” (FiM Wiki)

Then of course there are the supposedly leaked pictures and “screenshots.” Some of them (or even all of them, but I don’t think so) may be from different episodes if they are legit. Who knows. There is an Equestria Daily posts on the topic, plus this follow-up post.

Update: The one with the train is from the new intro, as you’ve probably noticed anyway.

A fourth picture seems to be floating around as well, which may or may not belong to the same set. See below.

As seen on ponymediaxis.de

EqD listed this tread as one source of the pictures, but Seth complied with a request from someone on that forum (Quaraezha) and removed it. Someone who claimed to be the originator of the images also posted them in this Ponychan thread, which has since 404’d.

Update 2011-10-20: Equestria Daily just posted two screenshots from the episode, of which one had been posted on the My Little Pony Facebook page, and another on Ponibooru (the confusing cyclical source link to Equestria Daily was probably added later). See below.

My Little Pirate

The following jokes have already been made:

“I really like her.... Mane?” —Flutterfan

“By Twilight's beard!” —Delichon

“This saturday. It's Spike... in... DRAGONCEPTION” —Silent_strike

“Yo dawg, I heard you like dragons...” —V

Update 2011-10-20: And then there are these images.

Update 2011-10-20: Lauren Faust proffers a possible explanation for Luna’s mane. (And tail! Don’t forget the tail!)

By PetalFluff

Update 2011-10-21 17:58Z: Sorry, I was on a bus when it was posted. Have more teaser videos. That promises to be one badplot epic episode. But can it be more epic than Lesson Zero?

Update 2011-10-21 15:46Z: Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh! Littlepip is canon!

Update 2011-10-23 08:40Z: Lauren Faust explained the episode’s Rarity rarity, and describes what Rarity was originally supposed to do.

Update 2011-10-23 09:02Z: In the comments, Pinkie Pie links to a few forum posts by a layout artist working on the show, who confirms Lauren’s description and provides a quote from the scene from memory.

Update 2011-11-03 22:20Z: On November 2, an inquisitive brony discovered (more details in their comment) a well-dressed but pink Luna in the Castle Creator Flash game that the Hub had updated only a day before. After the news covered in the two previous updates above, it was already rumored that it may be Rarity’s doing. Yesterday, Nayuki confirmed this.