Back to the Present

Title card.

**Back to the Present** is the second part of the twenty-ninth episode of the third season of *LEGO Ninjago & My Little Pony: Living the Pony Life*, and the 133rd episode overall. Along with "Planet of the Apps", it aired first in English on April 9, 2021, in the UK. It aired in the US on April 24, 2021, paired with "Mirror Me This" and "Aunt Roselle Makes a Visit".

## Synopsis

*After rescuing Zane from Irma, the Ninja, the Young Ninja, the Mane Six and the Williams sisters travel through a vortex where different portals lead to different parallel dimensions.*

**Extended**: *The Ninja and the ponies travel through a vortex, where they ended up in parallel dimensions, the Ninja, the Young Ninja, Kitonaru and Gleam are ended up in Unikingdom, and met Unikitty and her friends in the castle. The Mane Six, Megan and Molly also ended up in alternate Ponyville, known as the Wild Side, and they went to Salad Bowl Junction, a healthy food restaurant that replaces Sugarcube Café. As they found the mixing bowl and a guitar, they went back home, but the Wild Siders, Unikitty and her gang pleads to stay in Ponyville.*

**Tiny Pop**: *The Ninja, the Young Ninja, the Mane Six and the Williams sisters traveled through multiple parallel dimensions and ended up in two different dimensions; in Unikingdom and the Wild Side.*

**Teletoon**: *The team travelled through the vortex where it leads to different parallel dimensions.*

## Plot

The Ninja, the Young Ninja, the Mane Six, the Williams sisters, Kitonaru and Gleam reunite inside the temporal vortex, and they travelled into various parallel dimensions. The Ninja, the Young Ninja, Kitonaru and Gleam ended up in present-day Ninjago, but Lloyd realized that this wasn't Ninjago due to the cute and colorful building structures, Nya and Caralisa spots a familiar building that is shaped like the plush doll that Nya owned. Seeing that Unikitty is living in the main castle, similar to the monastery, the Ninja and the Young Ninja went inside to take a closer look.

The Mane Six, Megan and Molly arrived back in present-day Ponyville, but several details are noticeably different: Sugarcube Café is now a healthy food restaurant called Salad Bowl Junction, ponies make use of smartphones shaped like bananas, and there are statues of Discordeverywhere. Inside Salad Bowl Junction, the Mane Six meet a trio of friends called the "Wild Siders"—a tiger and owner of the restaurant Lightning Chill, a bat named Echo, and a peacock named Sugar Snap—and demand answers.

The Ninja, the Young Ninja, Kitonaru and Gleam are inside the castle, and greeted by Princess Unikitty. She then brings to the living room where her friends are. Unikitty introduced her friends to the Ninja and the Young Ninja; a male dog-unicorn hybrid Puppycorn, a smart vixen Dr. Fox, an action fighting hawk-crocodile hybrid Hawkodile and a grown-up 1x3 LEGO brick Richard. Unikitty wants to order Thai food for her friends to have dinner, but Lloyd really wants us to go back home. As Dr. Fox settles the visitors with a time machine to go back home, Hawkodile wants to try his own guitar he had in this collection. The Ninja realized that Jay's guitar that Hawkodile owned is the same one Jay puts it in the time capsule. He asked Hawkodile that the guitar was found, and he plays a simple tune. With the guitar obtained, a portal opens. Unikitty is going to miss having Thai food for dinner, but Lloyd will bring her and her friends to Ponyville for dinner.

Back at the Wild Side, the Wild Siders realize the Mane Six are from another dimension and offer to help them get back home, as stated from Pinkie Pie's explanation. Just then, a portal opens and the Ninja, the Young Ninja, Kitonaru, Gleam, Unikitty and her friends landed here, but they realized that they were in Salad Bowl Junction instead of Sugarcube Cafè. Lightning Chill offers them some samples of her restaurant's salad dishes, but Pinkie is resistant to try them. They all discover Pinkie's salad was served to her in the mixing bowl she put in the time capsule, and Echo interprets the bowl's glowing to mean it wants Pinkie to try the salad. Reluctantly, Pinkie tries the salad and finds it delicious.

With the mixing bowl obtained, a portal opens to bring the Ninja, the Young Ninja, the Mane Six, the Williams sisters, Kitonaru and Gleam back to their own dimension. Upon the team's return home, another portal opens to bring the Wild Siders, Unikitty and her friends through, with Lightning Chill commenting that the universe wants them to "take a walk on the *mild* side" and Unikitty wanted to explore this realm. Pinkie invites her friends, the Wild Siders, Unikitty and her gang into Sugarcube Café to serve everyone her new salad cupcake recipes.

### Friendship 101

**Twilight Sparkle**: Hi there, it's good to back home guys.

**Lloyd**: Yeah. Even though home is where we lived, some visitors from far away want to visit you.

**Pinkie Pie**: Oh, goodie! I hope I will bake Green Curry cupcakes for Unikitty and her friends for some cravings of Thai food.

**Lloyd**: (Laughs.) When someone visits your home country, take some time to try some culture and food here. That way, it makes us more comfortable to live in.

**Twilight Sparkle**: If your visitor are making a visit here, try saying polite words like "welcome", "please" and "thank you".

**Kai**: And when someone wants to leave back home, give some time to enjoy last moments, but they will visit anytime as they wished to.

**Lloyd**: So, the next time a visitor came here, make good amends to try and explore what we have. Until later, bye.

**Pinkie Pie**: See you next time!

## Cast

* Applejack - Ashleigh Ball
* Caralisa - Tabitha St. Germain
* Cole - Kirby Morrow
* Damien - Andrew Francis
* Dr. Fox - Kate Micucci
* Echo - Connor Parnall
* Fluttershy - Andrea Libman
* Gleam - Marÿke Hendrikse
* Hawkodile - Roger Craig Smith
* Jake - Nicholas Holmes
* Jay - Michael Adamthwaite
* Kai - Vincent Tong
* Kimberly - Shannon Chan-Kent
* Kitonaru - Andrea Libman
* Lightning Chill - Bethany Brown
* Lloyd - Sam Vincent
* Megan Williams - Kelly Sheridan
* Molly Williams - Chantal Strand
* Nelson - David Reynolds
* Nya - Kelly Metzger
* Pinkie Pie - Andrea Libman
* Puppycorn - Grey Griffin
* Rainbow Dash - Ashleigh Ball
* Rarity - Tabitha St. Germain
* Richard - Roger Craig Smith
* Twilight Sparkle - Tara Strong
* Unikitty - Tara Strong
* Zachary - Gavin Langelo
* Zane - Brent Miller

## Locations Featured

* Unikingdom
	+ Unikitty's Castle
		- Living Room
	+ Town Square
* Wild Side
	+ Salad Bowl Junction
* Equestria (present day)
	+ Ponyville
		- Sugarcube Cafè

## Trivia

* **Narrator**: Pinkie Pie
* This episode first aired in France on March 1, 2021, as part of sneak peak for the season's main arc.
* This episode, along with other episodes of the third season's second arc, was leaked on Pop! On-Demand in the UK on April 2, 2021.
* A sneak peak featuring the Mane Six, Megan and Molly meeting the Wild Siders was shown on Tiny Pop YouTube Channel on March 29, 2021.
* The title is a play on the Universal Pictures sci-fi film trilogy *Back to the Future*.
	+ The episode's title card logo is even modeled after the logo of *Back to the Future* film series.
	+ When Hawkodile mistakes a hawk-crocodile hybrid as a chicken, he said "Nobody Calls Me Chicken," which refers to the quote to insult Marty McFly in *Back to the Future Part II*.
* Unikitty mentions Rex Dangervest in *The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part**,* who travels back in time to save his future self.
* Ponies using banana-shaped phones is a reference to the children's song "Bananaphone" from the 1994 album of the same name by Raffi and Michelle Creber's father Michael Creber.
* The Ninja, the Young Ninja, the Mane Six and the Williams sisters are finally back home in present-day Ponyville.
* The Wild Siders, Unikitty and her friends want to explore Ponyville and Ninjago City as they want to "take a walk on the *mild* side".
* It is revealed that Pinkie Pie disliked salad, but after she tried it, she founds that the salad was delicious, so she tried making salad cupcakes at Sugarcube Café.
* There are many statues of Discord while the Mane Six, Megan and Molly are at the Wild Side.

### Friendship 101

* **Hosts**: Lloyd, Twilight Sparkle, Kai and Lloyd
* This episode explains some tips when a visitor makes a visit to your home.
* The clips used in this segment are this episode, "Vania Visits the City", "Superb Six", "A Wonderful Reunion" and "Into the Deep Caverns".
* **Moral**: The next time a visitor came here, make good amends to try and explore what we have.

## Continuity

* This is the first crossover episode in the series, as it crossovers with another series, *Unikitty!*.
	+ It is the third time in the franchise where it crossover with another series. The first is "Curseworld - Part II" as it crossover with *LEGO Legends of Chima*, and the second is "Return to Seaquestria" where it had a crossover with *LEGO Nexo Knights.*
	+ Since *Living the Pony Life* bears some similarities with *Teen Titans Go!*, it also features crossovers such as *TTG vs. PPG* and *Teen Titans Roar!*.
	+ However, unlike the two, multiple episodes will feature the characters from *Unikitty!*, as stated that Unikingdom and the Wild Side are closer realms, like Ninjago and Equestria.
* Jay plays the same tune on the guitar he played in "Superstar Rockin' Jay".
* When Cole explains they travel through the portal with dragons, he is referring to "School Raze: Lessons of Friendship" where the Marooned Ninja travelled back to Ninjago from the Realm of Oni and Dragons using dragons.
* Nya and Caralisa already recognized Unikitty in "A Cute Mystery" as a plush doll.
* Unikitty and her friends' craving for Thai food will later reimagined in "One Small Thing", where the Ninja and the Mane Six are craving for Vietnamese food.
	+ Incidentally, Thai and Vietnamese food are under Southeast Asian cuisine.

## Changes

### Changes from the Pony Life and Unikitty! cartoon

* The footage when the Ninja and the Young Ninja meet Unikitty and her friends are taken from "Delivery Effect", an original episode in *Unikitty!*.
* Few scenes from the original Pony Life episodes are cut due to time constraints.

## Errors

* The Ninja and the Young Ninja are in their Armor Robes at the beginning of the episode, even though they (except Nya and Caralisa) are wearing Island Ninja Robes in various episodes.