For me, the biggest difference between G4 and G5 is going to be infrastructure and expectations.
With G4, Hasbro saw a chance to maybe reboot a dead series that had been driven into the ground, so giving Lauren Faust the show seemed safe both from a “She can’t fuck it up worse than it already is” and a “We’re not going to really give her enough money or even any office space for this, so what’s the harm?”
With G5, there are Directors Of Global Marketing specifically for this show, with staffs of hundreds of people who need to make their next car payment, and ‘These are not forward looking statements’ in the investors’ brochures and filings explaining how this show is going to continue to be a global earnings juggernaut.
So where G4 was one woman’s attempt to recreate her love of a show from her childhood and a chance to take all of her personal stories about the ponies and bring them to the screen with nowhere near enough money, people, or time, G5 is almost certainly going to be the result of years worth of committee meetings and financial projections that embraces Hasbro’s core messages of inclusion and diversity.
So … “G5 will be Different”, I think is what I’m trying to say here.