The Mysterious Paw Do Well

The Mysterious Paw Do Well is the eighth episode of the second season of Legends of the Multiverse: Friendship is Magic and the thirty-fourth episode overall. The episode involves Sally Acorn's rise to hero status through various cliché superhero rescues. Later on, however, a mysterious mare called by the animalfolk as paw Do Well quickly takes her place as the new hero of Multiville. The Verizon FiOS synopsis for this episode refers to Sally Acorn using masculine pronouns. "Paw Do Well" is a play on the term "Poa'aw-do-well," a person who is completely lacking in merit.

Production and reuse of assets
In multiple shots, there are hats with Sally Acorn's old concept cutie mark on the front. This is also seen over some animals' cutie marks, in a sticker form, and on Rainbow Dash herself in one shot during the construction scene.

Of the six Earth animal construction workers saved by Mare Do Well, four use repurposed Squirrel designs from the episodes Super Sonic Acorn-boom and Feeling Rapunzel Keen.

Official Sally Acorn Fan Club
The episode begins with Alicia heading the Sally Acorn fan club in the Cutie Mark Crusaders' treehouse. She declares that Sally Acorn should be declared the most awesome animal in Multiville. Juniper Lee and her Younger Twin Brothers Ray Ray Lee and Max Lee join in the discussion with their opinion of the best way to describe Sally. A voice suggests Sally is super-ultra-extreme-awesomazing, which the club agrees is right. The voice is revealed to be Sally listening to the club outside.

Rainbow Dash saves the day
"Never fear, your friendly neighborhood Sally Acorn is here!"

- Sally Acorn

Sally Acorn is then seen flying around and having "a dip in the clouds." Suddenly, she hears Penny (from The Rescuers) shouting for help from a well. Sally cuts short her cloud dip and saves the dirty filly from the well, and is met with large amounts of praise from other animals, much to her surprise. Later, she sees a runaway baby carriage with a baby bunny in it and quickly saves the baby from plunging off a cliff. Again, she receives a great amount of praise and is then seen being photographed by paparazzi. Realizing the fame that comes with her heroism, she goes on to save a collapsing porch holding elderly animals and dances to the crowd's chants. She then gives a speech to the Sally Acorn fan club in Corona Sugarcube Corner. She brags about her new status as "hero" and the other main five are talking about her not being modest at all. Olaf and Navi is in the corner writing Sally Acorn's autobiography, which Kairi Sparkle reacts to by telling Sally that an autobiography is written by who it's about. Sally scoffs and says that she is too busy saving lives to write about her achievements, and has hired Olaf and Navi as her ghost writer.

Who is the best hero?
"That's right! Multiville has a new hero. A mysterious paw that has done well by our fair city today. I dub this new masked hero 'The Mysterious Paw Do Well'!"

- Mayor Isabelle

However, her pride soon begins to get in the way of her heroic deeds, and a mysterious mare in purple steps in. She begins to steal Sally's thunder by saving a animal from a falling hot air balloon, stopping a bus full of animals from falling off a cliff, saving construction workers from falling debris, and fixing the dam. She then becomes the new hero of Multiville dubbed "the Mysterious Paw Do Well". Sally attempts to outshine Paw Do Well but fails, and her hatred and jealousy towards Paw Do Well grows. Every time Sally fails, Paw Do Well steps in to fix the problem. It appears that Paw Do Well has both wings and a horn, seems to know when things are going to happen, is super strong, super fast, and incredibly agile as well. Sally realizes that she cannot compete with that. Even her friends seem to be impressed by Paw Do Well's heroics.

Sally decides that she has to convince the ponies in Multiville that she is still heroic and awesome. However, when she finds that there isn't anyone who needs saving, she ends up doing menial tasks like opening a jar of peanut butter and mowing a lawn in hope that animals may praise her, but instead the townsanimals roll their eyes and shrug her off as lame, leaving her even unhappier than before.

Sally goes off to brood on a thundercloud, wondering why the folk doesn't like her anymore and why she's all alone. When she hears her name called by Alicia, Sally assumes she's apologizing for forgetting about her, but Alicia tells her she's just inviting her to a thank you parade for Paw Do Well. At first Sally refuses, saying she wants to be alone, but then she hatches a plan to unmask Paw Do Well and decides to go.

Unmasking the Mysterious Paw Do Well
At the parade, when Paw Do Well appears, Sally comes up onto the stage and tries to get her to take off her mask. Paw Do Well runs away, but Rainbow gives chase. Paw Do Well keeps appearing in different places, too fast for Sally. After a bit of chasing, Sally pins her down and pulls off her mask to see none other than Rapunzel. Astonished, she begins stammering. Then two more Paw Do Wells appear and pull off their masks, revealing themselves to be Kairi Sparkle and Sheriff Mulan. They explain that they wanted Sally to stop boasting so much and come off her high horse. Mulan stopped the runaway bus with her powerful legs, Rapunzel used her Rapunzel Sense Magic Hair to avoid the falling obstacles at the building site, Kairi used her magic to fix the dam, Spectra did the flyby, and Nene designed the costumes.

Sally understands that she should act with grace and humility and not with selfish arrogance so as to avoid losing the appreciation of the townsanimals as well as causing a rift of jealousy between herself and her friends. She also learns that, while it's okay to be proud of your accomplishments, you should never brag about them. The episode ends with her holding a quill to write a letter to Princess Palutena and giving the audience a wink.

Superhero theme
The episode's lead storyboard artist, Sabrina Alberghetti, commented on how the crew incorporated "one [superhero] cliché after another" in a "fun tongue-in-cheek kind of way." Among them:


 * Sally Acorn's catchphrase, "never fear, your friendly neighborhood Sally Acorn is here!" is a play on both "your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man," and "There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!"
 * The Mysterious Paw Do Well shares the same purple-and-black color scheme and wide-brim hat and black ribbon as Darkwing Duck. Sabrina Alberghetti had worked on Darkwing Duck comics before, however she did not design the character.
 * The Mysterious Mare Do Well shares several elements with DC Comics' super-heroine The Spoiler, a supporting character of Batman. The Spoiler was the alter ego of Stephanie Brown, the daughter of a fame seeking, narcissistic super-villain named Cluemaster. Her costume was also a mauve body suite, with a purple mask. She became The Spoiler as a means of punishing her father by "spoiling" his every criminal plans.
 * Rapunzel's Pinkie Sense, which enables her to detect potential danger, parodies Spider-Man's ESP superpower, the spider sense.
 * The fanfare, accompanying music, and rally posters of the Paw Do Well strongly resemble the same from Batman: The Animated Series (reruns of which have aired on The Hub, the same channel that aired Legends of the Multiverse: Friendship is Universe before season five). Also, the girls all playing Paw Do Well are a nod to the animated movie Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, in which the Batwoman persona is a super alter-ego shared by three different women, each with different skill sets and fighting moves.

Quotes

 * Alicia Acorn: I motion that Sally Acorn be declared the most awesome flying squirrel in Multiville.
 * Max Lee: I second the motion, and might I add that if you looked up the word 'awesome' in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Sally Acorn.
 * Alicia Acorn: What about super-ultra-extreme-awesomazing?


 * Sally Acorn: Looks like my sky swim will have to wait!


 * Sally Acorn: Never fear, your friendly neighborhood Sally Acorn is here!


 * Kairi Sparkle: Call me silly, but this whole hero thing might be going to Sally's head.
 * Rapunzel: You may be right, silly.


 * Sally Acorn: Danger Nutty's my middle name. Sally 'Danger Nutty' Acorn.


 * Sally Acorn: Hey Sheriff Mulan, how'd you like to be immortalized as my friend?
 * Sheriff Mulan: Immorta--what?


 * Kairi Sparkle: Are you taking notes?
 * Olaf: Yup! I've been paw-picked by Sally Acorn herself, to write her autobiography!
 * Navi: Yup! Indeed being a Flying Squirrely Thing is Sally Acorn will Try to Fly Like Superman!
 * Kairi Sparkle: Umm, autobiographies are supposed to be written by the animal they are about.
 * Sally Acorn: Maybe for your normal, run-of-the-mill animals. But I'm far too busy saving lives to stop and write. That's why We hired Olaf and Navi as my ghost writer.
 * Rapunzel: Ahhh! Olaf and Navi's are ghost!


 * Sally Acorn: Never fear, your friendly neighborhood Sally -
 * Traveling Travis: Excuse me, do you think you could skip your catchphrase and just hurry up and save us?
 * Sally Acorn: Ugh...fine.


 * Sally Acorn: Oh, for the love of pete.


 * Olaf: She's... great.
 * Navi: She's... Awesome!
 * Sally Acorn: I didn't say that.
 * Kairi Sparkle: Sounds like somebody's jealous.
 * Sally Acorn: Who, me?
 * Olaf: Sally Acorn is jealous.
 * Sally Acorn: Don't write that, Olaf!
 * [others laughing]
 * Olaf: Correction: Sally Acorn is very jealous.
 * Navi: Very impressive!


 * Sally Acorn: Where is an out-of-control vehicle when you need one?!


 * Sally Acorn: How would you describe what I just did? Would you say I was amazing?
 * Amethyst van der Troll: Aren't you milking this a bit?


 * Sheriff Mulan: I stopped the carriage bus with these babies. Bucky McGillicuddy and Kicks McGee.
 * Spectra Vondergeist: Ooh, ooh! And I did the flyby afterwards.
 * Nene Amano: I made the costumes. Fabulous if I do say so myself!


 * Kairi Sparkle: Celebrating your accomplishments is natural. But...
 * Sheriff Mulan: ...Rubbin' them in everybody's face is not.
 * Rapunzel: Yeah, That's a great idea! the only thing that should be rubbed in anybody's face is chocolate cake.