Rainbow Dash

Rainbow Dash is a Pegasus pony and a main character in My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. She is responsible for maintaining the weather and clearing the skies in Ponyville. She is also a huge admirer of The Wonderbolts and dreams of joining their flying group. She represents the element of loyalty.

She is the last of the main 6 to have a pet; a tortoise named Tank, who was introduced in the episode May the Best Pet Win!

Personality
Rainbow Dash first appears in Friendship is Magic, part 1, where she accidentally crashes into Twilight Sparkle, sending her into a mud puddle. They briefly get to know each other. After that, Rainbow Dash tells Twilight about her adoration for The Wonderbolts, and Rainbow Dash later joins Twilight and the other ponies in Friendship is Magic, part 2 on their quest for the Elements of Harmony. Just as the ponies are about to reach the castle where the Elements are located, Nightmare Moon takes the form of The Shadowbolts, doppelgangers of Rainbow Dash's personal heroes, The Wonderbolts. They try to persuade Rainbow Dash into joining their ranks and abandoning her companions, but Rainbow Dash remains loyal to her friends and declines their offer, which earns her the element of loyalty.

Dash's loyalty is put to the test in The Return of Harmony Part 1 and Part 2. She and her friends have to solve Discord's riddle and play by his rules to regain the Elements. During their mission, Dash falls victim to Discord's manipulation after he tells her that her home will crumble without her, and shows her a vision of Cloudsdale crumbling. Under Discord's influence, she abandons her friends to "save" a cloud she believes to be Cloudsdale. Right before Applejack spots Dash flying away, Twilight Sparkle reassures herself by saying Dash won't let them down, but then watches in disbelief as Dash speeds off. Discord reveals himself and informs other ponies that they have been disqualified, as one of his rules stated that if one of the ponies leaves, the game is over.

The following episode, when Twilight sets about finding her friends to undo what Discord had done to them with a "memory spell", Rainbow Dash dismisses Twilight's plight with "loyalty shmoyalty". Since she won't come close enough to Twilight for the spell to be performed, the ponies must combine their efforts to catch her and bring her to the ground. Her first words after her corruption is undone is "How's Ponyville? Where are the Elements? Did we stop Discord?" With Dash by their side again, the ponies wield the Elements of Harmony and defeat Discord with their magic.

Laziness
Rainbow Dash is very confident in her abilities, which is often construed by others as laziness. When Twilight Sparkle first meets Rainbow Dash, she has none of her cloud cleanup work done, and lies idly on a cloud, putting off her work. Despite her apparent laziness, she performed her duty in "ten seconds flat", leaving Twilight wide-eyed at the sight. She languishes about in Griffon the Brush Off, The Cutie Pox, and Swarm of the Century, but springs into action in the last second when she's needed to help deal with the parasprite infestation, and leaves off for duty when she's needed in the first. She is the leader of the weather team in Winter Wrap Up and she volunteers to go on important missions with her friends, so despite her apparent laziness she is a hard-working, contributing pony.

She proudly says in Boast Busters that she's better than the rest of the ponies, but boos Trixie when Applejack gives her a scornful look. She and Applejack deride Twilight Sparkle in Fall Weather Friends for being an "egghead" and not having any experience with running outside of what she read in her book. However, both of them admire her magic in Boast Busters and tell her they're proud of her.

Rainbow Dash doesn't hide her annoyance at her friends' behavior, mostly with Fluttershy throughout season one. On the ponies' expedition in Dragonshy, Rainbow Dash is short with Fluttershy's shyness throughout their journey, in Suited for Success she angrily scolds her for suggesting panic, and in Sonic Rainboom she becomes so frustrated with Fluttershy's meek cheering that she does a pratfall. It is worth noting that despite her rude attitude towards Fluttershy, she doesn't apologize to her in the long run. She begrudgingly lets Rarity give her a makeover in Swarm of the Century, and keeps an annoyed frown on her face in the process. When Twilight Sparkle tries to convince Rarity in Suited For Success that she's not a laughing stock, Rainbow Dash rudely quips "she kind-of is". Like the other ponies' dresses, the dress she asked Rarity to make her is over the top, and it even includes a helmet styled much like the one worn by The Rocketeer. However, she wears the dress Rarity originally designed for her with a smile on her face when Rarity is given a second chance to redeem herself. Her shortness with Fluttershy eventually comes back to bite her in the beginning of Dragon Quest, where, in a parallel of Dragonshy, she tries to force Fluttershy go to the Dragon Migration because she went to the Butterfly Migration with her, however, Fluttershy angrily kicks her in the stomach as payback and runs off. She calls a dragon lame after seeing one do a trick, but then gets her coat singed after nearly getting burnt by another dragon's fire breath. She also mocks Spike in the same episode, but is then scolded by Rarity. In Hurricane Fluttershy, she is shown to have a great amount of patience and compassion for her friends. While Rainbow Dash remains supportive and encourages her to help, Fluttershy cannot overcome her fear of being humiliated for her lack of wing power. At the end, when Fluttershy succeeds in helping funnel the rain water to Cloudsdale, Rainbow Dash expresses her gratitude with an overjoyed hug, and proudly calls Fluttershy a champion flier.

Love Of Reading
Rainbow Dash discovers she loves reading in the episode Read It and Weep. When Twilight first offers her a book to read through her stay at the hospital, she rejects it and testily tosses away the book, saying "I'm a world-class athlete; reading's for eggheads like you, Twilight." After a short boredom montage, she picks up the book and discovers she loves reading, much to her chagrin. She spends much of the episode trying to hide the fact that she loves reading from her friends, and when she's discharged from the hospital she tries to get re-admitted so she could finish reading the book. The doctor recognizes that she's only feigning being ill and accuses her of laziness. Dash then tries to steal the book from the hospital, but gets caught red-handed and drops it while making her escape. She is pursued and eventually caught, and she admits she was after the book and that she loves reading. The episode concludes with Dash finishing the book and excitedly picking up another one, entitled 'Daring Do and the Griffin's Goblet'. She can also be seen reading another Daring Do book in A Friend in Deed.

History
Rainbow Dash mentions in Call of the Cutie that she was the first in her class to get her cutie mark. She tells the Cutie Mark Crusaders in The Cutie Mark Chronicles the story of how she got her cutie mark. Her story is set in summer flight camp, where she defends Fluttershy from a pair of bullies, who refer to Rainbow Dash as "Rainbow Crash". One of the bullies already have their cutie marks, where Dash and Fluttershy do not. Dash challenges the two bullies to a flying Pegasus race, and in the ensuing contest she discovers her passion for speed and for "winning", in her words. Going through the race course, she performs her very first sonic rainboom, not only gaining her own cutie mark, but also inadvertently setting in motion the events that would cause Fluttershy and her future Ponyville friends to gain their own cutie marks.

Skills
Having demonstrated remarkable speed and agility in the air, Rainbow Dash has proven herself to be a capable and accomplished flier. She speaks of and demonstrates her impressive and spectacular aerial acrobatic maneuvers in The Ticket Master, which include: the "rainblow dry", which she uses to clean up Twilight Sparkle in the first episode; the "super speed strut"; the "fantastic filly flash"; and the "buccaneer blaze", which involve strutting while flying, a nose-dive and recovery that create a flash, and the creation of multiple bolts of lightning, respectively. The mushroom cloud from Lesson Zero. On one occasion she uses her flying skills and physical strength to help Applejack demolish a barn in Lesson Zero. She ruthlessly tears through the structure from all directions, and eventually dives into it from a great height, finishing it off in a savage yet vibrantly-colored explosion that sends debris raining down upon Applejack and Twilight. Agility! She demonstrates her flight skills in May the Best Pet Win! to her potential pets: she zips straight up into the sky; flies to a far-away hill leaving a trail of rainbow-colored flames behind her; maneuvers in quick 90-degree turns between the pets while leaving a vertical rainbow-colored wake behind her; and swirls around a cloud to create a pony cloud sculpture. Later in the episode she holds a final race to decide which pet she'll choose, and performs dangerous stunts like flying through giant bramble patches and dodging the bites of gigantic quarray eels.

Rainbow Dash has demonstrated her prowess with manipulating weather numerous times. She clears the skies of Ponyville of clouds "in ten seconds flat" in the first episode, dispersing the clouds by kicking them. She leads water droplets out of a cloud in Boast Busters, and creates a rainbow above her when the droplets splash against her. She teams up with other Pegasus ponies in Winter Wrap Up to create a whirlwind that sucks away clouds and snow from Ponyville, and she creates a tornado to vacuum the parasprites in Swarm of the Century.

In Hurricane Fluttershy, Rainbow lead the Ponyville pegasi in creating a hurricane that would lift enough water to Cloudsdale for the rainy season. During this time, Rainbow's wing power was measured at 16.5; while most of the other pegasi's wing power could barely measure more then 10.

Rainbow Dash's most venerated move is the sonic rainboom, first depicted in the aptly-titled episode Sonic Rainboom. This is the second time in her life that she has performed the trick, the first being depicted in a later episode, The Cutie Mark Chronicles. Even though several ponies are present to witness the sonic rainboom in Rainbow Dash's flashback, the very same ponies consider the maneuver a myth in Sonic Rainboom. Little did anyone know that it was because of her unintentional execution of the maneuver that lead to the earning of each of the mane six's cutie marks. However, Rainbow Dash doesn't appear to have been able to perform the sonic rainboom intentionally and has only been seen to set it off by sheer accident when provoked or forced (e.g., when straining to go faster in The Cutie Mark Chronicles, to save Rarity and the Wonderbolts in Sonic Rainboom).