A nice touch in this episode is that Zecora has become so accepted that now she's part of the official festival celebrations. It also serves to foreshadow the role Luna will learn to similarly fill: Zecora was once feared by the inhabitants of Ponyville, but now her scariness is a sort of accepted asset. Also, giving up some of your candy to Nightmare Moon is a pretty cunning way to avoid sugar rushes amongst the foals and fillies. Might come in handy for human halloween.

Princess Luna then descends in her unnecessarily gothic chariot and creepy grim reaper cloak. I've heard people call people who care about the Luna change unnecessarily autistic, but... This is fairly over the top, especially compared to what we've seen before. And what we've seen before, to be clear, whilst not a lot, is definitely not this stridently gothic figure, and furthermore we've seen her in daylight before pretty much all of Ponyville. Going with best faith interpretation, Luna's more demure demeanor prior and her differing appearance could perhaps, at a stretch, be due to her powers being drained by 1000 years of being Nightmare Moon, having just been blasted with the Elements and having been expelled to the moon for so long, and this could be a post-recovery Luna, so to speak. Really, the worst element here is the reaction of the residents of Ponyville. This does go on to be addressed in the episode, that people know she's reformed but are acting scared nonetheless, however, this is a little widespread and just feels off. Not a serious rewrite suggestion given budgetary considerations, but setting this as the Nightmare Night of a different town with which the Mane Six are helping out would aid the believability considerably. For Luna to come back to Ponyville SPECIFICALLY and garner this reaction is what's odd. Indeed poor Luna has quite logically made the most sensible decision possible for gaining acceptance and yet she gets this sort of reception.

Then we get Luna's Royal Canterlot Voice, and I can't really think of a best faith interpretation. Luna may well be busy with managing dreams, whatever her bat ponies are and getting back into her night-ruling job generally, but it has by now been at least a year, probably a little more since she returned. Has Celestia made no effort to reintroduce her to society in all that time? As a declarative voice it does it's job just fine, but she hasn't brought announcers? Celestia gets a ground retinue and trumpets and parades, and Luna has just her chariot and has to announce her arrival herself. And faced with total lack of respect, Luna resorts to having to declare a humiliating retreat without a "traditional royal farewell". A traditional royal farewell, I must note, that would seemingly lack any of the pomp and circumstance with which Celestia allows herself to be arrayed. I can accept the difficulties of a pre-industrial bureaucracy, but this is pathetic. I dislike this for how demeaning it is to Luna as a character, I dislike this for the absurdity of the situation and how bad it makes Celestia look, I even somewhat dislike the smearing of Mayor Mare, who may not be the most competent pony ever, but she does not even try to get herself together. In-universe, why did Celestia not present Luna back into society at the Grand Galloping Gala? It may even have come round again since the one we saw last season. That's the way to go about it, first have her re-enter Canterlot society, reach acceptance there, then do a proper introductory tour following on from there. You cannot tell me Celestia is too busy to do that but not too busy to greet guests at said Gala. At that stage, and between this episode and Sweet and Elite, the Unicorn aristocracy centred in Canterlot are more politically significant and powerful than the Princess of the Night, a situation which ought only to exist if Celestia actively cannot get rid of it, the implications of which I also dislike.