Couch Potato Chronicles: My Little Pony Friendship is Magic

by Amy McVeigh

Note: Before we begin, I’d like to sincerely apologize for last month's article. Not because there was anything in it that offended anyone as far as I can tell, but because I sincerely don’t believe it was my best work. I spent way too much time recapping every little thing the character I was criticizing did and it resulted in the article being way longer than it should have been, by the time I was actually able to get to the main point I was trying to make, I was too burnt out to really say that much, and I didn't even end up going back to add images, so Ms. Robinson ended up having to search for images to add to the article herself, and I appreciate that she tried, but unfortunately since she isn't too familiar with the show I was talking about, her choice of images ended up feeling really awkwardly placed. I still agree with the main opinion I expressed in the article, I’m just not fond of how the article itself turned out.

Alright, now let’s talk about the pony show.

How Friendship is Magic Failed Starlight Glimmer (And How I Would Fix It)

Recently, I decided to finally check out what My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic had to offer. I figured it was one of those shows that I had to check out eventually, and so I’ve been binging the entire series over the past few months. Honestly, I completely understand why this show became the cultural phenomenon that it did, but having watched every episode of the series and checking out what other people had to say about it, it made me realize a crucial flaw in the way it handled its characters, specifically Starlight Glimmer, a character introduced in Season 5. Let me preface by saying that Starlight is one of, if not my favourite character in Friendship is Magic, which is why I feel incredibly disappointed in how the show handled her. But before we get to that, we need to cover some background information. Don’t worry, I promise this won’t take as long as last time.

Background Information

Season 5

Starlight Glimmer is introduced in Season 5’s two-part premiere, “The Cutie Map”, where the Mane Six (Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity) are summoned to “Our Town”, a mysterious village where everyone is stripped of all their individuality to create equality and prevent conflict, complete with all of their cutie marks

being removed and replaced with equal signs However, not all is as it seems, as Starlight, the mayor of the village, is revealed to have never actually given up her cutie mark, and has secretly been using it to power the spell that removes other ponies’ cutie marks. The Mane Six eventually expose her as a fraud, and the entire town turns on her, and she ends up retreating after she gets thwarted.

Starlight makes a return in the two-part season finale, “The Cutie Re-Mark”, where she goes back in time to prevent the Sonic Rainboom that caused all of the Mane Six to receive their cutie marks, which would later lead to them all living in Ponyville and becoming friends. Luckily, Twilight is able to follow her and tries to stop her, but fails multiple times, leading to several bad futures where a previous villain succeeded in their goals.

Eventually, Twilight realizes the only way to convince Starlight to stop what she’s doing is to show her the consequences of the Mane Six never meeting, a future where Equestria becomes an unrecognizable desolate wasteland with no sign of any life. This allows Twilight to get through to Starlight and make her realize the error of her ways, and it’s explained that Starlight is the way she is because she lost a friend after he got a cutie mark in magical knowledge and she didn’t. Twilight agrees to give Starlight another chance and decides to take her under her wing as her apprentice.

This allows Twilight to get through to Starlight and make her realize the error of her ways, and it’s explained that Starlight is the way she is because she lost a friend after he got a cutie mark in magical knowledge and she didn’t. Twilight agrees to give Starlight another chance and decides to take her under her wing as her apprentice.

Season 6

Season 6 has several episodes based around different friendship lessons Twilight teaches Starlight. To avoid spending too much time talking about each episode, I’ll try my best to summarize them in list form.

“The Crystalling (B-Plot)” - Twilight tasks Starlight with finding her childhood friend, Sunburst, who Starlight mistakenly believes has become an important wizard, when in reality he’s just a burnt-out gifted kid. Meanwhile, Sunburst misunderstands how Starlight came to be Twilight’s apprentice and keeps up the narrative that he is a powerful wizard. Once they both realize the truth, they’re able to rekindle their friendship.

“No Second Prances” - Twilight tasks Starlight with making a new friend, only to be disappointed when she finds Starlight ends up making friends with Trixie Lulamoon, a pony with her own shameful past. Twilight tries to get Starlight to make another friend, but eventually accepts that if she’s really willing to forgive Trixie and Starlight for their respective crimes, she needs to be able to trust Starlight’s judgement.

“Every Little Thing She Does” - Twilight tasks Starlight with several lessons involving doing things with the other members of the Mane Six, but Starlight tries to use mind control to complete all of these lessons at once, much to Twilight’s frustration. Starlight explains she’s insecure about failing at the activities she’s been asked to do with Twilight’s friends and disappointing Twilight because of it. However, she missed the point of the lessons, which was that sometimes you’re going to have to leave your comfort zone to do things with friends that they enjoy.

Then there’s the season finale, “To Where And Back Again”, where Starlight decides to go back to Our Town for a festival, but quickly feels uncomfortable when the villagers try to put her in charge of several events at the festival, and ends up running away out of anxiety, not wanting to be put in charge of anything ever again

after her past. When she returns to Ponyville, however, she quickly realizes all of the most important ponies, including the Mane Six, have all been replaced by changelings, creatures that steal ponies’ identities and feed off other ponies’ love for them. And so Starlight, Trixie, and

two other reformed villains, those being chaotic draconequus Discord, and friendly changeling Thorax, all team up to save everyone. And unfortunately for Starlight, she ends up having to be the leader of this operation, and learns to accept that just because she has a history abusing a position of power for her own gain doesn’t mean she can never be in charge of anything ever again. In the end, the Reformed Four end up saving the day when Starlight and Thorax convince

the rest of the changelings that they don’t have to feed on love if they can learn to love each other and becomes the new King of the changelings after Chrysalis retreats, wanting no part in this mushy emotional business, and Starlight goes back to help plan the festival in Our Town after all.

Season 7

In the Season 7 premiere, Celestial Advice, Starlight and the team are commended for their heroics from the events of the Season 6 finale, and Twilight realizes Starlight probably doesn’t need to be taught friendship lessons anymore. So

Twilight tries to figure out where to send her, but Starlight reassures hershe has no plans to leave any time soon. And, though Twilight isn’t teaching Starlight official friendship lessons anymore, she still has a few episodes focusing on her, so I’ll just go over them now.

“All Bottled Up” - When Starlight notices her anger directed towards her friend Trixie is manifesting in the form of dark red smog coming from her horn, she tries to contain it in bottles until it causes problems all over Ponyville and she learns not to bottle up her anger.

“Rock Solid Friendship” - Starlight befriends Pinkie Pie’s sister, Maud, and bonds with her over kite-flying. Apparently they’ve also known each other for a long time even before Starlight founded Our Town.

“A Royal Problem” - The Cutie Map summons Starlight to the canterlot castle, where the Princesses Celestia and Luna have a disagreement on who has the harder job, so to solve this argument, Starlight casts a spell to swap their cutie marks four 24-hours, which makes it so that they have to spend the rest of the day in each other’s shoes.

“Mirror Magic” - Sunset Shimmer makes a quick stop in Equestria to replace her magic journal, and Starlight, seeing as things have been boring around Twilight’s Castle, convinces Sunset to let her follow

her back to the human world. Meanwhile a villain named Juniper Montage ends up trapping all of the Main Seven in a magic mirror, leaving Starlight to have to defeat Juniper all on her own. She ends up convincing Juniper to cease her rampage by offering her hand out in

friendship, and Twilight gives Starlight permission to spend a few more days in the human world before returning to Equestria.

“To Change a Changeling” - Starlight and Trixie visit Thorax in the changeling hive, where apparently there’s been conflict regarding Thorax’s brother, Pharynx, who’s been having trouble adapting to the new way of life in the hive. Starlight and Trixie try to help him adjust, but they end up nearly driving him away instead when he overhears them worrying he might be a lost cause. One fight with a monster later and Pharynx and the rest of the changelings figure out a compromise.

“Uncommon Bond” - Starlight freaks out when her friend Sunburst seems to be getting along better with all her other friends than herself, and starts desperately trying to recreate their childhood fun, even going as far as to turn herself and Sunburst into colts. But, in the end, she accepts that Sunburst and her need to find new things to do together.

“Shadow Play Part 1” - Starlight, Sunburst, Spike, and the Mane Six learn what happened to important historical figures in Equestria such as Starswirl the Bearded. Apparently they had sacrificed themselves to defeat an evil creature known as the Pony of Shadows. Despite Starlight’s concerns about the subject, the Mane Six all agree to free the Six Pillars, which ends up also freeing the Pony of Shadows.

“Shadow Play Part 2” - The Mane Six: Spike, The Pillars, Starlight, and Sunburst, return to Twilight’s castle in order to figure out how to defeat the Pony of Shadows. Starlight points out that inside the shadows is a pony named Stygian, and suggests that he could be reasoned with. Starswirl is quick to shut down this idea, however, claiming that

“once a villain, always a villain”. A notion that hits a sore spot for Starlight for obvious reasons, made worse by the fact that Twilight

says nothing about it. In the end, the team is forced to do things Starlight’s way as a last resort, who’s proven right when it’s revealed that Stygian never meant any harm and that the Pillars were just quick to turn on him. In the end, Stygian is saved and he and the Pillars are able to start anew.

Seasons 8-9

After Season 7, Twilight opens a School of Friendship to help teach principles of friendship all throughout Equestria and beyond, and Starlight becomes the guidance counselor at this school and serves as substitute Principal when Twilight is away. And, because I don’t feel the need to go over both seasons separately, I just want to highlight a handful of episodes that focus on Starlight.

“The Parent Map” - Starlight and Sunburst are summoned by the Cutie Map to Sire’s Hollow, the town they grew up in, where they have to mend their relationship with their parents, as they grew distant due to Starlight’s father treating her as if she’s still a little filly, and Sunburst’s mother being too overbearing when it comes to planning for the future. Eventually, Starlight and Sunburst speak up about how they aren’t happy with the way their parents are treating them, even if it’s just their way of showing that they care.

“The Mean 6” - For once in the entire series, Starlight is invited to hang out with the Mane Six, specifically for a camping trip. Only one problem: she hates camping and doesn’t have the heart to tell Applejack, who gave her tons of camping equipment just for the trip. Meanwhile Chrysalis creates fake opposite day versions of the Mane Six to turn them against each other and to access the Tree of Harmony. None of this really matters, but I knew I needed to highlight this episode because it’s one of the few times the writers treat Starlight as being on at least a similar level to the Mane Six.

“A Matter Of Principals” - Starlight is put in charge of the School of Friendship while Twilight is away, only for Discord to show up and sabotage her efforts of keeping everything in order just because he’s been feeling left out recently. So instead of an interesting episode where we see Starlight try to run the school but fail because of her own flaws, the episode just ends up feeling like an “Ash loses the Indigo League because he had to use all his Pokemon against Team Rocket right before a match” situation and it’s really underwhelming.

“Road to Friendship” - Starlight accompanies Trixie on a roadtrip to Saddle Arabia to perform their magic show for the ponies there, but on the way they begin to realize they can’t stand travelling together, made worse when Starlight trades Trixie’s caravan that she has emotional attachment to for one that’s technically of better quality without her permission. Eventually they get Trixie’s caravan back and decide they’re better off turning back then continuing on this route.

“Student Counsel” - Trixie gets frustrated when Starlight’s job as guidance counsellor makes her too busy to spend time with her. Then, when Starlight decides to shoo away her responsibilities to make time to hang out with Trixie, a student ends up going missing.

“A Horse Shoe-In” - Since Twilight is set to be the next ruler of Equestria, it means she’ll no longer be able to run the School of Friendship, so she promotes Starlight to principal. Unsure of whether she can do this on her own, she opens vice-principal applications, which Trixie mistakenly thinks is a position Starlight opened specifically for her because of their friendship, but is eventually told off by Starlight for not taking the job application seriously and inadvertently proving she isn’t cut out for the job. Starlight decides none of the candidates are fit for the job, especially Trixie, and ends up contacting Sunburst to give him the position, however, as a consolation, she decides to give her old position of guidance councillor to Trixie.

Alright. I believe that’s everything I need to cover, and so far this is only seven Google Docs pages long, which should give me plenty of room to voice my own opinion.

Opinion Piece

The Problem

As I’ve said before, Starlight is probably my favourite character in the entire series, but that just makes it all the more frustrating that the writers didn’t seem to be able to decide whether she was a main character or a side character. I’m aware that the intention was never to make her a full-on eighth main character, but honestly? I think it

would’ve been way more impactful had they done so. Something I noticed about Starlight is that they almost never try to establish meaningful dynamics between Starlight and the Mane Six other than Twilight, which results in her feeling at times like a weird mix between Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer rather than her own character, made even worse by the fact that her design and name reflect that as well. I don’t entirely agree with this assessment, but I can

easily see why other people would. They somewhat alleviate this problem by giving her dynamics with other side characters, most notably Trixie, Sunburst, and Maud Pie, which is one of my favorite sets of secondary characters, but at the same time, it also feels like an excuse to not have to develop chemistry between her and the Mane Six.

How I Would Go About Fixing It

Like I said before, I’d make Starlight the official seventh member of the Mane Six (or, well, Mane Seven I suppose). It would also solve the little pony-type imbalance that was created when Twilight became an

alicorn and now Rarity was the only unicorn compared to the two pegasi, two earth ponies, and Twilight essentially being a combination between all three. I think the easiest way to have her bounce off of the Mane Six would be to have her be a little less of a goody-two-shoes than the others at first, not being afraid to make rash decisions that end up causing problems, which

is also in-line with her characterization in the official series, at least for Season 6. She does become a lot more level-headed in Season 7, so from that point onwards I think it would be fitting for her to become the clumsy/awkward one of the group, that way you can keep her development without changing her character too much. Maybe even give her a seventh element of Harmony, being Justice. As for her friendships with Sunburst, Trixie, and Maud Pie? I think we can keep them, after all, many of the other main characters have secondary groups they fall into, for

example Applejack has the Apple Family, Rainbow Dash has the Wonderbolts, and so on, and so I don’t see why Starlight should be any exception. Really, besides that and incorporating her into more episodes, which I think goes without saying, that pretty much covers everything I would do with Starlight. I really do think it’s that simple.

Conclusion

It just seems really odd to me that they’d see an opportunity like this to add a new main character to the cast without it feeling too unnatural, and decide to go the boring route of just making her a side character that feels underutilized, especially given it was such an easy way to renew interest in the series since a lot of the fandom stopped watching after Season 4. At the end of the day, the writers did what they did, and Friendship is Magic has been over for over six years now, but I still think it would’ve been nice if they had taken these kinds of things a step further. It just sucks seeing my favorite character not be given as much love from the writers as I would’ve liked.

And with that, this is Amy McVeigh signing off for this issue of “Couch Potato Chronicles”.

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