@Background Pony #4D66  
I know, right? It’s like I’m watching Legend of Korra. XD

They really put the “out” in “out of context.

@DarkStars
 
Yet seeing the future clearly had an effect on her. After seeing it she became intensely defensive and more unhinged. Until then she was more snarky and bitter. After seeing the bad future she dropped all of that and became a raving psycho, almost like she was trying to keep up her terrible worldview and convince herself that she was doing the right thing.
 
She had absolutely zero perspective. Once she had it, it was like… wait a minute… I’ve been going insane.
 
And regarding Twi’s power level, I consider it akin to a genius scientist who hs massive amounts of training in medicine and robotics. Such a person wouldn’t instantly be able to make amazing weapons if they’d never studied the making of them. While I don’t doubt Twi COULD learn amazing combat magic, I just don’t think she’s that interested in it.

@gingerninja666  
Admittedly, all excellent points, and I commend you for bringing them up. Being perfectly honest, I had never considered a few things here and there, and as such, didn’t see the points you could bring up as a result. One of the primary reasons I had been picking apart this finale is mainly because of how many corners they cut doing a half-assed job since the start. Had they maybe thought about putting in a little more effort to making Starlight’s backstory more fleshed out and genuinely developed, I would’ve liked her so much more, and would be more willing to see what happens in season six, assuming that she’s going to be a main part of it.
 
 
@Vree  
First, Twilight is canonically known to have spent just about her entire life up until episode one studying nothing but magic, as she was literally up to the ceiling in books for almost her entire life. As such, knowing powerful magic and how to handle it is first nature for someone like that. It’d be first nature to be a strong magus if you spent your life primarily surrounded by nearly endless amounts of books.
 
Second, the headcanon formed of Starlight the way she is, based on my own way of seeing her, is that she genuinely was a twisted, sociopathic individual hell-bent  
On overthrowing Equestrian Society. She locked up Twilight and friends after forcibly stealing their cutie marks and then tried to force her twisted ideals onto them against her will, even going incredibly far in lashing out furiously when her ‘utopia’ had been ruined thanks to the Mane Six’ efforts. This is further proven by how she went to incredible lengths to force her through the timeline and try to completely destroy Twilight and her friends’ relationships before they could ever become friends, not even caring about what it would spell for the future if she did so. Can you honestly blame people for considering her a psychopath based on all of that?

@DarkStars  
1- I don’t see how this is relevant if the series doesn’t do it and it didn’t.  
2 - Twilight was wildly overpowered as a unicorn from day 1 and I didn’t hear people complaining.  
3-4 - this one is actually one split into two. MLP has serious pacing and character development issues, but this isn’t unique to just this episode, so I don’t think it’s fair to use it to argue that this was worse than the rest of the show.  
5 - people seem to work off of their headcanon version of Starlight imagining her as some sort of murderous tyrant even though she never did any of that stuff on-screen. What you imagined she’d be is clearly not the writers’ image of her.

@DarkStars
 
I never really thought Star was all that demented. She was unhinged, certainly. But more in the “child with a loaded gun kind of way” Scary, yes. But almost pitiable after a fashion. Everything she did, she did out of a twisted desire to make the world a better place and to protect herself from being hurt. She didn’t know that there was a better way. That’s what Twilight will teach her. The fact that Twi didn’t know where they were in the flashback, and the location of her Markless Village indicates that she lives far away from a lot of pony civilizations. She’s never really been shown to have been given any guidance. There’s no reason to believe that she won’t accept it. Especially since she was receptive to it. She was remorseful.
 
The finale is definitely rushed. But I also think you’re assuming things that make the situation look worse than the episode itself did. For instance, she was a young kid, so visiting him wouldn’t be feesible, and the friendship express wasn’t built until years later. We don’t know how easy travel was for this little village she lived in.

@gingerninja666  
First of all, I fully acknowledge the fact that Twilight isn’t meant to fight. However, her magical level alone is something that enemies frankl can’t match without some form of enhancements or otherwise. That can’t be helped, no matter what the argument is. Twilight, even without having enhanced her powers through her acension, would still be above Starlight in just about every way. The only way to explain how is by looking at Batman vs Joker; Batman is infinitely stronger and smarter than The Joker, but Joker is more than clever enough to be able to trick Batman every now and again, and by using misdirection and trickery herself, that’s how Starlight should’ve combatted Twilight.
 
Second is the matter of how clearly rushed the ending was. Realistically, the others wouldn’t ever consider dropping everything they felt about Starligt after a few kind words and an apology. They’d be on edge and could very easily lash out at her in anger for what she had done, which she would’ve deserved considering her clearly demented personality. You don’t expect people to give a twisted sociopath a hug out of nowhere, and as such, they should’ve at least tried mentioning turning her in, even if it meant Twiligt would protest to it. It’s addressing the obvious fact that Starlight is completely out of her mind, and could just as easily snap if someone so much as told her ‘no’, the likes of which is clearly proven by how her first friend effectively got into a boarding school, and she didn’t have the common sense to visit him. Based on that, the only logical explanation is that unless other things happened throughout her life to further make her despite friendship, she would have to be even more psychopathic and unstable than Discord. Such a flawed character can only be hated unless they went back and changed her to have something more concrete serve as the basis for her fascist ideals.

@DarkStars
 
I’m so tired of everyone insisting that Twilight should be able to instantly beat other ponies. It’s insulting to other ponies, for one. You’re basically saying that none of them are allowed to come close to Twi’s level of skill or power. I just am not a fan of it. It’s like saying no one is allowed to be near as good a flyer as RD.
 
Twi is not a fighter. She’s NEVER been a fighter. I don’t think Tia would’ve focused Twi’s education on combat spells. Or combat strategy. Starlight had a level of readyness and viciousness that Twi didn’t have in this case. The closest she’s come is against Tirek, and even there she mainly focused on just blasting the problem.
 
Twi IS stronger. It’s just in this case her opponent had an unfair advantage over her in both prep time AND demeanour.
 
And you’re really cynical for a show that’s mantra is about how friendship can make the world better. Tirek was sent to Tartarus because he was flat out unwilling to atone for his crimes. Starlight IS. That’s MORE of a reason to befriend her than Discord had. She knew she’d screwed up, and so they set to trying to fix that. So that she’ll never do it again.
 
Those ponies she screwed with? THEY ACCEPTED HER! Because she was remorseful. Because they saw that she’d seen the error of her ways. The kind of ironic hell you’re suggesting doesn’t actually benefit society at large. It’s just cruelty. If they can teach Starlight how to be a good pony, and how to help the world, then that’s a net positive over the bad things she’s done.
 
And she’ll have that mental image of the world destroyed at her hooftips forever burned into her skull as a reminder.

@gingerninja666  
While it is true that Starlight didn’t exactly fight Twilight in a traditional sense, it’s still unreasonable to say Twilight couldn’t beat an ordinary unicorn. Twilight had spent the majority of her life studying magic under the tutelage of Celestia, even being the incarnation of the element of magic itself. For Starlight to be able to do anything without Twilight stopping her within split-seconds is total asinine. I get that they wanted her to use a more diplomatic approach to stopping a villain, they shouldn’t have done here, against someone criminally insane, and as such, would easily ignore whatever she said.
 
Also, when I said ‘let her go’, I meant that they didn’t bother pressing charges or flat out imprisoning her for the crimes she had committed, the likes of which any normal person with common sense wouldn’t object to. She was a horribly fascist monster committing several unforgivable crimes, including crimes against nature through cutie mark theft, assault, conspiring to destroy Equestrian society, imprisonment and attempt to force ideals onto others against their will. The fact that she was immediately forgiven without so much as a first thought, let alone a second one automatically destroys any and all credibility to the nation’s punishment system. In a perfect world, Starlight Glimmer would have her own cutie mark ripped off in an ironic twist of fate and then locked away in Tartarus where her kind belongs. Considering her crimes were actually worse than Tirek, an already committed criminal in Tartarus, she’d be sent there without question.

@DarkStars  
They don’t have 60 minutes, they have 44 minutes to tell a story. Less if you subtract time spent on the theme song (about 30 seconds each episode), credits (25 seconds each episode), and recap (however long they need it to be, usually about 30 seconds). 16 minutes are taken up by commercials.

@DarkStars
 
I read the whole thing as Starlight being an emotionally unstable brat who never grew up because of the amazing power she wielded. She never HAD to accept that things are “the way they are” because her magic literally allows her to get rid of anything she doesn’t like. Her cutie mark probably only added to her feelings of isolation because she could no longer see eye to eye with anyone.
 
So she has an immature outlook on the world, filtered through a genius mind and ability, which only reinforced her mindset and made her more sure of it.
 
What she saw in the future was completely a result of her magic. It showed her the results of her actions. For the first time her magic demonstrated that she was dead wrong. She tried to deflect and claim it was all a trick, but it clearly had a massive effect on her, given her demeanor shift after seeing the blasted future.
 
Starlight never actually beat Twilight one on one. She was just as tired as Twilight after their battle, and for most of it she just dodged around while twilight used magical shields to block. She had all the preparation Twi didn’t have, and Twi still kept up. Fact is, Starlight didn’t NEED to beat Twi. She just had to waste time until their fight broke up the race. THAT was why Twi couldn’t stop her. It wasn’t that she couldn’t beat Starlight. She just couldn’t beat her fast enough and without causing a scene. I thought it was a pretty ingenious way of writing around the power level thing.
 
MAny of the mane 6 have demonstrated insane streaks. Twilight mind controlled three innocent fillies against their will which led to a town wide epidemic just because she didn’t have a letter to write to ‘Tia that week. Pinkie started listening to imaginary friends telling her to hate her friends just because they kept a secret from her. The difference is that they had friends to reel them back in. Starlight never had that. Now, they’re trying to give it to her. AJ even pointed out that they couldn’t let her go due to the threat she posed. So they DIDN’T let her go. She’s, like, squired to the mane 6 now.
 
She was willing to accept ANY punishment they gave her. She knew that what she’d done was awful and she deserved a punishment. That’s what made her all the more grateful and accepting of the mane 6 when they were willing to take her under their wing instead.

@Badman Giant  
I did actually like, thank you.

@DarkStars  
You might like this then  

@stargrazer  
First off, in saying that she had no idea what the major effects of trying to rewrite history were, that makes her even worse because now, she’s just plain recklessly seeking revenge and destroying not only herself, but also the rest of society in the process.
 
Second, Starlight’s power level is actually greater than Twilight’s, even as an Alicorn. If the two were both unicorns, Twilight would stand even less of a chance right then and there.
 
Third, Starlight is seriously messed up in the head. No other way to put that, she’s criminally insane if she thinks that such an asinine thing happening in her life can seriously be used to explain her becoming a heartless, fascist dictator in the future. There couldn’t be any other explanation better than her simply being off her nut. That alone means that she can’t be expected to roam free when she could very easily snap and try to repeat her offenses again. Putting her into very extreme therapy in an asylum would kill two birds with one stone in that case; she’d be imprisoned for her crimes, and would also be able to lose her madness with others genuinely helping her.

@DarkStars  
You can’t really compare it to anything irl, because if you take all the mlp out of it, it’d sound like “she just wanted to incite them to not be friends and accidentally made the apocalypse happen seven times over”. How would you punish that if it happened irl?
 
One more thing. She’s at least on Twilight’s level in terms of raw power level. Why would they not try to befriend her? Much safer for everyone than locking her up and making her feel even more cast out.

@DarkStars  
The point here is that she had no idea what her actions lead to. She only wanted to take revenge on Twilight, and from the looks of it, didn’t know anything about her accomplishments, save for Twi and co. ruining what she thought of as her personal utopia. If she lived there for at least two years before the main 6 removed her from power, the only thing she’d have noticed from the season openers and finales would be a slightly longer night when it was supposed to be midsummer (I doubt she reads the news regularly in a remote cultist village) and even that would’ve happened over a year ago.  
All she wanted to do with that time traveling spell was to stop them being friends.

@stargrazer  
Try as much as you want, but that doesn’t justify her actions. If a man committed murder after growing to hate someone when he was a child, it doesn’t excuse him from being punished for inexcusable crimes. The same principle can be applied here as well, since tearing a cutie mark off is something I can imagine being worse than death in Equestria.
 
She goes way beyond misguided and has snowballed completely out of control into a delusional monster hell-bent on bringing out the end to everything that makes Equestria what it is, you can’t say that she could be forgiven so easily for crimes so monumentally heinous.

@DarkStars  
You call her backstory outrageously horrible, and yet that backstory is exactly why the only valid point you have is the 2nd one.  
The point of her backstory being that way is to show that she was in fact NOT evil, or a villain whatsoever. She suffered a form of emotional trauma as a what, 4-y-o? And that affected her life in such a way that she grew up to be extremely misguided. But she was never evil, and only committed those crimes out of a spite that grew in her unresolved for way too long.

@DarkStars  
I agree with points 2, 3, 4, and with 5 at least partially anyway. Though I do disagree that there’s no hope for her ever being a good character, I think it’s pretty much inevitable that she’s going to get the ‘Sunset Shimmer treatment’ in S6. Will it end up working out or will she remain worst pony? That remains to be seen.

@stargrazer  
This was worse because of the following reasons;
 
1-the entire tome travel trope is known to practically kill an entire series if it isn’t directly focused on since the start. It essentially makes it so nothing really happens, and all the characters involved basically don’t accomplish anything to begin with.
 
2-Starlight Glimmer is wildly overpowered as a unicorn. Her magical level alone is too much for an Alicorn such as Twilight to handle in a one on one confrontation, which is insanely bad writing since alicorns should by default be stronger than any unicorn could ever be. Glimmer’s magic is also powerful enough to modify a time travel spell, which is something Twilight herself has never done. It also doesn’t help that this modified spell makes it impossible to avoid Starlight Glimmer being sucked back in time with whoever tries to stop her.
 
3-Starlight Glimmer’s character has easily the all time stupidest reason to be a villain. Her ‘reasoning’ effectively boils down to a friend going to boarding school and she simply lacks common sense to the point where she never thinks of simply visiting him. This in turn completely destroys all credibility for her to be a good villain and instead makes her out to be infinitely more unstable as a character than anyone in the series could ever live up to, especially the Mane-iac.
 
4-The ending itself was outrageously rushed, and they didn’t do so much as any effort to make it something good. Even if they’re limited to effectively sixty minutes to make a finale, they had several months in advance to properly plan out a good way to resolve the Starlight Glimmer crisis in a way that was good for everyone. Instead, they immediately rush the ending to where Starlight Glimmer listens to Twilight’s advice, even though they still could’ve done so much more to improve it.
 
5-Starlight Glimmer, in spite of how many entirely unforgivable crimes she had committed, is let off the hook for all of them without so much as a first thought, let alone a second one. She had brainwashed an entire civilization into something clearly inhumane (or whatever the technical term is when applied to ponies), committed crimes against nature in that she stole hundreds of cutie marks, especially those from important ponies, and then even attempted to bring all of Equestria itself into total anarchy and mayhem by traveling back in time. In spite of all that, she was gladly forgiven of everything she had ever done by characters that lack common sense. They didn’t even make her go through any kind of trial either, but at least then, we would’ve gotten a good ending because she’d be imprisoned for the rest of her life.
 
If her backstory weren’t so outrageously terrible, then I may have just been a tiny bit willing to accept her as part of the main cast, assuming speculation about season six is true. Instead, we were given a horribly poorly written character with absolutely no hope for improvement and is guaranteed to go right back to her old ways faster than Discord during the season four finale.

@DarkStars  
Well your opinion is bad and you should feel bad. How was this worse than the s3 finale?

I hope we get to see a lot of Starlight Glimmer in Season 6. I also hope I won’t have to wait 12+ months to see new episodes :3

@Background Pony #C7F0  
Well, unlike you, I’m not ashamed to where I have to hide behind an anon tag when I speak my mind.

@Background Pony #C7F0  
Frankly I do disagree with his opinion, but that’s one heck of a burn.  
!loveatfirstpage.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2600506-2041811479-tumbl.gif!
 
 
@PonyPon  
Yes we are. However I uploaded it with the meaning for the ‘out of context’/hilariously timed feeling of this screencap. Discussing the episode is meant for the forums.

@Background Pony #A93C  
Are we looking at the same picture?