@PonyPon  
I hadn’t heard about Sci-Twi remaining Midnight Sparkle at the end of the movie. What’s the source? Of course we don’t know if Midnight Sparkle is necessarily evil, it could just be her pony-form like the human six get pony ears at the end of the first movie.
 
Based on the lyrics to Right There in Front of Me from the OST, and promotional artwork like >>957752 (whether it’s in the movie or not), I assumed the movie would end with the students from both schools becoming friends in the end. If not, what’s the arc? If the movie ends with Cinch still in charge of Crystal Prep, and the students and Sci-Twi still evil, everything’s back where it started, and the characters have had no arc (unless it’s Sunset Shimmer, but she’s already good).
 
If she does become good in the end, as I’ve assumed, she can hardly go back to Crystal Prep with all the other students still being evil, so my money’s still on the writers pinning everything on Cinch, including the behavior of the students. What would the alternative be?
 
As for Cinch’s motives, in Unleash the Magic she sings “my legacy will endure,” so I don’t think she has any motive beyond retiring with a spotless record.

High school sports are serious business. You put me on a plane to Texas, I guarantee you I could find a hundred football coaches who would gladly risk the destruction of all space and time (forward and backward) if it meant winning the state championship.

Yeesh, with a chin like that, she should be a human shovel!

eddie izzard?

@PoolofCarp  
Good theory however it was confirmed that Sci-Twi will stay as Midnight Sparkle at the end of the movie.

@Somber Star  
Her sanity, her emotions, her control, her deals with the mafia

I like how they went to lengths to make her ugly, probably because people are too inclined to sympathize with the pretty villains (Chrysalis, Starlight). I’m guessing she’s going to be tyrannical rather than manipulative, and Crystal Prep’s motivation for their endless victories is absolute terror of her. In any case, what does she really stand to lose if CP doesn’t win this one competition, other than a spotless record? Schools are supposed to be rated on their students’ academic performance.

@PoolofCarp  
I was with you up until putting the prep’s bad attitudes all on her head.
 
That’s cruel to the characters and asinine to the writing.

@PoolofCarp  
What about Midnight Sparkle?

Oh, don’t show us these characters from the side movie. Please don’t.

My guess is Sci-Twi invents a device that can harvest magical powers following her studies of the events at CHS. Cinch convinces Sci-Twi to use the device to give them a leg-up in the Friendship Games. The magic is distributed through those Pipboy-looking things all the Crystal Prep students are wearing. At the end Sci-Twi betrays Cinch, and all the students become friends (probably the Crystal Prep students were only mean-spirited because of Cinch’s bad influence or maybe some side-effect of the artificially harvested magic). Sci-Twi actually ends up saving the day, and Cinch is the villain. She’s basically Emperor Palpatine, pulling the strings behind the scenes.

It would be nice if she was a red herring, or being manipulated by someone else… but considering how the last red herring went… yeah.

@PonyPon  
That would be a first.

@Red-Supernova  
Considering she appears in the show’s introduction of the cast (as Sunset and the Dazzlings did respectively) I’d say so.

@Red-Supernova  
Probably the only one we’ll be expected to hate 100% by the end.

@StinkomanFan  
I’m still curious into seeing what happens to her.

@Red-Supernova  
nope, is twilight or better said midnight

Song incoming!

Sounds like someone made an ill-advised pact of some kind.

@Red-Supernova  
I’d think that would be obvious given her stereotypical appearance.

So is she gonna be this movie’s prime antagonist?

Whose the Crystal Prep coach? Coach Ditka?  

ech

@SentryBronyPlatinum  
that would require her surviving for a thousand years

What if she were to get banished to the Everfeee Forest for 1000 years?