Brightbart

Not necessarily religion but in "Feeling Pinkie Keen" definitely dealt with the topic of belief. Just take the friendship lesson from that episode: "I am happy to report that I now realize there are wonderful things in this world you just can't explain, but that doesn't necessarily make them any less true. It just means you have to choose to believe in them. And sometimes it takes a friend to show you the way." As well as this quote from Twilight once she stopped trying to disprove Pinkie's Pinkie Sense: "Just because I don't understand, doesn't mean it's not true." So while not explicitly dealing with an organized religion in Equestria, it does show that the ponies do have opinions about religious matters such as belief and faith. Of course since it hasn't been shown in the show it is unknown if those though processes extend to organized religion. Of course, given that some ponies possess supernatural powers perhaps not as much as in our world.

Nice to get a song, a good one too; I feel like there haven't been that many this season. Someone can probably remind me otherwise but this seems like the first episode where the conflict wasn't resolved. The mane 6 sort of just resigned to deal with it later so definitely a break from how the episodes usually go. I wonder if we'll a quick little cameo of this in the future, maybe a comment made in the background etc. I think that'd be good attention to detail on the part of the writers. One thing this episode made me think of is how much older the mane 6 are now compared to the seasons 1/2. That book looked quite old and the mane 6 are more mature/act older than they used to which is some nice character development. Overall I'm really enjoying this season, definitely an improvement from season 6 and this episode continued this trend .

I've always viewed her as older than the mane 6, maybe by about 5 years. I'd say she really isn't all that dependent on Twilight or the mane 6 beyond learning how to socialize normally. She is very adept at magic maybe moreso than Twilight is considering Twilight had a teacher while Starlight didn't.

I haven't seen any of the specials but after watching Saturday's episode I'd say that Starlight is the best character the show has now. I was really disappointed with her reformation since I thought she was FiM's best villain but I really like what the writers have done with her since. She might not be a villain anymore but her personality hasn't changed much and has a lot of depth, unlike Sunset who did a complete 180 from clearly villainous to trying to be everyone's friend in 5 minutes. Starlight at least still uses magic to gain an advantage, is instinctual, isn't afraid to make friends with ponies the mane 6 don't like, and makes mistakes. Sunset didn't even need friendship lessons afterwards. Starlight is also one of the only ones that recognizes how ridiculous some of the mane 6 can be, such as with Twilight's and Pinkie's spazzing. Really the only thing giving her mundanity is her guilt which has been keeping her in check. It could be me but in comparison I find Sunset to be much more one dimensional.