Luciferase

Give her more proper focus and maybe even keep her as Twilight's student. It was a neat idea to have Starlight be Twilight's personal protégé and be a new addition to the central cast, but the execution as a whole just fell flat due to how little we got of her, which didn't make her development and supposed friendship with the Mane 6 feel all that natural or believable. She really needed to interact one-on-one with others beyond Twilight and generally have a more consistent presence both as an active protagonist continuously learning and growing alongside everyone else, and even just in the background interacting with others to show that she is gradually integrating herself into the world. Along with this, she really shouldn't have graduated in Celestial Advice, cause the 8 episodes she appeared in out of the 26-episode season 6 was not nearly enough time to believe she learned everything she needed to know. Instead of giving the episode's focus to Twilight and having her suddenly decide to graduate Starlight, have Celestia instead recommended she has a have a heart-to-heart with Starlight about how they're both feeling regarding Starlight being her student, her progress so far, and what they should do from here, because that was definitely a discussion Starlight needed to have been included in. Heck, maybe even flip the script and have Starlight herself maturely announce that while she is proud of how far she's come, she still has a lot to learn and wishes to continue her studies with Twilight. Good way to demonstrate her current growth by showing her making her own rational decisions while acknowledging that she does indeed still have plenty of room for improvement, as opposed to her impulsive, prideful attitude we've seen prior (Plus, can toss in a nice message for the kiddies about how everyone moves at their own pace). Then as show progresses, have Starlight start gradually becoming more independent from Twilight's guidance by having her more consistently demonstrating what she's learned and start teaching others lessons as well, which directly leads into her becoming the guidance councilor the next chapter of her character progression, as opposed to just dropping the positions in her lap without much fanfare or reflection on her character. That way her proper graduation would be when she is declared the next headmare, as that's when she's officially ready to carry on the torch of nurturing those in need, just like how Twilight's own graduation was when she was declared a princess and no longer needed Celestia's guidance.

I'm also in agreement that EQG should've had a proper series. There's only so much the shorts could accomplish with a 2-minute runtime, and the specials were too few and far between for any long-term development. Along with a proper episodic series, giving the Humane 7 other than Sunset and kinda Sci-Twi some proper character development, since the rest of the group was just sorta there. Outside of the specials, we never got to learn much about them other than very basic traits lifted from their pony counterparts (Rarity likes fashion, Rainbow likes sports, Pinkie likes parties, etc), which ultimately made them just come off as cardboard cutouts of the Mane 6 rather than their own distinct characters. For instance, since this is a whole different world, we could've explored how their likes and goals translated to the laws and rules of the human world. How is Rarity gonna go about running her self-made fashion business while facing the challenge that is the modern fashion industry? Since Pegasi Flight Teams dont exist here like they do back in Equestria, what was this world's equivalent and how is Rainbow planning to get accepted by them? Heck, since Pony Twilight is a princess and later became the ruler of a whole nation, how would all that translate to Sci-Twi's own goals and destiny in the human world? Stuff like that to give them all some character motivations of their own beyond just "Pinkie Pie™ likes parties" or "Fluttershy™ is good with animals." Also speaking of Fluttershy, give the poor thing some actual focus. It feels like they lowkey forgot about her...

No. As much as I still miss it, FiM ended in a good spot. Heck, in this age of shows getting cancelled at the drop of a hat, I'm happy FiM even got a proper ending to begin with. For me, the show definitely started running out of steam after season 6 and while the seasons after weren't terrible, it was getting clear FiM had just about ran its course. By season 9, there sadly just wasn't much left to do with the Mane 6. At the most, I could see a follow-up series with the Young Six set after The Last Problem since they had some good potential as the Mane 6's successors and it could be an interesting opportunity to tie up loose ends regarding the larger lore and world, but as far as our main ponies themselves go, their story is done.

I've been revisiting a lot of G4 lately and god you are completely right, they really legit forgot about her when it came to EQG. Other than a few shorts here and there, the most proper focus she had was her introduction way back in the first movie before then being promptly dumped to the sidelines to occasionally deliver snarky one-liners, which is sadly symptomatic of the larger issue of everyone other Sunset being extremely static when they dont have the one single spotlight on them. Combined with the snappier and flashier style EQG shifted too, guess there just wasn't any room left for someone more quiet low energy her Massive shame too. As a former teen, adolescence is not easy at all, so they really missed the opportunity to utilize her as a means discuss some big stuff kids may be going through, like anxiety, finding inner confidence while going through a pretty weird period of life, and just generally surviving high school cause god those four years can really suck.

I could see Flurry Heart being a sweet person when she grows up, though maybe with a bit of a mischevious streak. From what we saw of her in A Flurry of Emotions, she's means very well and is always wanting to help, she just tends to overdo things due to a mix of her still being so young along with what seems to be a good dose of Sparkle family anxiety (Safe to say Twilight'ing just runs in the family, poor thing was already practically having a panic attack when she lost her Whammy and she's still barely in diapers ). I can imagine being the first ever natural-born Alicorn and heir to the Crystal Empire would put a lot of pressure on her to make a strong, positive impression on her soon-to-be subjects, such as making sure everyone is always happy and taken care of and thus, follow up on what we saw of her in A Flurry of Emotions by her feeling she needs to really dial up the love and care to 11. After all, we have seen what Twilight and Shining get like when theyre under a lot of stress, so wouldn't be too far off for Flurry to have her own spell of Twilighting too. Then, in light of this she'd have to learn about boundaries along with also how she'll need to be careful with using her abilities since that could easily hurt somepony, even if she doesn't have any ill intent. Nice lil lesson about how it is wonderful to want to care and be there for people, but it can start to hurt if you get too pushy about it as well as can lead to you overextending yourself if you dont remember your own boundaries too.

I can imagine a few in-universe possibilities! Since we do know the majority of ponies had very little knowledge of dragons for such a long time, it'd make sense that there wasn't any useful point of references (atleast not without likely going through a lot of hoops, such requesting some sorta research docs from the school of magic or whatnot) so the artist took some creative liberties with the egg. They prob ended up going with a white eggshell to make it more apparent its meant to be an egg and then tossed some green spots on it to make it look more dragon-y, or maybe even just for the sake of color-balancing so it would be easier for people to see Spike through all that purple. Alternatively, Twilight was pretty young when she had first seen it. It could very likely have been purple with green spots this whole time, but since it had been so long ago, the exact details blurred together over time and ended up coming out as mainly purple in her head. Or maybe Spike just assumed it was purple and green like him since again, ponies didn't have much frame of reference for most stuff dragon at the time and the description stuck since neither were 100% sure since it had been a good while since he hatched from it

Now that it's been a good few years since G4 concluded, what mysteries, plot threads, or other loose threads would you wish were answered and resolved? --- I'm personally still curious where the School of Magic got Spike's egg from and what that could imply on a larger scale. Since it has been more or less confirmed dragons are born and raised in the Dragonlands with some kind of family unit and then depart at adulthood, how did his egg get to the school in the first place? Were there any other eggs at the school just like Spike and thus, other students who may have baby dragons of their own? or was he just a one-off occasion that somebody just happened upon and had sent to the school for studying purposes? It very likely is just a case of earlier strangeness that doesn't fit very well into the later established lore, since a lot has changed since the dragons' earlier depictions as just simple roaming beasts and Spike being considered more a fancy magical pet than an adoptive family member, though it still is a shame that lil mystery was never fully resolved. Not that it would change his relationship with Twilight and his adoptive family in the slightest since they very much love and accept him either way, but you'd think at some point they would've at least asked the school "Hey where did you guys get that egg anyway?" that way our poor lil guy could at least finally have some closure regarding his birth family, since it was an on-and-off point of struggle for him throughout the series

I think it's alright tbh! It started pretty strong with the movie with a solid premise for the world, though I think it did kinda fizzle out a little when the series came around. Both series really did make an effort and I can at the very least appreciate that, though you can also tell they had to make some cutbacks which ended up hurting the overall staying power of G5, which is a shame cause boy if G5 had the potential to be something real great if it was just given a better chance from the higher-ups. IMO I think it would've been better to just have one dedicated series, that way the already limited resources it was given wouldn't be spread even thinner. Also, I do kinda think the connections to G4 were a bit of a mistake in the long run. Still do wish they just let G5 stand on its own two hooves cause adding G4 to it just made things messier and made expectations way too high Tl;dr I think G5 is pretty solid! Has the potential to be real great, just needs to let go of G4 and to have a better environment to properly flourish, cause it otherwise has such a strong world and characters as is!

Have to also agree that it's more writing problem than the sisters themselves, as that always sadly tends to be the case whenever you have some kind of media with super all-powerful characters. If the writers were gonna keep the princesses on the sidelines, then I think it would've at least helped to explain why. Perhaps the whole original Nightmare Moon incident resulted in their power being nerfed, or even just them having been at the whole princess and protector business for so long that their strength was finally wearing out and that they simply weren't as young and full of energy as they used to be (I mean, they did end up ultimately going to the old-folks retirement village so ). After all, those two have been at it for literal millennia and probably weren't even originally intending to rule for as long as they did, so I can only imagine the burn-out they've accumulated over the years. Would be a shame, but at least then it wouldn't have felt as big of a cop-out to see these supposedly all-powerful ancient rulers kept having the Mane 6 handle everything each time they tripped and stubbed their hooves

I think it's safe to say she'd stay in the human world! After all, even though she was able to pretty easily make amends with Princess Celestia, she still didn't have the best reputation in the pony world which might still cause her a lot of grief. She's pretty happy in the human world with her new friends, so I don't see why she would pack up and leave! Personally, I'm curious about her old personal life (outside of magic school) before she hopped through the mirror, particularly if she still has any family. Even if she was gonna stay in the human world for good, I imagine after everything she's been through, she'd probably wanna at least tie up any loose ends before saying goodbye for good, even just for the sake of emotional closure on Sunset's end so she can feel like she can finally have a proper fresh start or whatnot