Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Reformation and Redemption · 7:00pm Apr 13th, 2018

This season’s premiere, School Daze, opens with a brief follow up on the aftermath of the events of The My Little Pony Movie. Squeezed into this barrage of exposition is a magnificent little moment so brief and so subtle that if you blink, you just might miss it.

Starlight asks what had become of the mare who had taken over Canterlot. Twilight explains that Tempest is good now, and she’s off spreading the word about the Storm King’s defeat. In the course of approximately 4 seconds, Starlight Glimmer accepts this without reservation or question.

Think about that. Tempest had swept in, trashed the place, frozen the princesses, conquered and enslaved the entire nation. That’s the last Starlight saw of Tempest. She takes it on faith, however, that such a pony could become a force for good. She does so casually, without proclamation or fanfare, almost like it’s an everyday occurrence.

For her, that faith in humanity (equinity?) is absolutely everything. It’s who she is.

Starlight has done great evil. She knows how terrifying it can be to take that first step, and start turning your life around. She absolutely has to believe in others, because if nopony had ever taken a chance on her, where would she be?

That experience provides an extra layer to the moral fabric of MLP. In Shadow Play, it was Starlight’s faith in her fellow pony that drove her to stand up to Twilight, her beloved instructor, and in turn, inspired Twilight to stand up to Starswirl, a lifetime personal hero and legend.

In School Daze, that same faith in goodness and light once again drove Glimglam to approach Twilight, and advise her. All she has to offer is her own unique perspective; all she has to share is the question that keeps her up at night: “What if she had never seen the light? What if Twilight had given up on her?”

It is by putting a face on those whom are at risk of being abandoned that the show poses a serious moral quandary: What if it is not enough to simply do right by our friends? What if it is not enough to do the right thing merely when we feel like it? Every living soul that we have the power to help, we also have an obligation to help.

It may not be spoken in so many words, but it is the core existential quandary defining Glimglam. She looks at every troubled kid who could benefit from a friendship academy, and every ancient shadow monster who could benefit from a friend, and she thinks, “that could have been me.”

So yeah, when Twilight tells her that the unicorn who’d conquered and enslaved Canterlot is now on a good will speaking tour of Equestria, of course Starlight doesn’t bat an eye.

She can’t.

Reformation is the act of changing one’s ways, and while it may take time and effort, redemption is on a whole other level. Redemption is the determination to pay it forward, and for Starlight, that’s a way of life.

-Sprocket

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