Why Sunset Shimmer Should Not Return to Equestria

So, as you have probably noticed by now one of the deleted scenes from the Friendship Games DVD has come to light, revealing that in the original movie the song 'What More is Out There' was going to be a duet between Twilight and Sunset, counterpointing Twilight's feelings of isolation at Crystal Prep with Sunset's feelings of displacement in the human world in general.

I can't find the video on youtube but here is the Equestria Daily article that contains the video.

I can't really comment on the artistic quality of the unreleased song because my judgement is a bit clouded here. Not only is Sunset best pony, but I adore Sunset's singing voice (Sunset and Celestia need more songs) and am always glad to hear more of it, so I can't really give an unbiased opinion (can anyone who knows more about how sound works than me explain why, when Sunset and Twilight duet, you can always hear Twilight much more clearly? Is it because Twilight's voice has a higher pitch or is it just being mixed so that Twi's sound is more prominent?).

What I really want to talk about is not the song itself, but on some of the discussions that have gone on in the comments as a result of this reveal. Some people think that the theme of Sunset's disconnect will be the focus of a future film, and some people even think that Sunset will leave the Humane Six, now with the addition of Twilight, and return to Equestria (whether this involves joining the cast of MLP or not).

It might seem strange to hear this coming from me, considering how many fics I've written involving Sunset returning to Equestria, but I'm not really sure that I want that to happen.

Why Sunset Should Stay In Canterlot High

One of the things that stood out to me after watching Friendship Games was how bizarrely coherent the completed trilogy is for something that was written by two different writers and involved various direction changes over the course of the writing. What also stood out to me was how, viewed as a whole, the trilogy is quite clearly Sunset's story, and charts the course of her journey from villain to hero.

Now, there are objections to this analysis, most obviously that Sunset-as-villain doesn't get enoug focus in the first movie to justify a reading of the film as being about her, but I also think that the only way to look at the three films as a whole is to see them as being about Sunset's journey. Why else, after all, does the end of Friendship Games mirror the climax of the first Equestria Girls but flip the roles, with Sunset as the hero and human Twilight as the villain, and have Sunset explicitly recall those parllels in her dialogue?

Sunset spends the first movie as a villain, and in that role she is defeated. In the second movie Sunset eventually claims the heroic role, but the the third film makes it clear that she is not wholly aware that she has done this, as she continuously seeks Twilight's guidance and council, and seems lost without it. It is only at the end of Friendship Games that Sunset realised what the end of Rainbow Rocks made clear: that she is Twilight's counterpart in this world, Earth's champion and embodiment of magic, and that she doesn't need to rely on Twilight popping over to save the day every time a crisis happens.

And it is for that reason that Sunset should not return to Equestria. Friendship Games puts the cap on Sunset's story, as the person who once stole Equestria's element of magic ends up becoming Earth's equivalent of same. To have her abdicate that role in a future story would, to my mind, be a betrayal of the story of this trilogy and Sunset's journey over these films.

I'd also like to say a word on Human!Twilight and the idea that her presence in the group makes Sunset Shimmer redundant, as has been suggested in the EqD comments and on TV Tropes. I don't agree. I think that Josh Haber did quite well in presenting a Twilight who was different from Princess Twilight, and I also think that even at the end of the film human!Twilight is a far less impressive figure than her pony counterpart (this isn't meant as a criticism, but as a statement of fact). Not only does she not have the development that Twilight went through in the show (and Sunset has gone through over the three movies) to turn her into a leader and a champion of friendship, but she also lacks the degree of what one might call aristocratic self-assurance that pony Twilight possessed even at the start of the show which enabled her to take charge of group endeavours. By contrast, human Twilight is a much more timid, less assured figure, and I find the idea that she could usurp the central heroic role from Sunset to be faintly ridiculous, because human Twilight's character simply isn't there yet.

Why Sunset Shouldn't Return to Equestria

Sunset, as I have said, grows over the course of the trilogy in which she appears, going from a false element of magic to a true one, albeit in a different world.

And that's the point. She is the element of magic in the human world. In Equestria, that's Twilight, and just as human Twilight cannot replace Sunset in the human world, so Sunset cannot replace Twilight in Equestria because she doesn't have the relationships that Twilight has with the other element bearers.

So, if Sunset were to return to Equestria, what would she do there? In-universe, she can't be the hero because that's Princess Twilight, and although she is intelligent, brave and magically powerful, she isn't as smart or as magically powerful as Twilight is and, in any event, her magical abilities don't count for much compared with the powers that the Mane Six can wield collectively.

The same considerations apply if we consider what Sunset would do in MLP as a television show. Again, she can't be the lead character because that's Twilight again, and even as part of the ensemble there are five other characters in line ahead of her in terms of prominence and a claim on the spotlight. Sunset would be stuck as a permanent second-banana Twilight, of the kind who isn't really necessary to the show and doesn't have anything to distinguish her the way that the rest of the Mane Six have.

The only thing for Sunset to do in Equestria would be to permanently leave the show, going off somewhere off-screen to be the Hero of Another Story, and I don't honestly see the point.

Should Sunset's Displacement be Explored in Future Films/Show?

This is a more interesting question. I'm not sure whether there are going to be any more movies, or whether there is going to be that rumoured Equestria Girls TV spinoff, but either way there is the possibility to explore Sunset's issues of homesickness and feeling out of place.

That said, I'm not sure whether they should. As I've said, these three films put a pretty decent cap on Sunset's story, and I'm not sure that I'd want to risk spoiling it with more installments. However, it is definitely an unexplored element of her character, and one that could potentially carry a story of some kind.

I just hope that, whatever fresh directions Sunset's character goes into, she does it in the human world as part of the Equestria Girls cast where she belongs.