What are your thoughts on Summer Shimmer's redemption?

Do you believe it was too rushed or that it never should have happened in the first place?

If you were writing a story, how would/have you handle or handled her character and development in a story?

Thoughts, please!

I didn't have a problem with Sunset Shimmer being redeemed or with redemption in general. But just like Trixie in Magic Duel, I thought it was rushed which made it feel less believable. As for how I would have handled it in a story? I did write an alternate ending to the movie if you haven't read it here's the link.
The Prodigal Student

1683466

I think that the only way that redeeming a character by firing the elements of harmony into their face can work is if the thing making that character evil is external. Anything else is a little much like brainwashing. The problem with Sunset Shimmer being redeemed that way is that that external force, like the Nightmare Moon persona, appears to be absent since she was a bitch even before she turned into a demon.

An ordinary redemption requires effort, both on the part of the writer and on the character being redeemed (unless you deliberately write it so that the redeemed character was never shown doing anything really evil in the first place).

1683466 I found an interesting post somewhere that explained that the Elements of Harmony basically showed her how cruel she had been to everyone in an instant.

That, and in canon she seemed to realise that the Element of Magic was corrupting her literally as soon as she put it on (she was actually crying until her tears were evaporated by the magic). At least, that's what the MLP Wiki suggests.

Anyway, that's just my view

I say it was rushed. I think she was too quick to try and change. I mean boom, she gets hurt and she just crumbles. Made her look pretty weak, don't you think?

1683466
First do think she should be redeemed, and like 1687486 said the Elements did more than just cleanse the evil out of her and how I've worked it out in my 'verse is that she was possessed by a demon that was sealed in the Mirror so some of her bitchiness came from that... of course the demon much like the Nightmare had to have something to latch on so Sunset is completely free and clear with her action.
1684833
There is a difference between being a bitch and being evil.

1852180
Like with Luna, I don't like the idea that the evil is external or even partially external. It's making excuses for a character. While it looks like you're supporting/helping the character, it is actually taking away her agency and making her character arc less dramatic or worthwhile. Let ex-villains own up to their mistakes and work fully to redeem themselves.

I'm fine with her being redeemed, but yes it is too quick. The story that I think paced her redemption best is still The Long Road To Friendship (anyone who hasn't read it, should asap). However, Hasbro didn't have a 3-volume novel to dedicate to Sunset's gradual reversal, so I don't blame the studio for setting it up the way they did. They did a great job telling her story with just 2 hours' worth of animation that is 50% songs and another 25% Twilight.

And yeah the rainbow is like Ghost Rider's penance stare.

3784372
*Rereads post* Made an error in my post, despite be possessed Sunset is't free and clear. She already had issues before she crossed over, and those were here's alone

1683466

I think you have to read between the lines a bit when it comes to Sunset's heel face turn. Turning into a demon didn't look very pleasant, so it's possible that messed her up a lot more than the friendship laser did. As with Luna, I get the feeling Sunset was actually grateful that the elements managed to stop her, because she'd come to realize just how much she'd messed everything up. The way I interpret the elements, they basically blast away all the negative influences and "resets" you to a state where you are emotionally stable enough to reevaluate yourself. (It only works that way on individuals who are are good at heart but have been corrupted over time - hence why they couldn't forcibly redeem antagonists who were just being themselves to begin with, like chaotic neutral Discord or chaotic evil Tirek.)

Over-all, I think it was handled decently - I can buy that by Rainbow Rocks, enough time has passed that Sunset has managed to pick herself up and become friendly to the rest of the Humane Six. There probably was a period between the two movies when things were a bit awkward and Sunset felt pretty crummy about herself, and in a way it's too bad we didn't get to see it, but implied character development isn't the same thing as no character development.

1684824

Um, Trixie wasn't "redeemed" because she wasn't a bad pony to begin with. She was literally being mind controlled by an evil artifact.

3784840
The only problem with the mind control by an evil spirit or artifact excuse is that to me it feels like a cop out so that a character avoids any responsibility for their actions, especially in the case of Luna and Trixie. For Trixie, she willingly put on the amulet and all it did in my opinion not only enhanced her magic but also the anger and desire for revenge that she already had. It just like if someone got drunk and did something terrible while under the influence except instead of drugs or alcohol it was an amulet. With Luna, the season 4 premiere already showed that Luna had already cast the gauntlet down and tried to userp Celestia before she was completely turned into Nightmare Moon. At the very least she was a co-conspirator to the nightmare forces.

3784840
Interesting point there, one worth taking note of I might add.

I wonder, if someone (say a future-Sunset or whatever) was to warn Sunset Shimmer of what the crown and its power would do to her, would she still put it on anyways?

3785136

The only problem with the mind control by an evil spirit or artifact excuse is that to me it feels like a cop out so that a character avoids any responsibility for their actions,

Yes, well, that's the whole point of an insanity plea, isn't it? Sometimes you're not held responsible for your actions because your ability to make rational choices has been compromised.

It's no different from when Rarity went bonkers from using dark magic and ended up terrorizing Ponyville for a whole day. At the end of Inspiration Manifestation, Twilight wasn't mad at Rarity for being corrupted, because that would have been unfair and terrible. She was mad at Spike for giving Rarity the book without checking if it was dangerous.

If anyone is at fault for the Alicorn Amulet incident, it's that shopkeeper - he should never have sold it to Trixie in the first place. Hell, he should never have been allowed to have something like that in the first place.

For Trixie, she willingly put on the amulet and all it did in my opinion not only enhanced her magic but also the anger and desire for revenge that she already had.

Well, sorry, but your opinion is wrong. It was pretty clearly established in the episode exactly how the Alicorn Amulet works: It makes you more evil and deranged the longer you wear it. That part isn't really up for interpretation. It was even pointed out that Trixie was acting blatantly out of character - it made her paranoid about wheels, for crying out loud.

Trixie just wanted to defeat Twilight and gain back a bit of the respect and credibility she lost after the Ursa Minor incident. (Which, it can't be stressed enough, was not her fault.) Everything she did after that was all the amulet's doing. She'd probably been wearing it for a while when she arrived to Ponyville. And when she took it off, she went back to normal in a matter of seconds. If the amulet just enhanced her own evil tendencies, they wouldn't have just gone away like that.

It just like if someone got drunk and did something terrible while under the influence except instead of drugs or alcohol it was an amulet.

That analogy only works if you voluntarily ingest the drug knowing what it will do to you. If I have one glass of wine and it turns out someone spiked it with a high dose of LSD, then whatever happens when I drink it is hardly my fault.

3787500

It's no different from when Rarity went bonkers from using dark magic and ended up terrorizing Ponyville for a whole day.

Poor analogy. The premise of Rarity's character is not a heel character doing a face-turn and undertaking a journey of redemption. The Inspiration Manifestation episode is just one odd adventure. However, the redemptive arc is central to both Luna and Sunset. Therefore, grant these characters some dignity and don't apologize for them, is what I'm saying.

That analogy only works if you voluntarily ingest the drug knowing what it will do to you. If I have one glass of wine and it turns out someone spiked it with a high dose of LSD, then whatever happens when I drink it is hardly my fault.

Trixie did research on the Amulet; she knew she was playing with fire. That is not ignorance, but willful ignorance.
It's equivalent to me telling you "Don't drink that I think it's been spiked-" "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU~~"

3787500
Problem is Trixie wasn't spiked, the shop keeper even told her that the amulet was too dangerous to sell but she didn't care. She voluntarily put it on and didn't care about the consequences. It even said only she could take it off meaning she voluntarily kept it on.

Rarity's situation is different because she didn't know about the danger the book had making her more of a victim.

Point is when the door was opened Trixie walked through it whereas Rarity was pushed out of it.

3787753

Poor analogy. The premise of Rarity's character is not a heel character doing a face-turn and undertaking a journey of redemption. The Inspiration Manifestation episode is just one odd adventure. However, the redemptive arc is central to both Luna and Sunset. Therefore, grant these characters some dignity and don't apologize for them, is what I'm saying.

No, see, I was drawing a comparison between Rarity and Trixie, because they were both brainwashed by dark magic due to using dubious artifacts. That makes them different from Luna and Sunset, who were responsible for their actions. (At least I think Luna was, the circumstances of her turning into Nightmare Moon were always pretty vague.)

1683466
I guess this thread would be the best place to do it, since making a thread for it would serve no purpose for it other than to hear myself talk.
I absolutely hate everything about Sunset in the first movie, just like I hate the movie overall. I think she's a bitchier version of Trixie, her backstory and placement in the mythos makes no sense at all, and her plans seemed faulty and not fleshed out at all. And I absolutely hated the reversal she pulled after she was defeated, that she "didn't know there was another way " Oh whatever missy, you're a young adult who spent a good deal of time under Celestia's tutelage, don't expect me to believe for a minute that she didn't teach you better than that. Twilight might not have learned all the secrets of friendship from Celestia herself, but she at least had the good sense not to be a bully. That seemed like the biggest cop-out I had ever heard.

WITH THAT SAID, even though Sunset got one of the worst set ups possible, I absolutely loved what they did with her in Rainbow Rocks. I loved how much she was really trying to redeem herself, and she seemed honestly ashamed of what she had done in the past. And I loved that she got to show off and be heroic at the end. This is probably one of the most unexpected character turnarounds I've ever seen, and I welcome it now if only they could pull off a turnaround like this for Flash, then life would just be perfect

So coming back to the initial question, yes I do think her redemption was a little bit rushed, but honestly, that's what I've come to expect of EQG movies. They're made under a very tight schedule, while Hasbro barks the worst of demands and offers little to no sympathy to the studio making it. But as far as a fucked predicament as it is, they did a pretty decent job with her. A lot of people said that the students were wrong to be so cold to Sunset's attempts at winning their affection, but my girlfriend Lexxi made a good point when she said that they had a good reason for not immediately trusting her. She said something along the lines of "Hitler would have had to say a lot more than 'I'm sorry, can I be your friend now?' in order to gain redemption for what he did."

tl;dr, could have been better, but I wasn't really expecting much from EQG to be honest

3851451

I agree with a few of your points;

The people in the film-Celestia, Luna, the student body have every right to still be angry and distrusting of those who have wronged them in the past, since forgiveness is usually earned and actions speak louder than words, but her nice girl facade she used in the past is coming back to bite her, as for all the other students knew she was just trying to manipulate them somehow, given how Applejack described her in the first film.

It is also pretty hard to interpret the way she interrupted the Rainboom's performance as anything, but hostile from the perspective of the other students and what little they know of what's actually going on.

I also feel like it is unrealistic for everyone to have forgiven her 100% even after the ending and just decided to move on because the world doesn't work that way and she herself admitted that her actions were pretty terrible; the bullying, brainwashing, attempting a hostile takeover of Celestia and Luna's thrones, and attempting to murder Twilight with a fireball-which is pretty serious no matter how you look at it and as we've seen from Twilight and the Rainboom's interactions with her-forgiving isn't necessarily the same as forgetting, given Twilight's reluctance to accept her hand to helping her up after going through the portal.

One of the reasons people empathize with Sunset and dislike the other students is partly because she has been shown to sincerely regret her mistakes and is trying to make up for it, yet since normal reactions are working against her-people tend to dislike that and the characters displaying those reactions (as logical as those reactions and assumptions may be) because they are now an obstacle to a character the audience is meant to be rooting for.

3851451
I liked movie #1, because I accepted that it's merely a setup, an introduction, to Hasbro's official HiE universe. And its one saving grace was that it gave us a new character with a potential to be more morally complex than what's usually offered in MLP.

Correct, Sunset in movie #1, in and of herself, wasn't a great character. Read through the thread "How old is Sunset?" and you can really see that her backstory wasn't well thought-out. Her plan isn't intrinsically faulty, but it requires viewer input to make it reasonable in retrospect.

Nevertheless, she had a potential. That's how some of us became her fans as early as movie #1 (or before, heh). Thankfully that potential wasn't wasted by Hasbro.

Oh whatever missy, you're a young adult who spent a good deal of time under Celestia's tutelage, don't expect me to believe for a minute that she didn't teach you better than that.

In the thread "How old is Sunset?" we worked out that if Sunset isn't actually an old mare in a teenager's body, then she left Equestria when she was 13+ y/o. She ran away, had no parental/ moral guidance, and had to survive on her own since she was 13 (or a little older). So yes, she was telling the truth when she said "I didn't know there was another way."

It also highlights how brilliant a little filly must have been for Celestia to outright say to her "I think you're going to be a Princess" at that age. It's part of why I was her fan before movie #1 came out.

I liked the fact that she was the teenage author's most beloved Mary Sue trope: Young, brilliant, beautiful, special, courageous, rebellious, self-centered, loved by everyone.
I loved the fact that this favorite YA trope's worst qualities are placed under the spotlight by capable critics (movie #1): Without moral guidance (which this character trope loves to reject), this is what this kind of Mary Sue character would become when left to her own devices.

1683466 I wouldn't mind her being redeemed, but the actual execution in the film was so poor.

Like maybe if when Sunset was (or as she was turning into a demon), you can see her human side fighting the demon side and saying stuff like, "No, this isn't what I wanted," and stuff like that, but there's literally nothing to suggest that she would change like that. At that point in the film, it like the writers suddenly decided, "Guys, it's a kids film, so the villain shouldn't be allowed meet a bad end, right?"

Right?

RIGHT!?

3857127 exactly, although Sunset Shimmer is more likable now