Season 7 is here, and certainly off to at the very least a unique start. For the first time the season does not start with an adventurous two-parter. There’s still two episodes but they don’t exactly interconnect, the only detail you need to know before watching the 2nd episode from the first is that Starlight is no longer Twilight’s student but she’s still around Ponyville. A status quo change that is both big yet small at the same time. I’ll talk a little more near the end of this thoughts but for now it’s important to remember this for a few reasons.

If I may say one thing that kinda drags the episode down for me is the insistence that Starlight and Twilight’s mentor-student relationship is comparable to Twilight’s with Celestia when there are some big differences. Twilight became Celestia’s student as a filly, she was under her wings for years and even when Celestia sent Twilight away that didn’t mean Twilight was no longer her student. It turned out her going to Ponyville was the final steps toward her ascension to Princesshood. Meanwhile Starlight used to be a pretty evil character that almost destroyed the current timeline before somehow Twilight managed to talk her out of it and reform her. And since the student-teacher relationship ends in this episode, couldn’t have been any longer then a year. Also at least IMO there is some emotional attachment we get to Twilight and Celestia’s relationship while there wasn’t enough in Season 6 to have the same kind of attachment. The only episodes where the teacher-student thing was all that relevant was No Second Prances and Every Little Thing She Does. And I didn’t even like the former since Twilight didn’t seem like a very good teacher in that episode, and while I liked the latter Twilight is only there for the opening scenes of the episode and the very end where she helps fix things. Just like how I felt lukewarm to Starlight’s character in general, I felt just as lukewarm with her apprenticeship under Twilight and Season 6 didn’t do much to change that. It’s kinda similar to how I feel about Rainbow Dash caring so much about Tank in Tanks for the Memories when we barely saw Tank in other episodes aside from his debut. Twilight and Starlight’s thing is still better then that was but in the same sense I didn’t care about the relationship and it’s being compared several times to one that most have come to like between Celestia and Twilight since even early on we could really get a lot of how much Twilight respects her mentor, and how proud Celestia is of Twilight.

I do want to say that I still kinda liked this episode and in fact is probably my favorite of the two that aired that day. But it’s still unfortunately dragged down by things I just don’t care for. Just my personal opinion on the matter, I’m sure there are those who are fans of Starlight and Twilight’s relationship that probably loved this episode and I’m not going to tell them they’re not wrong for doing so. I just don’t feel very strongly about what this episode is hyping up the apprenticeship to be.

That said though perhaps the funniest part of the episode is certainly the fantasy sequences/imagine spots of what Twilight’s thinking could happen when she sends Starlight somewhere. Heck, the line of Celestia saying “There is no wrong way to fantasize” has already gotten some giggles in the fandom, especially from the NSFW art community (That’s not a bad thing though, many NSFW pony artists I’ve met are some of the nicest folks in the fandom). But even aside from that you have Twilight imagining funny scenarios like a Changeling pretending to be Starlight and purposefully doing bad things to other changelings to get her in trouble, Twilight imagining what Ember and Starlight would interact like. Though it does get serious for a moment when Twilight actually has a somewhat believable idea of sending Starlight to work on Magic together with Sun Burst and suddenly Twilight thinking they might get into magic that they can’t control.

But perhaps the best scene of the episode is Celestia revealing she had some of the same concerns that Twilight has in the episode years back. While I did say I’m not sure comparing the two as if they’re that 1:1 is a good idea, I do like the idea of Celestia caring for Twilight in that way and is a really heartwarming scene for Celestia. While it’s a little debatable if this episode even counts as a Celestia episode, it’s certainly the most character we’ve gotten out of Celestia in a really long time. It really feels like the last time we had anything with Celestia’s character being revealed it was as far back as Season 1 in either the end of Best Night Ever or that episode with the Phoenix. It just makes us crave a real full 100% Celestia focused episode even more then before I’d say. But at least we got a good taste of it in this episode. Also a little funny thing that might of revealed why the letters were there in the beginning of the series in that that was also part of Celestia missing Twilight so much heh heh.

But now we get to the ending where Starlight is announced by Twilight that she’ll no longer be Twilight’s student though at the same time a part of the status quo still stays in that Starlight still lives in the castle. Just she’s on her own now. You can look at this a few ways. For those who are even a little like me that kinda never felt too much attachment I think it’s good enough to be glad the apprenticeship is over since it didn’t feel like it was really going anywhere between the two. Though at the same time does who may dislike Starlight a lot more then I do may feel they don’t do enough to end it since Starlight isn’t actually going anywhere. Though for those who do like Twilight and Starlight they may have mixed feelings of them no longer being student and teacher because it may feel all too fast but relieved that Starlight will still stick around for the near future. So this a pretty weird status quo change where something has changed to a good degree but at the same time not a lot.

As for my opinion on the matter, I am glad that Starlight is no longer Twilight’s apprentice as I feel Starlight could grow better on her own especially as she interacts with Trixie, Discord, and/or Thorax. And as for Starlight ever being sent away, I do feel like that could possibly be what the eventual finale of Season 7 could be about. Especially if Starlight isn’t involved much with the movie coming up. Since as of right now there’s no sign Starlight will have an important role in that. (Or at least she’ll help protect the home front while the Mane 6 and Spike are traveling abroad?) Just saying since it’s not like we’ve seen any merpony Starlight merchandise/artwork. So they could just be taking a slower route but will eventually go with somewhere of which to take Starlight on her own path. Cause with all of the Mane 6 that had goals already having reached them as well as the CMC with their Cutie Marks. Starlight’s one of the few characters that there’s gotta be some incoming goal for that needs to be shown and even if I don’t care as much about her it’s only fair she gets her chance to have something. Granted I have no idea what the plan is for Starlight yet, but we’ll see what happens.

So to recap, while I’m still mixed as ever with just about anything Starlight. This episode had some solid moments from Celestia and Twilight that I enjoyed. And it’s certainly an interesting start to the season. I’ll get to talking about All Bottled Up next week. Since I want to give it the proper respect of it being a separate episode on it’s own and also I have a feeling my episode response for episode 3 of the Season will be really short because I pretty much know how the episode would go in Genie Twi’s universe and trust me it’s not very long. Admittedly I’m not too looking forward to the 3rd episode but maybe it’ll surprise me. Seeya then either way though.