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"My Little Pony: Equestria Girls rewards repeat viewings, setting the stage for the far superior Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games, and those films' redemption arc for the villain Sunset Shimmer, who would go on to become one of the franchise's most emotionally complex characters. [...] Though Sunset is older (established by her having been Celestia's student prior to Twilight), like Luna she let her darkness overwhelm her, and will pay the price for the rest of her life. It's possible that if Sunset had stayed on the straight and narrow in Equestria, she might have ascended to Alicorn status, but now she'll never know. It's probably one of the reasons why she chooses to remain in the biped world. The emotional crux of Rainbow Rocks, and all My Little Pony up to this point, is a simple conversation between Twilight and Sunset late at night after a slumber party at Pinkie Pie's well-appointed home. [...] She's joined by Sunset Shimmer, and in the night kitchen they open up to each other about their vulnerabilities: Twilight is feeling pressured to save the day, a pressure she's always felt but which is much heavier now that she's a Princess and is expected to have all the answers, while Sunset faces the Sisyphean task of redemption, well aware that the others are expecting her to screw up and ruin the day. Each carries a heavy burden, and they share a bonding moment when they realize that they're in the same emotional place. An offhand comment by Sunset that writing a song is probably simple compared to the duties of Equestrian royalty almost gives the recently crowned Princess of Friendship the courage to embrace that thing which she is the Princess of, to admit that she's in over her head and ask her former enemy for help... but she can't."
Blue, Jen A. (2016-01-20). My Little Po-Mo: Unauthorized Critical Essays on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Season Three and Derivative Works. pp.238–246.
"Consider, first, the relationship between Twilight Sparkle and the film’s villain, Sunset Shimmer. The parallels between them are quite clear: their names are synonymous, both are unicorns gifted at magic, both are protégés of Celestia. But “the villain is a reflection of the hero” is not, in itself, particularly interesting, being pretty cliché at this point. What is more interesting is the nature of their encounter: Twilight passes through a mirror into a world that reflects Equestria, but inverts it—and, a few details like skin coloration aside, the inverted world is effectively our world. This is an inverted fairy tale: instead of a human passing through a liminal space into fairyland, a fairy (or magical creature from a magical world, at any rate) passes through that space into our world, and experiences the wonders and terrors to be found there. [...] In keeping with the show’s ethos, the main character this time around is not Twilight Sparkle but Sunset Shimmer. We begin the film with her, the majority of it is shown from her perspective (there are only a handful of scenes for which she is not present), and she is the character who experiences a real arc. At the beginning of the film she is notably withdrawn even with the Mane Five, but over the course of it she comes to realize that while she has done terrible things in the past, and both her guilt and the anger of the people around her are legitimate, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still people who care about her and with whom she can belong. She was a bully, and it is not wrong for the people she hurt to be cautious, skeptical, or even hostile—and to its credit, unlike “One Bad Apple” the film never depicts the other students as being wrong not to want to spend time with her—but that does not mean she cannot reform or that she doesn’t deserve to have friends. It’s a finer line than the show usually walks, and Rainbow Rocks pulls it off handily. [...]
Rohrer, Melissa; Austin, Sara (June 2024). "Christ is a magical girl: Queer popular culture and Paradise Lost". Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture. 9 (2): 135–150. doi:10.1386/qsmpc_00125_1.
"In the film, Twilight Sparkle is sent to Earth by her mentor, Princess Celestia, to stop Celestia’s former student, Sunset Shimmer, from wreaking havoc on this alternate world with pony magic. Her backstory paralleling that of Satan, Sunset Shimmer was once Celestia’s most prom- ising student, but was corrupted by greed and power; when she could not overthrow Celestia, she was banished to Earth. These events occur before the start of the film, when Twilight Sparkle volunteers to go to Earth to recover the magical object that Sunset Shimmer has taken: a crown contain- ing one of the Elements of Harmony. The Elements of Harmony are a series of magical objects representing Twilight and her friends (honesty, kindness, laughter, generosity, loyalty and magic). Sunset Shimmer plans to use the Element to corrupt and enslave humanity, again paralleling the demonic plan in Paradise Lost to ‘waste [mankind], or possess/ All as our own, and drive as we were driven/ The puny habitants’ (II. 365–67). [...] It is not until Sunset Shimmer uses the magic of the Elements of Harmony that she transforms into a literal demon with fangs, wings and a tail. She also turns the human students into zombie slaves in a bid to invade and conquer Equestria. [...] These transformations – both of the Mane Six and of Sunset Shimmer – also echo transformations in Paradise Lost. Satan and his fellow rebels are changed by their sin into something ruined, dimmed and unrecognizable; the Son is likewise transformed during the War in Heaven when he assumes the Father’s full power and goes into battle ‘in celestial panoply all armed’ with sword, bow, thunder and chariot (I. 591–604, VI. 710–72). In this scene, which parallels Christ’s battle with Satan in Book VI of Paradise Lost and their debate in the Second Book of Paradise Regained, Twilight tells Sunset Shimmer that ‘the crown may be upon your head, but you cannot wield it because you do not possess the most powerful magic of all, the magic of friendship’ (Thiessen and McCarthy 2013). This moment is highly evoca- tive of Christ’s resistance to Satan’s temptation in Paradise Regained, where the Son calls a crown and other trappings of royalty ‘golden in show […] but a wreath of thorns’ compared to ‘honour, virtue, merit’ and ‘self government’ (II. 459, 464). The use of ‘friendship’, here, stands in for Godly virtue works to situate Equestria Girls within secular pre-adolescent girl’s popular culture, as does the imagery associated with the battle. Twilight and her friends form a heart and rise into the air as a rainbow shoots out from their formation and wraps around Sunset Shimmer. This moment is indicative of the ‘Care- Bear stare’, a tactic common in both anime and girl’s television, in which the heroes link hands and bombard the villain with positive emotions, symbol- ized by colourful lights or rainbows. It also echoes the moment in Paradise Lost when Satan and his allies are blasted down to Hell by the Son and his cherub-wheeled chariot which ‘glared lightning and shot forth pernicious fire’ (VI. 849). The rainbows remove the zombie curse from the other human students and deposit Sunset Shimmer into a smoking crater. Sunset Shimmer emerges crying and apologizing because she ‘didn’t know there was another way’ (Thiessen and McCarthy 2013). Sunset Shimmer seems truly sorry for her role, evincing the self-awareness and repentance that Milton’s Satan never achieves.
