Luster Dawn: So, even though everything changed and you moved away from your friends, you didn’t grow apart? And this is the Council of Friendship? That’s what you’re all doing here?
Future Rainbow Dash: Duh! This time every moon.
Future Applejack: [chuckles] What she means is this is how we’ve been rulin’ together.
Future Rarity: And how we’ve continued to face every problem and threat to Equestria over the years.
Future Pinkie Pie: But mostly, it’s how we keep in touch. No matter how busy life gets.
Future Twilight Sparkle: Sometimes friendships can be hard, and it takes work to maintain them. But without friends, things can be a lot harder.

Twilight Sparkle: I tried to talk to you all about how I was feeling, but you seemed more worried about what you had to do for the coronation.
Spike: It’s true. I was there.
Rarity: I suppose it gave us something else to focus on.
Applejack: I knew you were worried about everything changin’. I guess I thought if I made it seem like everything was okay, it would be.
Fluttershy: I was just trying to make you feel better. That way I wouldn’t feel so terrible.

Anyone who liked the episode either 1) doesn’t take the characters seriously to begin with, or 2) has what amounts to Stockholm Syndrome.

1. Spike changing his mind about the Power Ponies comic is an explicit message that just because you’re getting older, and things are changing, doesn’t mean you have to let go of what you love. Which is also the lesson that Twilight learns about her friends, and a lesson that the writers are trying to tell us: just because the show is ending, doesn’t mean you have to let it go.
    
2. Maintaining a friendship is, indeed, difficult, but not impossible. And it’s entirely worthwhile. This is why the characters are aged up and we get the sense that a significant amount of time has passed – to demonstrate the strength of bonds that are properly maintained.
    
3. The mere existence of the episode is an indication that the writers wanted the characters to live on with us. They could have very easily ended the show with The Ending of the End – the final defeat of the only surviving villains, and harmony created between Equestria and the lands beyond. This episode is an acknowledgement that the big, fancy action set pieces and world-threatening problems is not all that made this universe special – it’s the characters and relationships which are the foundation.
    
4. There is so much negative space to be filled with the time skip. If you choose to write a fanfic that lives in the universe where the time skip happened, you have great places to jump off from. How did the romantic pairing(s) get together? Who has immortality – if just Twilight, does she try to grant it to her friends somehow? How did Sandbar and Yona end up working at Rarity’s boutique? What shenanigans do the CMC get up to as teachers? What kind of changes and growing pains did Equestria go through to accommodate all the many species that now live there? And Luster Dawn… well, she’s a blank canvas to do more or less whatever you want to, and we got a glimpse of some potential friends of hers that you can flesh out into real characters. Jim said that they left a lot up to interpretation – in particular the RDxAJ relationship – specifically because they want the fans to be able to expound on them and come up with their own theories.
    
   With these ideas as plausible as yours – and even more so if you read the public statements and leaked documents from the show runners – it’s pretty poor form to attribute malice against us to the show runners. It’s one thing to not like the episode. It’s another to assume it was created maliciously.
    
   I can’t believe the reason I finally made an account here is to defend a show… on an image board… for that show. This certainly not what I was planning to do with my time this afternoon.

@StormsparkPegasus
I’m frustrated by some artists who draw art for the 26th series, it’s sad that they support it :(

And I left the Easter egg on the table in the form of an inscription that not everyone will notice.

@Atlas_66
I don’t feel entitled to say much, because I’ve stopped watching the show around season 3, but this is exactly my thought. A timeskip like this is a big middle finger to people who have strong emotional bonds with these characters, because it basically crushes all of their fantasies. It’s like “Ok, the show is over, but wait! Here, have this hard timeskip to a distant future, so you won’t have any space left for your own vision of their future anymore. Ok, bye.”. Yeah of course, no one can stop you from creating your own fantasy in your head, but we know how the dynamics here work. This thing crushed a TON of head canons and closed the door hard.

@Atlas_66
That really lays out a lot of the issues that pop up. If you really really care about the characters, you have to separate them to some degree from the show or else you are going to have a bad time. I don’t think many people will disagree that the show was often very sloppy, with some writers that never understood the characters they were writing for very well (simple ways, anyone?). If you can separate the characters you care about and start to view the show as more of a compilation of isolated fanfics, it’s a lot easier to roll with the loose canon and kinda painful decision making. And then you can get some enjoyment even from the decisions you don’t really personally like again. Just my two cents.

Hnnng, so cute and adorable. Also I’m pretty sure this is more like Dashie’s real response. It fits her character more IMHO.

@StormsparkPegasus
Your head canon isn’t real canon.

@Atlas_66
Canon is not based on what you like or don’t like all episodes are Canon
@Atlas_66
It’s not the same model

Based dashie not putting up with S9 badness