@LanceOmikron  
You know what, that I could buy. After spending all that time amongst the high school students and coming to despise them with a barely contained passion, she’d be eager to send them to their deaths for even a mild advantage.

@Trickquestion
 
…Y’know, maybe she never intended for those brainwashed teenagers to actually help conquer Equestria as her personal army. Maybe she was just gonna kill them off by sending them against the royal guards as suicide soldiers and then conquer Equestria singlehandedly (Obviously there’s no way she could have accomplished that, but she’s probably arrogant enough to think she could do it).

@LanceOmikron  
Just imagine, you’ve spent your young life as the personal student of the god empress, and every day delve deeper into the amazing world of magic. Then, after losing your status as personal student, you flee to the other world. In this world, all that knowledge you spent years to learn becomes completely worthless in less then second, and in order to stay under the radar, your have to become just another face in the crowd, spending each day in the same goddamn class, being talked to like you’re one of the THEM, those slow minded dullards with whom you have to spend every. single. day. surrounded by. That would be maddening. Hell, if the rating of the movie had been higher, it would not surprise me if Sunset had been tapping into High School’s easily available drug supply.
 
Make no mistake, Sunset was already evil when she went through the mirror, but her time in the human world made her evil and stupid.

@Trickquestion
 
Superficially, she seems fine, but she’s incredibly stupid evil, acting like a big old bitch for no strategic reason, and is completely blind to the utter stupidity of her plan. This, I like to imagine, came about as a result of losing her magic, and spending years in the crushing despair a high school generates.
 
…Y’know what? I can totally buy that.
 
(though I should further note that my analysis of her character mainly deals with her pre-EQG self that appeared in the MLP annual comic (since, of course, EQG didn’t exactly give us a whole lot to work with))

@LanceOmikron  
There is a bit of a disconnect between what they tell us about Sunset Shimmer, and how she actually comes across, which actually leads to two different foils for Twilight. The movie wanted us to think Sunset is a manipulative bastard capable of turning friends against each other, thus making her someone who has a great understanding of friendship and social conventions, but is simply so arrogant that she doesn’t want to make friends, and simply uses this skill to drive people apart. As opposed to Twilight, who genuinely had to learn how to be a good friends.
 
The all around poor writing of the movie however, gives us a different interpretation. Sunset is seems like a pony who’s neurosis have gone completely out of control sometime after entering the human world, probably because she has no friends and no mentor to reign her in. Superficially, she seems fine, but she’s incredibly stupid evil, acting like a big old bitch for no strategic reason, and is completely blind to the utter stupidity of her plan. This, I like to imagine, came about as a result of losing her magic, and spending years in the crushing despair a high school generates.

@Trickquestion  
I really like comparing Twilight, Trixie, and Sunset. While Trixie and Sunset haven’t exactly had a lot of screentime (though Sunset’s origin story in the comics certainly helped), I find them to be quite fertile as characters and how they act as shadows to Twilight in different ways. Here’s how I see them:
 
Twilight has a ton of power and a healthy amount of ambition, and it’s all held safely in check by humility and conscience. Her greatest fear is to fail her mentor. Thus, she’s the hero!
 
Trixie has no power, no humility, and a huge amount of ambition. She hates being seen as weak. However, she still has some semblance of a conscience, as evidenced by her demeanor after she had the alicorn amulet removed. Thus, she’s amoral. Not really a nice pony, but not outright evil either.
 
Sunset Shimmer has a ton of power, no humility, no conscience, and her ambition is completely and utterly out of control. She hates being held back from gaining more power, and thinks that her magical talent should place her above any kind of worldly laws or restrictions. She’s evil.

@BlackPuma  
Twilight’s been dark side material since Season 2, and I would hope the huge number of character flaws they’ve been sticking on her are intentional.
 
As for Sombra, if they’d gone full force with the evil counterpart thing, we wouldn’t have needed to know too many exacts. Either say he was Princess Celestia’s student who fell to evil, or draw some very explicit parallels between Twilight and Sombra’s obsessions, as well as Spike and the Crystal Ponies, and the murky bits about him would become obvious enough to not require spelling out.

@PonyPon  
Yeah, it’s too bad none of them made for spectacular villains.
 
Trixie is Twilight, if in addition to being insecure (though Twilight wears her insecurity on her… sleeve? While Trixie’s is more repressed) Twilight sucked at magic.
 
Sunset is Twilight if Twilight was just as powerful, but magic was ALL that she was good at or smart about.
 
And Sombra looked like a perfect, formidable evil counterpart (obsession and slavery being the two prominent themes) but he died before Twilight ever got the chance to fight him.
 
So sad.

@Trickquestion  
It’s actually odd that Twi’s gotten three shadow archetypes over the show’s current running.
 
Trixie, Sombra, and Sunset all seem to be like her, except with key elements left out or blown up to make them different.

@BlackPuma  
You know what you get when you make Twilight evil and male?
 
King Sombra.
 
Crystal Empire was one of those episodes that felt like it had been re-written a few times, and I got a feeling in one of those drafts King Sombra was explicitly Twilight’s evil counterpart, maybe even a more powerful Sunset Shimmer. He was obsessed with magic power (just as Twilight is with pleasing Celestia) and enslaved an entire race to presumably give him the resources to delve deeper into the secrets of darkness (just as Twilight’s treatment of Spike was at an all time low that episode).
 
Of course, I have absolutely no evidence for any of that, but consider it the gut feeling of a long time fantasy buff.

@LanceOmikron
 
 
Yes. Yes! YES!  
An evil, corrupted, badass Twilight Sparkle is what I want to see in S4! Or S5 if needed. But it NEEDS to happen someday! >.<

@Sonlirain
 
“The dark magic is however unexplained and might either be forgoten OR bite twilight in the arse in one episode.”
 
I really hope it’s the latter. A “Corrupted Twilight” episode would be incredible to see.

I think that Sombra is some kind of a hybrid between an alicorn satan and a mortal unicorn. Makes sense when you think about it

I hope Dark Magic comes up again in the future. Specifically, I hope it’s shown as having some sort of negative consequence to its use.

That’s my bet, Trick. Nothing evil about Alicorn magic, but multiple attempts by others to use it have given its side effects on mortals a sinister reputation.

So does this make Sombra some kind of Prometheus figure, who dared to steal the special alicorn magic of the gods?

@PonyPon  
Well the locked box kinda confirms there will be a overarching story this season.  
The box is kinda obvious since they will probably trek around equestria a bit to find keys and each key will only be obtainable by one of her friends (with one obviously being obtainable by herself).
 
The dark magic is however unexplained and might either be forgoten OR bite twilight in the arse in one episode.

How worryingly and troublingly confusing.

Twi is secretly holding dark powers within?  
Soon…Celestia/Luna soon…

this is a good point,  
her pure alicorn magic was dark? that sounds foreboding!

@BlackPuma  
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