@Background Pony #3C6B
 
I’d say he does have one, but it’s perhaps not the most engaging or rounded. I’m also all up for some development, because I hate character potential being squandered.

@Poptard  
I hope he gets a personality.

Flash Sentry could be a male friend to both pony Twilight Sparkle and pony Sunset Shimmer, once he finds out the truth that is out there.

@LuminoZero  
So what if you consider him a template? He’s still a character with a name, and a name is worth more than gold or a thousand pictures quickly moving one after another in this case. And believe it or not, every character (or template as you so described him as) has their role. It might not be an actual role for other characters (such as a love interest), but a role to carry out for the audience to see.
 
Remember what this show is all about. It’s about showing how many things that normal people in life would stress over on, but can be overcome with the true values of what Friendship has. Of course, the show mostly talks about how friendship is achieved mostly through women and less of men. The movie however, shows Twilight’s interaction with a male that is not family related and is in a completely different dimension, where she is new, unsure, and alienated. Flash Sentry is the only male that is not family-related to Twilight and one that actually shares encouragement and do what a friend would do, just like what her normal female friends would do. Flash is a representation to remind the young girls watching (if there is any) the movie to understand and to mature what they may face during their future lives: coping with the opposite gender that’s not a family member.
 
I completely understand your qualms about Flash Sentry (either human or pony) due to what he is now (and I do agree for some more development, but then again, many other characters are like him, and it could be the same for us in real life) and what he was made to be, but even the smallest things such as his name or actions and decisions count as character, even for a template.

@Millennial Dan  
I was just copying Lumino’s words, didn’t mean it myself.

@Millennial Dan
 
I don’t call him a terrible character, because calling him a ‘character’ to begin with is inaccurate. He’s a template.
 
-Lumino

@LuminoZero  
>Does he have flaws/Does he ever make a mistake?
 
Obviously. He’s no superman. He’s been just as easily brainwashed as the rest of the school on more than one occasion. You can’t exclude that fact, because for him to be a “Mary Sue” would require him to have some specialness that no one else does. Time and again though, we see that he’s just an average dude, which is plenty “humanizing”.
 
Additionally, there are obvious characterization moments that you’re ignoring.
 
He’s not too suave. He gets nervous around a girl he likes. He fumbles around rather clumsily sometimes. He’s ridiculously chill—it apparently takes a lot to rustle him. I noticed that even though he could have suggested Sunset was behind Twilight’s framing, he never mentioned her name. Was he protecting her for some misguided reason? And what about Rainbow Rocks. He may have been influenced by the sirens, but it stands out that he was the first to dis Sunset when given the chance. He also completely ignored her in the band hall. Does he have a bit of a chip on his shoulder about her that’s more complicated than what we see on the surface? There are a lot of subtle cues here and there about what he’s like. More would help, but all you can say so far is that he has room for development, not that he’s a terrible character.

@LuminoZero  
Well, he did break up with Sunset. We don’t really know why, but it’s easy to interpret him finally recognizing how much a bitch Sunset turned into a broke it off. Considering the pony counterpart became a Royal Guard, perhaps it’s due some burgeoning development of a sense of duty or justice that made the pony join the Guards.
 
Then again, I don’t really know, and I was pretty disappointed in Rainbow Rocks in regard to Flash.

@Millennial Dan
 
Give me one three dimensional quality Flash Sentry has been shown to have in the movies.
 
He plays a guitar.  
He’s a cool guy.  
Twilight falls for him on sight.  
He owns an absurdly cool car.
 
What else is there to him? Does he have flaws? Does he have character goals? Does he ever make a mistake that isn’t due to him being under mind control?
 
Does he have ANY humanizing factors at all?
 
-Lumino

@Tythen  
I really wish you wouldn’t use that term. Even if you apply it as broadly as you possibly can, it doesn’t work for Flash.
 
What some people don’t understand is that even if Flash is a “stereotypical Awesome McNice guy”, that is merely a character trope, which is not in any way automatically a bad thing. It is simply a type of personality available in a literary palette. A Mary Sue is in an entirely different category; aside from that, the name is often used now merely as an insult toward a character someone disapproves of, because the person making the insult wants everyone else to think he has some kind of objective standards people should apply in order to reach the same conclusion he has. Human Flash is nothing special—he’s just an ordinary Joe, who liked a girl, who liked him back. Big deal. The way people act, you’d think Twilight was dating Kim Jong-il or something.

@LuminoZero  
What I mean is that they are similar to Flash Sentry when you think about it. While people complained about Human Flash being a bland love interest, others also complained about Minato (Persona 3) and Yu (Persona 4) being bland protagonists. They are in a fact, like Mary Sues too.

@Tythen
 
Never played them, so your reference went totally over my head.
 
-Lumino

@LuminoZero  
What? Like the Protagonists from Persona 3 and 4?

@Background Pony #4161  
That’s another way of putting it. Still, he does have his good points, which the negativity tends to completely overshadow to the point of dismissal.

@Millennial Dan
 
The issue most of us have with Human Flash is that he is a prime example of a Mary Sue in a show that does such a good job at avoiding the trope any other day of the week.
 
He’s your stereotypical Awesome McNice guy. He has no other qualities that define him, and he’s introduced as a romantic sub plot for Twilight.
 
Human Flash was designed as a Love Interest without a Character. They still have a chance to do it right with pony Flash.
 
-Lumino

@Millennial Dan  
Personally, I’d define “underrated” separately from “overhated”.

This is our regularly scheduled reminder that human Flash has to be the most underrated character in cartoon history. Never have I seen so much irrational hate over someone who is, in himself, a perfectly normal and okay guy. It’s quite a spectacle.

@Poptard
 
I’d actually like to see pony Flash get a little development. Human Flash is already a lost cause, but these is still hope for pony Flash.
 
And I don’t really care for the movies, so whatever they do with human Flash is of no concern to me.
 
-Lumino

@Poptard  
Precisely this.

@Drflash55  
 
The Dark Side of the Force.

They’re watching a marathon of a series that got put on hiatus long ago, but then continued way later on.
 
You all probably know what I’m talking about.  
If not, let me give you a hint.  
It has to do with The Dark Side of The Force.

@Background Pony #4161  
Yah whatever pleases you.

@Ghoul 13  
Speaking as someone who’d rather not see Dreamy Cutebottom in the series, your original comment struck me as a little baity as well. Can we just agree that some people like him and others don’t, and drop the matter?

@Poptard  
Uh, ok whatever.

@Ghoul 13
 
person 1: I hope X happens!  
person 2: I hoped not-X happens.  
Person 3: I see both 1 and 2’s comments, and I hope person 1 is right!