Glimmy undercover.

The first of the first Starlight-a-stalking screencaps. #2 comes along with “What About Discord?”.

@TexasUberAlles  
Heh. That would be kinda awesomely meta, too, though, because the audience would expect it for the same reason.

@Poptard  
maybe the twist wouldn’t be entirely unexpected  
I was thinking more of a tactical feint than a strategic one– Discord was less “Ha-HA, I’ll fool THEM!” and more “talked out of being a Good Guy by Tirek”– but it would be extra awesome if she tried to fake them out with a phony reformation and got smacked down anyway because the Mane Six had actually learned their lesson from Discord’s betrayal.

@TexasUberAlles
 
We kinda did that with Discord, so maybe the twist wouldn’t be entirely unexpected.

@Background Pony #35C9  
It would be so awesome if she pulled a fake Heel/Face Turn and just played along with being “reformed” long enough to strike from behind.

@Background Pony #6982  
starlight:IM IM not evil anymore  
twilight:WHAT WE REFORMED YOU  
starlight:yes

@Background Pony #6982  
waiter hands starlight a plate of quesadilla by mistake
 
starlight:ewwww ewwww ewww ewwww ewww….take that away from me!!!!
 
twilight <internal realization>: by celestia! i can see the family resemblance now!!!

@OptimusPrimevil  
So that would mean during the S5 finale:
 
Starlight: Come Twilight. All you need to do is join me and we can create an equal paradise for everypony.
 
Twilight: Never! Why are you so fixated on me!? Are you secretly my sister!?
 
Starlight: …no…
 
Twilight sighs
 
Starlight: I am actually…|| your daughter ||
 
Twilight: Widens eyes in shock No…no…that can’t be true…THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!
 
Starlight: Look inside yourself, you know it to be true…
 
Twilight: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…

@OptimusPrimevil
 
What a twist!

@TexasUberAlles  
makes more sense than final crisis’ time bullet.

@OptimusPrimevil  
Makes as much sense as any Golden Age Silver Age superhero comic.

@Background Pony #6982  
no, starlight is from the future…
 
she’s twilight and flash’s kid and the pressure to live up to her legacy is too much that she opted to create a world where cutie marks don’t matter…but got stuck in the past and now must collect cutie marks to go back to her time.

@thps48  
Twilight: Nooooo- Wait, that makes no sense…NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

@rdibp  
They already did that anyway:
 
You killed my brother!  
–No, Twilight, I married your brother!

@Background Pony #6982  
Shhhhhh. Don’t give them ideas.
 
<.< >.>

Man, what’s next? Starlight was Twilight’s sister?  

@Background Pony #B392  
<curls into a ball> because of the zoids legacy cave maze

@Background Pony #B392  
Yes, and I suppose it’s only if they weren’t friendship addicts, would they desire to campaign a marehunt rather than assume she’ll be sorry later on. ;3

@thps48  
They’re just being rational. Wildly charging into a maze of caves will result only in losses.

They pretty much left her 200% MAD hoping that she will spontaneously learn her lesson for no damn reason, since hope and McLovin’ has the potential to blow up meteors, so if they hope enough, their love radiation will make her feel sorry from the other end of the damn country. The ultmate reason is simply to allude to the season finale. Silly plot elements are prevalent in numerous mediums all of which share a retro aspect in a similar manner as Expendables. :3

@Cirrus Light  
But that’s what I’m saying; Starlight may not be repentant, but she was as good as defeated. She’d been exposed as a liar and a hypocrite, she no longer had any way to store cutie marks due to the vault being destroyed, and it’s fair to say that the residents of Equal Town would give her hide a good whooping if she ever tried to take over there again. As far as everypony was concerned, Starlight was finished, and there was no need to pursue the matter any further. Not to mention that it’s inferred that Twilight was counting on the rest of Equal Town to try and redeem her themselves when/if she came back.
 
Besides that, like I said, the whole show tends to fall very much on the idealistic side of the idealism vs. cynicism scale. We’ve seen that the magic of friendship is capable of overthrowing tyrants, sealing away spirits of chaos, and even defeating a demon who has all the frickin’ magic in Equestria on his side. If the magic of friendship is capable of all that, there’s no reason to think that it couldn’t reform some small-town megalomaniac in time. Twilight even infers this near the end of the episode.
 
“We just have to hope that when she’s had a chance to think it over, she realizes that you all have taught her something.”
 
Obviously, that didn’t seem to work very well, if Starlight’s appearance in the finale is anything to go by. But at that moment, there was no reason to think that the magic of friendship wouldn’t work on Starlight when it had such a flawless track record beforehand.

ICE-T in MLP would be funny as heck

@Brony_Conundrum  
The difference in every case (except for Rainbow with the weather factory. But maybe she got pardoned because she’d saved Equestria, what, three times now or something? A case like this is kinda what pardons are for - world savior being pardoned for a crime) is that the person was no longer a threat at the end - they are either repentant or defeated so that they can’t harm any more.
 
Starlight was neither.

@drumpowa  
until they make Law and Order: Equestrian SVU