How would that have even worked? When Spike and Starlight were "hanging out" with him in Crystalling was Spike just pretending that Sunburst was there? And are Cadence and Shining Armor pretending that they have a person looking after their baby to humor Starlight?
Well I mean, we've never actually seen anyone in the show acknowledge the existence of Sunburst when Starlight wasn't present. And I suspect he doesn't actually do anything in the Crystal Empire. I'm not saying everyone is pretending he's real, but maybe Starlight is unknowingly using a spell to make everyone think he exists, but only when she's around.
Nothing in this episode has provided proof otherwise; for all we know, when Starlight left Maud, she just went back to looking at rocks.
(Not serious, of course)
Anyway,
Uncommon Bond
More proof that Sunburst doesn't exist: he didn't get off the train, and instead suddenly poofed into existence.
Holy shit that part where Twilight gets excited about the game and knocks over the board. Twilight's interactions with Sunburst were pretty fun,
and she has much better chemistry with him than her canon love interests. When Sunburst was talking about Twilight to Starlight, I was half expecting him to ask if Twilight was single.
I was expecting Sunburst to interact with the Main Six, so when they went to the apple farm, I was pretty surprised to see Trixie just bumming there. That must have been an intentional fake out. Sunburst had great scenes with Trixie too, including the above GIF.
Bringing back the Mirror Pool was pretty random; they didn't even use it for anything. Maud's scenes were less interesting, aside from Sunburst being confused about when she was joking.
I read a post about Starlight's magic being OP here, and yeah, her spell was pretty far out, but we don't know the actual extent of it. It seems like it was very specific for those circumstances, and required that paper as a medium. Still, it's always fun when she goes crazy with her magic.
The ending was alright. Nice to see Sunburst being used for slapstick in canon, though Twilight is more alright with her home being wrecked than I expected. Also, those books are huge.
To match up what we saw at the end of Legends of Magic #6, Sunburst must have unpacked Starswirl's book from the barrel without reading it then lost track of it. Which... isn't that unlikely.
Overall, this was a nice episode for the scenes of Sunburst getting along with the other mares, but I thought the resolution was a bit weak.
EDIT: Posting the PonyGAF Discord chat invite link again. Quote to see:
