EqG Mini-review: "Sunset's Backstage Pass"

"If I can just get this bike up to 88 mph..."

If Nick Confalone's understanding of the position of Equestria Girls is indeed Hasbro's as well, then the days of anything beyond a few more shorts in that universe are now at an end. According to Confalone, there were plans for a Season 2 finale, as well as a third season, but those have not been taken up. I suppose Boulder might be making them, but there seems no indication of that either. So, "Sunset's Backstage Pass" (written by Whitney Ralls, not Confalone – thanks, Zack Wanzer in the comments :) ) represents the end of an era. Possibly. Let's have a brief look at how it did.

Hey, it's a time loop story! Okay, nothing wrong with those – I'm one of those people who liked the FiM S5 finale, for one thing. I can't say the music festival backdrop was especially original, but it wasn't objectionable either; I can easily enough see the Mane Seven going to one together. Having Sunset and Pinkie spend time together is interesting and something we haven't had much of, but I don't know how common SunPie shippers are! No, I'm not a shipper, but let's be honest: this is EqG and I'm sure they knew people's minds would go there.

I had to look up the names of the PostCrush ponies (Kiwi Lollipop and Supernova Zap), since they weren't all that memorable. After all, the big deal for a lot of fans will have been the return of the Dazzlings. Like many people, I was expecting them to end up being the root cause of Sunset's time-loop strife, so it was a nice twist that actually they had no clue what she meant when she accused them. We did get a song out of the Dazzlings, but "Find the Magic" really wasn't a patch on their best Rainbow Rocks efforts.

"Don't even think about it. Do you know what happens when you let churros interfere with causality?"

I enjoyed the way that Sunset eventually managed to use her repeating day to her advantage, such as winning over the security guard with a kitten. (Not keen on the notion of giving animals as presents/bribes, though. Maybe not the best signal to watching kids?) As for the moral of the story, that PostCrush's fans don't care about perfection, they just want to see their heroes sing, there's nothing wrong with it as such. It's just a bit unexciting, especially when "The Point of No Return" had a fairly similar moral earlier this year.

All in all, another moderate effort, and while it was no disaster and will doubtless have given SunPie fans in particular a good time, I don't think "Sunset's Backstage Pass" is going to go down as any sort of classic. It's been quite a while since any of the EqG specials were any sort of classic, so hard as it is to say I think perhaps there's a case for saying that it might be for the best that this is (nearly) the end. "True Original" this no longer seems to be, underwhelming more like. This final special was... okay. Nothing less, nothing more. Okay.

Yays

• Fun to see Pinkie and Sunset spending time together
• Some funny lines, eg Twilight and Sunset talking about space-time
• I can believe Pinkie getting distracted by those churros!

Neighs

• Maybe one too many times around the time loop
• The Dazzlings were a little underused
• The PostCrush duo were pretty generic characters

★★