Headscratchers / My Little Pony: Nightmare Knights

• How did the alternate Starlight Glimmer get into the casino if it requires boasting about their evilness and Starlight was convinced to a fault she was righteous? Why were they even there?
  • All the alts are very different from their prime versions. Not to mention a Glimmer who won was quite capable of jumping off the slippery slope, as she was clearly letting her standards slip even by 'Cutie Map'.
• Why are they dismissing Starlight Glimmer for the team? If she's too reformed, how's Luna, who's spent far longer reforming, not? If it's past misdeeds, haven't Trixie and Capper done less? On that note, why wouldn't the Mane Six get through given all the mischief they've caused?
  • The stated metric is potential harm and mischief. As a villain, Starlight was the opposite of mischievous, honestly thought she was doing right, and well-intentioned enough to stop once she realized the consequences of actions. The Mane Six have never willfully cause harm, at least compared the good they've done.
  • While Luna and co. are Reformed, but Not Tamed, Starlight and the Mane Six are redeemed and nice enough respectively that it's hard to imagine they could convincingly fake villainy.
  • The exact reason stated was "she's too close to Twilight." It was more about keeping it secret than anything else.
• Why don't they consider recruiting Discord?
  • Even reformed, he's too chaotic to be reliable for this job?
  • Or his being Eris's? "cousin" may mean she'd be ready for him?
  • None of them have any real way of contacting him. Even Luna cannot appear in his dreams (which was established a long time ago).
• Tempest states she used the Staff of Sacanas to drain the Princesses magic. But the Storm King was the one who did that and she just brought him the Princesses to make that possible. What gives?
  • Tempest's Guilt Complex?
• Tempest was unaware of Nightmare Night. If she grew up in Equestria such that her friends were accepted into Celestia's academy, how could she not know about it?
  • Pipsqueak indicated that it's not a particularly widespread holiday, as he had never experienced it before moving to Ponyville.
• Why has Trixie suddenly reverted back to being bitterly resentful of Twilight? The last time she really acted like that was in "No Second Prances", with season 7 onwards showing her having perfectly friendly and civil interactions with her (and even admitting in "To Change A Changeling" that she "used to" hate Twilight). So why is Trixie now back to angrily holding their past encounters against her?
  • Trixie's just kinda petty and mean spirited. She has no desire for revenge on Twilight, but even Starlight is the target of frequent catty comments from Trixie. In a way Trixie appears to thrive on antagonism, especially if someone is spoiling for a fight (as alt-Twilight clearly was, by stealing her shtick).
• Why, in the ending, did they decide to keep what happened secret? I understand at first that Luna wanted to keep her powers being stolen, but once that's fixed, what's to gain by continued secrecy? Surely they would appreciate the good publicity?
• How does Eris' magic work, exactly? She is only using them while wielding the Staff of Sacanas, and is apparently rendered completely powerless and at Luna's mercy once the staff is destroyed. This would indicate her power is, for some reason, not self-sufficient and dependent on the artifact (if it was previously used to steal her chaos magic from her — presumably by the Pony of Shadows — why doesn't she just take it back?). But if that is the case, why is she planning to sell it? This could be interpreted that Eris actually intends to sell the crystal containing stolen Luna's magic, not the staff itself — but then again, she is repeatedly clearly referring to the staff when talking about her plans. Come to that, how does the crystal installed affect the powers of the artifact? After Capper secretly replaces Luna's crystal with a fake, the Staff of Sacanas channels Eris' chaos magic properly at first, but suddenly stops working when Capper's double-cross is revealed — allowing Luna to destroy it after gaining her powers back...
  • The implication is most of Eris' power was drained by their Pony of Shadows using her as a battery, so she used Luna's as a replacement. With how they bested the Pony of Shadows (Daybreaker), there may have been nothing less to take back their powers from, or they lacked the ability to drain/transfer magic, or the way they drained their powers was finite. As for selling it, maybe she expected to recover her powers on her own eventually or was overconfident she didn't need her powers due to relying on guile to get by this long.
  • For that matter, instead of begging for mercy and coming up with this victimhood justification, can't she just summon any of the villains in her own casino? I'm sure there are plenty of them around.