the fact that Celestia never even apologises to Sunset for failing her as a mentor, when she comes back to Equestria, and it's Sunset who is forced to apologize is what gets my goat

I wish we got a full episode on Sunset’s backstory.

It’s my headcannon that Princess Celestia learned her lesson with Sunset Shimmer when she took on Twilight, but given Celestia’s (seeming) inability to take responsibility, she wouldn’t acknowledge any of her faults on the matter. She’s a huge doofus.

I think part of the problem is she saw Luna in Sunset and since she had to banish Luna for 1000 years she was afraid of history repeating itself but didn’t know how to handle things differently

Yes! I like this! We need to acknowledge that Celestia, despite being immortal, is still capable of making mistakes. We can still love her as a character and her strengths while also acknowledging she is flawed.

I definitely agree that Celestia is partially responsible for Sunset turning evil, but at the same time, Sunset is also responsible for her own actions. I also feel like Celestia's teaching approach towards Twilight was different, not just because she was not as confident as Sunset was or that she treated both  differently, but also because she probably DID learn from failing Sunset. She knew she messed up and wanted to try and change her approach towards Twilight. I don't think that Celestia was cold to Sunset because she didn't like her, I just think she didn't know HOW to actually teach Sunset what she needed learn which leads into Celestia sending Twilight to Ponyville to make friends later because she probably knew full well that she couldn't teach Twilight about the Magic of Friendship herself so she sends her off to make friends and learn about it herself instead, gave Twilight a support system and a curriculum "write about what you learned about Friendship every week" instead of what she did with Sunset, where she acted cold and indifferent towards her and just said "your not ready" Sunset was cruel and vindictive and she shouldn't be excused for her past, but I think it's fair to put some blame onto Celestia as well for not doing more to help Sunset get off that path she was on

Another issue I see not addressed with sunset is we are told she was egocentric and a bit narcissistic in her behaviour but we never see what her parents are like
A lot of sunsets issues with needing validation and being the best at magic could have come from her home life
She never talks about her parents in the equestria girls movies or shorts and specials and we never get flashbacks to her childhood or to her time in canterlot. Neglectful parents or straight up abusive parents can create an environment where sunsets egocentric tendencies and need to know more and be the best in her field can stem from.

WOW I agree: Celestia was wrong to assume Sunset would simply accept her study plan without explanation (somewhat misguided: focusing entirely on Sunset's magical ability for much of her life and leaving friendship for later), Celestia was indeed right that Sunset wasn't ready, but she didn't tell her what she was lacking: it’s true that should have found a better way to help Sunset overcome her personal flaws—guiding her rather than leaving her to figure it out on her own. It’s also remarkable how Sunset’s ambition seemed innocent at first, right up until things took a turn for the worse.. And Celestia probably changed her teaching style to a less strict one with Twilight. It hurts that all that happened between them.

So sad we never got that last movie to see the real human Sunset shimmer and what she been up to.

Celestia definitely mishandled Sunset, but it wasn't entirely her fault. The comics and word of mouth from the writers revealed that Sunset's parents only viewed her as a means to promote their own status and brought hr up believing that you could only gain love and acceptance through status and success. So Sunset attempted to rush through her studies to learn as much as she could as fast as she could in order to get that status. Celestia tried to dissuade her from this by telling her to make friends, but she didn't properly explain things. But Sunset viewed friendship as a waste of time due to how she was brought up, and so didn't listen to Celestia and dove even more into her studies. Celestia kept trying to dissuade her, causing Sunset to believe that Celestia didn't think she was worthy and was trying to hold her back, so she just dove even more into her studies to prove herself, causing Celestia to be stricter in her dissuading, which eventually caused Sunset to grow resentful of her, thinking Celestia was refusing to acknowledge her worth. That's why Celestia used the mirror to show Sunset her possible future (one where she was an alicorn who ruled Equestria as a dictator, and one where she was in the human world). This backfired though as Sunset became obsessed with the mirror, believing it held the key to her success, eventually causing her to learn that she could use it to travel to another world, where she believed she would find the answers she sought, but she ended up getting stuck in the human world when the portal closed behind her for 30 moons, leading the the events of the first Equestria Girls movie.
So really it was a combination of Sunset's parents raising her wrong, Celestia not recognizing the situation for what it was and mishandling it, and Sunset not listening because a combination of the above that led to her going bad. Ironically though, it's what ultimately led to her finding her true destiny and finding happiness.

This is great :) I agree heavily, you’re not too harsh with Celestia. In fact I hope you do a video on why Luna was the victim between her and celestia. I think celestia sets up the storybook in ep 1 with a convenient narrative that makes her sister look bad. Celestia kinda makes me think of a narcissistic sibling that has spotty empathy and sudden moments of rage and ego, especially in episodes like between dawn and dusk. Celestia uses the canterlot voice on Luna after a day of having an imbalance of activities done, where Luna is suffering but when Luna has fun Celestia is disengaging. There’s more examples like this, but when I see Luna transform into nightmare moon because she’s finally standing up for herself, something takes over her that surprises Luna and no one knows what caused it. Celestia never asks what this is, she just allows everyone to see Luna as bad and never talks about it when Luna is restored. When Luna is resorted for the first time she patronizes Luna and acts like her becoming nightmare moon was voluntary, you’d like there would be a different reaction right? Like yeah sure, Celestia shed some tears when banishing Luna and when she returns but she acts like nothing strange happened, it almost feels like Celestia was too calm…and each time Celestia argues with Luna, it mirrors how narcissists argue by circling around redirecting it to you instead of getting to an understanding, I see that with how Celestia talks to Luna behind closed doors… opening to the episode where starlight glimmer switches their cutie marks, Celestia glares at Luna forcing Luna to not say how she really feels and instead just say she’s ok when she’s not.

Honestly, you are 100% spot on about everything that unfortunately happened with Sunset Shimmer. To me, I align it with how parents change their parenting style after the second kid. With the first one, they’re too strict, too overly protective, have so much high hope for them, encourage and/pressure them into studying more, getting good grades, look into a good college and job, etc etc. Then the second kid comes around, and they’re not as strict as they were before, they’re not pressuring the kid too much into getting good grades and to just try their best, they’re letting them decide whether or not if they want to continue studying or just go on to working. Had Celestial used her second way of mentoring on Sunset then she wouldn’t have gone down the path she chose, she wouldn’t have become so cruel, she would have definitely become a princess as well, but well, what’s done is done, though she didn’t become a princess, at least she did become one of the elements of harmony in the human world ❤

One thing I thought of while watching the video was, since Twilight and Sunset seem to be around the same age based on the Equestria Girls movies and how Sunset looks while in Equestria and Celestia took on Twilight as her apprentice when she got her cutie mark(I think that's when it started, but it could've been later at any point during her time at Celestia's School). Sunset might've been a filly when she left through the mirror, this puts Sunset's story in a new perspective to me.

I wondered about this very question many times. I believe that Celesta changed her teaching style completely after failing with Sunset. In the first Equatria girls comic, where we are presented with Sunset’s backstory, Celestia seems cold and distant towards her. She even has Sunset’s kicked out of the palace library at one point. In short, she’s a completely different character from the maternal figure we see when she interacts with Twilight. This particular behaviour, as you mentioned, is what ultimately pushed Sunset onto a darker path. This makes even more sense if we compare Sunset and Luna’s falls. We know from the very beginning of the the series that Luna’s heart gradually grew darker because she felt outshined by Celestia and less loved by her subjects. This change didn’t happen overnight, fear and hatred consumed Luna little by little until they burst and she became Nightmare Moon. Had Celestia been as attentive towards her sister as she was with Twilight later on, she would have noticed Luna’s gradual change and intervened by trying to get through to her. Instead, she only does something once Luna has gone rouge and she does so by banishing her to the moon for a thousand years. The same applies to Sunset. We know that Sunset began her studies before Twilight and that she was Celestia’s personal student before her. It makes sense that Celestia would treat her differently, more harshly, since by that point in her life, she still didn’t have enough experience as a mentor. Her cold and, at times, cruel demeanour ultimately pushed Sunset away. However, Sunset’s fall must have impacted Celestia to the point that it made her realise that she needed to change. Hence why she’s completely different with Twilight for whom she isn’t just a mentor but a warm, maternal figure, too. It’s no coincidence that, upon returning to Equestria, Sunset specifically tried to steal Twilight’s crown. Furthermore, in “Rainbow Rocks”, after hearing about Twilight’s official princess title, Sunset openly says to Twilight “I guess you really were Princess Celestia’s prized pupil.” Even though, she’s already changed by that point, we can feel the pain in Sunset’s voice when she says that sentence. What she really means is “You were her prized pupil, the one who made it, and I didn’t., I wasn’t enough”.

Yup, sounds a lot like what happened with Morro in Ninjago, and Morro was definitely victim to a flawed method, although for slightly different reasons. The core part that's similar for Sunset and Morro's stories, is knowing what their path should or could lead to, but ultimately being unable to reach it for reasons outside of their control. Now, the two of them definitely don't have one-to-one similarities, but they were both failed by the expectations of their mentors and improper communication from those figures. It's no wonder they both went villain mode, dang...

Sunset got the eldest sibling treatment (assuming she was Celestia's very first student), basically when parents don't know how to parent so they experiment on the first child with lots of trials and errors but they become more prepared for the second one (Twilight).

I think sunset probably assumed she could become a princess because cadence and sunset were probably fillys around the same time and sunset probably thought if celestia saw something in cadence then celestia could see something in her but the thing is sunset prob never noticed that you have to be destined to be a princess because we know cadence and twilight were both destined to be princess because of their cutie marks but also I really don’t think sunset would have wanted to be a princess if she did become one because we know that twilight hated being a princess but I also dont think celestia thought sunset could have been a princess I think celestia thought that she could train sunset up to be a holder of one of the elements of harmony

100% agreed, loved this video <3.

I hate that the fandom is unable to accept that Celestia was a bad and negligent teacher to Sunset. Sunset needed a better guidance and Celestia failed on that.

Even Celestia knew that Sunset wasn't destined by the Tree of Harmony because of her Cutie Mark, but she still filled her with illusions and hopes that she would be someone great- kinda cruel, if you ask me.

And in the comics you can see that Celestia and Sunset were similar; they both had big egos and arrogance issues that they later overcame.
Celestia is not perfect, she is flawed, and there's nothing wrong with that, But I really wanted  her to be the one to apologize to Sunset, not the other way around, and to accept her mistakes.

Something else just occurs to me. I'm amazed Celestia, didn't have an answer ready for the question. Which probably would have come up of why am I your apprentice? And what are you training me to become? Because let's be real, you don't become an apprentice to stay an apprentice. You become an apprentice to become something else that's just the way it works.

This character straight up got the Tai Lung treatment