“The writers definitely threw away a golden opportunity to take the problems with Boast Busters and turn them into something great. If Trixie’s return had been centered on Pinkie taking her friends to visit her family at the rock farm where Trixie worked after they ruined her life, they could have done an amazing episode where they threw what Spike, AJ, Rarity, and especially Rainbow (but not Twilight since she refused to heckle Trixie and saved her life at the end) did back in their faces and forced them to deal with the consequences of their actions since not only will Trixie justifiably hate them for it, but so will Pinkie’s family. Rainbow is especially interesting here because she’s also a performer who has suffered from bullying in the past which creates amazing narrative potential since she knows exactly how awful it is to be on the receiving end of what she did which will create all kinds of fun as she initially refuses to accept it and then frantically tries to fix it because she will absolutely hate herself for what she did in Boast Busters. At the end of the day I think everything would have worked out and Trixie could very well have joined the core cast to mix things up moving forwards (expanding the primary cast would have been important to keep things fresh), but instead we got the largely pointless Magic Duel”
