@Charade
I wouldn’t be surprised. xD
Not that you mentioned, the Starlight writters had a lot of time. Many episodes, 5 seasons, 4 years, from 2015 to 2019. But they haven’t done a lot with her. She appeared in 2 episodes out of 26 in season 5, she was barely introduced, we got many episodes that came out too late (The parent map should have been an episode from season 5, not 8) and, even though she wanted to redeem herself, she kept manipulating everypony, she kept swapping cutie marks, she kept saying she doesn’t want to be judged even though she’s her worst critic and she’s the last pony who should say that because of what happened in season 5, she manipulated Sunburst without his consent (and little reminder that he’s supposed to be her best friend)… And nobody, absolutely nobody, questioned her.
It’s not like Peridot in Steven Universe where they constantly questioned her loyalty to Yellow Diamond, especially in Message Received.
“Why do I keep sticking my neck out for you? You’re never gonna be on our side!”
“You offered her a lot of your trust.”
“I did! And it blew up in my face. You guys have been protecting Earth for thousands of years. She could’ve destroyed all of that. A whole Earth, why did I think I could change her mind?”
“Ugh, I know right? But I guess you can’t like go into peoples’ heads and change how they think. Maybe we can? Yeaaah, if we just shrink down really little-”
“No no no, I don’t want to tell her what to do. She should just know. Shouldn’t she?”
So… Yeah, pretty messy character.
About Cozy Glow, I still think she’s the most boring character in the show because of the lack of character. I won’t say that “the villains should be redeemed at the end of the show” because the villains did pretty bad stuff as well as Starlight, and I don’t think it would be the best solution.
I have a couple of ideas to make her at least interesting, even though it wouldn’t matter anyway:
-If Cozy Glow would end up being a villain, she shouldn’t be a kid. If she ended up being redeemed, she could be a little kid, like she is, but without bad intentions. She needed a better writer and better dialogue to make her believable.
-Cozy Glow should have parents. The core idea of her controlling personality is because her parents are sometimes manipulative, and that bad influence affects Cozy Glow’s view of the world in a negative toxic way.
-Cozy Glow uses a scepter to gain a huge amount of magic.
-Her parents try to help her in the last second, they try to reason with her, they admit their flaws, but they want her to be safe and happy no matter what.
-Cozy Glow takes a look at her hooves and her parents. This is not what she wants. She throws the scepter, but Twilight catch it. Cozy Glow comes back to her parents and Twilight puts the scepter safely in Canterlot.
-All that would last in the season 8. She would get 6 episodes for her character arc to make her meaningful.
It’s very basic, but I think it could work.