If the "Unicorn Trap" by Canterlogic was being shown off at the event, how and why are there already so many of the traps set up around Maritime Bay on the same day?
Given how paranoid earth ponies had become, it's safe to assume they already installed some in advance. When you live in fear, you rarely think rationally.
The splat-a-pults were ready to go as well. It's pretty clear the technology was already out in the field, it was just being shown off at the annual presentation. This makes sense because there shouldn't be anything to actually trigger these defenses in public so ponies wouldn't be familiar with them. The presentation isn't a "Coming soon", it's a "Look what we've accomplished this year".
This will probably be explained once the series comes out, but how do you somehow obtain literal world peace and then have it all fall apart somehow? What caused the three pony races to hate each other again? What happened to all the non-pony creatures?
1. Given it's so far in the future the Mane Six are widely thought to be fairy tales and nopony seems to even remember their names, the beings/teachings that maintained and enabled said peace were long gone and forgotten. 2. Zephyr Heights had long abandoned advertisements for Maretime Bay and Bridlewood meaning the ponies turned against each other relatively recently, long after those who would have known better were gone. 3. Given how insular ponies are nowadays and how much they've forgotten, they're unlikely to encounter or remember the other raced whom may well have come just as insular, if they're still around after whatever cataclysm was bad enough to wipe G4 civilization from the map and history.
If nothing else, maybe the beings or ways to turn friendship into a magical Deus ex Machina were lost, without which the utility of friendship diminished to the point they lost faith.
Something else that will probably get addressed in the series once it's out but how does Sprout get away with minimal consequence for nearly murdering Sunny on top of rendering her homeless and destroying most, if not all, of her memorabilia of her heavily implied to be deceased father? Yes he was a product of his environment but said environment shouldn't have caused his "I want to do this/have this/get this, therefore it should be mine even if it was someone else's first and they're upset about me taking it or even if me taking it causes problems for ponies who aren't me" attitude (which he exercised on his fellow Earth Ponies so "I was raised by a bigot" doesn't fly there). It's not to say "let's all jump on the 'Sprout is trash and deserves to die' train"; it's maybe, assuming Sunny ends up being given some kind of authority after becoming an Alicorn, Sprout needs to be given a few years of community service to help unlearn his bigoted mindset.
Cynical answer: His mother pulled some strings. She may believe that he went too far but that probably wouldn’t stop her from using her influence and make sure her son gets away with a slap on the wrist.
Because Society Is to Blame. Sprout only became as villainous as he did because the entire town pressured him into action, leading him to fall back on the same prejudice they indoctrinated him with and were guilty of themselves, and was shown just as remorseful as the rest of them once the dust settled (it didn't do a good job establishing why, but that's another issue). If Sprout deserves further punishment, how does the society that encouraged/enabled him also not deserve such? Also he has the whole upcoming series to face karma.
Because technically, he did nothing legally wrong:
His takeover of Maretime Bay may be perfectly legal. We do not know, how exactly Maretime Bay is governed, so he may be just voted into dictator position by frightened population.
Forming militia and preparing for war is not illegal by itself. It may actually be viewed as his responsibility.
Attempting to defend the town against unicorns, pegasi and plans to restore their magic (upsetting the power balance against earth pony) are his direct responsibility.
So...Let Me Get This Straight...? You are saying that attempted manslaughter (which trying to destroy the lighthouse while Sunny was inside/on top of it would qualify as since even if Sprout's machine didn't kill her directly, falling debris or Sunny falling from the roof to the ground had the potential to do so) wouldn't be illegal and/or could be brushed aside by Sunny being a supposed race traitor?... pretty sure in Real Life, "I wanted to destroy X's home while they were inside because they're a race traitor but poor little old me; I was raised by a bigot" would fall under Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse, not Alas, Poor Villain.
It may not be technically illegal. Sprout is clearly overreacting, but technically, he may be well within his powers vas legally elected emergency dictator.
In the Make your Mark series, we can see him doing Community Service. Took him long enough, but karma finally hitted him.
That they are still using Hammerspace suggests it's animation shortcut as opposed to anything meant to take it seriously.
It has been speculated hoofs use Granular Jamming, but G5's redesigned hooves look too solid to support that. Maybe they're like geckos and have tiny hairs/structures that allow adhesion. And/or maybe they are just that skilled at using them.
It doesn’t seem like they would be skilled at using hooves to hold things as in some instances it looks like the object would immediately slide off that hoof. So it’s more likely that their hooves are just really sticky, or their hooves are magnetic and there’s magnets inside of the objects meant to attract to the hoof.
So is everypony just together again? Not all of the pegasi and unicorns were there when the leaders worked together, for all they know their magic just came back, and for all we know, Sunny and her friends might still have work to do.
If we were realistic, that should be the case, but this is My Little Pony. Our best bet is that the series will start off with a small time skip to get the "suspenseful phase" out of the way.
Minor conflicts between the three races trying to live together can be a recurring plot element in the series.
How did Hitch lost his badge? Last checked, when Pipp decides to help Sunny and the others to find the other crystal, he still had it. But in the next scene, when it's morning, he lost it... like a scene is missing here.
He lost it somewhere between the escape from Zephyr Heights and the flower field. They had been travelling for a few hours, there was plenty of time for him to lose it off-screen.
He had it shortly before he went to sleep and he didn't realize it until the next day, because of what had happened at least one night.
Also, how did Queen Haven escape from prison?
One possibility is that she was helped by a guard who stayed loyal to her despite the reveal. Afterwards she only needed to track her daughters. That could have been relatively easy thanks to Pip having her phone with her, which could have provided the Queen with their exact location or at the very least general direction in which they traveled.
Or Pegasi may actually realize (after initial outburst cooled a bit) that she did not actually done anything outright criminal, and instead of having problem with potentially embarrassing proceeding, quietly decided just to let her go.
Haven't they sent a number of guards after her after she escaped though? One of them addressed Haven as "Your Criminal Highness". That would imply that they were still angry with the Royal Family and treating them as fugitives from justice.
Maybe those guards are still (understandably) angry and / or there was a lack of communication and they don't know that they wanted to release her.
They have the least dungeon-y dungeon of all time. The thing is plated with gold and has a massage chair. Considering that design, it's not hard to imagine that the place has some gaping security flaws.
The Wonderbolts poster on the abandoned airport is exactly the same as in G4. Does this means, that whatever catastrophe hit Equestria, it happened within several decades from G4's end at most?
Very unlikely, otherwise somepony would remember the before times. A guess is that the poster is within the same category as Monet paintings, Egyptian heiroglyphs, and extremely old maps- an expensive old thing you would find at an auction or a museum. It was likely once very well-preserved at one point.
It's assumed that Alicorns are the only ones who can be from royalty. Who changed the rules that Pegasus can a be royals too? Or Queen Heaven and her daughters are also phony ponies full of baloney whom pretend to be royal?
Before the unification of three tribes into what became Equestria we know from Friendship is Magic, each tribe had its own leader (military commander for Pegasi, hereditary princess for Unicorns and elected chancellor for Earth Ponies). It's apparent that after dissolution of Equestria and separation of tribes, they went back to ruling themselves again and developed their own political systems; ones that would be unbound by traditions and rules of ancient Equestria.
More generally, even if alicorns were the only ones seen as royalty in G4's Equestria, it's not especially strange that a society's rules and traditions will not survive that society's end. The nations that formed after the end of G4's Equestria aren't any more bound to follow its old traditions that, for instance, modern latinate nations are to still run themselves like the Roman Empire.
Alicorns are seemingly so long gone most think the setting they were from was a fairy tale, thus their existence is no longer a consideration or possibility to account for politically.
Sunny works at a smoothie stand for a living. Smoothies are fruit blended with milk, yogurt, or ice cream—dairy products. In G4, at least in earlier seasons, there were talking cows. Yet we don't see a single talking-cow character in the movie. Where are the talking cows? Where do they live, if not in pony cities? Clearly, if Sunny has a source of dairy products for her business, then cows and ponies must have some kind of economic relationship. But would they have similar economic relationships with pegasi and/or unicorns? And if so, why didn't each of the three pony tribes hear on the grapevine from the cows that the other two tribes weren't so bad, and didn't even have magic?
Non-dairy "milks" exist even in our world. They could be smoothies made with soy or almond milk.
Maybe cows lost the ability to speak somewhere during the timeskip. Or maybe their source of dairy is breastmilk.
You're thinking milkshakes. Smoothies can be made with other liquids like juice.
Unicorns say that earth ponies smell like rotten sardines. That raises some questions: why would sardines even be a consumer-product for a race of herbivores? And if unicorns have never seen the sea, then how would they know what naturally-occurring rotten sardines smell like?
This just probably an unfortunate rumor similar to the one about Unicorns and Pegasi. Remember we see they're full of odd superstitions, so unfounded beliefs such as the above isn't unusual. As for the smell, they probably got that fact from ancient Equestrian book from before whatever split the tribes and incorporated it into their rumors.
They could use fish for pet food. While the ponies may not eat meat themselves, any cats they might own would find sardines a tasty treat.
While there may not be any cats in the story, there are definitely dogs (Cloudpuff, for instance), which could easily be fed sardines.
Izzy has never seen the sea; other unicorns may have seen it. Presumably there are other coastlines far from Maretime Bay.
How do the ponies have cutie marks if there is no magic? When Tirek took magic, the cutie marks of those he stole magic from disappeared. Also, what is the purpose of cutie marks now? Further, why are they only on the right flank? In G4, which this is a sequel to, they were shown appearing on both flanks.
Perhaps they saw the marks on pictures of "ancient Equestrians" and didn't know what they actually were, instead just choosing to emulate those ponies with tattoos.
A reason they had cuite marks on both sides in G4 was it being easier to animate in Flash, they no longer need to limit themselves to that. In-universe, if something changed how magic functioned as it did (like the sun and moon now moving on their own), a change in how cutie marks function wouldn't be out there.
Maybe the both sides thing wasn't diegetic. In "The Cutie Map" Starlight was only shown stealing one mark each which was sufficient to leave them de-marked, while the times having marks on both sides was story relevant were minor enough at most to be within the realm of casual Retcon.
Note that the figurines of the Mane Six don't have their cutie marks (having them in the opening is likely like how they imagined their voices correctly, it's beyond what's meant to be diegetic) nor did they recognize the star symbol as a cutie mark or it's connection despite Sunny knowing about Twilight. Whatever happened it seems cutie marks no longer carry such significance and haven't for such a long time it's been forgotten.
After Queen Haven and her daughters are revealed to be unable to fly, she is not only stripped of their royal title, but also arrested for being a "phony pony". On whose authority, exactly? If she is a monarch, shouldn't the guards serve her, flight or not? Who is the leader of Zephyr Heights now that she's stripped of her rank?
It's not too hard to imagine they've got a Monarch-Parliament system similar to Britain. Maybe the Prime Minister ordered the Queen's arrest.
The outrage regarding the royals' lies seems to have resulted in a Military Coup in the form of her guards turning on her.
There are lots of possibilities: A government minister, a general in the military, a judge, a law enforcement agency, and probably some combination of those. Ultimately leadership derives its power from the confidence and agreement of other powerful individuals in society. Once the leader loses that confidence, they're out, and the new leadership can paper over the coup with whatever new laws they like.
It could be an Oliver Cromwell style leader who likely was a major part of the plot to overthrow her.
Where does Zephyr Heights gets its food (and other resources for that matter)? The city is very developed and prosperous but also seems to be isolated from the rest of Equestria given its placement on top of a high mountain and how surprising the presence an Earth Pony and Unicorn was. There didn't appear to be farmland around the mountain either.
Since they are high-tech society, hydroponic and vertical farming seems to be the best answer; they are more efficient than traditional land farming, and could feed a city from within.
So if the reason magic disappeared was due to the pony tribes becoming divided, why didn't it disappear in the backstory revealed in "Hearth's Warming Eve" when they were also divided?
Even though the tribes weren’t on good terms during that time period and constantly fought they still maintained a relationship with each other and had agreements in place to support each other and as such weren’t actually divided like they were here.
If this is the same world as Friendship Is Magic, how is the sun and moon able to rise and set without the use of magic or someone to move them? And how does weather occur without ponies actively managing it?
Maybe ponies merely controlled weather to their liking, but it would still happen on its own if they didn't intervene. As for the sun and moon, maybe the same way it worked before unicorns/being able to use use magic such came to do it.
In Generation 4, it's shown that disharmony between the three pony races summons ghostly, horse-like creatures known as Windigos that feed on their negative emotions and turn Equestria into an icy wasteland. Here, the three races living apart and believing the worst of each other seems to have eliminated magic entirely, with no hint of the Windigos ever being a problem, though it's possible they were destroyed at the end of Friendship is Magic.
The loss of magic in Equestria may simply have affected the Windigos also, rendering them just as powerless as the ponies (or possibly even causing them to vanish entirely, like Discord almost did once).
In FIM, wendigos feed on hatred. Although the relations between ponies have declined, there does not seem to be an open hatred between them.
Throughout Friendship Is Magic, the ponies make peace and became friends with several other creatures throughout the world, including dragons, griffons, changelings, hippogriffs, yaks, and others. However, none of these other creatures are ever referred to in the film, making it unclear what happened to them or if the ponies became divided from them like they did with each other.
Like ponies, distrust may have taken its toll on their relationships.
There is no clue as to if any of the god-level characters from Generation 4 still live. Discord, Celestia, Luna, Twilight, and Tirek are fairly explicitly immortal, and elder dragons can live for millennia. Where are they, and if any of the alicorns still live, what happened to cause them to abandon their people? Did they give up their immortality at some point, or lose it when magic ended?
In the case of alicorns, they may just not age and may be killed, have accidents ETC; in Tirek's case, he may have starved to death after the magic disappeared.
Some have speculated that immortality is not actually a standard feature of alicorn physiology - that Celestia and Luna had been sustained via their respective magical connections to the sun and moon (which they may have given up when they retired).
Are Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow still statues by this time? If they haven't been destroyed at some point already (which the pegasi of Zephyr Heights likely could have done after the divide, either out of fear of unicorns releasing them or covering up evidence of ponies working together — the biggest instance of which being the fight with this trio — or both), it is possible that the disappearance of magic released them (given Cozy Glow's ritual had broken the "walk on clouds" spell), though if this was the case, they would be powerless and most likely die of old age by G5's time (depending on how immortal Tirek is and whether it depends on magic or Tartarus). Unless the spell was permanent.
As you well said, assuming they are not still in stone, it is possible that they have not survived: Cozy will have died of old age and Tirek and Chrysalis of starvation note Depending on whether or not they need magic to feed themselves. .
After the gang leaves Zephyr Heights for Bridlewood we have a scene where Sunny consults the map from her dad's journal to navigate the land. Why does she do that, if she has a pony who came from there right beside her? Just ask Izzy!
Just because Izzy is from Bridlewood doesn't mean she would know how to navigate her way there, especially from a place that she's not familiar with and has never travelled to from Bridlewood.
Judging from her conduct during the song "I'm Looking Out For You" (and, y'know, her overall personality and behavior in general), it might be inferred that Izzy might not be the type of pony to be trusted with directions. The real question is how she found her way to Maretime Bay all by herself.
Izzy wanted to go there since childhood, maybe that's why it took as long as she did.
Canterlot, Ponyville, and the Twilight Sparkle School of Friendship are all important places that symbolized the former unity of the Equestrian Ponies. But now that Equestria is divided, have these places been completely abandoned and reduced to ruins? Or have they completely disappeared without a trace and been replaced by unfamiliar locales with almost no hint of their existence?
Concept arts for the movie show the ruins of Ponyville cordoned and walled off, with radiation and biological hazard signs on the wall.
The pegasi managed to develop smart phones, but not airplanes — Zipp seemed to be the only one interested in finding any sort of solution to the whole "loss of flight magic" thing. What's up with that? One can argue that the queen (and Pipp) would be more interested in maintaining the illusion of natural flight than with practical flight, but what of the others? If nothing else, airships (like the ones they used to have before the pony tribes isolated themselves) would be very useful for border patrol.
Long-distance trips (where airships would be most useful) aren't a thing anymore. Travelling within the city is best done by ground-based transport. The border patrols seem kind of perfunctory holdover from past times (Zoom and Thunder seem pretty surprised to have actually found intruders, the implication being it hasn't happened in years if not generations) so probably have had their budget slashed and can't justify expensive equipment. As for flying for pleasure, it's possible that "artificial" flight would just remind the pegasi of what they're missing, like being able to smell a delicious meal you can't eat. Add to that that there are few if any qualified pilots for the above reasons, and the whole flight industry is probably dead with no economic incentive to start up again.
How did Pipp escape her audience after her secret was exposed? We see her hanging above a dumbstruck and probably angry crowd, and then in the next scene she comes up to Sunny and co., completely alone.
She climbed her wires back up to the dressing room/mezzanine where the royals descend from for their performance. Once up there, she probably knew a private exit path out of the castle.
When they were all separated, what would any of the three regions have done if a situation like Pumpkin and Pound Cake happened, where two Earth ponies unexpectedly gave birth to a unicorn or pegasus (and vice versa with any of them) due to distant ancestry? Panic? Exile?
, but G5's redesigned hooves look too solid to support that. Maybe they're like geckos and have tiny hairs/structures that allow adhesion. And/or maybe they are just that skilled at using them.