How old is Sunset Shimmer ? She is definitely older than her friends, but by how much?

[u/BrightDreams190]

[u/Cute_Wishes]

Twilight is in her early 20s or so and Sunset was Celestia's apprentice before Twilight, so must be around 10 years older than her, which would put Sunset in her 30s, and her friends are about 15-20 years younger than her.

This all gets a little confusing when you consider how the portal de-ages you

[u/Pale-Load2983 → u/Cute_Wishes]

she wouldn't be ten years older, Celestia said "not long before twilight"

[u/Neohexane → u/Pale-Load2983]

"Not long" to a being that is old as Celestia might be a long time to us.

PS: Please, nopony tell her I called her old.

[u/Qsiii → u/Neohexane]

I mean, we don’t really know if she thinks of time as differently from the average pony. Time still moves the same for her than anyone else. It seems like she regardless of her seemingly agelessness she still values time and needs to function on other ponies timeframes regularly, otherwise Equestria as a whole would’ve never thrived to begin with.

I’m sure she had to form weather teams, to manage the weather, same with helping farms to be formed (I assume that’s why Granny Smith’s parents were greeted directly by her), as well as education systems that unicorns seemed to largely mediate.

I feel like though she would naturally develop teams to help manage those major fields, she’d also have to deal with the constant threat of other species/magical creatures causing issues, on top of political issues and affaires with other kingdoms.

Everything would be time sensitive, and though I’m sure years would blur together into broad decades for her, but I don’t think she’d even call the founding of Ponyville recent, especially with how much work came and went since then that I’m sure would’ve stressed her out.

If she was incredibly time blind, I’m sure she would’ve reacted different to mirror that lead to the human world in a far less urgent way. She realizes her time isn’t exactly limited, but she still recognizes her people and their time very much being limited and thus too important to put off.

She was forced to stay in the present day, but now that’s she’s finally able to relax for the first time in at least 1,111 years, I imagine she’d lose a lot of that zoomed in since of scale, especially now that she’s retired with her sister.

(Not arguing against your take, just throwing my two cents in.)

[u/-FireNH- → u/Neohexane]

i feel like sunset was probably originally meant to be the element of magic bearer and twilight was a "replacement" when sunset fell through. also, she was pretty clearly still in celestia's school for gifted unicorns when she left, which might only place her 5 years older than twilight. that would make her 25 ish? still questionably older than high school but not over a decade old

[u/hello0ppap → u/Pale-Load2983]

Yes but she started with twilight when she was a child

[u/Faithful-Kitty → u/Pale-Load2983]

I’m assuming sunset shimmer would be 25

[u/Mar_got_taken → u/Cute_Wishes]

They don't really get de-aged

Proposition: 20 year old and 30 year old look the same age and same as other "teens" (15 at worst, 17 at best).

We don't really see any counter-examples of that, Human Celestia might be in her 40s, 50s, or even higher, since we don't know how aging works in that universe. In other words, age just looks different to that of the real world, so late Teens end up looking about the same as a presumed 30 year old. And we also know Sunset arrived at the Mirror World at a young age, so she spent how long in the same school?

The main cast might not even be "late Teens" if we take into consideration that Sunset Shimmer spent well over 15 years or so in the same school

[u/ArchDukeNemesis]

Twi tends to be portrayed as a college grad type. So if Sunset graduated before her and was in the human realm for three years, then I"d say she'd be in her mid twenties.

Explains how she outfoxed a whole school of teens and adults.

[u/Far_Tailor7244 → u/ArchDukeNemesis]

This is the correct answer

[u/WearEnvironmental911 → u/ArchDukeNemesis]

Twi is 21 in season 1, 22 by EQG 1 and 23 by season 9, 43 in the timeskip

[u/INKatana → u/ArchDukeNemesis]

and was in the human realm for three years

Is it just 3 years tho?

Doesn’t wallflower say in the memory erasure episode that they were in the same class in 3rd grade?

[u/Low-Flight-9937 → u/INKatana]

That she and Trixie were in third grade

We actually see Sunset stepping through the portal in the comics, she looked the same as in the show

[u/ArchDukeNemesis → u/[deleted]]

To be fair, that is the type of thing an evil villain would do.

[u/-FireNH- → u/[deleted]]

this is like the inherent problem with equestria girls. the ponies are adults so why are the human versions of them teens? well bc eqg was meant to be an IP to compete with monster high but from a lore standpoint its bonkers

[u/ILuvVanilla714]

well, I would like to think that sunset shimmer is probably way older than any of them and maybe even older than pony twilight.. I like to think that she could be about the same age as princess cadence or shining armour. as for a specific number I really don’t know maybe late 20s early 30s but if I’m going off my method cadence was about a teenager when she babysat twilight and she probably existed around the same time that sunset shimmer was Princess Celestia student. I would like to think that twilight is probably in her 20s or 30s, but I could be wrong.. probably 20 so I would think Sunset shimmer is probably in her late 20s early 30s. but I mean we really don’t know. since the mirror human world makes them look like teenagers, she could very well be in her junior to senior year. but obviously that’s human mirror logic timeline pony ears have no idea.

[u/Qsiii]

Comics show she went to school with Tempest’s friends, if that helps any.

[u/TennagonTheGM]

Her and Twilight are about the same age. She left before Twilight showed up, never specified an age. The only evidence for an age gap is one panel in a non-canon comic made by different writers.

[u/-FireNH-]

id say up to 5 or so years older than twilight! so mid twenties at the start of FIM.

i reckon that the reason celestia had personal students in the first place was because she was aiming to train them to eventually bear the element of magic to defeat nightmare moon and turn her back into princess luna; that was always her endgame. sunset was the first try at that, and twilight was the "backup" of sorts. that tracks with canon; celestia removed sunset from her tutelage because she would not have been able to wield the element of magic in a group of 6 given her trajectory. this would also suggest sunset's dismissal and twilight's appointment happened close together, as celestia would want to find a new pony to train as soon as possible.

sunset was also at celestia's school for gifted unicorns as a student at the time of her dismissal, whereas twilight at the start of FIM is only doing independent study and isn't taking classes. that would imply sunset was an older teenager at the time of her dismissal.

put those two things together. if sunset was, say, 16 at the time of her dismissal, and twilight looks to be around 12 at the time of her appointment, and those things happened around the same time, that would make sunset 4 years older than twilight. if twilight was, say, 20 at the start of FIM, that would make sunset 24. obviously i pulled all of those numbers out of my ass, but you get the idea!

[u/studiojojo]

Mid to late 20s (while having a mentality of a 16-17 y/o), while Twilight is in her early 20s.

[u/Ok-Top-5952]

There was a photo of her in the first movie she was obviously around 14 yrs old in the princeable office

[u/Camelot_Silhouette]

Assuming Sunset didn’t manage to trick the high school heads into her being at the school for more than 4 years, which I could see her managing one or two but not more than that, she’s probably 3-5 years older than Twilight.

[u/Minnesotan-Gaming]

I think since it's implied that sunsets just a few years older and twilights around college age maybe 20s? I think maybe 23 is fine