Huge Sun fan here, I do agree his redemption arc was flawed. Very flawed. I think Sol's overall character and story has insane potential and was done as good as it could be considering the show he's from, but that doesn't necessarily make it beautiful, insane, powerful storytelling. I've said before to some people in the discord server about a similar topic that some characters in the show are, in a way, too complicated for the writers to handle correctly (ironic considering they made them.) Different example here so I can have an excuse to talk about writers neglect, Neptune.
Neptune, my second favourite who I love dearly, is a really interesting character that also has huge amounts of potential only for them to avoid covering his mental illness properly and are instead dumbing it down to silly comedy gags which are funny on surface level, but then you think about it harder and it comes off ableist. Neptune isn't "dumb" or anything like that, he is very intelligent, but his literal disability limits him from being totally alike to most others in the Solar System. He went through billions of years of total isolation (outside of his moons, who seem to frequently leave him alone anyway to go and do their own thing) out of fear of what could happen if he leaves his orbit, leading to him developing some serious mental issues (eg memory loss, visual and auditory hallucinations, etc) and you're telling me we should just play this off as a comedic relief character? I don't buy it.
(Little note here: Neptune's character arc is part of my personal complaints about Sol's character arc, but we'll get to that soon enough.)
They've done something similar with Sol's arc. Although they actually acknowledged his behaviour was wrong, they "resolved" this in the worst way possible: rushing it. This is a reoccurring theme in SB where they start a character central arc, completely butcher it because they make it go way too quickly or even too slowly, then make a controversial conclusion that sparks a lot of debates in the fandom. In this situation, I would have liked Sol's redemption to be slower.
Although I do enjoy the way they make his past impulses and instincts linger in his head (eye twitching heavily when asked about leaving orbits, harsh amounts of hesitating to say it's safe to go about their lives freely) I think they need to have spaced it out way more than just a couple of conversations with the remaining members of the SS. Earth and the gang did the best they could, sure, but that shouldn't have been enough if you get what I mean. Sol's mental issues are not things that can be so easily helped by non-professionals. Speaking as someone who's got some pretty serious issues of my own, conversations and comfort from your friends aren't what's gonna help you long term; this stuff WILL drag out. Especially in the Sun's case, it would take a very long time realistically to make the progress he did in the show. He should not be this stable right now, and his planets shouldn't assume this either. They were right to be confused.
Sol has done a lot of harm to the Solar System. Coming back to my point about Neptune earlier, it went as far as some of them being terrified of going out of bounds out of fear of intense injury. That is not a healthy relationship. If we are to say we are okay with them coming back to Sol, it should have taken longer for them to adjust again. So, unless we've had a big time skip between the end of the Rogues arc and the beginning of the Chrysalis arc, the peace as of now is questionable.
I'm glad I got to talk about this tbh lol, thanks for pointing out the flaws with his writing. Some aspects of this show make me very glad fanfic writers exist.
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