How do you know that Applejack’s parents were not at another Apple Family Reunion in a fake identical world where all of the other Apple family members are really changelings?

@gittonsxv  
Every time I see or hear somebody say that, it makes me feel like I’m already dead inside. It’s like what Michael thought in The Good Place when he was having an existential crisis: “We’re all just corpses who haven’t begun to decay.” Yikes. No wonder Stewie in the Family Guy episode Mom’s the Word and Stan Marsh’s Grandpa in the South Park episode Death wished they were dead when all of their suicide attempts failed, because they feel like life is a cruel joke where you’re just waiting to die and lose all you have done with your life. I’m just glad I’m not that fruit fly from Epic.

Headcanon was always accepted, now confirmed.

This is as direct as they can be about it, and frankly I found it very tasteful and well done.

@Animals  
True, it’s not officially confirmed, but I think it’s pretty bloody obvious that that was the implication.
 
This is as close to confirmation as we’ll get (unless Hasbro decide to tread on the ‘death episode’ route, which is unlikely)

They were not confirmed.

This is the kind of subtle tone Iäv been missing in this show, hopefully this get’s a good response so they can grow some more balls at Hasbro.
 
And for those who thinks death is a subject to tough for kids, look at the most beloved child media of all, the handdrawn Disneyclassics and you’l see death is common in childrens stuff. And for good reasons, the more alienated a child is from death the harder it will affect them when the innevitable happens.

AJ confirmed for Jesus Budda

I’m terrified at how much sense all of this makes.
 
But to be honest, their continued absence for any other reason would get rather ludicrous after this episode.

I just hope that in the FIM movie they will address this issue.

some days i feel like mlp fim could be so much more if it was not chained down by hasbro’s ever increasing need to be blind…

@Background Pony  
Just because they could doesn’t mean they would.
 
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a merchandise-driven show, and if they were to try anything that could upset the kiddies, they risk losing sales.
 
If such an episode aired to a child who’s just lost their own parents, the child could associate Applejack with the death of their parents, meaning they could stop buying Applejack toys.
 
It may seem implausible, but these are the things Hasbro would need to consider before greenlighting a sad episode.

@brony
 
NEW HEADCANON
 
And a really sad one, at that. ;_;

Legend of Korra ended with a murder/suicide and Sesame Street had the Mr Hooper episode  
I think MLP is capable of and can get away with having a dealing with dead parents episode

@gittonsxv I’d like that too, but there’s pretty much no way it would happen.
 
My headcanon is that there were killed in a train crash on their way back to Ponyville for Hearths Warming Eve of the year Apple Bloom was born.
 
They were visiting family in Manehattan, and Applejack’s mother saw a baby Babs Seed looking happy and adorable, and realized that where she belonged was at home with baby Apple Bloom.
 
She convinced her husband and they decided to take the night train to Ponyville, arriving to surprise Applejack and co. on Hearths Warming Morning.
 
Unfortunately, a flash flood struck and washed out a rail bridge minutes before the train reached it. As the train had no warning, it couldn’t stop in time, plummeting into the raging river below with Applejack’s parents being washed away to their deaths.

For all the love the show gets, I doubt it will ever tackle anything like meaningful death, moral complications, and/or anything else vaguely mature. It’s a pretty generic kids’ cartoon otherwise.

@gittonsxv
 
I remember back in the 90s they would put touching and emotional subjects in kids shows.
 
Too bad they aren’t as bold today as they were back then.

@RIG  
actually they can deal with death in kids shows quite a few have they probably just won’t :T

exactly, they could never do something so interesting and emotional, hell its not even that sad, everybody dies eventually…

@gittonsxv  
like hell they would do that in a kids show.

well personally i would love an emotion episode to do with her parents, how they died and AJ learning something she did know about them but hey that is me.

headcannon accepted.

@gittonsxv  
Because its a family reunion and every family member should be there, but the parents are not there, but its never questioned why they arent there, so maybe they cant talk about it or didnt think about it, but then theres these two stars flying side by side at the beginning, but they’re not part of the plot, but they still use them two times at the beginning and at the end of the episode and it hardly looks like it was put there only for an effect, because they could just used one star for that, but instead theres two stars side by side, so maybe this is their way of telling that the parents are dead without presenting the topic at kids show.

@gitton  
:T I like them implying things without outright saying them sometimes