(Warning: Contains slight spoilers of MLP season 8 ep 3)

I just watched the latest episode of season 8, Maud Couple, and I am strangely starting to see a pattern forming in the ships created for the Pie sisters, namely they seem to be dating ponies that resemble real world comedy actors (I know cheesepie is not technically canon, but I'm speaking hypothetically here). In the episode we can see clear similarities between maud's coltfriend Mud Briar and Jim Parsons's Sheldon Cooper, and Cheese Sandwich is obviously Weird Al Yankovic is pony form, though you probably don't need me to tell you that.

To this end, I submit to you a headcanon theory, that will probably not come true, where Pinkie's other sisters find coltfriend's that resemble celebrities. Most likely in the form of a popular character role that a actor or voice actor has played. So basically, Limestone starts dating the pony equivalent of Anger from Inside Out and Marble starts dating some male voice actor who's famous for play shy dude roles. But that's just my opinion, what do you guys think.

I submit to you the headcanon that the writers are so utterly bereft of ideas that all they can do is pull from pop culture to try and keep the brony fanbase, because the actual target demographic has stopped giving a shit.

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Or, just throwing this out there, their target demographic has grown up and is now watching the same things their parents do and enjoying them. Or they're trying to stay keep an increasingly diverse fan base attached so they need to include subtle and not-so-subtle nods to more adult-oriented culture in order to get a chuckle from watchers. They've actually been doing this for a while. One could argue this has been going on since the inception of the show.

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That's the thing. The ratings don't really suggest that's happening. They are waaaay down.

Like the last time they made the top 150 on day of broadcast was June 2017, with episode S7:10 "A Royal Problem" doing a combined .15 million viewer watch in the airing and first repeat. For comparison, season 4 averaged over half a million viewers for the same, and that was still on the Hub.

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I have to wonder if online sales are accounted for in that. I don't have time myself on Saturday to watch. I typically watch on Sunday or whenever it come out on Google Play, but they've been pretty good about that.

My niece and nephew also watch more online through subscription services and one time buy places like Google and Amazon than they do live TV, and that's mostly because my brother doesn't want to expose them to too much advertising. How many other families have taken the same route?