Thread:RRabbit42/@comment-3399576-20151014181655/@comment-961279-20151015160441

She still gets to do that, as evidenced by the matching cutie marks. That's just another example of things turning out differently than she thought. But isn't it better that she got both her cutie mark and keeping her friendship?

Regarding being blank flanks, that's something that the writers had to resolve. Their choices were:
 * 1) The CMC never get their cutie marks during the entire course of the show.
 * 2) They save the CMC getting cutie marks for the last episode.
 * 3) The CMC find theirs during the course of a season.

Let's look at each of these.

If they go for #1, they risk frustrating the audience by continually dangling a major plot point in front of them that they don't do anything with. To show them always failing in their search is cute for a while, but gets boring later on. There's also a principle in drama called Chekhov's gun which says you don't put anything in a story that absolutely doesn't have to be there, and what is there, you make sure is used. The search for a cutie mark was important, and it was important that it be resolved.

For #2, that sounds really good in theory. It's a reward for the fans that stick around. You used to be able to do that sort of thing. You knew you had 26 or 13 episodes to work with and were typically told early if it was going to be the last season, so you had time to work on a finale.

But it's not safe to do that any more. Even if a TV show has a guaranteed number of episodes, it takes at least eight months to make an episode of an animated series. If a network said, "Sorry, this isn't working out. Finish up what you're working on now and that's it", they'd have to scramble to write a finale that they weren't planning on just yet and get it made. Or, the network says, "stop production now" and cancels the show right then and there. Doesn't matter if other scripts and episodes were being worked on. They never get finished. That happened with The Penguins of Madagascar.

By letting the CMC find their cutie marks before the show's over and doing it in a way that they realize they can help others find theirs, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle now have a new way to grow as characters and as people.