#Dead parents?

[karamina]

Theories on Will's Parents

Man I love making up theories and headcannons for media intended for children and preteens. Why might you ask? Because often they leave out details on things kids might not understand and only hint at darker themes, leaving ample space for older fans and parents watching with their kids to gather the pieces to make hypotheses on what may be happening off-screen. As a side note, this is why I love the HTTYD franchise in particular, but that is not the victim of today's crazy theory post.

This post is about Will Taggert from Horseland. For those who don't know, Horseland was a show produced in 2006-2008 for children aged 6-12 that follows the life lessons and social skills that Sarah, Molly, Alma, Chloe, Zoey, Bailey, Nani, and Will (to a certain extent) as well as their horses (Scarlett, Calypso, Button, Chilli, Pepper, Aztec, Sunburst, and Jimber) and the animals around the farm (Shep the dog, Teeny the pig, and Angora the cat) learn through episodic stories.

There is a mystery that many fans of this show have explained in various ways surrounding the character of Will. What is up with Will's parents? Why does he never mention them? Why does he live at Horseland with his aunt, uncle, and his cousin Bailey?

As usual let's first look at the evidence the show presents.

Episodic Evidence

In the episodes "Talk, Talk" and "No News is Good News", we can clearly see that Will lives on the Horseland property and has his own bedroom in the ranch house. He is a riding instructor, coach, and grounds maintenance man at Horseland and often takes on responsibilities at the ranch such as special events, organizing and facilitating activities (such as the camping trip in "Fire, Fire Burning Bright", the early morning ride in "No News is Good News", and the Twilight Trek in "Molly and Chilli"), and advising students on proper care for their horses.

Throughout the series, Will never once mentions having parents or having any other family besides Bailey and his aunt and uncle (unless you count his grandfather in the episode "The Secret", who I am 90% sure is dead based on Will's use of the past tense when talking about him).

Okay so not much to work with. There is no hard evidence for his parents being dead or not. Remember, no mention of parents does not mean they are dead, especially with Will being removed from the other MCs (he's older and has a different relationship to them based on his status as a teacher) and only appearing briefly in most episodes or not at all. All we can say with 100% certainty is that if his parents are still in his life, he doesn't live with them and instead lives with his aunt and uncle. This opens the door for fan theories. I will present both common fan theories and theories I have come up with on my own.

Theory 1: Will's parents died and he was adopted by his aunt and uncle

From what I have seen, this is the quintessential fan theory regarding Will's parents. In this theory, Will's parents died when he was young and he was adopted by his extended family, ala his aunt and uncle. From there, he grew up at Horseland with Bailey as his adoptive brother and became part of the family business. I've seen fanfiction where they died in a car accident, they died in a storm while trail riding, etc. I've even read some where Will has siblings that he was seperated from when his parents died and who were adopted by other extended family members. Regardless, his parents are dead, potential siblings live elsewhere, and Will is an honorary member of the Handler household.

Personally, I think this theory is as popular as it is within the Horseland fandom because it readily presents an opportunity for both emotional angst and whumpfic. In fact, Disney is quite partial to using the dead parents card as a tragic backstory for its main characters. Will is an easy character in this fandom to apply this trope to as he is the only main character in Horseland whose parents are not accounted for. (That is, besides Alma's mother; she only ever mentions her father and grandparents). Now that I think about it, alot of these same theories could also fit her as well, except maybe Theory 2 and with the addition of divorce as another possibility. However, this observation does not discredit any validity this theory holds.

Theory 2: Will lives with his aunt and uncle as a job requirement to work at Horseland

In this theory, Will's parents are alive and well. So why does Will live at Horseland? Simple really. Will works with his extended family as onsite staff. Maybe Will's parents (and potential siblings) live far enough away that it makes more sense for him to just live at Horseland. They may even live in another state.

This is even more plausible if you are like me and consider Will to be over 18 yrs old (see my post about Horseland character ages).

In this, Will mostly interacts with his parents and any siblings over the phone and visits them for holidays, special events such as birthdays, graduations, weddings or funerals, or just whenever he has a large chunk of time I suppose. Just infrequent and distanced interaction may be why they are never mentioned.

Theory 3: Will has an estranged relationship with his biological parents

It's unfortunate, but some people just really don't get along well with their immediate family or aren't safe living with their biological parents for one reason or another. It could be anything from something as simple as personality differences or irreconcilable moral beliefs to horrible situations such as child abuse, alcoholism, and/or drug abuse. This can lead to one of two things. The first is the case of a child under the age of 18. In this case, if the home environment of a child is deemed unsafe, any children in the household are removed from the home by Child Protective Services (CPS), parents lose custody and/or go to jail, and the children are placed in the care of another family member or into foster care. This can also happen if the parent(s) are incarcerated for a completely unrelated reason. The other case is estranged adult children. In this case, the child becomes an adult without ever having CPS and the foster care system intervening for whatever reason and moves out, limiting or completely cutting off contact with their parent(s). If either of these is the case leading to the relationship Will has with his parents, then this may be why he lives at Horseland with his aunt and uncle and never mentions his biological parents around his "students".

Conclusion

Because of how little the show actually tells us about the state of the relationship Will has with his parents and any potential siblings, all three of these theories are equally plausible and one can make an argument for any of them. I think all three of them could easily be used in fanfiction as interesting plot devices, and I would be overjoyed to read any of them (although theory 1 is already beating out 2 and 3 in that scope). So now I open the floor to y'all. Which theory do you think is the most plausible? Did I miss any other possible explanations for why Will lives at Horseland and his immediate family is never mentioned?

[chipistrate]

Vanessa, Tony, Gregory, and Cassie all have parental issues one way or another

Can anyone have a stable home life PLEASE

[p0isonives]

conner kent has INCREDIBLE self control, cause if i came back from being dead to find out Tim Drake tried to clone me 99 times because he missed me so much, i’d immediately make him my bride

[some-kind-of-creature]

It wasn’t supposed to be a secret.

If you died while with the league, you will no longer be acknowledged to have existed, especially if you died during a mission. A disappointment will not be remembered.

The bats and birds don’t like speaking about the people they have lost, so they don’t. If someone ask about the dead, they will tell the person they don’t talk about that.

So how was Damian supposed to know that he should have told his father about his dead brother?

[fordtato]

I saw a post about how Bill "isn't ACTUALLY the villain" of Gravity Falls, given his ✨tragic backstory✨. Y'all know you can be sad and evil at the same time, right? You know Bill maybe feeling kinda bad for his actions does not make him the VICTIM of his own actions, right?

He gleefully drew little doodles of 12-year-olds in puddles of blood and you people are like "but his parents are dead." YEAH. HE KILLED THEM.

[mydeadgaywizards]

sirius and/or regulus telling a story: "when i was little..."

remus and james: *braces for the absolute worse*

[ciderjacks]

dad issues

+

(I think they were all fundamentally affected by what they saw and just collectively decided not to share the upsetting details)

[chloesimaginationthings]

How helpy tested out the FNAF pizza sim attractions

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

#The Strict Parent vs. The Easy Going Parent

[goodieprocter]

This was literally all I could think during that scene.

[not-rab]

Harry, jumping out of Regulus’ closet: BOO!

Regulus:

Harry:

Regulus:

Harry: *makes a sad face*

Regulus: Ahh Merlin you scared me!!

[aviolettrose]

I saw a tiktok where the first spoiled cat, that lives there since it was a kitten, is a menace to society vs. The ex stray cat, that appreciates literally everything, is a ray of sunshine, and I had to think about Dick Grayson as a child vs. Jason todd as a child.

In this essay, I will-

[moonyswarmsweaters]

Regulus: Sirius… I’m gay

Sirius *excited*: can I tell Walburga? Cause this WILL kill her

[mayomkun]

But I still think of you

[starlightseraph]

obsessed with them.

[greenglowinspooks]

Thinkin about a DCxDP where Danny’s helping ghosts find peace while he’s laying low in Gotham.

Like, he moved away from Amity for whatever reason. Maybe the reveal went badly, maybe he just couldn’t stand staying any longer. For whatever reason, he’s in Gotham, because the rent is cheap and he’s nowhere near the strangest thing there so no one looks at him twice.

However, this city is cursed. Like, cursed beyond cursed. It’s actively alive with how many curses there are, and the ghosts there are extremely unhappy about it.

(Of course, that’s not a problem for Danny. His ghost side filters out the toxic smog and the chemicals in the water, and his human side gives a resistance to the rank ecto and the hexes that are actively trying to devour him.)

He doesn’t really want to do anything about it, to be honest.

He’s sick of playing hero, considering how it went last time, and he’s busy working at Waffle House or Walmart or whatever other store doesn’t bother doing a background check (in Gotham, that’s probably all of them), and maybe trying to find a way to get highschool credits that don’t immediately disqualify him from every college in existence.

Still, the ghosts know he can hear them. They know, and they keep coming for help.

So, hey, why not? He definitely can’t put this as experience in any sort of job application, but he really doesn’t have much else to do.

So, he becomes errand boy for a bunch of ghosts.

Sometimes he’s finding objects that are important to them, sometimes he’s giving evidence they collected together of their murders to the police, sometimes he’s getting them the last meal they never had, sometimes he’s just spending time with them like they’re not dead.

The ghosts don’t always move on, but they’re always more at peace. Occasionally they pay him back in charms and blessings and the locations of valuables that he can keep or pawn for cash.

Eventually, a new ghost shows up.

She looks like a shadow, like all the ghosts of Gotham, but she seems stronger than usual. She asks him for a favor that those who came before him were never able to fulfill.

She asks him to find her engagement ring, and give it to her son.

Easy enough, he thinks. It’s a bit of a pain to buy the ring from the seedy pawn shop it’s in (he would usually just steal it, but he doesn’t want to implicate her kid in anything, which she seems grateful for), but everything’s going mostly alright.

Then, she tells him who her son is, and wow, no wonder no one’s helped her yet.

He’s Red Hood. The guy who is(/was) the crime lord in charge of crime alley. The title sounds a bit stupid to Danny, but he’s still a genuine threat to a living person.

Good thing he’s not one of those.

And so, the next time he sees Red Hood out and about, he goes right up to him. The man seems mostly unbothered, but Danny does notice how his hand slightly drifts towards one of his many weapons.

He tells Red Hood outright that he’s there on behalf of the man’s mother, then just holds out his hand with the ring inside, dropping it into Red Hood’s open palm.

Then he leaves, not waiting for a response.

—

Jason has a mystery on his hands, and he might just cash in some favors from Babs and Tim to figure it out.

He’s got to find the guy who gave him his mother’s ring, and find out everything he knows.