Connie

Welcome back Connie!

In my personal opinion, for what little it's worth, the season 7 finale and everything that comes afterward aren't worth watching. There's been one, maybe two, good episodes, but the rest are mediocre at best.

It's a subjective thing.

The S7 episodes are either amongst the best in the series, ever, or terrible - you will have to decide for yourself, but really you need at least to watch the one about AJ's parents - and have something to cry into when you do.

Other parents that feature? well, we get to see Dashie's parents, and the royal sisters get an episode. Twi (and shiny)'s parents are featured in one episode, which is nice - we only ever seem to get a few seconds of them usually. 

S7 also introduces (very briefly) the Pillars (the previous generation of element holders, basically) and they are in the finale and... that's about it.

S8 is the post-movie season, so we get to see hippogryphs, and then there is the NEXT generation of element holders who are students at the school (and only one of them is a pony, the little changeling is almost unbearably cute).

Big Mac's g/f is S7 onwards, there is the new character race (the Kirin) that only get one episode, And Fluttershy's ponysonas in Fake it are great (even if the episode itself sucks a bit)

So even if you don't fancy watching them all, it might be worth hitting at least key episodes, so you can follow along the conversations