Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31916334-20150124160932/@comment-26973802-20150611041432

Disney movies are kid-friendly for the most part and have killed off villains in brutal ways. MLP can at least either magically destroy villains or have them fall to their deaths. Nightmare Moon, Discord, and Sunset Shimmer are reformed, Tirek imprisoned, and the Dazzlings and Starlight Glimmer run off, and people can use the comics as justification to say that Chrysalis survived her fall over a mountain (despite a gaping plot hole regarding lava's effect on dragons), but Sombra was disintegrated on-screen and the writer of the episode confirmed his death. One episode even has a minor villain, Arimaspi, fall into a ravine, and his skull can be seen later. Even G1 unambiguously killed two villains, Tirek and Lavan.

Of course they're never gonna kill off a non-villain character (especially Luna or one of the Mane 6), but the reason they had Tirek and the Dazzlings survive is because fans are attached to villains and want them to survive (the above mentioned Chrysalis had a return in the comics because fans wanted her to still be alive)