Parks & Recreation debuted on NBC in 2009 and came to an end in 2015 after seven seasons. Although the series initially struggled to connect with the audience, the writers eventually found the right tone for it, and from season two onward it was much better received by critics and audiences.
Parks & Recreation follows the daily lives of the employees of the Parks Department in Pawnee, Indiana, led by eternal optimist Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott), who very much like the audience, had no idea how a miniature horse could be so famous and important to a whole town.
Lil Sebastian was introduced in season 3’s episode “Harvest Festival”, where he was one of the “attractions”. Lil Sebastian was brought to the Parks Department, where viewers witnessed how loved he was among the main group, with Lil Sebastian ed away in the season finale, where the group organized a big memorial service for him, with Andy famously writing “5000 Candles In The Wind” for him. As mentioned above, Ben could never understand why everyone was so obsessed with a mini horse that didn’t do anything, but played along during the memorial. Viewers were left wondering why Lil Sebastian was so famous in Pawnee, and the answer might be in the town itself.
Speaking to Uproxx in 2015, Parks & Recreation writer Greg Levine shared that, when they were working on the Harvest Festival arc, there was discussion about various types of hometown superheroes, as a lot of real-life small towns have local heroes and mascots. After learning about the story of another town’s miniature horse, they realized that was perfect for the episode, with the mini horse being adored by everyone in Pawnee and becoming the most famous “person” in town – Ben, then, would represent the audience by not getting what was the big deal with him. Lil Sebastian was like nothing Pawnee had seen before, thus why he was a big sensation and went on to do a lot of things, such as entertaining troops in Kuwait, being a goodwill ambassador for Indiana Veterans, and even receiving an honorary degree from Notre Dame University.
Lil Sebastian’s celebrity status in Pawnee was a clever and funny way in which the writers of Parks & Recreation referenced – and, in a way, paid tribute to– all those local celebrities (not necessarily humans) that seem weird to outsiders but to town residents are really important. Ben Wyatt failed to see that, but viewers got some laughs from Lil Sebastian and how much the Parks Department loved him.