Friday, March 4, 2022

Reb00t 1t - Ducktales Season 2



Time to take a look at the second season of Ducktales. In season one, Dewey got the bulk of the spotlight, but for season 2, the torch is passed to Louie. What will his character bring to the fold? Let’s take a look and find out.

The season opens with The Most Dangerous Game Night! And it’s a nice palate cleanser, nothing too major happens in terms of plot, it’s a typical Ducktales adventure but Louie gets the focus. He’s feeling like he doesn’t have a purpose and isn’t good at adventuring, which worries him since someone as good as Della still ended up hurt.

But as the episode ends, he has a talk with Scrooge and his gift had unfolded, the ability to read a situation and see the angles and the shortcuts. As Scrooge puts it, being sharper than the sharpies (it was 'sharper than the sharpies' rather than 'smarter than the smarties' in the original comics, good way to bring that back in). It’s a gift Della also allegedly possessed. Scrooge tells Louie that if he applies that gift he’ll be a billionaire himself someday, inspiring Louie to begin starting his own business, Louie Inc.

The Depths of Cousin Feathry! Introduces the latest eccentric member of the Duck Family, and also a giant krill named Mitsy. But the main plot truly begins in the next episode: The Ballad of Duke Baloney! Who is Duke Baloney? Well, he’s the real identity of Flintheart Glomgold, in an interesting effort to reconcile his origins within the Ducktales TV show and the Disney Duck comics. We find out in flashback that he was a shoe-shiner with ambition until the day he happened upon Scrooge.

Scrooge gave him a dime hoping to inspire him and it kinda did, but not quite the way he was hoping. Duke Baloney put on a Scottish persona and dedicated his life to besting Scrooge. In the episode’s climax, Glomgold reveals he began his career with money he stole from Scrooge and baits him into a bet, whoever’s the richest duck in the world after <insert arbitrary time period here> wins the other’s company.

The Town Where Everyone Was Nice! introduces Jose and Panchito, from the Three Caballeros film. The success of this inspired the creation of the Three Caballeros series which ran for 13 episodes. Louie Inc begins its rise in Storkules in Duckburg! Where Louie’s business plan is to get Storkules to deal with a Harpie threat and charge people for it, which works great until they run out of harpies and he spends all the profits on merch.

Last Christmas! Is interesting for a lot of reasons, it’s not an essential episode, but it’s the first true Christmas special of the series. Aside from a blink-and-you’ll miss it reference to Santa, the Impossible Summit of Mount Neverest! is not really a Christmas special. Again, we get reference to the animosity between Scrooge and Santa but the main thrust of this episode is Dewey on a time-travelling adventure where he meets his mother for the first time. Russi Taylor, the voice actress who voiced the triplets in the original show returns here as a Young Donald, sadly she died in 2019 before she could reprise the role in s3. The Duck Family seem familiar with time travel, Young Scrooge happily greeting his older self at one point and we see a still living Duckworth, who does next to nothing. It’s a really charming story that I’m not going into detail covering here.

Instead, we’re gonna talk about Della Duck in Whatever Happened to Della Duck! This episode is a Ducktales special, forgoing the usual opening credits to just showing the title in-episode. We already know that Della landed on the moon, surviving thank to Gyro’s oxy-chew. And being that the episode takes place entirely on the moon, oxy-chew is not the only reference to the Ducktales video game as the theme from the moon level is utilised repeatedly including for a really touching song in the climax.

As for Della herself, this episode is entirely focused on letting us know her and she shares a lot in common with Donald, she’s determined but has a short fuse and suffers from similar ill fortune to her brother. But her determination shines strongly in this episode as she manages to survive for a decade on the moon, she loses her leg in the crash and builds a new one out of rocket parts, that is awesome.

There are some important story developments as the episode approaches its climax, we’re introduced to General Lunaris and Lieutenant Penumbra of the ‘Planet Moon.’ Lunaris is calm, sophisticated and observant whilst Pemumbra is more hot-headed and aggressive. The episode ends with Della given a new chance to rebuild her ship and head home.

Treasure of the Found Lamp! Is an obvious reference to the original Ducktales’ feature length film, Treasure of the Lost Lamp. It introduces us to Gin, he’s not really important but what can you do. The Outlaw Scrooge McDuck kinda continues the Louie Inc storyline, as Scrooge tells a tale of his gold hunting days, one that for some reason involves an ancestor of Fenton and a mock-up Gizmoduck suit… either way it’s another chapter in the Scrooge and Goldie relationship, introduces Rockerduck who will important later and at the end Louie asks Goldie for help being sneaky.

The 87 cent solution! Is up there with my favourite episodes of the show, it continues the bet arc, shows Scrooge going crazy because someone stole 87 cents which is absolutely classic Scrooge, features a use of ‘all I do is win’ that makes sense. And Owlsen is a delightful straight-woman to Glomgold. There’s also a reference to a concept from the original show, Gold Fever. Except in this show, it’s a ploy by Glomgold and it’s kinda also where the story kinda falls apart.

The Golden Spear! Picks up back on the moon with Della using the newly discovered supply of moon gold to fix the Spear of Selene. She regails the inhabitants of the Moon with stories of Earth, making them want to go to see it with her. Penumbra is less than impressed and one night decides to place Della in the fixed Spear of Selene and launch it prematurely. Lunaris tells Della to give him the plans so they can follow and she does so and as the spear launches he tells his people that Della is going home to launch an invasion. He played the long game, got Della to fix the spear and regale his denizens with tales of the Earth to build a sense of betrayal that would get them to fight in an invasion of Earth. This makes penumbra uncomfortable.

The B-plot of this episode makes me a little uncomfortable. I think the problem is they make it so Donald needs rest for his health but have the kids constantly interrupt with adventures of their own, all whilst he’s malting from the stress. This might’ve been funnier if he didn’t need the rest for medical reasons, still it might’ve been necessary for the next plot beat to work. Scrooge arranges him to go on a relaxing cruise, but as he’s about to leave he sees the Spear land. He goes, hoping to see Della but he’s the one stuck with all the bad luck and the spear launches with him trapped inside. Him malting from stress is then completely forgotten about.

But you heard it right, Della’s coming home and we pick up on that in Nothing can stop Della Duck! And the reunion is… it’s perfect, I can’t critique it at all, right down to the fact that she had different names in mind for them. But being a parent presents a unique challenge to her because she’s had 10 years of not really maturing at all. This puts her at odds with Mrs Beakley and later also with Launchpad, who replaced her as Scrooge’s pilot, of course this is Launchpad so he’s completely oblivious.

Fortunately, the benefit of having the large family the Ducks do at the moment is that she has the time she needs to adapt and for the kids, in particular Louie, to adapt to her. Oh, and Donald is captured by Lunaris on the moon.

Raiders of the Doomsday Vault! Is my favourite episode of the entire series. It’s got just about all you’d want; it’s got Glomgold and Scrooge, Owlsen being an amazing straight-woman. Ludwig von Drake being hilarious but whilst all of that is great it’s the Della and Dewey plot that sticks with me the most. Dewey has always been the most adventurous of the triplets, so giving him an adventure plotline with Della makes sense but as much as they both enjoy it, it’s also a dangerous life and her maternal instincts come into conflict with her love of adventure. Dewey is eager to prove himself, so when things go wrong, he feels like he failed. It’s heart-warming to see Della be a reassuring presence in this scene and show’s ways she is a great mother, whilst not sugar-coating her flaws. It’s funny but it’s also heart-warming and I love it.

But we’re past half way through the season and Lena hasn’t been mentioned once, what’s up with that? Well, it turns out that Webby has been researching the Shadow-realm on her own and it’s there she meets Violet Sabrewing, another original character for the show’s roster. Her deal is she’s an academic who became interested in the supernatural following the events of the Shadow War, oh and she found Magika’s damaged amulet. She’s able to keep up with Webby on an intellectual basis. Her and Webby have a sleepover where they continue the research and with the power of the amulet and friendship they bring Lena back from the Shadow Realm

There’s also a B-plot with Launchpad and Mrs Beakley that further expands on the Darkwing Duck TV show within the series. Apparently, the show ended on a big twist and the show was cancelled before it could be resolved. Something that has never happened in real life ever, and certainly not in a Disney Show…

But from one superhero to another, we haven’t checked in with Gizmoduck in a while and it turns out he’s a bit overworked, in fact the only thing he hasn’t worked hard at is protecting his secret identity, he now has a whole list. The episode in question introduces Gandra Dee, a love interest for Fenton who also happens to be a spy in Mark Beaks’ latest attempt to do something related to the armour. It’s kinda hilarious how he becomes a huge hulking monster and his undoing is that he can’t use his phone.

The Duck Knight Strikes Again! Not the first time a Darkwing Duck story has used that title is the 16th episode of the show and is a reinvention of Darkwing Duck. What we know so far is that Darkwing Duck is a TV show within the Ducktales universe with Darkwing portrayed by an actor named Jim Starling, who is voiced by Jim Cummings, the original voice from the show. The show was cancelled prematurely and on a massive cliff-hanger.

This episode begins showing us that cliff-hanger, and yes I’m doing a full breakdown of this episode. Anyway, it turns out Darkwing’s new shadowy nemesis was himself? Jim Starling is a washed up actor now, obsessed with his glory days as Darkwing, even rolling out that episode as he opens a store. Turns out he was a last-minute replacement too.

And of course, if there’s Darkwing, there’s Launchpad, and Dewey because he’s the one to find that Darkwing Duck has suddenly started trending, and why? Because there’s a Darkwing Duck movie being made. Launchpad immediately drives Jim Starling to the studio, believing that Jim is Darkwing Duck and the movie couldn’t be made without him, Jim agrees.

So, which of the 3 Billionaires of Duckburg owns the movie studio, yeah it’s Scrooge, he really only wanted to use it to create office safety films but a director, played by Edgar Wright of all people, is trying to talk Scrooge into giving him a bigger budget for the finale of his Darkwing Duck movie. Scrooge hasn’t seen a film since 1938 which is hilarious. I wonder if the Adventures of Robin Hood put him off.

We see the new trailer for the film which certain puts the Dark into Darkwing… Yeah, this is commentary on gritty reboots, isn’t it? Your argument is only about a decade out of date. Or last Thursday if you’re DC Comics. Dewey says he doesn’t really understand it and I kind of agree, though not for the reasons he’s stating. It’s okay for a trailer not to tell you things, and it was stated at the end it wasn’t targeted at children, incidentally probably the biggest error.

So this might not be intentional but there’s a bit of a jab at Edgar Wright’s history with Disney as his ideas clash with Scrooge, as his did with the upper brass at Marvel when he was doing Ant-man. Anyway, Jim Starling actually sides with the director until it’s revealed that he isn’t the one playing Darkwing, he’s in fact played by a brand new actor who actually showed up for his autograph in the opening.

But Jim Starling cannot stand the idea of Darkwing Duck being played by anyone other than him. He’s the stand-in for the overzealous angry ‘fan’ so he and Launchpad enact a plan to get him to replace the actor on set. Launchpad is to lock the new actor in his trailer as Jim replaces him on the set. But as Launchpad and this actor fight one thing becomes abundantly clear, this new actor is clearly a fan of Darkwing Duck.

And one thing you should know about Darkwing Duck, both the interpretation from this series and the original show. He’s an ego-maniac who got beat up a lot. But after every blow he just gets up and keeps going and this show has transformed that aspect of him into an inspirational trope and it works surprisingly well.

But as Launchpad is growing to like this new actor, Jim Starling’s desire for the spotlight is making him become more and more unhinged, locking up the new actor himself. I don’t need to repeat the Linkara speech about toxic nostalgia from his Infinite Crisis review, and Jim Starling is hardly a tragic figure but it hits similar beats.

So the finale begins and naturally he messes it all up and causes a fire. Now children, don’t forget what we learnt on the poster, save the money first! Anyway, who could possibly stop a rampaging Darkwing Duck? well

He is the terror that flaps in the night
He is the… something that does something to crime

OK, It’s Darkwing Duck. The fight is pretty cool but it’s ultimately Launchpad who ends it, speaking as a fan who’s open to change and yeah, I can see where this is going. Not all change is great but stagnation can be equally atrocious. Jim drops his attack thanks to the speech and ends up supposedly sacrificing himself to save Launchpad’s life.

The movie’s shut down after Dewey recording himself dancing over most of it… Anyway, that means the actor’s out of a gig but Launchpad suggests that he does it for real. And at the end we do find out his name, Drake Mallard, the original alter-ego for Darkwing Duck. But beneath the studio it’s revealed that Jim survived but has suffered a bit of a relapse, becoming his own worst enemy, Negaduck. Oh… I get the cliff-hanger now, nice foreshadowing. 

Unfortunately, we never see Negaduck again, Darkwing is supposedly getting his own show, jury’s out whether or not it’s in the Ducktales universe but it could pick up on this idea.

Whatever Happened to Donald Duck! Picks up Donald’s story on the moon. Lunaris is using him as a posterchild, saying he’s the first of an invasion and most people fall for it. The one person who isn’t having it is Penumbra who tries to help sabotage the fleet but they make a discovery. Lunaris had been planning this invasion long before he met Della, he’d been researching Scrooge and his family for years and knows to come for the children first. Donald tries to send out a warning but his difficult speech and poor reception means it falls on deaf ears. After that he’s fires out of an experimental launcher intended to launch ships to Earth, it was abandoned for the spear because no-one would survive, unless that person is Donald Duck.

We haven’t heard from Louie Inc in a while but we’ll be hearing a fair bit from it in the coming episodes. Louie the exact wrong lesson from Scrooge’s story and has brought Goldie to the mansion. Their mission: Get all the money from Doofus Drake’s birthday party. It’s actually a really interesting dynamic the two share, but we need to introduce BOYD, a robot brought in by Mark Beaks as his fake kid. At the episodes end he and Doofus are officially brothers and Doofus is brought down a few rungs.

There’s also a minor B-plot with Huey and Della getting some mother-son time over a video game. Nightmare on Killmotor Hill! Circles back to Lena, has some very interesting dream imagery and reveals that Magika is still about, though her powers are greatly diminished without her amulet. Also, another time where the power of friendship wins the day, more on that next season.

The Golden Armory of Cornelius Coot! Show’s us a bit of the founding of Duckburg… It’s also does double-duty with Della getting moments with Launchpad and Webby and both are pretty interesting. Oh, and it has a mine-cart chase fakeout But that’s the last of the ‘filler’ episodes of this season, we need to get to the big stuff, and it starts with a hurricane.

Timephoon! Continues the Louie Inc arc, Louie has a plan to get rich, steal lost treasures before they were lost using the time-tub described in Scrooge’s story. Unfortunately, the ripple effects of this have very noticeable impacts, including bringing Bubba Duck into the fray. He was not a popular character from what I hear. Anyway, there’s a B-plot involving Mrs Beakley encouraging Della to be a stricter parent and once everything comes back to normal she takes that lesson to heart. Louie is officially grounded.

This brings us to Glomtales! Which concludes the bet arc with a story focused around the villains, this actually the first time they’ve teamed up. This story is also a Louie story, as he’s grounded, guarded by the BT-87 robot from a previous story, which is a pretty effective guard. Glomgold, after taking over the theme song gathers his army, Ma Beagle and the 3 main Beagle Boys, Mark Beaks, Don Carnage and finally Magika de spell.

Duckworth, who honestly could’ve been a useful character in this episode proves once again to be completely useless and is easily dispatched by a depowered Magika. Of course, everything kinda falls apart when they realise that Scrooge isn’t even at home, in fact it’s just Louie. But Louie and Glomgold have a fair bit in common, except whilst Glomgold is an idiot, Louie is smart and calculates a way for Glomgold to win the bet, by having the assembled villains pool their resources, which really should’ve been Glomgold’s plan in the first place, far fewer moving parts.

Anyway, this might save his family’s life for about 10 minutes but it means Glomgold wins the bet, and the McDuck fortune. But Louie developed a counter-scheme, using the fact that Glomgold is a fake identity making his signature on their agreement legally void and the money then goes to Louie. The other villains, who had already been tripping over each other by this point, turn on Glomgold and escape. How Mark Beaks kept his fortune after this is anybody’s guess. Anyway, Glomgold escapes to scheme another day but Louie has all the money and that gives him an idea.

He decides to keep the money, and Scrooge takes it actually pretty well, bursting out laughing at the idea of Louie running his business. Still, he has Owlsen by his side to do most of the work. Of course, fun and business aren’t the only problems, there’s a curse on the richest duck in the world, the Bombi. Pretty sure that’s another comic reference. Anyway, dropping a ton of communications satellites right on top of him does nothing. He cannot be bought, he cannot be fought, if it’s riches you’ve got your life will be fraught until you have earned the one thing you have not.

Turns out that’s humility and no better person to instil that lesson in Louie than Owlsen, who gets her moment to shine in this episode. Louie finally admits to himself and Scrooge that he isn’t ready and gives Scrooge back his company, however there’s a B-plot in the episode of Della trying to contact space, she gets a message from Penumbra that Lunaris is coming to invade Earth starting with her family.

Lunaris lands and quickly disarms Scrooge’s 3 Earth defence plans, wanting to keep the children safe, Della takes them under the pretence of recruiting allies from around the world, and geez it’s amazing the budget this show must have, they got Gin, one of the Toth Ra mummies, Storkules, Selene and Zeus’ voice actors all for a bare minimum of dialogue. Scrooge calls in his remaining allies for a fall frontal attack and this is the most useful Duckworth is ever. Lena calls him a waste of magic and I couldn’t agree more. Also, it turns out Mama knows that Fenton is Gizmoduck, better add her to the list too.

Still, this full-frontal attack and pretty much everything played right into Lunaris’ hands as he enacts his plan to… make the earth revolve around the moon... I think we need the Batman quote

Della ends up crashing on a desert island and who should they find there but Donald, now with a Watermelon Mickey Mouse. I think I heard Mickey was not allowed on this show or something so this is the closest we’re getting and another voice actor for the studio to pay. I think this is the first time we’ve seen Scrooge in the present day use the can hop manoeuvre, a reference to the Ducktales game.

With most of Scrooge’s allies captured, it’s just Scrooge, Mrs Beakley, Launchpad, Manny and Duckworth, actually scratch Duckworth, he’s decided to be useless and go prepare their graves. With his back against the wall and Lunaris prepared for any of his plans it’s time to go dumb, and whose schemes are dumber than Glomgold?

So how to the kids make it home with a crashed plane. Well, time for the mother of all co-incidences to occur. Oh hey Gladstone, hey Fethry, what a surprise. Oh and Mitsy’s here too and I can imagine a giant Krill might turn the tide of battle. Still, there’s the matter of convincing Della who might’ve gone a bit moon crazy.

So, what’s Glomgold’s scheme, it involves sharks, a catapult and Scrooge dressing up as Santa. Yes, he is that cruel. Oh, and he was running a scheme within his scheme to get his company back. I’m not even sure if Scrooge was unaware of this.

It’s ultimately Louie who gets through to Della, channelling the lesson he’s been learning all season and the moon song. Glomgold’s plan works mostly and with the timely intervention of the rest of the family, the planet engine is crippled, but it’s far from destroyed and this episode clearly had a lot of money thrown at it as we’re treated to a CGI space battle on top of everything. Penumbra deals the killing blow, most of the moonlanders realise this whole invasion was stupid and release their captives, and Lunaris is stuck orbiting the Earth as it’s newest moon.

The victory is celebrated, especially by Glomgold who got some attention for playing his part. But there are people not celebrating. Bradford Buzzard, one of Scrooge’s board turns out to be the head of FOWL, we see Black Heron, Jeeves with a cryogenically frozen Rockerduck, the Funzo Mascot who we’ll find out later is the Phantom Blot, Steelbeak, a Darkwing Duck villain and Gandra Dee are top agents. They blame Scrooge for the Moon Invasion and have set in motion a plan to end their adventuring. I’ll probably explain later how Bradford is a massive hypocrite who has had a hand in many of the disasters he claims to want to stop but that’s a discussion for next season.

Season 2 had some real standout episodes. The Della stories were all great and Della as a character fits naturally into the Duck universe. The bet with Glomgold is lifted from the original Ducktales but you never got much of a sense that it was going to go Glomgold’s way, which might’ve been intentional as it didn’t get that heavy a focus. The show clearly has a generous budget, with a large roster of full-voiced characters and some really impressive animated set-pieces.

Louie’s arc was a bit scattershot, but the culmination of it from Timephoon was fantastic and the jokes continue to be hilarious at every turn.

Lena really could’ve been in more than 3 episodes but a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. I left this season excited as to where they’ll go with FOWL. And season 3 will be their most ambitious season yet.

R E B 9 5 T

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