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The Not-So Secret Origins of Darkwing Duck Finale: The Duck Knight Returns!: Keep, Getting, Up.

Hello all you happy people and welcome to the finale of “The Secret Origins of Darkwing Duck”, my look at the many origins of Darkwing Duck for his 30th birthday. And fittingly I saved the best for last.. and also the last for last but that isn’t quite as catchy. Yes it’s time to finally tackle the Ducktales origin story for our hero, the finest one and frankly one of the finest superhero origins in superhero history “The Duck Knight Returns”. 

To get here though, the creators, specifically Frank Angones, had to take a massive gamble. Frank had a plan we all know now, a brilliant one that would give the hero a proper origin for season 2.. but require both waiting that long and waiting out fan outrage at what the plan was on the surface: To take this legendary hero many people loved and wanted to see as a full part of this unvierse.. and make him into a tv show that happened in universe.  It’d lead to this brilliant origin story.. but he coudln’t tell them that, the most he could tell them was “Wait for it, I got something” and give a hint with him in a tiny costume. Tell them “This was just leading to the main event”, but couldn’t tell them what, leaving a lot of fans pissed for a good two years. And pissing off a large portion of your nostalgic, and modern, fanbase for that long, and KNOWING you will takes guts, and Frank had em.. and frank’s instincts were right. 

See once the episode aired the clouds parted, the outrage stopped, and fans stood up and cheered. Frank had played them, he played them good and they liked it. 

So what’ dhe do? Why is this origin story the best of the best? and why.. is this episode a bit lacking despite that? Well the answers are inside.. except the last one it’s very obviously the whole subplot with Scrooge, Boorswan and Dewey, but i’ll get into WHY exactly ti’s a problem under the cut. So lets, get, DANGEROUS shall we?

We open with the final episode of Darkwing Duck. It was previously set up this very season in the previously reviewed “Friendship Hates Magic!” that Darkwing Duck ended on a cliffhanger after an abrupt cancelation. Which.. honestly is something that kinda stings to think about given not two days ago Final Space was canceled, hopes of a finale movie or fourth season are dim, and this is close to a year after Adult Swim also canceled the venture brothers (Though at least since then we’ve got a movie announnced). Point is I get why Launchpad maybe needed to write and film a fanscript with a middle aged housekeeper. 

Said episode is in line with the original real world series in tone, with darkwing fighting a masked figure trying to blow up an orphanage, getting blown up slaspstick and unmasks his foe only to find .. himself!

We then cut to where the episodes being screned Ceaser’s Parking lot.. well more like a furniture store parking lot where Jim Starling, the actor who played Darkwing Duck is doing a ribbon cutting... and a nice sight gag later shows this was SUPPOSED to be Johnny as part of the ongoing ottoman empire drama... seriously this comedy subplot about two characters who are functionally identical having a falling out.. which somehow still sticks the landing better than the actual major Louie story arc... AS A RESULT OF SAID STORY ARC. 

Yeah i’m going to let that one marinate as we move on to the actual focus: two fans and one boy sidekick in line for autographs: Launchpad, Dewey, who apparently takes launchpad to a lot of these because Launchpad only has one adult friend and as this season already established Fenton dosen’t have a lot of free time, and Drake, who the episode dosen’t identify till the end but i’m going ahead with because it’d be awkard to dance around something all of you already know for dramtatic effect. 

Turns out Launchpads been to a LOT of signings with jim, offering Drake with advice, and already having chemistry with the guy before passing out at seeing his hero. Let’s be fair here i’d do the same if I saw Al Ewing at a signing. 

Turns out though Jim.. is a pretty massive bag of dicks atop a cascading mountain of dicks. He moans to his agent about not getting any parts despite having an actually earned reputation of being a difficult asshole on set, is openly ungreatful of his fans , brushing drake off, taking an itnresting in dewey only because he’s young and thus a new fanbase and being audiably disapointed when it turns out the autograph is for launchpad. He’s completely and totally up his own ass so far you can see his head when he talks. 

So naturally the only thing that gets the egotistical old bastard to perk up is finding out Darkwing Duck is trending, their making a new movie and enlisting Launchpad to take him there. I”ll get more into Jim’s character as a whole in a bit, for now our heroes make their way to McDuck Studios!

It’s here though the episode also gas guns itself in the foot with a bowling ball.  There’s a lot to unpack with this scene so i’m going to contain my rage for a second and give it to you straight up: Scrooge, who hasn’t seen a movie since 1920, is concerned with the films budget, having only agreed to this film because Boreswan assured him it’d be a crowdpleasingwithin budget blockbuster, while Boreswan is “but the ARTTTTT”. Our heroes come in, Scrooge rightly points out he never told Dewey he owned a stuido for this reason, and Boreswan shows them the trailer, with Launchpad not liking it because it’s “not darkwing duck”, jim hating it because h’es not in it and Dewey hating it because i’ts not for kid. Said trailer is a parody of grim and gritty reboots in the veign of the dark knight trilogy and zack snyder. Scrooge gives creative control to Dewey because he’s the youth, Drake arrives as the new darkwing, Jim tries to kill him, he and launchpad get thrown out, we’ll get back to the good part in a moment. So your all refreshed on what happened? Good.. then....

You being the plot, you readers terrific. Okay

1) Scrooge... just... just Scrooge. There’s so much wrong with this scenario. For starter shi mnot having seen any movies since 1930, nor having invested in the movie buisness outside of his own low budget saftey films for alllll tha ttime. I call the bullest of all bullshit on this one. For starters there is no feasable way that Scrooge would sit on making money off one of the most lucrative industries in existance. Educational films are a decent market as are saftey films: he could easily make them for other companies extra cheap using donald as he clearly already tended to since he works cheap. But beyond that the film industry is a global juggernaught of money with TONS of ways to profit off it from making film: Making cheap equipment, renting equipment to filmakers, leasing mcduck properties for shoting, setting up stuidos for shooting they could both rent out AND use for their own productions, selling old props, video stores back when that was a thing, stremaing now.. there’s SO many ways Scrooge could make a decent profit off this over the decades he’s been at this ther’es no way he woudln’t have a deaprtment. I could buy him not getting how to make a blockbuster and thus meddling where he dosen’t get it, but the way it’s framed is tha the knows nothing about film and never tried despite being someone all about risk, reward and profit. And ther’es so much in film and so many peopl ehe coudl trust to basically run it for him, that it’s damn near impossible he sat on it and even more so he didn’t step in till they asked for more money. If the film was going overbudget he woudl’ve sent one of the buzzards over to penny pinch ages ago and they would’ve gladly done so as they need to embezzel theat money for more fowl jetskis. 

2) For an episode about accepting reboots, about both chershing an original work and letting others enjoy a new version of it.. they decided to also poke fun at gritty divisive reboots of popular stuff. The message of the ep isn’t bad, lettting someone enjoy their versoin of something even if you don’t and letting it inspire a new generation.. but it kinda sidesteps the fact that Allistor’s reboot is genuinely bad, he cares nothing about the property, and he learns nothing. You can’t have a reboot that’s genuinely terrible and NEEDS to be stopped at the cente rof your disertation on why reboots aren’t a bad thing> They arne’t, this show, she ra and jellystone are proof, but then don’t use something BLATNATLY evolcative of the zack snyder films, films that also used heroes more as symbols, were annoyingly pretinous and sucked gas while misunderstanding what they were remaking, is not how you do it. It’d of worked better if Boreswan’s reboot genuinely wasn’t bad, just very diffrent from the original,and he had genuine respect for the original. Instead he just comes off as, much like Snyder, a pretenious ass who dosen’t get the character. They also weirdly dip some Christopher nolan in there.. when he only made ONE bad batman film and one that’s bad nhot for how nolan’s usual batman tropes, but beacuse it was long, overly padded and not very satisfying as a conclusion to this epic trilogy. 

3) Why in the 39 flavors is Scrooge basing his opinion SOLEY on Dewey. See I get that their trying to spoof network execs foistering changes on movies in order to be more profitable at the sake of merit which again, I get it. He works for Disney aka 50 first gay characters, I GET IT. It just dosen’t work here because of the characters at play. Scrooge isn’t THIS stupid on a good day, and has three other kids at home he can call on for a focus group. As is it’s Scrooge letting his dumbest nephew actively ruin his big budget film because he dosen’t understand how films work. Which granted probably is why half of studio disasters happened and why we need an Ayer Cut, but dosen’t work for SCROOGE. He’s not this dumb and no one calls him out on it. It again would’ve worked better with Scrooge bringing in the others and letting them run wild, having it play out character wise, and have Huey be the ignored voice of reason. And i’ts not because he’s my tiny red son, he’s the logical choice: Della or Beakley would also butt in in their own ways as a reckles doofus and darkwing fangirl respectively. With Donald in space Huey is the only one who’d see the mess they were making. Louie would try and sequeeze stuff in for box office and Webby like Dewey would just go kind of insane. I will grant that Dewey’s changes are objectively hilaroius, but plot wise i’ts just UTTERLY agrivating. 

So yeah this part of the plot sucks and it sucks energy out of the episode when we have to go back to it. The only bright side to it is Dewey’s insane changes, including a mascot of himself, the darkwing dance crew, and megavolt as bane. 

So back at the plot people care about, Jim formally adopts Launchpad as his sidekick, hatching a scheme to get himself back in the roll: Jim will sneak on set and take the part while Launchpad will do the same, beating up and kidnapping Drake so Jim can do said part-taking. Even with a brain that’s just a bear riding a motorcycle in a circle with a darkwing duck hat, Launchpad can tell something’s wrong here and only goes along with it because his hero tells him to. Which again let’s be fair if Al Ewing asked me to rob a bank i’d probably at least consider it. 

Jim tries faking being a package guy and runs into Tad, played by DW creator Tad Stones, who has never heard of the show which sets Jim off into a homicidal rage again.. but at least it creates a distractoin for Launchpad. 

This being Launchpad the plan lasts all of two minutes before he gets trapped in the trailer he just broke into. Drake shows his heroic instincts by rescuing launchpad only to quickly find out “Oh shit this guy’s broken into my trailer and wants to kidnap me”> A fight ensues which shows off two things: Drake is an expert martial artist in this continuity. While he COULD fight in the original and does have an old martial arts teacher, he mostly used his wits and his gas gun, usually both together, to best his foes, like spiderman but with more gas.  This Drake’s no less scrappy or clever mind, he’s just better at hand to hand and it’s how he prefers to deal with things. 

The other is that Launchapd dosen’t want to do this, purely playing defensive. It’s clear he KNOWS this has to be wrong deep down but his brain simply can’t reconcile jim’s actions being as bad and selfish as they are with jim also being his hero and inspiration. 

Hilariously though Drake can’t help but call out to Launchpad not to destroy various merch duing their fight, something launchpad respects... and gets him to notice Drake’s trailer, a mini-musuem to darkwing duck with all kinds of merch even Launchpad, me sized nerd that he is, dosen’t have including a banned action figure.. which naturally he asks to play with and just as naturally, Drake obliges

So after more deep hurting, we cut back to these two who are having the time of their life, playing with action figures and holding them over Drake’s iron... which he has in his trailer that has no room for an ironing board ...

So the two get talking because the only way to start, is heart to heart and we get Drake’s backstory: He was a bullied, shy little kid who wasn’t very happy.. until he caught this tv show with a guy that no matter how much he got beaten, or mocked or blown up or crashed (that one was launchapd’s addition).. he got back up. This inspired drake to not only start cosplaying as the daring duck of mystery, but also get a cool lunchbox.. neither of which impressed his bullies to Launchpad’s suprise.. but which simply lead to Drake now fighting back, getting up and taking them out. He wants to star in the film because while he knows it’s not good and not relaly true to the source material he wants to inspire some other kid with a lunch box, touching Launchpad into deciding to try to talk jim into letting Drake do the part. 

There’s a lot to unpack with this new version. The first is that it takes almost entirely from Paraducks: Drake was bullied and shy, got inspiration from darkwing duck (a tv show instead of his future self this time), and then fought back and became his best self. 

The other part is just how utterly brillliant, heartfelt, well crafted and personal this feel. It’s VERY obvious how much Darkwing Duck means to frank, and in crafting a version of darkwing that had the same inspiration he does, i.e. the tv show, he gets to lovingly show it. To show how a cartoon can really impact someone and make their life better and be an important part of their life, to show kids i’ts okay to let that happen and to let the adults watching this show, those who watched the original and realitive newcomers like me, that you are seen. 

It also cleverly defines this version of Drake: the orignal was your classic Jerk with a Heart of Gold: doing the superheroing mostly for his own ego, being short and assholish with his best friend and daughter, not wanting to share his spotlight. But underneath it as a true hero who genuinely loved those people and lets them make him better. 

This drake still has flecks of the old darkwing ego, especailly in Moonvasion which again i’ve already covered, but he’s mostly just an earnest guy who wants to be someone for kids to look up to. He wants fame, respect and to live out his dreams being a superhero, sure, but he wants to do so at it’s core to help the helpless and inspire kids like him. He wants to be a hero for all the best reasons that define a superhero: to make lives better using whatever skills he has, to be hope for the hopeless. It’s a key part of what makes this origin work so well: the heart of it. Part of this reboot’s strength is adding depth to things, to give character motivation for why they do stuff.. and they gave drake a perfect one. 

They also cleverly found a use for who darkwing used to be.. by showing what he could’ve been. See Jim , whose been sneaking around, is another key peice of this.... and when he finds Drake, who despite Jim’s earlier assault is geninely kind and tells him how much he means.. Jim beats him up, locks him away and plans to take the roll, his eyes going a familiar shade of crazy as they do. 

Jim is a dark mirror of what Drake Classic COULD have been: Without a higher goal of helping people (If not as high as his reboot counterpart but darkwing still cares abou this job), or two people who truly love him and get him to see past himslef. What’s left is an egocentric, selfish, hot dogging, grandstanding, violet, petty, shell of a man with no great goal in life other than making himself look good and being validated by the world. He’s darkwing’s egocentric need to be noticed and adored turned psycotic. He’ll do ANYTHING to get HIS spotlight back no matter how much he dosen’t desrve it, how much he lost it due to his own behavior and how much someone else badly needs it more for better reasons. He dosen’t need anyone else except to serve or praise him. 

Unsuprsingly Jim Cummings plays this perfectly, and I applaud him: he was asked not only to NOT play darkwing, but to instead play an evil mirror of the character that shares Jim’s own name.. and being Jim Fucking Cummings said “of course” and gave one hell of a perforamnce. The episode is already good just iwth drake.. but giving him Jim to contrast with puts it over the top. 

This thus leads to our climax and one of the show’s finest scenes and probably my faviorite: Jim takes up the roll, refusing to give up to Megavolt as boreswan wants because symbolisim!, and ends up taking the villians gun which is an actual HIGH POWERED LIGHTNING GUN .... and I really don’t know why i’m shocked. Dewey probably just stole it from Gyro. He has to make them all pay SOMEHOW. That or scrooge just keeps a storage bin on the set of all of Gyro’s invetnions he took away from the guy before he made the mall pay. Either way I buy it. 

As a fire breaks out, Jim REFUSES to let anyone leave, not caring who dies as long as he gets his moment. Finally seeing his hero for what he is, Launchpad shields boreswan.. when we hear a familiar catchphrase...

                   I am the terror that flaps in the night,  I am the overstuffed burrito that spills in the lap of crime!                                   I am DARKWING DUCK!

With those word, a legend is reborn. Props to Chris for absolutely nailing his first terror that flaps in the night speech and for the writers for absolutely nailing what made them work. 

So a battle natrually ensues, as Drake shows off just how “scrappy and resilient” he is, having shrugged off the door earlier and walking off explosions and getting a piano knocked on him.. all to keep getting up. it dosen’t matter if the person who taught him that is the person knocking him down...he won’t stop getting up.

This leads to a BEAUTIFUL fight sequence as both darkwings fight hand to hand. Scrooge dosen’t interfere.. because he can’t tell them apart. Despite wearing diffrent costumes and him being you know mr.see all the angles. 

Oh and he also brings up “If only one of them had a moustache”, as there’s been a whole runner about him thinking film villians need Dick Dastardly mustaches

Back to the fight it’s utterly spectacular, with Launchpad running to turn the sprinklers on... after giving out a let’s get dangerous with his future boyfriend and both geeking out over it. This might be the most relatable episdoe of the entire show. 

Eventually just as Jim is about to decaptiate Drake with a chainsaw, Launchpad begs him to stop giving a heartfelt speech, which actually gets Jim to drop it. We also get the iconic line of “He knows a lot about this one thing”. Just thought i’d mention it. 

Sadly Jim’s story does not end happily as he once again lets his own ego get int he way, shoving Drake out of the way to save Launchpad when the last pylon overloads, seemingly dying doing something GOOD for once.

The film is shut down.. not because of the tragic death of a douchebag.. but because they didn’t get any of that and Scrooge is VERY stupid and dosen’t get he’s not getting ANY money back not continuing production or just you know HIRING A BETTER DIRECTOR. 

Whatever, back to our boys. Drake is not in a great place: his hero is dead after trying to kill him, his film is gone, his career is gone.. but Launchpad has a suggestion: be Darkwing for real. He has the talent, he looks good in a cape, and gizmoduck does it. (”And I am better than gizmoduck” proving some things never really change). With that Drake decides to take his soulmate’s advice to heart, signs the poster and reveals his name, becoming who he was born to be... a hero. 

And as a hero rises.. so does a villian as we catch up with Jim whose still alive.. but his mind is now throughly gone.. and his costume now a VERY familiar shade of yellow. 

It was all a setup! That hack put my fan in danger to steal                                           the glory and humiliate me! 

                         They want “grim and gritty”, huh? 

                                        Happy to play the part... 

And with that.... Negaduck.. is also reborn.  He WAS supposed to show up in let’s get dangeorus, but the crew felt it’d be a bit too crowded so they save dhim for season four

So yeah unless Frank rightfully gets to reboot the show, which given he gave them TWO backdoor pilots for it, they better, this will never be resolved and I can’t blame the crew. They had SO MUCH ELSE to unpack in season 3 before the finale in case they didn’t get renewed, that some things just wren’t going to.Still a damn fine villian origin

Final Thoughts:

This episode is pretty good: amazing acting with Chris Dimatopouls perfectly stepping into the role and Jim perfectly stepping back into an old roll of his.. if not the one people expected, a jaw dropping finale, great chemistry with drake and launchpad. It took a VERY risky narrative idea and paid it off brilliantly. 

As i’ve said it’s only real weakness is the scrooge part of things where he’s made to look like this...

For the entire episode. Boorswan likewise isn’t likeable, coming off as a pretenious twit who dosen’t care about the franchise he’s actively ruining.  Dewey is the only bright spart of that whole messy part of the episode and it drags would WOULD be one of the series best episodes down as a result.  Still ther’es WAY too much good here for this to be a bad one, just not one of the best like it coul’dve been. Still worth checking out. 

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#ducktales #darkwing duck #the duck knight returns #drake mallard #jim starling #negaduck #launchpad mcquack #drakepad #allistar boreswan #dewey duck #scrooge mcduck #disney+