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fly-pow-bye · 6 years

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DuckTales 2017 - “The Shadow War!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Bob Snow

Written by: Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Bob Snow

Directed by: Hatthew Humphreys, Tanner Johnson

Storyboard by: Vince Aparo, Emmy Cicierega, Ben Holm, Vaughn Tada, Brandon Warren, Jason Zurek

The Day of the Ducks, and the Night of DeSpell. I almost wish they kept those titles!

We start where we left off from the previous episode, with Huey, Dewey, and Louie packing up the newly repaired houseboat. They're not too happy, but they're also not happy with a mother-losing uncle, either. Donald tries to cheer everyone up with some sardine crackers, which, judging by Webby's expression, aren't that great.

Webby's there too, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. Is she going to move in with the boys, or is this some temporary home for her? The fact that the boys were some of the first friends she ever got to meet probably had a hand in that.

But enough about that, time for some recap of something I skipped earlier: in Lena’s last episode, Magica manages to possess her, taking over her body. She's already possessed here, as she starts to plot to get that number one dime before the lunar eclipse happens. She only occasionally regaining her senses to show the viewer that this isn’t actually Lena’s real personality. How? Maybe it’s just like just shaking her head, or her eyes changing color, or...

KIDS SHOW. KIDS SHOW. OH, GOOD LORD IT’S A KIDS SHOW. I mean, I'm not against this. Having Magica's shadow form literally getting attached to Lena's poor eyes shows how little control Lena has now.

Honestly, I wasn’t a big fan of this when Other Bin used it as a twist, mostly because it lessened Lena’s importance in the plot. Why have any investment in Lena doing the right thing if her evil aunt can just possess her to do the wrong thing? Turns out, this episode has some twists that make that an easier pill to swallow.

They even throw three items from three separate filler episodes into the ocean, including the Druid’s Cup and the “I Didn’t Survive_d_ Mount Neverrest” shirt. Yeah, there’s a lot of references to the previous episodes, and these are just the most blatant. One neat joke is that, despite everything, Louie is still the money-making schemer as he desperately tries to keep the hook from the Toth-Ra episode to sell on their version of eBay.

As Louie desperately tries to scuba dive for the soon to be lost treasures, Donald shows up to tell the boys that he’s taking the boat to Cape Suzette. Just in case, the logo is even in the style of TaleSpin and it has the Sea Duck on it. I wonder how the ducks feel about that name.

Meanwhile, Magica, let's be honest, while it's Lena's body, it's clearly Magica in 100% control here, finally infiltrates her nemesis's manor by using Lena's voice to tell Scrooge that Webby would be so disappointed that he's going through one of those "old man moments". She finally comes face-to-stolen-face with Scrooge...

...and he looks like this. After everyone left him, including ghost Duckworth, long story, Scrooge is at his lowest moment. It apparently didn't take too long for him to become a pizza loving duck with a stained t-shirt, living off of the last remains of his money. Magica thinks this is all some psychological ploy, and gets irritated when this increasingly does not turn out to be the case.

Back at the houseboat, Webby does a plan to get some sort of farewell party going. Since the boys are starting to have second thoughts about Cape Suzette, sans Dewey who gets all dressed up for the occasion, they decide to agree to this.

Webby tries to gets a special guest to join this parent trap, and yes, they outright call it that. She also gets Launchpad, who was oblivious to all of this and is confused to why Scrooge won't let him into the manor, and accidently gets Mrs. Beakley, who finds out about it and wants to investigate this. Thankfully, she wants in on it as well. Crisis averted. Webby decides to call up Scrooge McDuck, and to her ears, it seems like Scrooge answered the call and would happily go anywhere with free food.

Unfortunately, it was Magica talking in Scrooge McDuck’s voice, as Scrooge is still wallowing around in his own sorrows. For the record, they do the body swap voice change thing, with Lena speaking in Magica's voice when she's not trying to be in-character. It's still Lena's vocal cords, but, it's magic, okay? They actually say that later in the episode.

Magica really wants Scrooge to drink nutmeg tea which was spiked with a sleeping potion. Y'know, so she could get the dime. Short answer, he doesn't, and her reactions are funny. She even ends up putting it in a sippy cup, only for him to knock it over and break it. However, her other strategy ends up working better.

She also accidentally convinces him to try to go on an adventure on his own, and start fresh, forgetting about everything in the past. This includes forgetting his family; that’s another major theme in this episode, and it’s not just in the Huey, Dewey, and Louie part. He throws away his clothes, and Magica suggests giving the Number One dime away to her.

Of course, that's the one trinket he doesn't want to get rid of, much to Magica's lament. Gotta say, that's pretty harsh but yet fitting for him that a piece of money is held to a higher regard than his own family, even if his own family disowned him. Eventually, Magica gives up on tricking the old man into a slumber and starts wrestling him for it. Since Scrooge has been out of it for the last few days, this does not take too long.

Turns out, she had a decidedly different and legitimate reason to get the Number One Dime, even though previous episodes implied that she thought it had mystical powers just like in the original comics and cartoon. For the first and only time, we see that it’s an ordinary dime that happened to have Magica's true form banished into it in a battle that happened 20 years ago.

A little bit different from the naive assumptions from the original, possibly due to Magica's new character. They may have also felt that would be a lousy ending if it turned out to be an ordinary dime without Magica's real body in it. She grabs it just as soon as the lunar eclipse begins, and...

...this reveal of Magica's real form is so cool. The green feathers are a bit odd, considering she never had that in the other adaptations or the original, but it is addressed in the end.

Scrooge and Lena plan to take on Magica. With Lena's knowledge of magic, and Scrooge's skills, nobody can stop them! Especially not sorceresses that were listening in on their plan right outside of the cage!

Magica taps her staff, and Lena gets sucked into her shadow. Magica, when she's not getting irritated by everyone around her, really is a nightmarish figure. Yeah, kids show, oops, she gone!

Oh, and Scrooge is sucked into his number one dime as well, and becomes the new back of the coin. It seems like all hope is lost. But, there's still some family left, right?

Sure enough, yes, though at least one of them had to think about it. To make a long story short, Huey and Louie are convinced to go back to Scrooge by a combination of Donald’s talking to them about family and Mrs. Beakley’s guilt trips. Apparently, as a spy and a grandmother, she knows fully well how to do those.

Dewey, on the other hand, is still the odd one out. It makes sense; he was the one that was the most involved in the mission to find his mother, and he was the one who was the most shaken about it. I'm not a fan of the complainer is always wrong trope, but the complainer is definitely in the wrong.

He eventually gets over it, because, let’s be honest, we got to get to the better part eventually. Dewey goes into the hug, and tearfully tells Donald that he wants to go back to the manor. Donald agrees, but they’re immediately interrupted by some commotion outside.

They see a huge magical tornado where the manor used to be. Soon, other people hop into the boat as well, including Gyro Gearloose, and Manny. Y'know, that headless horse they're trying to make into a thing.

We get to see Magica's plan in action; not only does she want revenge on Scrooge, she's going to take it out on the entire city of Duckburg! She causes everyone's shadow to rise up to join her. They make sure to do many cameos with this, including Glomgold, Gladstone Gander, and even Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera and his mother, the former even getting Gizmoduck snatched away from him. I'm sad to say that was essentially a cameo and not a lead to an amazing fight scene. Not to say there won't be one.

I’ll set yourself up for disappointment: no, they didn’t give this any sort of payoff beyond an implied off-screen fight later in the episode. Eventually, this turns into a huge shadow vortex that eventually settles into a tornado above the money bin, where Magica has formed a throne made out of Scrooge’s remaining money.

Someone has to have a plan to stop this, and who else but our lovable Uncle Donald? Unfortunately, there’s a problem.

One problem the comics couldn’t have in a audio-visual based medium does rise up, and one I had suspicions with even when I was first watching this: Donald’s voice is still that classic Donald voice, and nobody can understand him. That “[speaking gibberish]” is an actual closed caption.

Thankfully, Gyro has the solution that doesn’t involve taking a role away from the most well known character in the series: a Barksian Modulator, an obvious reference to Carl Barks, and a not-so-obvious reference to a classic Disney cartoon that involved Donald taking pills to mitigate his speech impediment, is forced into Donald’s throat.

While Donald with an intelligible voice always felt wrong in an audio-visual medium, it is necessary at this point, and it leads to some great moments later in the episode. Here’s a good example, from where Donald takes the wheel of the boat, letting Mrs. Beakley know that he can handle it:

Mrs. Beakley: Watch out for the storm.

Donald Duck: I am the Storm!

Mrs. Beakley ...were you always saying things like this?

Eh, I could see people thinking this is out of character for him, too. At least, for the "unlucky everyman" character he was until now.

He then tells the kids to stay home, as it's too dangerous. They reference the lifejackets from the first episode a lot in this episode, which is a little more subtle than the "box full of items" scene. Of course, they don't listen to that. They need to find someone who’s crafty, like a teenager who knows how to get into places. Somelike...like Lena.

They go to the theatre Lena lived in, which I’m not entirely unconvinced was the Beagle Boy’s old hangout from the original, but they can't seem to find her. They do find a trapdoor leading to her room, though, which happens to contain her journal! They debate whether or not to open it, and decide it may lead to where she ran off to.

It's here where Webby learns an even deeper secret about Lena, one that the audience wouldn’t have guessed and one I won't entirely spoil here. I know this because I sure did not! A part of what cloaked this secret is that Magica had a niece in the original comics named Minima De Spell, and I just assumed this was the reboot’s version of her, but the truth is a little bit different. In an only slightly inaccurate way, they figure out that Lena was the big betrayer, and Webby is the one hit the hardest by this.

This explains a lot about her character development; she was just slowly gaining her conscience this entire time. I still wish it was a little smoother, as it seemed like she had a different personality in every episode. But, now I can see the progression.

I'm going to skip around a little bit, just because I don't want to ruin the episode too much. This episode was said to be like an "action movie airing on a Saturday morning" by one of the writers, and they weren't kidding; there's a lot of outright fisticuffs in this episode! Granted, most of it is against these shadow creatures.

Usually in the comics, original cartoon, and even this cartoon, they have to win through cleverness. They do only one scene where they actually stop the shadows by turning off the lights and then using Webby's nightvision goggles. For the most part, it's an extended Power Ranger-esque putty fight.

Once the ducks manage to get into the money bin, we get back to the irritating the evil sorceress bits that are all really clever. All of the boy's personalities show in this fight scene. For example, Louie scams Magica by telling her that she broke an ancient cursed mirror, and Huey...

Huey: (dodging Magica’s attacks) How did Scrooge curse you, anyway? Isn’t Scrooge not the magic type? And we never saw you on the back of the coin before now? And how does the lunar eclipse factor into all of this?

Magica: You see, the lunar eclipse enhances...it’s magic, okay?!

...does my job for me, apparently. Notice how I said the boys, but I could understand why Webby would act the way she does against someone who fooled her into making a false friend. No use of her gadgets here. It feels very out of character and out of style...and maybe that was the point.

At one point, Magica shoots another beam, which hits Webby's friendship bracelet. A scene anyone could expect happens here; it was certainly a scene I expected. What I didn't expect was how short it was, and how tragic it eventually became. It worked in the same way as that shocking scene from Other Bin, except this is reality rather than a dream.

The tragedy doesn't last long, though. It really wouldn't be much of a spoiler to say that Scrooge and the boys eventually win over Magica, and part of this is from Scrooge coming out of the coin...somehow. Something about the shine of the lunar eclipse, I guess. Scrooge even somehow got his clothes back when he got out of the coin.

He then tells Magica the greatest irony of them all: her attempt to ruin Scrooge's family ended up bringing them together again. In fact, Magica had nothing to do with the breakup; she didn't even know it happened!

Of course, it's a super happy ending for the most part, with the family coming back together in the end, Magica gets defeated, the voice pill breaks to give Donald his old voice back, and the houseboat becomes unable to take anyone to Camp Suzette. Of course, it's for the most part; Lena's fate is up in the air. It really depends on how you interpret one of the last scenes. Lena may have been "false", as non-spoilery as I can call her, but she’s become a character in her own right.

There’s one final scene regarding the one plot thread that wasn’t exactly closed up by the end of this episode. While I'm glad it's there, it did lead to one huge question: why not check the moon first?

How does it, and the whole season, stack up?

Angones has said that this was essentially an action movie, and I can’t disagree with that. A great ending to a good reboot.

And thus, that’s the end of Season 1 of the DuckTales reboot. A very good season all around! But I must talk about something.

People have noticed that I have never given a negative review to any episode of this series as of yet, though there were episodes that came very close. This would have been the image if I went with my initial opinion of Other Bin before I thought about the importance of it in the long run. Terror of the Terra-Firmians was ultimately a useless episode that had to have Lena shoved in to be halfway decent.

It was a captivating season from beginning to end, and that’s not something I would say about most seasons of anything, especially not reboots.

I’ll say this, reviewing two shows at the same time took a lot out of me, but I can’t say it wasn’t worth it. Who knows what journeys our boys will go through next, and if the demand is there, or if that other show ends first, maybe I can go for it when it airs.

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#ducktales 2017 #ducktales #disney #fpb rerun

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