*A few spoilers, including spoilers for the end of “The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!”*
The double-length season finale goes all out. We’ve got action, we’ve got drama and emotion, we’ve got jokes! In short, season 1 is going out with a bang, and it resolves some of the ongoing plot threads while leaving other mysteries dangling for future episodes.
At the end of the last episode, new revelations about the triplets’ mom caused them to break with Scrooge pretty severely. They’ve left the mansion and have moved back into Donald’s newly-repaired houseboat. Despite the stubborn protests on both sides that Scrooge and the boys don’t need each other, they’re all clearly miserable, and Webby teams up with Launchpad to “parent trap” them into reconciling. But little do they know, Lena’s wicked Aunt Magica has chosen that moment to execute her ultimate revenge on Scrooge.
This is a big, splashy, dramatic season finale, with all sorts of guest stars from earlier in the season. Obviously, Catherine Tate’s Magica and Kimiko Glenn’s Lena spend plenty of time center stage—after spending most of the season literally in the shadows, Magica is confronting Scrooge directly now, so we finally get our animated reunion between Tate and David Tennant. We also get appearances from Lin-Manuel Miranda as Fenton and Jim Rash as Gyro, who’s as cracked as always: “That’s it, no more underwater labs! It’s volcanoes or abandoned castles from now on!” Best of all, Don Cheadle guest stars as a voice modulator for Donald. Now that everyone can finally understand what he’s saying, he gets to unleash his inner eloquent badass, who turns out to be equal parts James Bond and Henry V. It’s an obvious joke, but it pays off with every line and Cheadle is an absolute hoot.
The spectacle is good, bringing both thrills and humor, but as usual, the family relationships are the real heart of the story. Each of the boys has their own way of dealing with their falling-out with Scrooge—when they each throw their keepsakes from the mansion overboard, I love that Huey sets his ablaze Viking-funeral-style, and it’s very in-character for Dewey to go into full denial-mode, throwing himself into upbeat thoughts of the future because he’s so completely over Scrooge, don’t you know? At the same time, Webby and Launchpad make a delightfully-hyper team of conspirators, though they need Mrs. Beakley to go for the emotional jugular—“I’m a former agent and a grandmother,” she explains. “I know how to weaponized guilt.” Together, Webby, Launchpad, and Mrs. Beakley work to help the boys remember how much they miss Scrooge.
Speaking of our favorite mallardly miser, Scrooge is decidedly Not Doing Well on his own. There are all kinds of good funny-sad sight gags here. Without Mrs. Beakley around, the mansion is giving way to entropy and garbage, so Scrooge has constructed a surrogate family out of empty pizza boxes. I also love the moment where he’s collapsed on the floor in miserable apathy, briefly tries to reach a stray piece of pizza with his tongue, then decides it’s not worth the effort. Tennant’s voice-acting nicely matches the animation, by turns pathetic, funny, and emotional. I also like that, despite the clear visual evidence that Scrooge is falling apart, he’s still too proud and stubborn to admit that he misses the boys. “I’m obviously doing much better than they are,” he tells Lena archly.
The finale makes room for a few more excessively-Scottish exclamations from Tennant/Scrooge, which always makes me happy. Here, we’re treated to, “Scat, you rapacious ogress!” and, “You wee tenebrous traitor!”
As I said before, with season 1 now under my belt, I'm going to take a break from DuckTales and pivot to our forthcoming Fourteenth Doctor. So, that's where my Other Doctor Lives focus is going to be for the foreseeable future.
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