Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Huey Duck (DuckTales)

Fair warning: there are going to be a lot of DuckTales-related Neurodivergent Alley posts coming up here. While it’s far from the only show that makes me think “so much autism!” when I watch it, I just finished watching the whole series for the first time, concurrently with my own neurodivergent journey, and it was a neat experience to see how character after character starting “pinging” for me, to the point where I thought, “All of them???” I won’t necessarily cover every character that I read as neurodivergent—again, so many!—and I imagine another piece of media will catch my eye and take over my brain sooner or later, at which point I’ll check back in with these characters more periodically. But for now, I’m all in on neurodivergent-coded ducks!

In deciding how I wanted to tackle this show, I thought I’d look at the major characters in chronological order of when I started viewing them through a neurodivergent lens. And that means Huey is first up! One of the smartest things DuckTales did from the outset was give each triplet their own distinct personality. Plus, within the first handful of episodes each one got something of a “spotlight” episode to help cement their characterization for the viewer. At the very beginning, I was keeping track of them by their voice actors and clothing colors, but it didn’t take long at all before I knew which was which at all times.

Huey is what I’ve taken to calling an autistic-coded “Freebie” character. In my Neurodivergent Alley post on Leslie Knope, I called her a good example of The Second Autistic-Coded Character I Spot on a show with Big ND Energy, and at that time, Huey was one of the examples of the first autistic-coded characters I spot. A lot of deeply neurodivergent shows have one, the character that aligns more closely to the widely accepted tropes about what autism looks like. That’s a Freebie—their coding is right on the surface, and plenty of neurotypical people would also recognize them. In my post on Leslie, other examples I used of this type of character were Ron from Parks and Rec and Gregory from Abbott Elementary. In fact, Danny Pudi, who voices Huey, played another such character with Abed on Community. On a show that isn’t intrinsically neurodivergent, they’re probably the only character who could reasonably be read as autistic, but on a show with Big ND Energy, they’re sort of a gateway character to help you realize how neurodivergent the show is as a whole.

Yikes, so many words, and I haven’t really started talking about Huey as an individual yet! My apologies. Basically the first things we learn about Huey are that he likes planning, order, and rules. He loves studying maps and writing itineraries, and Louie once secures his cooperation on a hustle by luring him in with the promise of spreadsheets. He’s a dedicated Junior Woodchuck scout who positively lives by his guidebook. On the kids’ adventures with Scrooge, he’s likely to reach for the guidebook at the first sign of something he’s never encountered before, making sense of the fantastical through the orderly descriptions he finds there. In one instance, he goes into a tailspin when they come across creatures that aren’t in the guidebook—at first, he insists that they can’t exist, but once they become impossible to ignore, he adds his own pages to the guidebook to account for them.

Huey can become overwhelmed easily, especially when there’s a lot of unpredictable stuff being thrown at him at once or people aren’t responding to situations in a logical way. With a family that goes on as many adventures as Huey’s does, that can be tough. Don’t get me wrong, Huey does love adventuring. But he loves the discovery part: finding and interpreting clues, knowing the history or the science behind what they’re searching for, seeing something entirely new. He also loves a good infodump! He’s not in it for the adrenaline rush or the derring-do, and the opportunity to gain new knowledge is all the thrills or excitement he needs. More than once, he see him get delightfully stimmy over this artifact or that supernatural creature.

These traits can put Huey in conflict with his brothers a lot. His penchant for rules and precaution rains on Dewey’s death-defying parade, and Louie groans about his obsession with “nerd stuff” getting in the way of the “important” things like treasure. He can be seen as the buzzkill or the Debbie Downer. But these conflicts are realistic for triplets with wildly different personalities, and the show continually affirms Huey, with the brothers’ fights usually ending with the realization that they succeed best when they combine their individual skills. That very much includes Huey’s pedantic nature and research-mode instincts!

Now, I’m not sure if Huey’s autistic coding is dialed up in season 3 or if it just became much more apparent to me because, by that time, 1) I’d been exploring my own neurotype more and 2) the show had cemented itself in my mind as super neurodivergent. Either way, season 3 gives us Huey spiraling over having to complete a difficult Woodchuck course without the familiarity and comfort of the guidebook, happy-stimming as he infodumps about a hidden mermaid society, admitting that he thinks of the “irrational” side of him (i.e. the strong emotions he can’t control) as a separate entity that he needs to rein in, and using a weighted blanket to calm down when he’s panicking. Oh yeah, and he’s happy to finally make a close friend outside of his family, someone who really operates on his level, and that friend literally turns out to be a robot. But again with the affirmation, the episode resolves with Huey reassuring BOYD that he’s exactly who he’s supposed to be, and at the end of the story, their relationship is tighter than ever! Despite the conflicts that can arise or the fears/anxieties that make him feel out of control, Huey ultimately likes being who he is and doesn’t want to change that.