Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Webby Vanderquack (DuckTales)

*Webby-related spoilers.*

To reference my Leslie Knope post again, Webby is definitely a perfect example of The Second Autistic-Coded Character I Spot. As I said in my post on Huey, he jumped out at me almost right away, but it took a while for me to start wondering about Webby. Once I did, though, it was a very short hop from, “Hey, is Webby autistic too?” to “omg, this girl has so much autism and ADHD!” I love her to pieces and must protect her at all costs.

When Donald first drops the triplets off at Scrooge’s mansion, Webby greets them with a frenetic but nervous energy. She has a boundless well of love that she’s ready to fire off at the drop of a hat, but she’s been raised in relative isolation. Scrooge has hung up his adventuring hat and been keeping to himself for years, and Webby really only has her grandmother, Scrooge’s housekeeper, for company. She doesn’t know any other kids and has spent her childhood becoming an expert in various forms of combat and other adventure-related skills.

She is a lot. She is so much, and the boys don’t know what to make of her. Webby gloms on hard, and her inexperience with regular-kid stuff means she has zero context for how to act in social situations. She instantly regards the triplets as her best friends, a practice she’ll later repeat with Lena and Violet.

Because Webby was raised with hardly any socialization, some of her autistic-coded traits could be chalked up to her inexperience, but I think it’s more than that. She’s widely knowledgeable and always eager to learn, geeking out about random factoids and acquiring new proficiencies with intense focus. But when it comes to social stuff, she doesn’t really catch on. She’s confused by Louie’s methods of hustle for free juice at Fun Zone, and when she tries it for herself, she’s positively unable to tell the staff that she just wants a free cup for “water.” She’s super trusting, even when other characters warn her not to be. Sometimes that pays off for her, and others—I’m not sure if Lena ever would’ve been brought into the fold were it not for Webby’s relentless friendship and kindness—but sometimes she gets burned. And even when she starts out wary, like when she follows Scrooge’s lead on his feud against Santa Claus, it’s not long before her defenses break down and she’s brimming with affection.

It's fair to say that Scrooge is Webby’s special interest, which makes living in the same house as him a little awkward. The first time Webby and Scrooge spend time alone together, she alternates between fawningly infodumping to him about him and being so excited she can’t speak at all. She’s read everything she can get her hands on about Scrooge’s adventures and has an encyclopedic knowledge on goofy minutiae from his life. She’s been running around the mansion on her own all this time, but once she starts becoming friends with the triplets and then gets properly incorporated into the whole crew, that obsessive energy and adoration gets channeled into making an enormous “family” board, including pictures of absolutely everyone in her circle and the connections between them.

Webby is incredibly competent at her many practiced skills, from fighting styles to parkour-ish moves to handling grappling hooks. She’s good at solving puzzles, and she has all kinds of esoteric knowledge that comes in handy at odd moments. She is ride-or-die for anyone who’s the slightest bit nice to her, and she’s a sweet, sunshiny kid who will burn down the world to protect those she cares about. She loves hosting sleepovers that inevitably turn into near-death experiences, and a friendship bracelet is a sacred bond to her. She will misunderstand your social cues, she will smother you with her wildly enthusiastic love, and she will get equally excited about pretty unicorns and evil spies. Webby Vanderquack, my beloved!