Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Della Duck (DuckTales)

*Della-related spoilers.*

In a way, Della is the character who made things click for me on an “oh yeah, this is all genetic!” level. At the time, I didn’t recognize it specifically as neurodivergence, but in her first major appearance on the show, I was struck by how much she seemed to be a combination of her entire family.

I remember I specifically noted this in my review of “Whatever Happened to Della Duck?!” Part of the reason we get invested in Della’s story off the bat, besides knowing how much she means to the other characters, is seeing their various traits resonate within her. Dewey’s energy and impulsivity. Huey’s deep devotion to the Junior Woodchucks and consultation of the guidebook. Louie’s pattern recognition. Scrooge’s obsession with adventuring. Donald’s tendency toward big emotions, especially when she’s mad. Within a single “here’s what Della’s been up to the last 10 years” episode, we see how she’s basically every member of her family, distilled into one extraordinary person.

As I said, I didn’t see it as such when I first watched the episode, but when viewed through a Neurodivergent Alley lens, it’s easy to read Della as having All the Autism and All the ADHD. Her intensity and obsessiveness, the way she’s hyped about everything, her confidence that she can master any skill, the way her attention pulls every which way but she locks into “action focus mode” when there’s a baddie to defeat. It can come across as chaotic, but that’s very much what an AuDHD combo can feel like.

Della definitely has spiky skill sets. She’s incredibly good at a lot of things, and her tenacity means she doesn’t give up easily. She’s a talented pilot, she can both fight and research, and she’s resourceful enough to get herself out of nearly any jam eventually. She’s able to survive being stranded on the moon for ten years, constantly adapting to difficult conditions and brainstorming solutions to new problems.

At the same time, she’s sometimes the one to get herself into those jams in the first place. She takes a prototype rocket on an ill-advised test fight that winds up with her crashlanding on the moon, and she then wildly overestimates her aptitude for building a new rocket to get home. When she finally does manage to make it back to Earth, she’s thrilled to meet the triplets but struggles to get a hang of “mom stuff”—she can’t cook well, she doesn’t know how to reassure the wary Louie, and she has a hard time setting good boundaries when she tends to get excited and barrel confidently into things herself.

Also, social cues are not her forte. Della is wildly affectionate and fiercely loyal to family and friends, but she’s not good at taking a hint when she’s aggravating someone. On the moon, once she connects with the native population, she absolutely thinks she and Penumbra are besties and has no idea that the stern moon warrior is plotting her downfall. (Luckily for Della, she unknowingly wins Penumbra over in the end.) She clings so hard to the people she cares about that she lowkey sabotages Donald’s romantic relationship, inserting herself between them and preventing him from setting off on his own sort of adventure with Daisy.

In my “Whatever Happened to Della Duck?!” review, I said the show gives us enough of Della’s flaws to keep her from feeling too superwomany. While I don’t really subscribe to the “neurodivergence is a superpower!” notion, I do like how much Della’s autistic- and ADHD-coding contribute to her impressive and varied abilities, just as I like the way that coding also informs her flaws and struggles.