Headscratchers / DuckTales (2017)

DuckTales, woo-huh?

Beware of possible unmarked spoilers.

General/Non-episode-specific

• Will there be a Watsonian explanation for Donald's... speech impediment? Yes, we all know he wouldn't be Donald without it, but now he is officially the only duck who talks this way. Will there be a reason or will they at least lampshade like they did every now and again in the original show?
  • The somewhat Fanonnish stance on it (in the classic pre-reboot universe, anyway) is that talking this way is a predisposition of the anthropomorphic ducks' vocal cords, but they can easily choose to speak more normally. Note that in a 1950's cartoon, Donald received a flowerpot to the head and woke up talking normally (and in quite a nice silky voice at that). It seems he's perfectly capable of speaking normally like everybody else but he just… doesn't bother. This is consistent with how even Scrooge occasionally "WAK" -s in surprise in the comics even though his voice is far from quacky.
  • There's also the somewhat common idea that Donald's voice actually is a speech impediment. The above mentioned that Donald "doesn't bother" talking normally, but that's not quite accurate. While it's not super common, Donald is sometimes shown to be insecure about his ducky voice. If he's so insecure about it, why doesn't he just talk normally? It's likely that Donald just has great difficulty overcoming his speech impediments without outside help like "voice pills" and amnesia.
  • It's got to be some sort of speech impediment/(I hate to use the word) disability. In the season finale, the triplets admit to the fact that they can only understand about every third word and mostly rely on context clues. And they've been with Donald their whole lives.
  • A note about calling it a disability: Most disabled fans will APPRECIATE treating Donald's speech impediment a disability because we don't like dancing around it. If it makes *any* ordinary part of your life difficult, it qualifies. (One important reason is that if we put a false line between abled and disabled we usually leave out people who need support.) Donald represents a speech disability pretty dang well in this series, and I love how they got into his mental health regarding it.
  • A speech disorder so severe that not even your adopted children can understand you is absolutely a disability. It affects every aspect of his life, damages his work prospects, even distances him from his own family, and is established as the root cause of his anger issues. He probably couldn't get disability payments for that alone (he can still do manual labor) but his medical insurance should absolutely cover augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices to compensate. Given he's had this disorder his whole life, it's bizarre that Scrooge hasn't kept him equipped with such devices since childhood, especially since Gyro designed one.
• Just how long can the bird people in the Ducktales world live? How does aging for them work? I've heard it said Scrooge is over 100 years old and yet he's more fit and spry than most humans half that age. Then there is Quackfaster who has worked as Scrooge's Archivist for some 50 years, which means assuming she started working as a young adult she's around 70 years old, yet she barely looks, sounds, or acts even middle-aged. Is it perhaps a bit of fridge brilliance in that real birds often don't show age quite the same way mammals do?
  • In the classic Duckverse, it's a semi-accepted mechanic (Depending on the Writer) that the saying that you're only as old as you feel is much more literally true. El Capitan in the old series lived to four-hundred-odd years old out of sheer willpower and Carl Barks's late story Go Slowly, Sands of Time shows Scrooge angsting about his age and investigating a remote town of long-lived people in the Himalayas, only to find out they stave off the Reaper by doing what they love all day. It's a surprisingly Discworld-like concept, but it seems the characters only age when they remember they're supposed to.
    
    Alternately, it has been suggested that duck biology is somewhat different from humans — it was originally an oversight, but the timeline appears to show Della Duck giving birth to Huey, Dewey and Louie at 15, and on the opposite end of the spectrum we have at-the-least-80-years-old Scrooge and Grandma Duck both still fit as a fiddle and Scrooge's great-uncle Quagmire (died 1954) and uncle Jake (alive in the early 1950s, may or may not still be alive).
    
    Finally, the same story that finally lifted the mystery of Comic!Della's disappearance (though it clearly isn't canon to the reboot's continuum since they have an entirely different storyline about this very subject) dropped another bomb in addressing how Donald and Co. haven't aged in decades. Scientists investigate and one develops a theory that he and the others stay true to their 1950's selves because of a strange phenomenon where, ever since they became comic-book icons, the collective image their fanbase has of them had the magical effect of preserving them as close to that image as possible, with none of them ever consciously noticing it because the fans' idea didn't include them noticing it, either. The whole thing is honestly a fascinating idea, tying together the age issue with the oft-mentioned but rarely plot-relevant Literary Agent Hypothesis of the entire Duckverse, but the story isn't the best vehicle for it (since it also had to spend page count on exploring Della's story) so not everyone likes it. Besides, the writer left a backdoor in case they ever want to Retcon the entire idea into oblivion, by having the scientist who comes up with the theory seem not a little nutty, and actually change his mind by the end of the story, though his new idea is so bonkers it's just as likely he just went completely round the bend and his older idea was the good one.
  • Going beyond the simple "it's a kid's cartoon, just run with it" explanation, it could be a play on the fact that in real life one human year corresponds to just over four duck years, so a duck that was 100 in duck years would only be around 24 years old in human terms, i.e. still fairly sprightly and active. Of course, this isn't realistic in the slightest (not least because most breeds of duck on average only live to ten human years max), but at that point, I think "it's a kid's cartoon, just run with it" justifiably kicks in.
  • In the comics (for however little it's worth), they clearly age at the same rate as humans. But that's the impression I would gather from both cartoons, too. The inhabitants of this world aren't anthropomorphized birds the way, say, Lauren Faust's ponies are anthropomorphized ponies, or the mammals of Zootopia are anthropomorphized mammals (ex. they don't eat worms or underwater plants, they don't fly, they don't display any avian traits whatsoever beyond appearance) — they're humans who just happen to look like birds. The conflict between the human lifespan and how Scrooge would have to be over 100 years old to, say, have been a prospector in the Yukon gold rush is due to Comic-Book Time.
    • At least partially explained in "The Golden Lagoon of White Agony Plains!" - Scrooge mentions that he was stuck in a timeless dimension for a while, meaning that he didn't age at all during that timeframe. Who knows just how many years passed in the outside world before he got back?
• What about the triplets' dad? Why is Dewey more focused on his mom than both parents? Is it because there's more photographic evidence of his mom? Do they already know what happened to their dad and thus don't need anyone to tell them about him?
  • This is something that can't really be answered without further evidence from the series or the base material (which I confess I'm not familiar with), but I'd imagine that it's something along these lines. However he left the scene, presumably, the triplets have more information about what happened to their dad and, assuming he's not really going to come up at any point, it likely wasn't under such an air of mystery with his relatives refusing to even discuss him beyond the simple fact of acknowledging his existence. Of course, it's still early days yet at the time of writing so finding their dad could equally become part of the series' arc as well.
  • The answer could be that there's no mystery surrounding their dad (the triplets and their relatives know who he was, they know that he's dead, and how he died), so there's nothing compelling them to search for facts about him or what happened to him.
    
    I, however, suspect it's the opposite: that Della's family knows nothing about the father of her children — his name, how they met, where he is now, if he's alive or not, what her relationship with him was like, etc. The triplets know who their mom was, they're surrounded by her family in the town where she lived, so they have plenty to go on to find answers, but they know nothing about their father, and nobody around them knows a single thing about him either — they have nothing to go on, so they have no ability to search for facts or "the truth" about him. Nobody — Scrooge, Donald — has anything to tell them.
    
    Why isn't this frustrating for the triplets, or at least Dewey? Why don't they care as much as they do (or at least as Dewey does) about their mom? Because they have and always have had a father: Donald. Thanks to Donald, they've never had that void in their lives — he's the only dad they'll ever need. Plus, since they have no face or name to put with a biological father, the idea of their biological father is just a vague concept to them. They know on some level that he exists/existed but in a completely disinterested way because, since he's never been involved not just in their lives but in the lives of anyone around them, they have no sense of a connection with him; he's more of a concept than a person to them. Donald is the person they recognize as their father figure, and with no other figure to disturb that, there's no emotional drive to disturb it.
    
    Donald knew, grew up with, and loved their mother, though, and they've never had anyone to take the place of their mother — she's a person to them with a name, face, family, history, and photos (however rare). They know enough about her to miss her and enough initial facts/connections to propel an investigation into her past. They don't have anything to miss about their father, though, and zero facts to look into, making an investigation into him as impractically pointless as it is emotionally unnecessary.
    
    ... That's my theory, anyway.
    
    What are the chances a kids' cartoon even today would explicitly spell all that out were it the case? Not good. Illegitimacy is more taboo than death. So if the show says nothing on the subject of their father, I would assume it's because the canonical truth is something the censors will not allow them to explicitly portray for the audience. Personally, I would prefer silence to a deliberately censor-approved explicit explanation (ex. their parents were married, and their father died under completely non-mysterious circumstances).
  • The triplet's father was never even named in comic-book canon and he's literally the only member of the family who is covered up in the Duck family tree. The only things we know about him aren't flattering, either - Della is a pilot and astronaut so isn't home much and her husband couldn't deal with raising triplets by himself and is implied to be the reason Donald mostly raises them by himself.
  • In the flashbacks to before they hatched in The Last Crash of the Sunchaser, their father is conspicuously absent and Donald has already stepped into his place. That gives a lot of credence to the idea that either he left before they hatched, or that he doesn't know he has children. In the former case, Donald may have just told them the truth that their father was a deadbeat who never wanted anything to do with them, while in the latter case he could honestly claim to not know anything.
  • While I agree with the earlier ideas, I feel like there's a simpler answer. They haven't asked about their dad because there hasn't been any new information about him. Dewey didn't think about Della until after he saw her picture, and that's what started the hunt. Before then, they had already asked all their questions about both their parents years ago and didn't really think about either of them. But now that there's a lead on what happened to their mom, Dewey is going after it. If there was information about their dad, they would probably have a similar reaction.
  • Not that it's an angle the creators of a children's show would consider but with Della's impulsive personality, it could have just been a one night stand. If she was ever called on it she might give an answer similar to Toph's.
• The airing order vs production order. Why the shuffling, and do you think it hurts the story flow at all?
  • According to Word of God, the re-shuffle happened because Disney XD wanted one thematically fitting episode for Halloween and one for Christmas, which they didn't plan when making the series. They also said it doesn't break story flow too much, only the focus on the characters is less balanced (namely, episodes focusing on Webby and the triplets were brought earlier and episodes focusing on Scrooge and Donald were pushed back.)
• Is there practically no police in the Duck Tales universe? Criminals like the Beagle Boys are running around and committing a crime without consequences; Ma Beagle and Bigtime Beagle get captured at the end of "Daytrip of Doom", and yet they are back in "The Beagle Birthday Massacre" without the implications they were arrested; a company saboteur like Falcon Graves can simply walk into a company and right-out announce "I am going to steal your project"; a fraud like Mark Beaks gets away scot-free, and Flintheart Glomgold can talk openly about his murder plans and create slides that are pretty explicit evidence that he had such plans without having to fear that he gets reported and arrested. If not for Bigtime Beagle's mention of a "policemen's ball", one would think that cops don't exist at all. Police Are Useless indeed.
  • To be fair, police being somewhat useless and prison a revolving door (especially for the Beagles) are pretty well-established things for the Duckverse. They can't have many recurring villains if they receive logically lengthy punishments for their crimes.
  • Perhaps Scrooge really is that forgiving about his various nemeses because he considers them part of what makes his adventures fun and challenging. He didn't denounce Glomgold for the attempted murder in the pilot episode and doesn't seem to actually resent him for it in the Mark Beaks episode. Arguably, they probably didn't even call the cops on the Beagle Boys.
  • People like Glomgold and Beaks get away with crimes like that in real life all the time. If Ma Beagle is actually a full-scale crime boss she's in the same league. As for Graves, if Beaks actually tried to have him arrested Graves would blow the whistle on his huge-scale investment fraud. One billionaire pointing the finger at another billionaire is something the cops can ignore; dozens of millionaires and billionaires calling for Beaks' head might actually get him sent to prison.
• So, I definitely get that Webby was home schooled all her life. But what about the triplets? Were they in public school? Did Donald teach them? They obviously know a lot of things, especially Huey thanks to being a junior woodchuck. But where do you think they got their primary education?
  • Primary school, presumably. They certainly go there in the comics. The question is rather, did they just stop going to school when they moved to McDuck Manor?
  • According to Word of God, the boys are currently homeschooled by Mrs. Beakley.
  • The comics and original series show them attending a regular school; I see no reason why this series would change that/assume otherwise. As for why we don't see them in school now, it could be summer. If that episode Angones mentioned where it snows airs with no indications about time passing, we have a problem. (Well, not really, but for those who like stories that pay attention to time and continuity. Imvho, audiences value/expect that a lot more today than we did in the 80s and 90s.)
  • The Huey Episode will take place in the Himalayas, making it a bit more reasonable for why there's snow.
    • The aforementioned episode, "The Impossible Summit of Mount Neverrest!" does indeed take place in the Himalayas, but at the beginning of the episode, it's also made explicit that it takes place around Christmas.
  • There is some support that the episodes so far take place in summer: at the end of "Daytrip of Doom", the children hang out on the edge of a swimming pool, and in "The Beagle Birthday Massacre" they go on a boat trip, both being typical summer activities.
• At the beginning of the series, Huey, Dewey, and Louie didn't know they're Scrooge's grand-nephews. Does that mean that it's not widely known that Della had kids? Or is it that Donald homeschooled them so they'd never have any classmates bringing up that kinship?
  • Since there's no father in the picture, maybe Donald and/or Scrooge did feel the need to protect his sister's/niece's honor by making sure it wasn't widely known she had children... (By the way, is there an avian equivalent term for pregnancy that means "expecting eggs to hatch"?)
• Just how "duck" and how "human" are the people in this universe? On the one hand, they have beaks, feathers, webbed feet and in Donald's case a quacking voice; on the other hand, they have hands, teeth, human-like knees, they age like humans, and they can't fly nor float on water. But what about the rest - for example, do they give birth to live children or do they lay eggs?
  • Per Frank Angones Word of God, the anthropomorphic ducks of the 2017 Continuum do lay eggs. It's a bit more up-for-debate for the original canon; most show them as laying eggs, but Don Rosa has stated that he thinks they give birth like humans (but then, he holds the fringe view that "canonically", Donald & Co. are all Homo Sapiens, and they're just drawn as ducks or dogs as part of the artstyle). For a more general answer, they're basically to regular ducks what we are to lemurs; biologically similar with some key differences, and all scaled up, but pretty much no comparison in intelligence and behavior.
  • This was answered in episode 22, where it was shown that Della was lost before the boys were even hatched, showing Donald pushing the three eggs in a pram.
• Scrooge is frequently stated to be the "richest duck in the world." This begs the question, are there people who are richer than him who aren't ducks, like say, Shere Khan? Or is duck being used as a euphemism for "man" here and the anthro-nature of the universe just makes it weird? Because Scrooge did refer to Glomgold as the "poor man's version of me," so the use of man isn't totally out of place.
  • Though it may be different in this universe, the Prime Universe's Scrooge is clearly the richest person in the world; "richest duck in the world" just has a nicer ring to it. It's sort of a joke; in-universe this is equivalent to his saying "I'm the richest spats-wearing old guy in the world!".
  • It seems Scrooge only goes less specific when somebody who isn't a duck is said to be richer than him. Comic book story "Statuesque Spendthrifts" features a non-duck being declared the world's richest man because he, unlike Scrooge, agrees to donate U$ 10,000 to build a statue of Cornelius Coot and Scrooge reacts by spending more money on a bigger statue. The rival goes bankrupt trying (and failing) to defeat Scrooge, who only spent what he calls "petty cash".
  • This is answered in "The Richest Duck in the World." We see the moment when Scrooge claims the title; the previous titleholder calls himself "the richest man in the world," and when he buys something from Scrooge, Scrooge pulls ahead of him in net worth and immediately calls himself "the richest duck in the world." So, there is a definitive title with mystical properties and the title just changes between "man" and "duck" (and presumably "woman," "goose," or whatever) depending on who holds it.
• Another question concerning the characters' ages. Scrooge clearly was born in 1867 in this continuity, as confirmed in the "Other Bin" episode, and the series is set in the second half of the 2010s. The Goldie episode explained why he has been living for such a long time, OK. But the pilot, if I remember correctly, clearly shows Hortense (on Webby's board) as Donald's mother, etc. - it works in the Barks/Rosa timeline, but here? I mean, the triplets were bewildered by Scrooge's age, so it's unlikely all ducks live that long. But if Hortense is Scrooge's sister and Donald's mom, then we have a problem here - unless in this continuity Hortense was pregnant when she was 100 years old, or Donald himself is really old. Then what about his sister and Huey, Dewey and Louie,... etc, etc... Do you have a plausible explanation for this? It keeps puzzling me.
  • If one really pushes the limits, maybe Scrooge's mother was in her late teens when she had him but over 50 when she had Hortense, then Hortense was over 50 when she had Donald and Della (who are twins), and Della was over 50 when she had Huey, Dewey, and Louie, then the 140-year age gap between Scrooge and the triplets may just work. But maybe "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!" will explain it somehow?
  • One possible explanation (going into WMG territory): in "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!", it was revealed that when Scrooge restored the family castle for his parents, he built in some druid stones that grant immortality. Although the episode does not mention it, but when this happened, Hortense may have been still living with her parents, and thus was around a 100 years old when she met Quackmore Duck (Donald and Della's father). When she left the castle to live with Quackmore, she lost her immortality and died not soon after her children were born, leaving Donald and Della in custody of Scrooge.
  • Another option is that Hortense wasn't even born when Scrooge rebuilt Castle McDuck, and it was Fergus and Downy who were over a 100 years old when Hortense was born (assuming that the druid stones extend not only their life but also their fertility). The rest of the story plays out as above, except there's no May–December Romance between Quackmore and Hortense.
• If Scrooge was born in 1867, as stated in “The Other Bin,” then how could he have been alive during the Gold Rush, like he says in “The Golden Lagoon?”
  • Perhaps you are thinking of the California gold rush of 1849, arguably the most famous one. But there have been many gold rushes in American history. The one referred to in the episode is the Klondike gold rush of 1896-1899.
• Why does Webby speak with an American accent when Beakley is English and Scrooge is Scottish? According to Webby herself, she didn't even hear an American accent until she was seven (presumably only shortly before DuckTales begins) implying that she was raised by Beakley for pretty much her entire life, so she couldn't have gotten it from her parents (more missing parent arcs incoming?). So why does Webby not have an English accent? Or a Scottish accent? Or a mix of both? My only guess is that she picked it up from Launchpad, possibly at the request of Beakley so she could better blend in with "normal" children.
  • That guess might well be right — that and TV: the Webby Reacts To… minisodes show she watches various shows on her portable telephone. Beyond "socializing with other children", being able to do both British and American accents at will could also have been part of her "spy training" in earnest, making it easier for her to impersonate just about anybody. Also, and regardless, "when she was seven" would not be "shortly before DuckTales 2017 begins". The Prime Universe Webby from the original series may well have been around seven, but in the rebooted series, it's clear all four children are around the same age, and that's at least 13.
  • If I remember correctly someone did actually send this question to one of the show’s crew on Tumblr. And they answered by saying that Mrs. Beakley taught her many skills. So I guess that would mean that Webby is actually faking her accent and is an In-Universe Fake American I guess. Mrs. Beakley herself has shown to be able to fake an American accent so If it is believable she would/could teach Webby how to. So I think the answer above mine is pretty much correct.
• Why did the crew state the events of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck are canon in this continuity when, so far, they're... obviously not? So far, the events of "The Terror of the Transvaal," "The King of the Klondike," "The Prisoner of White Agony Creek," and "The Billionaire of Dismal Downs" clearly didn't happen. That's fine, of course — they're not obligated to follow that series, and they seem to focus more on Barks references than Don Rosa references, but then why did they bother saying that was Scrooge's backstory?
  • Did they actually say that Life and Times is canon in this continuity? What I specifically remember is that they said Life and Times was a mandatory read for everyone in the writing team - which can mean that the creators wanted the writers to be familiar with the source material, not that the source material is canon in any way.
• Where is Lena living after she returns in Season 2?
  • According to Word of God she was taken in by the Sabrewings. Violet first invited her because she was interested in the magic inside her, but then Violet's parents grew fond of her and officially adopted her. Apparently, this was supposed to be mentioned in "A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill!", but got cut for time/pacing reasons.
  • Confirmed by "Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks," where we see Violet's parents and Lena openly refers to her as "my sister from a couple of misters."
• Why is Jim Starling named that if he isn’t a starling?
  • Why is Gladstone Gander named that when he's clearly a duck?
    • He has Gander blood from his father. Really. Since that's the case, one can just say Jim's father was a starling and like Gladstone gets his look from his mother's side.
• During Zan Owlson's rant against Duckburg Billionaires, she refers to Scooge McDuck as a reckless thrill seeker. While this is an apt description for him, she was never there when he did those things. Plus the previous episode she calls him a competent business man and that was set the day before.
  • When she refers to him as a competent business man, she's in a much calmer state of mind (plus Scrooge is right there-not a good idea to tick off your possible soon to be boss). Perhaps she doesn't approve of the reckless thrill seeking but can still respect that Scrooge knows how to run a business especially when compared to Glomgold.
• Why do some locations have their names changed, (Parrotguay for Paraguay, Eagleslavia for Yugoslavia and Tokyolk for Tokyo), but other places remain unchanged like Egypt and England.
• Is Drake Mallard forbidden by Disney to use a gas gun in this show? He never pulls it out during Moonvasion. Is Disney afraid kids will mimic Drake if they see him use the trademark weapon on bad guys? The censorship was different back in the 1990s. Nowadays I see cops in cartoons using laser guns instead of real guns.
  • Wouldn't put it past Disney to forbid it especially in light of recent events and controversies causing Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd to no longer wield guns in Looney Tunes Cartoons.
• Since Gandra Dee (Fenton's love interest) was revealed to be a F.O.W.L spy in the Season 2 finale "Moonvasion", what will happen if Huey and Webby, or Fenton found out about it?
  • The next time the Ducks see Gandra they all take her being a F.O.W.L. spy completely for granted. Fenton's only appearance this season wasn't F.O.W.L.-related, so we don't know how he reacted or if he even knows.
• Considering how much Della loves adventuring and Donald being more open to adventures after his talk with Goofy in "Quack Pack" (which explains why he seemed more gung-ho about adventuring in "The Lost Harp of Mervana"), how come neither of them participated in any adventures after "The Lost Harp of Mervana"? Given how early episodes of season 3 implied both of them and even Beakley would be going on the adventures, it feels kinda of weird not having any of them on adventures for the rest of season 3.
• Louie clearly does not like danger, he is afraid of them. Then why doesn't he ask his family to release him from their adventures, or at least ask if he wants to go there with them or not?
  • He's seldom ever forced to adventure (indeed the opposite happens as a punishment at one point), and while not a fan of danger he is quite willing to go through it provided there is a good chance of profit. At times he's readily simply decided to opt out of a adventure after figuring out there is no treasure involved (Mount Neverest being a prime example). His only other major issue with adventure was lack of self esteem, believing he didn't have much to contribute to the group on an adventure and just plain wasn't good at it, which gets addressed when he embraces being "sharper than the sharpies" in a later season.
  • Big Rock Candy Mountain was an easy and safe adventure. If the family had gone to a dangerous place, Louie would not have been upset. He made a profit only twice (ten cents and a golden idol). And his talent in adventures rarely helps, even a victory in Glomtales turned into trouble. Plus, in the third season, Louie grumbles about the dangers too often.
    • Well sure, but the fact he rarely gets treasure himself doesn't matter as much to Louie so long as there is a chance of him getting treasure (keep in mind he also thinks whatever treasure Scrooge gets may one day be something he can inherit). Also, Louie complaining is part of his personality. We've seen he can and will opt out of things.
• Why Gyro still uses Bulb Tech in his inventions, despite knowing that the disadvantage of this technology is its tendency to go evil?

Season 1

Episode 1: Woo-oo!

• Why did Donald use GPS to get to McDuck Manor? He has to know how to get there from where he currently lives or from anywhere in the city really.
  • Not necessarily. Donald wasn't living on the houseboat in that location before he moved away from Scrooge, so he never had occasion to drive between his current home and the mansion before the fallout, and he obviously never drove there after the fallout.
  • Even if you know where something is, there are a couple of advantages to using GPS. If you've never driven that specific route (you've been to A, you've been to B, but you've never driven specifically from A to B) it can be used to find an efficient route, and it can help ensure you don't miss any turns by warning you in time to change lanes.
• Assuming that the Roxanne-looking girl waiting for an interview at Glomgold and the reporter at the end of the episode are the same person, and not just a case of the animators reusing character designs, why was she interviewing for a job with Glomgold when she's already a reporter?
  • The best time to look for a job is when you already have one. Maybe she's unsatisfied with her current job and wants to go into another field.
  • Potentially, she was attempting to do some undercover reporting to find out about Glomgold's evil business practices by being employed there.
• If all of Atlantis is flipped upside down, why were the fire room's lasers right-side up? In other words, Dewey was dancing across the bottom of the bridge and tripping the sensor lasers causing the fire traps on the ceiling (now floor) to go off, which wouldn't happen if the city were proper side up.
  • I could be wrong but I took it as they were supposed to be on the ceiling because it wouldn't matter where the fire is as long as the intruders got burned.
  • Still, the lasers were shining at the bottom of the bridge; nobody crossing the bridge would have triggered them.
  • The bridge appears to be just one entrance to the treasure room. After all, if the city was the right way up the lasers would have been covering the floor, which would be the more logical entrance point. So someone trying to enter the treasure room via the floor could still trip the lasers and get fried. Presumably there were other triggers on the right side up of the bridge for people crossing there (like trigger plates or something). Alternatively, it's possible that the laser sights were intended to cover the right side of the bridge but simply got misaligned/realigned in the collapse and centuries of neglect to end up criss-crossing the underside of the bridge.
  • I thought they got it right, the bridge has a curve to it. If the temple was right side up the bridge would curve the other way and the lasers would be on the top of the bridge's walkway. It would have had to fall through the lasers when Atlantis flipped though, which leads to the question how did the bridge not burn. It seemed okay with the quick burst of flame when Scrooge put his cane through the laser so maybe it's fire retardant?
  • Perhaps they were installed on the underside as a measure to catch thieves who would have been too clever by half, and tried to go under the bridge?
• Why does Scrooge keep treating Beakley like a secretary when she keeps repeating she isn't one? Does this mean that one of the nephews is going to take up that job, or Donald will give it a shot? Can this be the season's Running Gag on who is Scrooge's Secretary?
  • I think it's meant to imply that Scrooge is so busy in his own thoughts that he keeps forgetting that he has no secretary at all. The same way, he keeps ignoring Launchpad regularly telling him that he's a pilot.
  • Also, he is Scrooge McDuck. A certain amount of single-minded self-centred thoughtlessness is a pretty fundamental part of his character. He keeps forgetting Beakley isn't his secretary because as far as he's concerned, to a certain degree "works for him = general dogsbody".
    • This would be consistent on how he treats Ms. Quackfaster (his actual secretary, at least in the comics) and Quackmore (the comic book counterpart to Duckworth) in the comics: while they have a main job, they're also expected to do a number of other jobs depending on the situation, even occasionally following him on adventures. The fact they're actually that good doesn't help them.
• Why are Webby and Louie convinced they have to keep their "field trip" a secret from Beakley? Scrooge already told her he was taking them on an adventure, and she's well aware of what his adventures entail.
  • Because Scrooge just said he's taking the lads on an adventure, without a mention of Webby.
  • He also made a point of declaring that the journey was to kept secret from Donald — namely, the guardian of the nephews. They might have assumed that he was implicitly suggesting that they should keep it secret from Mrs. Beakley (namely, Webby's guardian) as well.
  • Webby's incredibly sheltered, to the point where she's never been allowed on a bus or eaten a hamburger. Mrs. Beakley quickly makes it clear that adventuring with Scrooge is an exception to this over-protective rule, but Scrooge stopped adventuring around the time Webby would have been hatched, so tagging along with him never would have been an option. (Webby has been to the Money Bin before, which would imply that "trips with Scrooge" have always been permitted, but there's obviously a difference between "tagging along on a business meeting a mile away in a heavily-secured building" and "attempting to find the lost civilization of Atlantis that may or may not even exist in a sub piloted by a man who crashes into the mansion's gates on a regular basis," so naturally they wouldn't expect the same rule to apply.)
• Just how many bars does Webby's phone have? It's hard enough to get a signal out in the woods, let alone calling your grandmother somewhere in the arctic circle at the bottom of the ocean!
  • Gyro Gearloose technology. Obviously.
  • They're in an experimental deep-sea submarine, so part of the experimental tech involved might involve boosting a cell phone signal. Alternatively, Rule of Drama; it is still a Disney cartoon.
  • That phone looks to be a Satellite phone rather than a normal cell phone. Still implausible to have that kind of service, but at least an attempt was made.
• Why were the snakes that fell on Launchpad still alive? Besides the one crab, it didn't look like there was much to eat for the last thousand years.
  • Fanon answered thy prayers. At least one fanfic tells the story of a descendant of a group of Atlantean technicians who stayed behind when the city sunk, making sure all the traps were in working order, which included feeding the snakes.
  • Perhaps the magic/super advanced crystal's energy that kept the city lit and functioning also kept the snakes alive?
  • Maybe after the Atlanteans died, there were numerous crabs and other deep-sea scavengers feeding on their corpses, providing plenty of food for the snakes. Or the snakes are a semi-aquatic species that can go out hunting for fish in the sea, but for some reason return to their nest in the death trap?
  • It had to be snakes.
• Regarding the ending twist: why is a fake crystal on the ceiling of the treasure room of Atlantis (that Glomgold mistakes for the real crystal)? Why does removing it trigger the mechanism that floods the room - and why does removing the real crystal remove the water? Why is the fake crystal "cursed" so that whoever carries it will be carried off by a kraken?
  • Some of the city seemed designed to take advantage of the city being upside down (some Atlanteans survived to make that record of what happened after all, and may have adjusted things so they could still have their city of wonders and traps). The trap being called "insightful" suggests that it was meant to be a test of intellect and bravery for anyone who made it to the treasure room. If one took the relatively easy way out and grabbed the cursed gem that was there for the taking then a kraken would go after them, whereas to get the actual greatest treasure they would need to first figure out how to trigger the death trap (the flooding room) and then let it flood until they could reach the crystal, trusting that once the crystal was removed the trap would deactivate and reward them with the treasure.
  • It's a test of intellect and bravery even if it was designed with the real Jewel on the floor. Most adventurers would be suspicious of something being right out in the open and expect the most difficult to reach jewel to be the true one. If they trip the flooding trap, they need to be able to hold their breath long enough to dive down and grab the real Jewel.
  • It's also worth noting that just stealing the gem itself doesn't automatically activate the water trap; Gabby McStabberson uses one of her blades to activate a floor pad on the 'ceiling'. I can't recall exactly where it was, but presumably it was close to or right next to the Jewel, so anyone who got close to the jewel would likely step on it.
  • One final trap to take out any would-be thieves? If anyone ran the gauntlet for one magic gem, surely they'd take a moment for two. Plus, the cursed red gem looks fancier than the actual blue gem- it may have been a decoy.
  • Alternately, look at the amount of gold and treasure on the ground- in the original trap, it may have covered up the real gem, leaving the gigantic ruby on the ceiling uncovered and in plain view of everyone. This would mean that one of three options would present itself: The thieves would try to take the jewel on the ceiling, which would take a lot of time and effort to get up to it (and if the city was functional, allow for guards and/or armed forces to apprehend the intruders), possibly failing; the thieves do take the jewel on the ceiling, and activate a death trap which has the only way to turn it off be to dig through very heavy piles of gold while the room is flooding; or the thieves would know what to look for, which still leaves them digging through very heavy piles of gold. Remember that Scrooge is unique in his gold-swimming abilities and that he has great strength to do so, and that such intrusion would probably bring guards or armed forces, and doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't other death traps in that room that we didn't see in the show.
• The carving on the wall that shows how Atlantis sank is upside down, which is a neat gag, but doesn't make sense: the carving shows the story of the city turning upside down, so unless it's a prophecy, it had to be made after the city sunk; but if the city already flipped, why would the few surviving citizens make the carving in a way that is upside down for them?
  • The Atlanteans had a twisted/wacky sense of humor and decided to go out with a final joke via the upside down record for whoever found the city? It's made out that they made the city purely for entertainment after all.
  • Perhaps they had some sort of vision problem that made them see upside down. It would explain their miscalculations in building the city.
  • Well, there probably wasn't much else to do, and busying themselves helped stave off the thoughts of their impending demise.
  • The people of Atlantis were so focused on building death traps for their city that they forgot to build proper supports for it. It seems in keeping with their character to be so single-minded that they would add in that sign in that way because "Well, of course we put it in upside down! That's the way the room goes!"
• After defeating Pixiu, when Scrooge dives into the money bin, he has the Medusa Gauntlet on. When he comes out of the money, the gauntlet is gone. Where did it go?
  • I think that's a reference to the opening scene of the original 1987 series, where in a split-second scene Scrooge dived into his money wearing a swimsuit and jumped right out in his regular office clothes.
  • In the money bin, obviously! They just to be careful when digging around trying to find it.
    • Or he put the gauntlet in the pocket of his jacket while under the coins.
    • You can see the Medusa Gauntlet in a box of stuff near the end of the episode.
  • For that matter, why didn't it turn the coins into stone as well?
    • "Careful! Medusa Gauntlet! One touch can turn organic matter to stone!" Coins aren't organic.
• Why did Glomgold reveal his betrayal to his employees?
  • Because he's a cartoon villain that enjoys Evil Gloating. Heck, the orientation video openly states that he steals other people's ideas, and when he passes out Employee ID cards, he says that it offers discounts for life vests in the case of an emergency. At some point, you just accept that your boss is Obviously Evil. The real question is why the mercenaries didn't see it coming.
  • It was too late for them to do anything about it, anyway.
• How does Scrooge figure out that the jewel Glomgold got was cursed? It would be one thing to say it's not the real jewel of Atlantis, but to come to the conclusion that it's cursed as well?
  • Presumably Scrooge's many years of adventuring have given him sufficient experience to know what a cursed jewel looks like as compared to a non-cursed jewel. The fact that it's a rather sinister red colour probably doesn't hurt either. As does the fact that it's an obvious decoy.
  • It may not have been the jewel, but it was still a huge and therefore valuable jewel yet had zero protection to stop someone from taking it — obviously a trap.
• Why exactly did Scrooge get so pissed when Dewey called him out on thinking that family is "nothing but trouble"? I realize that deep down, he really does care about his family, but he did say those exact words earlier, so if anything, shouldn't he be apologetic for saying that about them?
  • Maybe he got angry realizing that Dewey eavesdropped on him, overhearing some words he addressed specifically to Beakley?
  • It's a Berserk Button. Scrooge is touchy about family. He's trying to push his family away so he doesn't get 'inconvenienced' (i.e. hurt), but at the same time deep down he cares for them and resents any implication that he doesn't. Dewey's also throwing his own words in his face, which no one really likes, and Scrooge is proud and doesn't back down easily. As well as this, there's no doubt a lot of complicating factors due to whatever happened with Della and his estrangement from Donald. Plus Scrooge is already kind of pissed off about finding the nephews and Webby poking around where he doesn't want them poking around on top of them aggravating his insecurities about being washed up and irrelevant earlier, and he's not really in the mood to take backtalk from or explain himself to a ten-year-old. In short, Dewey threw the rhetorical equivalent of a hand grenade into the conversation as far as Scrooge was concerned, and it went off.
• Near the end, the houseboat explodes and everyone looks at Dewey since he wired the engine at the beginning of the episode. Scrooge witnessed Dewey's recklessness first hand, Huey and Louie also know of him wiring the engine and can also be chalked up to Never My Fault. But shouldn't Donald be looking at all 3 of them?
  • Donald witnessed Dewey wiring the engine at the start of the episode. That's how he knew what they were up to in the first place. Sure, all three were in on the plan, but Donald knew who was directly responsible for the overclocked engine.
• Why were all those artifacts in the garage and not in Scrooge's other bin, which is specifically for dangerous artifacts?
  • The easy answer would be that they simply are comparatively less dangerous. The garage items seem to all need to be triggered somehow, while the Other Bin items are dangerous to merely be in the presence of.

Episode 2: Daytrip of Doom!

• One item that Donald washes in Scrooge's bathtub is a pair of underpants. Nobody in the household wears anything below the waist (except for Mrs. Beakley, but I doubt Donald would wash her undergarments), so where did those underpants come from?
  • The Duckverse's anthropomorphic ducks *can* wear pants, they merely aren't obliged to. While none of the main cast include lower-half clothes in their trademark costume, it's not unreasonable to assume they might have a full-body suit in their wardrobe for special occasions. The best RL analogy I can come up with is how even women who normally wear pants may have the odd dress or skirt stashed in their wardrobe.
  • Rule of Funny. A more detailed explanation of that is in the first episode when Donald is getting ready for his job interview, Louie gets rid of his classic blue sailor uniform while holding a business suit. During this time, Donald is naked, and wraps a towel around the lower half of his body, yet when he gets dressed (as do most ducks), only the top half of his body is clothed.
  • Or it could be that Donald was washing an undershirt, as those sometimes are counted as underwear.
    • That's pretty much it. If you look at the drawings, you can clearly see that it's an undershirt, not underpants. He does refer to the shirt as his "unmentionables," but that can be chalked up to Rule of Funny.
  • It's also Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal. We're just to assume it's a stylistic choice and they actually have all the usual clothing options.
• How in the world is the Uke or Puke game able to keep enough electrical charge to change its animations accordingly after it is unplugged before it loses all power? And if it's sophisticated enough to do that, why doesn't it have battery-backed memory or something similar to save high scores in case of power failure?
  • Actually, why are its default high scores all zero? Was that ever an actual thing for arcade games?
• If Ma Beagle is so against the idea of dealing with Scrooge or Beakley after Bigtime tries to ransom off the kids to the former, what's stopping her and the Beagle Boys from simply letting them go free and making a break for it before Beakley arrives with Donald?
  • Criminal pride. Now that she's involved in this scheme, she's not simply going to walk away from it. Besides, if the kids get back and tell Mrs. Beakley that they were kidnapped, she's probably going to retaliate even though they were released (at the very least, that's what Ma Beagle would do, so why would she think Mrs. Beakley wouldn't?). She has no choice but to see this thing through to the end.

Episode 3: The Great Dime Chase!

• Why doesn't Scrooge seem to notice how long Webby and Dewey are away for?
  • He was probably focusing on the meeting with the Board of Directors. They were discussing pretty important matters, such as the possibility of firing employees and getting rid of the Money Bin itself, so no wonder he didn't think of where Webby and Dewey are.
  • He only intended to take Louie initially, the others just tagged along and he probably thought they needed no supervision and could entertain themselves (its indicated Webby has had her run of much of the bin a number of times in the past given the archivist was tired of telling her she wasn't allowed in the archives).
    • As the above poster mentioned, Scrooge was mainly focused on Louie due to the latter's wasteful and lazy attitude. Combined with having his attention diverted by the Board, it makes sense he didn't start wondering where they had gone.
  • Also, Louie was only in the meeting room for about five minutes total, and Scrooge was only mildly curious as to where he wound up. Whatever plan he had for the day went right out the window as soon as the Board came in and started trying to tell him how to do things. He knows the Bin is impenetrable, so it's not like he was concerned about their safety. He had no reason not to let them wander to their hearts' content.
• Why is the coin counting and sorting from the Pep machines done at the Money Bin itself? Even if they're McDuck Enterprises and not contracted out, wouldn't this be something handled at McDuck Amusement & Vending or whatever? It's not like the money is coming from the bin and needs to be cycled back. Vending machines in an office building are for employees.
  • Since it's a pretty safe bet that Scrooge McDuck owns the vending machines and the company that operates the vending machines, then they might as well count the intake from those vending machines at the Money Bin since, well, they're already there and the money is one way or another going to end up in the Money Bin eventually. It just saves two redundant journeys.

Episode 4: The Beagle Birthday Massacre!

• Just how did Ma Beagle give birth to so many Beagle Boys? Do dogfaces have litters like real dogs do? Or maybe some of the Boys are cousins or adopted?
  • Lots of twins, an early marriage — it could work, I think, by the same loose logic that allows Scrooge's ludicrously large fortune. But like someone said earlier, it's entirely possible they're not all actually her sons, just their matriarch and modern-day "mother figure", much like even Gus Goose and Scrooge McDuck call Elvira Duck "Grandma" even if she is their great-aunt and sister's-stepmother respectively. This was certainly how it worked in the comics for Grandpa Beagle, who isn't the direct ancestor of all the worldwide Beagles (only the Duckburg branch) but is still considered the leader and patriarch by all of them.
  • My advice, don't think about it. I mean asking that question more or less has to lead you to assume that Duck Tales is a different show for a different audience than what it currently is. This isn't BoJack Horseman which uses that anthropomorphization for weird gags.
  • It's the result of emphasising Ma Beagle's role in the adaptation. In the comics the Beagle Boys were always a collection of brothers and cousins, with numerous distant family lines. It's possible that Ma Beagle still isn't the literal mother of all the boys, just the family matriarch.
  • In fact, it's pretty likely that Ma Beagle is only the mother of the three Original Classics (hence why they're the "main guys"), and the others are just cousins.
• Lena's plan was to befriend Webby and plant the seeds for an opportunity to help her Aunt Magica. One problem: her plan nearly got her and Webby killed. Why convince Webby, who is an honorary family member to Scrooge, to crash a Beagle Boys party? Even if she didn't know about the humiliation Webby inflicted on Ma Beagle, surely Lena could have applied some common sense in crashing the equivalent of a mob boss wedding.
  • Just cause Lena is The Mole, and befriending her to help her aunt Magica, it doesn't automatically mean she is an evil mastermind. From the looks of things, she really is an impulsive, reckless teenager. No doubt her plan was they crash the party, have some fun, get out before getting caught, and thus Webby now has a friend who likes dangerous stuff like she did. Then it went wrong, and she ended up having to improvise.
• Webby and Lena intercept a message from Ma Beagle, demanding her sons to catch the pair of ducks before they reach McDuck Manor. What do they do after escaping? Immediately start messing around at an abandoned play park. Why didn't they just try and escape home to safety?
  • Because of Lena's Toxic Friend Influence. It's not fun if it's not dangerous, right?
  • They stopped to rest in a seemingly safe place before continuing on.

Episode 5: Terror of the Terra-Firmians!

• How on earth did Mrs. Beakley take Lena's word that the movie was educational? It was in the title that it was about Mole Monsters, they had to walk past the poster to get into the movie, and what's more, this takes place in the era of the smartphone and the internet. This could have been gotten away with back in 1987, but it would have been really easy for Mrs. Beakley to go online and look up the movie to check to see how "educational" the movie was. Given how paranoid she is shown to be about Webby, that would seem to be the first step, instead of trusting a random child she barely knows.
  • Perhaps, seeing how much Webby liked Lena, Beakley initially decided to trust her? Also, the movie was called "The Beast" - that title, while still should have ringed a bell, doesn't directly indicate that it's about mole monsters.
  • She probably saw through that lie, but assumed it was a campy monster movie (a "soft R") instead of a terrifying gory one (a "hard R"). When she realized she'd been hoodwinked, she was only able to complain about Lena's exact words.
• Why did Mrs. Beakley conclude that to get out of the tunnel, they had to "get this train moving"? They couldn't get out the way they came because of the cave-in. All that means is they had to go down the tunnel and find another way out, which they could do on foot. All the train would do is take them in the direction they would have gone on foot anyway, but requiring a lot more effort and a lot more risk. "Cave-in" does not translate to "only other option is to hotwire an abandoned train."
  • Perhaps she assumed it was too far to travel on foot safely in the dark? Course it would have been helpful for her to say that i.e. say something like "the next exit is five miles from here."
  • She lives with Scrooge McDuck, some of his crazy might have infected her over their long association. Generally, a sane person says "My fortune will accrue interest, I don't need to go on crazy trips to increase it," instead of "Let's go to Atlantis to steal the riches!"
  • She's also concerned that the kids are going to wander off again. It's harder to escape from a moving train than it is to sneak away from a group in a darkly-lit tunnel. With the train doing the moving, she can keep her attention on Webby and Lena, rather than worrying about corralling the lot of them. Driving a vehicle might also serve to calm Launchpad down, since it's a familiar task that doesn't scare him even when it should, so at the very least she wouldn't have to worry about him doing something stupid (well, a different brand of stupid) out of paranoia. And the train would give some sort of protection against further cave-ins while the tunnel is still unstable, sort of like bunkering down to wait out the storm, except without the part where you have to stay in one place. It wasn't the only solution, but it was a viable one.
• Why is Huey so scared of the idea of the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook not having all the information in it, when he's admittedly already added to it to incorporate things that weren't in it before, and in fact, does so at the end of the episode?
  • Huey doesn't do well without structure and authority, and this is the first time we see him dealing with a situation where he has neither. Where the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook wasn't able to help him before, he had seasoned-adventurer Scrooge around to provide context and helpful advice. Now he only has Webby's crazy theories, for which she provides no solid evidence. When he's provided with concrete evidence of the Terra-Firmians' existence, he deals with the situation well. It's that "I have no trustworthy source to inform me how to deal with this situation" feeling that he's afraid of.
• I get them changing the episode title "The Beagle Birthday Massacre," since "massacre" isn't a kid-friendly word, but why on earth change "Terror of the Terra-Firmians" to "Tunnel of the Terra-Firmians"? Since when are kids' shows not allowed to mention fear?

Episode 6: The House of the Lucky Gander!

• Were the guests in the House always illusions created by the demon from the cards, Coraline-style, or were they real people whom he turns into cards at the end to get them out of his hair? If it's the former, why did he even need the front of a casino?
  • To lure in suckers. Even if they are all just illusions, he needs to lure in potentially lucky people to feed from somehow.
• Considering that shiner Donald sports for much of the episode... How are we able to see any bruising through a duck's feathers?
  • Rule of They're Anthropomorphic Cartoon Ducks So We Can Probably Give The Animators Some Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
  • Through a Face Full of Fur.
• Don't people whose luck is fed upon by a "luck vampire" suffer any side-effects? Sure, they're kept prisoner in a place like that Twilight Zone episode's version of Hell, but victims of Abstract Eaters usually suffer some physical or mental effects, as well — losing their memory, losing energy until you waste away and die, being brainwashed, being unable to feel anything but something like despair or fear... Something that feeds upon luck, you would think, would cause the victim to lose their luck or something, but other than the fact that he's trapped, Gladstone seems perfectly fine, despite saying the luck vampire is constantly "feeding off" him.
  • Two ways to look at this. The simple answer is that Gladstone is just so unbelievably lucky that it didn't affect him. The other way to look at this comes in the first appearance we have of Gladstone is him getting a massage. From the looks of it, it's quite likely that Li Hai wanted Gladstone to be alive and healthy so he wouldn't need to worry about feeding on anyone else's luck. The Gilded Cage variety of justification.
    • Pretty much. Gladstone's luck "output" is so massive, the luck demon could feast on it and yet it wouldn't even begin to make a dent.
  • So, essentially, Liu Hai was smart enough not to kill the golden goose?
  • My guess is that in the eventuality of Gladstone running out of luck or outliving his usefulness, he simply gets turned into one of those phantom guests who become playing cards right at the end.
  • You know the old saying that someone's luck will eventually "run out"? Apparently in the Duck Tales universe that's literal; "luck" is presumably some kind of force or aura or energy that someone possesses and that can be drained. Li Hai is simply doing that to Gladstone. However, in the Duck Tales universe it's also clearly possible to live an otherwise more-or-less normal without having a lot of luck (look at Donald). So any side effects of Gladstone having his luck drained would revolve around that; most likely, the longer Li Hai feeds off his luck, the less unnaturally lucky Gladstone gradually becomes, until eventually he's literally run out of luck. At which point, he probably wouldn't actually die just from that, but as Li Hai would have no further use for him he'd almost certainly wish he had.
• Why was Louie so fascinated by an inflatable hot dog when he hates hot dogs so much?

Episode 7: The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks!

• The story goes that Mark Beaks was originally named Mark Duckerburg. What does the character have in common with Mark Zuckerburg besides being a Self-Made Man in the tech industry? They didn't seem to give Beaks any of the vices people complain about Zuckerburg having. The character seems more like a Take That! at Internet-obsessed millennials in general rather than at the founder of Facebook. Was he really intended to be a Captain Ersatz of Zuckerburg? Anyone able to point out how?
  • I think you might be overthinking this a little bit; the character of Mark Beaks is really just supposed to be a general parody of hipster dot-com start-up billionaire types (of whom Zuckerburg is one of several), not an attack on Zuckerburg specifically. And if anything, it’s really more a parody of modern tech workplaces like Google and Apple (and probably Facebook) that on the surface seem to emphasise fun and creativity and being chill and mellow, when in actuality they’re really just using all that as a cover to hide the same old greed and ruthlessness and unethical dealings that the worst capitalist robber barons had when you take a closer look. “Duckerburg” was just supposed to be a bird-pun play on Zuckerburg’s name, not an attack on him and him alone (and they might have ended up changing it because the character moved away from being just a Zuckerburg parody, or because they thought it was a bit too on-the-nose even for Duck Tales).
  • That's exactly how the character came across; if that's all that was ever planned/intended, then not naming the character Duckerburg was a good choice because such a name would say "Zuckerburg parody," not "general parody of hipster dot-com start-up billionaire types."
  • It might be possible that the rename happened in an early development phase of the show, and the personality of Beaks was also changed a bit after the rename to push him away from being a blatant No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Zuckerberg.
  • If anything, Mark Beaks may be more of a parody of Elon Musk.
• Related to the above, if Beaks is supposed to be a general parody of Silicon Valley types, why does his plan involve not inventing anything? The companies Waddle lampoons (Facebook, and also Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) all made their money by inventing SOMETHING, be it virtual or tangible.
  • Because it's not parodying the inventions themselves, it's parodying how the above companies tend to really go all-in on the hype over their products when, objectively speaking, what you get probably isn't worth all the fuss. Look at how Apple markets each iteration of the iPhone, for example; at times you'd think they were announcing the literal Second Coming of Christ combined with the Singularity, when most of the time when you look at it objectively it's really just a few relatively minor changes to the previous model or upgrading some tech specs that most of the average users outside of the really hardcore tech-wonks probably don't really understand or notice anyway. And even when they do shake things up it's still just a smartphone, something they invented ten years ago at this point, so it's not like the product is particularly new or radical anymore. Waddle is just parodying this by taking it up to eleven, where what they're selling is all hype, no product.
  • Also, there are real-life instances of Silicon Valley startups getting investors to give them giant piles of venture capital for things they haven't actually made yet, then living the high life until the product turns out to be Vaporware that never materializes, or proves to be far less innovative or effective than the company promised (e.g. Elizabeth Holmes became a billionaire—albeit temporarily—on the basis of a home blood-testing product that might have never worked like she said it did, and the Juicero guys attracted millions in capital for a machine that just squeezed juice out of a bag). All of these companies (probably) intended to make real products, but if you were persuasive enough and had no scruples, you could make a surprising amount of money for a surprisingly long time without actually producing something real. Beak's empty room seemed like a parody of that.
  • Beaks does invent and market a ton of products, and became rich doing it; characters use Waddle technology constantly throughout the series. It just wasn't enough to push him through to that all-important tenth digit and the title of "billionaire" — hence the scam.
• Is the Duckburg Billionaires' Club in Glomgold's house? There's a portrait and a statue of Glomgold there but no one else, and Glomgold keeps one of his sharks there. It seems like the room Scrooge and Glomgold have their meeting in is treated more like part of Glomgold's house.
  • It’s likely in a different building; there’s a large portrait of Scrooge on his side of the split room. I also got the feeling that Glomgold had had the shark shipped there specially from his "shark guy", not that it's kept in there all the time.
• Why do Scrooge and Glomgold take such an instant dislike to Mark Beaks, strong enough to make them willing to work with the person they each hate most on the planet just to get him out of their hair? Scrooge knows nothing about his dishonesty; all Beaks does to them is turn on annoying music. The way neither of them turn to acknowledge him when he's trying to get their attention says "we find you so insignificant, we see no need to notice you other than to tell you to stop interfering with our focus on each other," yet the next scene, they're all "This means war!" What did he do to make them hate him so much (especially given that Scrooge sees murder attempts as minor annoyances)?
  • It does seem pretty in character for Glomgold to decide to kill someone just for being annoying and him being willing to work with Scrooge was probably more due to him planning to back-stab Scrooge. Scrooge, on the other hand, doesn't make sense. He originally thought they were plotting to get Beaks out of the Billionaires Club but then still sort of goes along with it (he does seem to try to refuse but is interrupted) until he finds Glomgold's plan to back-stab him which snaps him out it.
  • Don't forget that they are still in the middle of their Staring Contest when Beaks interrupts them — they are ignoring him because neither of them wants to look away and lose the contest. Once Glomgold looks away, Scrooge also starts to care and listen to his plan.
  • Also, they're old-school robber baron types, and Mark Beaks is a trendy hipster nouveau-riche type. It's snobbery, basically. As for why Scrooge kept listening, I guess he just figured that he might as well see where Glomgold was going with things once he got started, and figured that if he was around he might be able to at least steer Glomgold away from the "kill Mark Beaks to death" side of the project.
  • Looking back over the episode, I also get the feeling that Scrooge didn't really care about Beaks that much and was mainly there because that's the time he usually hangs around his club (his "See ye tomorrow, Flinty!" suggests that they regularly catch up and glare at each other). In keeping with this, it's possible he was listening to Glomgold mainly because he happened to be there already and he didn't particularly want Beaks around if there was a way of getting rid of him.
• Expanding the point made above, Isn't Scrooge a bit too passive about Glomgold pretty much saying he is going to murder somebody? The episode sorta tries to handwave Scrooge's weak reaction (and subsequent inaction) as him dismissing Glomgold as a harmless villain... but that really doesn't hold up, considering that a few episodes ago Glomgold almost killed Scrooge and his family for real. Scrooge should know that even if the Glomgold's plan may seem utterly idiotic, the guy is crazy enough to go for it and he certainly has the resources to pull it off.
  • To be fair, he may simply be assuming that Mark Beaks has enough wits about him to not walk into such a ridiculously convoluted and tenuous plan to begin with, or at least be able to do something to get himself out of it. It does kind of hinge on him passively allowing himself to be sailed into a volcano, for starters. He may also warn Beaks about Glomgold off-screen. Although if we're brutally honest, while he's probably willing to intervene if able and necessary to stop Glomgold from doing anything too drastic to Beaks, he's also probably not going to be particularly worked up about the prospect of something unpleasant to someone he clearly doesn't like very much either (especially since he'll soon learn that, as it turns out, Beaks is a bit of a scoundrel himself and so has a bit of karmic redressing coming his way in any case). He's Scrooge McDuck, he loves his family, his treasure and adventuring, and he'll ultimately do the right thing when it counts, but no one ever said he was a completely and unreservedly nice guy.
• Are child labor laws different in this universe? Huey and Dewy are still CLEARLY minors, and yet they're being tapped for internships and even promoted to VP of fancy business.
  • Probably. That or Willing Suspension of Disbelief meets Rule of Funny. It is a kid's show where our main hero is an elderly trillionaire constantly taking his minor-aged nephews and their equally-young friend on fantastically dangerous adventures, after all. If we can accept that Scrooge and Donald get away with that without anyone siccing Children's Services on them, then Huey going for an after-school job is chicken feed in comparison.
  • Maybe "internship" isn't the 100% accurate term for it, but a business having a program where it show kids what it's like to work in its field doesn't sound unheard of; I remember taking several field trips like that in school. Given Beaks' attitude towards business, him throwing around terms like "hiring" a kid and making a kid "Vice-President of Fancy Business" without meaning it seriously or doing actually "hiring" them in the legal sense sounds perfectly in-character.
  • It's established in "The Richest Duck in the World" that minors in this universe can sign legally binding contracts involving billion-dollar transactions (Word of God says it's because Scrooge was de-aged once and had the law changed). Given that it's white-collar work and the kids are participating enthusiastically, it's unlikely the police will care unless someone files a complaint.
• Why does Duckburg Billoniare's Club appear to have low membership? Were the other Billonaires put off by Scrooge and Glomgold's shnanigans?
  • Billionaires are not exactly that common a thing in a single city (at least usually), the simple answer is that before Beaks became a billionaire the only billionaires in Duckberg were Scrooge and Glomgold.
    • It's quite possible that the billionaire's club was only created so that Scrooge and Glomgold could fan the flames of their rivalry. They probably never expected anyone else in Duckburg to become a billionaire, let alone actually want to join the club.

Episode 8: The Living Mummies of Toth-Ra!

• So, at the end of "The Living Mummies of Toth-Ra!", Scrooge decides to spot Launchpad for burritos for everyone and the bill comes out to some $9,000 dollars and Scrooge is visibly annoyed. Just...Scrooge, dude, you probably earned another nine million in the time it took to finish that sentence if you're even half as successful as you say you are. What's $9,000 worth of burritos for friends and family when you run a multi-trillion dollar company?
  • Scrooge is named after the protagonist of A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge, the Trope Namer for The Scrooge. The whole idea behind this character type is that he's ridiculously cheap despite being filthy rich.
  • A lot of what Scrooge earns has to go to providing for his employees and business empire, it doesn't all go directly into his own pockets. Course we know he does have a ton of spending money, and on his own volition he can spend a lot of money on unnecessary things (thousands of dollars for a velvet pillow for a decoy #1 Dime). But in addition to being cheap (usually smartly so, sometimes unreasonably so) I think the joke of that scene was that Scrooge was not expecting it to cost that much, i.e. he didn't want to spend all that money to provide snacks for the aftermath of the "dumbest rebellion" he'd ever been a part of. He also gets over the issue very fast and enjoys the food, showing it was just a passing irritation.
  • Plus, to be entirely fair to Scrooge, $9,000 is quite a lot to spend on burritos. They're nice enough, yes, but if someone wanted me to buy $9,000 worth of them I'd probably be at least a little taken aback for a moment as well.
  • It might also go against his general business sense- remember that he practices the motto "Work Smarter Not Harder." Compare real life business moguls like John D. Rockefeller, who once said that if he could get steel for a few cents cheaper by building a factory in a different spot, he'd do it. Generally, rich people do not become rich by spending frivolously. Granted, this is countered by some of Scrooge's other eccentricities, like thousand-dollar pillows or an actual money bin, but still.

Episode 9: The Impossible Summit of Mount Neverrest!

• This question can apply to The Living Mummies of Toth-ra as well, but where is Donald in all of this? Did he even give his permission for Scrooge to take the triplets on this adventure?
  • It would be nice to have confirmation, but it doesn't seem unlikely to me that Scrooge simply doesn't bother to tell Donald all the details of such trips (at least in advance), especially if he thinks Donald will object. Donald may well think they are going somewhere else. Or perhaps Donald has simply given up trying to stop them, as he admitted in the premiere that the boys will get into dangerous situations no matter what he does.
  • I get the impression that while their relationship has improved, and they're happy to live together, Scrooge and Donald still have a lot of unresolved issues between them. Donald not yet wanting to go another adventure with his uncle, isn't unreasonable.
  • Donald might also be working on fixing his boat, or working on trying to find a job to get himself back on his feet. He just might have other things to do and not be able to join them; as in the first episode, the episodes where Donald isn't around could be Scrooge "babysitting" the kids.
  • Donald may be great at adventuring, as Webby states, but he's never been the adrenaline junkie Scrooge is. One trip across the world per month is probably enough for him.
  • As shown in "The Spear of Selene," Donald no longer has any taste for adventure. He went along to Macaw because he was a trip to visit family, but he doesn't see any reason to go along to Egypt or Neverrest. (Which is a shame, because he could have stayed at the resort with Louie and gotten some desperately needed rest.)
• Don't people care that famous billionaire/adventurer Scrooge McDuck was the Neverrest Ninny? It's something his rivals would have used against him for spite.
  • Nobody knows. Scrooge last went up Mt Neverrest 75 years ago, he's probably the only living person still alive who knows he was the Neverrest Ninny. (Huey lampshades that noone's used the word "Ninny" in ages.)
  • More significantly, even if they found out now, nobody would have any reason to care. Scrooge was beaten by the mountain, but so was everybody else. When everyone loses all the time, the best thing one can do is give up and accept it, which Scrooge eventually learns and appreciates.
• Scrooge being the Neverrest Ninny doesn't explain how he was so easily able to find George Mallardy's body, or his belief that taking a step past it is proof that he's gotten further up the mountain than Mallardy ever did. There are three explanations for how Mallardy got into that cave: 1. It's a cave he and Scrooge encountered on their climb 75 years ago (explaining how Scrooge knew its exact location), in which case they would have had to either pass the cave or double back at some point before Scrooge chickened out and left, which would mean Scrooge would know for a fact that Mallardy (and he himself) had been past that point before. 2. It's a cave Mallardy had encountered on a previous climb before meeting Scrooge, or he heard about it from someone else who'd explored the mountain, so when Scrooge mentioned quitting, Mallardy was able to mention that there was a cave up ahead (meaning that Huey wants to give up at the same point where Scrooge initially gave up), but that doesn't explain how Scrooge knows where it is or why he would have confidence that it was the furthest point Mallardy reached (it would make sense for him to double back and bunker down in a cave once he realized he was lost, but it would also mean Scrooge would have no knowledge of his journey beyond this point and no reason to be so confident that he'd beaten Mallardy). 3. The cave is the point where Scrooge chickened out on his first time, and as he left, Mallardy immediately died without taking a single step further, which would explain how Scrooge knew the location of the cave and that it was Mallardy's furthest reach, but otherwise makes no sense in the context of Scrooge's depiction of events without making him a psychopath (he would have to witness a man die without making any attempt to help him or at least alerting anyone else about what had happened without a twinge of remorse; not to mention "I stopped my journey because my guide literally died in front of me" is a much more sympathetic story than "I stopped my journey because I was a ninny," so why would he live with that shame for so long?). Or Mallardy could have died on a subsequent journey up Mt. Neverrest, which would be how the story of the Neverrest Ninny would be able to spread in the first place, but just further solidifies the questions about how Scrooge is so certain of Mallardy's final actions in the first place.
  • The above may be taking Scrooge's "second furthest" line too literally. As I recall they indicate Mallardy wandered around a lot to who knows how many parts of the mountains, thanks to the portals, before eventually dying in the cave that he and Scrooge presumably had been in before. Scrooge was likely being petty and sarcastic rather than thinking stepping over his corpose literally meant he made it farther. After all, Scrooge didn't "chicken out", Mallardy cut him loose and almost got him killed in the process just so he could keep climbing and Scrooge has held a grudge over the betrayal ever since. The story spread as part myth and part fact, where people knew a inexperienced climber returned from Neverrest and Mallardy didn't, leading to the belief that his failure to return was the "ninny's" fault.

Episode 10: The Spear of Selene!

• Sooo...Zeus is pissed off, and Launchpad utterly destroyed the plane. Assuming that the family will probably be back home or on another adventure next episode...how will they get off of Ithaquack?
  • Intentional Sequel Hook/Fanfic Fuel/Noodle Incident, more or less. The Ducks get into crazy adventures all the time, and we don't see them ''all'; how they got off Ithaquack is left up to imagination but it was presumably another, equally episode-worthy high-flyin' adventure.
  • Well they have Storkules to keep Zeus at bay, and may be able to sate his anger any number of ways (point out Dewey was not actually supposed to be in the game so what he did didn't count, or just let Zeus win another challenge). As for the plane, if Launchpad could take it apart in a few hours then between the whole group they should be able to put it back together (or make something to call for a flight out).
• How does the Siren's song work? Why is it only Storkules who gets enthralled? Huey and Louie are seen covering their ears, but why aren't Scrooge, Donald, or Zeus affected?
  • Given once he is under the song's spell Storkules obeys Zeus, it seems that the song was only intended to effect Storkules all along so that he would attack the ducks.
• I know that not all depictions of divinity are omniscient but How does Selene, Goddess of the moon, not know that Della is on the moon?
  • If they are anything like how they are depicted the old comics at least, it seems the gods have in modern times largely retired and thus no longer have the connections to/awareness of their namesakes that they used to.
  • Selene didn't even know Della was missing; the Ducks had already stopped coming to Ithaquack before Della disappeared. Selene would figured Della was in Duckburg and had no reason to look for her on the moon.

Episode 11: Beware the B.U.D.D.Y. System!

• If Jim Starling did not like using special effects in his show, how did they create The Liquidator? It's really unlikely that they could hire an actual actor made entirely of water. Or did Launchpad simply mean that Jim Starling insisted on no special effects for his own actions, but his opponents could be created by CGI?
  • Pretty much the latter. He's got the same kind of thing as Tom Cruise. He does his own stunts as much as possible, and his character doesn't have 'explicit superpowers'.
  • How would they have created Liquidator at all? He would have looked terrible in mid-90's CGI (which is what Launchpad would have been watching as a kid), enough so that the studio probably wouldn't have attempted the character at all.
    • A creature made of water is relatively easy to create with CGI compared to an organic creature. Look at this scene from The Abyss, an 1989 film - this effect would have passed for The Liquidator in a live-action TV show.
    • While that would have technically been possible, it also would have been an expensive and time-consuming process. Apparently it took 6 months for them to make 75 seconds of footage for that scene in The Abyss, and a TV show from the 90's would neither have the schedule nor the budget to have such a character.
  • Launchpad said Starling insisted on doing his own stunts, meaning no CGI stand-ins for him during explosions etc., not "no CGI ever to do anything else."
  • There's also the possibility that this really was Darkwing Duck filming his own adventures while pretending that everything's pretended. It'd be a way to receive recognition as Darkwing without actually exposing himself. Does that seem out of character?
• How was Launchpad hired as Scrooge's driver if he didn't obtain a license until now? Did neither Scrooge nor Beakley conduct a background check on him or ask him to show his license? And given what a negligent driver he is, who would even allow Launchpad to pass his driving test?

Episode 13: McMystery at McDuck McManor!

• When did Duckworth die? It's mentioned that Scrooge only started hating birthdays since Duckworth died, yet Donald flees the scene on Scrooge's birthday despite having been gone from the Manor for around ten years, implying that he may have died before Donald left. However, Webby, who is around ten, seems to remember Duckworth pretty well, which suggests that he died when Webby was older, after Donald left.
  • As I recall what Webby says is Scrooge "hasn't had a good one since before" Duckworth died. So he may well have hated birthdays back then as well, the ones Duckworth was in charge of were just the only exception.
  • Probably before Donald left. Webby spends a lot of time learning all she can about the McDuck family, and would probably know quite a bit about Duckworth.
  • After Della's disappearance, definitely, because she was expecting to see him there (and surprised to see Beakley).
• Why didn't Donald take the boys with him when he left the house to go to who-knows-where?
  • Perhaps he knew they wouldn't have agreed to leave once they found out why he was leaving?
• Why does Duckworth's ghost have such a demonic form, complete with horns on his skull?
  • That's not his real form, but as a ghost he presumably can take on a variety of forms. Blackarts wanted to summon a demon, so once Duckworth figured out what was going on he decided to give Blackarts what he was expecting and change into that form.
  • When Magica sees Duckworth, she ID's him as a "demon butler" (granted, he did appear in the skull-headed form), and when he decides to prepare the afterlife for Scrooge's family, he explicitly goes down, not up. And let's not forget that he was chasing the boys with a very real axe in this episode. There is probably a dark aspect to him, tempered by his loyalty to Scrooge, making him something of a Token Evil Teammate.
• Where was Blackarts Beagle in The Beagle Birthday Massacre!?
  • Choose your option: A) He was away studying black magic; B) He was there all along, he was just off-screen as the episode focused on other Beagles.
  • There are chapters of Beagle Boys all over the world, as shown in "Massacre." Some of them are in town, some aren't. Maybe Black Arts usually lives somewhere more occult-y like Boston, and he just visits Duckburg occasionally (like when paid to perform for a billionaire).
  • Black Arts seems to be based on "spectacle" magicians like Criss Angel. He's probably performing somewhere. Maybe he does work in a trio like the other Beagles, with him doing shows in hotel-casinos that get people out of their rooms so his partners can rob them or something.

Episode 14: JAW$!

• Where exactly does Launchpad sleep? He seemed to get over to the mansion pretty quickly.
  • As we learned in the B.U.D.D.Y System, he lives in Scrooge's garage.
    • Of course, this then prompts more questions. Did they clean out the garage after what happened the first day? Cause it looks way less cluttered than it did when Webby first showed it to the boys. Or where was Mcquack before the series began?
    • To the above, we do see the family cleaning up the garage at the end of the two-episode pilot.
    • When we see it again in "Treasure of the Found Lamp" it's just as cluttered. That episode ends with it being cleaned out, and then it's cluttered up again in "Nothing Can Stop Della Duck." Guess Scrooge just has that much stuff.
  • Scrooge lives in a mansion and explicitly has "a dozen or so spare rooms" with which to host Donald and the boys. He may have more than one garage; one for storage, one for vehicles, etc. Or Launchpad might live in a separate building on the property (Doofus Drake's tree house has a separate building for the servants' quarters, so that's not unprecedented in-universe) that he simply considers being a garage because, well, he's Launchpad. "Smaller building next to the house" = "garage" is exactly the level of thought he would put into that arrangement, and he's the one who would have put the address on his driver's license paperwork.
• …So are the Smashnikovs from Duckburg? It was nice seeing them again, but the specifics of how they got to Duckburg seem especially iffy (even with Rule of Funny in function) if you consider they are Russian.
  • Unless Glomgold actually hired his henchmen from all around the world, it's probable that they are simply Russian immigrates who live in Duckburg.
    • Plus they are "the best of the cheapest" and it'd be an extra expense for Glomgold to have to transport mercenaries from a distant land.
• Webby says that Scrooge hates magic and sees it as a shortcut to hard work, and thus won't allow it in the mansion. However, this doesn't make sense for several reasons. First, we were already told in "The Great Dime Chase" that Scrooge spent a tidy sum on Magical Defense. Also, Scrooge's mantra is "Work smarter, not harder". True magic requires study and effort to work, so if it makes a workload lighter, why wouldn't Scrooge employ it whenever possible? And finally, we've seen Scrooge with various mystical artifacts like the Promethean Candle and the Medusa Gauntlet.
  • First, "Magical Defense" implies that Scrooge is defending himself from magic; presumably, whatever the Magical Defense is cancels out or repels any kind of magic-based attack. Given that he has enemies who rely heavily on magic, that's just a common sense move that he'd be foolish to reject based purely on stubbornness. Scrooge would likely prefer not to use magic, but if he's got no other choice then he's (grudgingly) willing to use it. Besides which. who says the Magical Defense is actually inside the mansion?
  • Second, Scrooge is an adventure junkie. He doesn't want to spend all his time studying and reading, he wants to get out into the world and experience it directly. Spending years studying magic would get in the way of that.
  • Third, the simplest solution isn't always the smartest solution. Certainly in the Disney universe, magic can be tricky and unpredictable. Using it can have unintended and often calamitous results. It often requires making uneven deals with powerful, untrustworthy entities who almost certainly don't have your best interests at heart and are fond of including hidden clauses that will backfire on you. And while it can solve your problems if you have it, if it disappears for whatever reason when you need it then you're screwed. Scrooge probably finds it smarter not to trust magic, but instead, be able to solve his problems without it whenever possible (which is most of the time).
  • Finally, the Promethean Candle and the Medusa Gauntlet and the like are clearly just trophies of old adventures that Scrooge keeps around for a souvenir, and pretty small-scale ones at that. The former is clearly just a glorified everlasting candle, so there's no real harm in keeping that one around, and it's not like he's constantly using the Medusa Gauntlet to solve every problem he comes across. In any case, as above Scrooge would likely prefer not to use magic but if he needs to then he will as a last resort.
• Why didn’t Lena wait for Magica to retrieve the #1 dime before dispelling the money shark? It’s framed as her being concerned for Webby but we’ve seen that being swallowed by the shark is harmless since Scrooge, Launchpad and the triplets were still ok after being eaten. Given that Magica was inches away from getting the dime, all Lena had to do was wait a few seconds before casting the spell. Boom! Webby’s safe and Lena could’ve bargained for her freedom from her aunt by reminding her that she did what she asked.
  • The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck shows that "Lena's worst nightmare" is Magica being released and immediately arranging to kill Webby because she's an inconvenience. While she still hasn't owned up to the likelihood of this scenario in JAW$ yet, it was likely already on her mind and would have been enough to force her decision in such a stressful situation.
• Since Magica is trapped inside Scrooge's #1 dime, shouldn't she already know where it is?
  • Her body (and most of her magic) are trapped in the Dime, but her mind isn't — it's hitching a ride round the world as Lena's shadow. There is no suggestion that she retains any psychic connection with the Dime.
  • She does say she can feel her power growing as she gets closer to the Dime. It might just be that she thinks she's getting closer to the Dime, and that confidence is what's making her magic stronger (or at least, making her feel stronger). Or Scrooge's magical defenses might be running some sort of interference on it. Or, since she is physically closer to Scrooge (and, therefore, the Dime) than she has been for the previous 15 years or so, maybe she is feeling the Dime's presence, but since she has no reason to suspect where it is, and since the real and decoy Dimes are close in proximity at the time, she's simply assuming that that feeling is coming from the Bin.

Episode 15: The Golden Lagoon of White Agony Plains!

• Jaw$ establishes that Scrooge hates magic as a shortcut to hard work and won't let it in his house. How then did he reach the literal hell dimension of Demogorgana to put down that rebellion, and why?
  • More specifically he doesn't allow spell books in the house, rather than not allowing magic of any kind. He doesn't seem to be against using magic completely so much as against relying on it. Heck, several artifacts he kept in his garage were magical (and even in the episode where Webby notes his dislike for magic, Scrooge must have used magic beans to grow that beanstalk at the start of the episode). Likewise, there is no evidence he would refuse to participate in a conflict with magical beings simply because he personally doesn't like using magic.
  • Scrooge was thrilled when he thought he was going to get to fight a magical opponent in "The House of the Lucky Gander." He considers relying on magic an ignoble shortcut, but he loves fighting magical opponents who can give him a fun challenge. He probably went to that other dimension for a vacation!
  • Scrooge doesn't so much hate magic, so much as considers it a tool of fools and villains. In fact, he's likely averse to using it himself because he's exploited its weaknesses enough to know how impractical it can be. His talk of magical protection certainly suggests he's reasonably well-versed in its properties.
  • I was under the impression that he'd accidentally traveled to the Demogorgana dimension through his adventures and then had to figure out his way back while dealing with the rebellion that Goldie left behind. With the traps that Scrooge does manage to trigger and the curses that get sent his way, it wouldn't be that unlikely that one would be a literal "go to hell" curse and be successful.
• So...how did Goldie manage to tie up both a Battle Butler and a Pint-Sized Powerhouse? Like, Webby and Beakley aren't exactly pushovers.
  • The Worf Effect. Goldie is just that competent.
  • Probably the same way she took out that Swede from Malmo who... never mind. Every incarnation of Goldie is a badass. No wonder Scrooge considers her a Worthy Opponent.
• How did the map not rot inside the mouth of a mammoth?
  • Perhaps it was preserved by the cold? And the mammoth's flesh was gone not because it rotted away, but because it was eaten by predators such as the bear?
• Plot Hole: If Glomgold was working with Goldie all along, why did he act all shocked and indignant when he first saw Scrooge and Goldie together in Dawson through his binoculars?
  • He isn't as shocked to see Goldie and Scrooge together, but he's probably jealous that Goldie and Scrooge flirt with each other more than what's absolutely necessary for the plan.
• So Goldie and Glomgold clearly had a plan when they found the golden lagoon. Use the oil equipment to pump the gold out. Goldie then would oil tanker it out, while Glomgold would presumably use his employees to move the Gold. Then what did Scrooge plan to do if they actually found the Golden Lagoon? All he brought with him was rope, a pickaxe, a locator beacon, and the map. How could he have transported the gold? Or did he just want a picture or something?
  • Perhaps Scrooge believed that it was more practical (and cheaper) to bring the equipment to take the gold after he actually found the Lagoon. Also, since he went there right the day after he met Goldie, he didn't have much time to prepare the equipment, whereas Glomgold was probably planning the whole thing several days ahead (and was already drilling for oil there before he even knew about the Lagoon's existence). Furthermore, this incarnation of Scrooge is a Bold Explorer who loves glory just as much as he loves money, so perhaps the glory of being the first to find the Golden Lagoon is more important to him than the actual gold in it.
  • Scrooge is too savvy to spend thousands of dollars hauling equipment out to recover a treasure that might be there. That's a rookie mistake for overconfident idiots like Glomgold. The Lagoon isn't going anywhere; he can radio for assistance and equipment once he's actually found the exact location.
• Why did Goldie team up with Glomgold in the first place? In what way did she need him? He did nothing that helped her... in fact, he almost got her killed with that elevator. She didn't need his help to find the gold or to fight Scrooge... in fact, she did her best to stop him from interfering in her fight with Scrooge. He doesn't contribute to her goal in any way besides being annoying and repeatedly trying to feel her up. What did she stand to gain by partnering with him? What purpose did she intend for dragging Glomgold into her plan to serve her?
  • Goldie seems like more of a freelance adventurer than a well-established multi-millionaire. Sure, she may have taken a loan or something for that oil tanker that hauled out the gold afterward, but she didn't have the resources to do several of the things she needed to make this trip possible. Perhaps foremost, excavation. She needed Glomgold's oil rig to give an established line to the golden lagoon, and It's quite possible that when Glomgold found the Glacial Monster, Goldie found out about it first, and approached him with a chance to "find the treasure of a lifetime" in exchange for his support. Of course, there is another potential reason: It Amused Me. Because Goldie, being irritated by Glomgold's advances, planned on this double cross just to give him a cut-down.
  • It might also be a case that she'd rather have him "on her side" than against her, simply because he's a wild card. Glomgold's plans have been repeatedly shown to be difficult to counter because he relies on Complexity Addiction and Insane Troll Logic. Sure, he doesn't usually win, but that's because of those same problems. Goldie could easily outsmart Glomgold, but she'd have a much harder time trying to defeat Glomgold and Scrooge at the same time. If she'd gone into the plan focused on Scrooge and Glomgold showed up at an inopportune moment, it could have been disastrous. By getting him involved from the start, she at least had a better idea of where he'd be and how to avoid him when she needed to.
  • Also, he provided a great distraction at the end there. While Goldie's good at getting one over on Scrooge, he does always know she's up to something, and she'd have to abscond with a lagoon of molten gold with Scrooge right behind her. The logistics of that would be incredible. Even assuming she still faked her own death, she would have to rely on Scrooge being too busy mourning her to realize she was draining the lagoon. Scrooge can sense 87 cents disappearing from his Money Bin; he's going to notice all that gold disappearing and quickly realize what's up. Bring Glomgold into the equation and Scrooge's rivalry with him will drown out his rivalry with/suspicion of Goldie. Not only will his mourning be tinged with a desire for revenge, distracting him from the draining lagoon, but it also provides a logical explanation for the draining lagoon- Glomgold's doing it, so there's no reason to look for Goldie.

Episode 17: From the Confidential Casefiles of Agent 22!

• Where was Duckworth when Black Heron broke into the mansion and kidnapped Beakley? Why didn't he use his ghostly/demonic powers to stop her?
  • We don't know yet what, if any, rules or limitations Duckworth's new existence may entail. But regardless, he could easily have simply been in another part of the mansion and not noticed the kidnapping, much as Scrooge and Webby didn't notice until they entered the kitchen. It's not like much time had passed since it happened.
  • Was it ever implied that Duckworth is permanently guarding the mansion and everyone in it from danger? Scrooge certainly didn't act like he was, and he credited Black Arts Beagle with raising him on his birthday. Perhaps the ghost can only manifest on Scrooge's birthday, or only when the mansion is literally overrun with dozens of different enemies of Scrooge. In any case, again, no indication anywhere that he's some permanent supernatural guard over the mansion.
    • While you may have a point, it has been indicated that Duckworth is sticking around, given in the previous episode Louie mentioned his home has a ghost for a butler.
    • Note that in Duckworth's debut episode Louie is the most thrilled about the idea of a ghost butler, and the only one asking how to summon Duckworth (and never getting an answer). But Duckworth having limited powers would also explain why he didn't stop Goldie from breaking in and subduing Beakley and Webby two episodes earlier.
  • He's a ghost, not a Genius Loci. He doesn't automatically know what's happening outside his field of vision. Scrooge happened to find the evidence of the kidnapping first.
• How did Webby allow herself to STAY tied up for so long by Black Heron? After all, as we know from Day Trip of Doom, "escaping being tied up is like...adventuring 101."
  • Having a charged laser gun held centimeters from your face is enough to freak any 10-year-old out, no matter how well trained.
  • It's best not to escape from bonds when the person who tied you up is standing right there with a weapon ready.
• While Rule of Funny is in play here, why not help Donald out of the pantry? Was it simply that he refused help? How long has he even been locked in there?
  • "Donald making an omelet" leaves the same aftermath as "trained assailant infiltrating the mansion and overwhelming a Retired Badass." Donald's temper is an issue, and he's only able to focus on that rage when the boys are threatened. Leaving him locked in the pantry is probably the easiest way to give him time to calm down when he's worked up in a frenzy (and keep him away from the sharp knives). Otherwise, he'll just go back to fighting the eggs, making the situation worse. Since Scrooge didn't need to take him along on the rescue mission, he had no reason to release him, and he did make a point of telling the boys where Donald was before he left.
• If the Gummi Bears existed in their universe, does that there was a non-human version of Duke Igthorn? Their version of the gummies defended Castle Dunwyn from something(or someone). There is no evidence of humans existing, so does that mean there was an animal version of Igthorn in that universe?

Episode 18: Who is Gizmoduck?!

• So, did Gyro never even try approaching Scrooge and saying that the Gizmoduck suit got stolen? You'd think after Fenton made off with it, and Mark Beaks's new campaign with Waddleduck, Scrooge might've had a real case to sue for intellectual property theft against Fenton if not Beaks.
  • It's implied that Scrooge was abroad during most of the episode's events, and also since the Gizmoduck armor being a product of McDuck Industries was secret Gyro might have had trouble proving it was stolen without revealing company secrets.
• How did Huey get the name Gizmoduck when he saw Fenton escaping with the armor?
  • Well, he probably got a chance to talk with Dewey about what he saw after he got picked up from the roof. And Dewey could then pass on the name.
• After saving Mark Beaks from the missile he fired, Gizmoduck flies off and the suit runs low on power, making him plummet and get knocked out. When Fenton wakes up for Gyro to fire him, he activates the suit and runs off to Beaks. How did the suit have the power to activate again if it was low on power since Gyro was planning to destroy the suit, he wouldn't waste time and energy recharging it?

Episode 19: The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck!

• After Gavin threatens Louie, why doesn't he tell Uncle Scrooge when he shows up? He is of course afraid that the Bigfoot will hurt him or his brothers, but Scrooge is carrying a crossbow, and Louie has seen Scrooge defeat far more powerful monsters, so he could easily drive out the creature from the house before he goes through with his threats.
  • Sadly, most real kids who find themselves in situations where someone threatens them or their family if they reveal the truth about something terrible are too frightened to tell someone who's in a position to help them even when logic would say they have nothing to be afraid of if they ask for said help. Fear trumps logic, especially in the heat of the moment like that with no time to contemplate. (Don't know if the writers intended for that subplot to come across so dark, but...)
  • Also, Louie's skillset is "seeing all the angles" and talking himself out of trouble. Those are the instincts that kick in when he's in danger. Even when Gavin isn't posing a direct threat, he doesn't go to Scrooge when he knows he won't be overheard and plan out a trap. Even when Scrooge finds the bigfoot in the house and is prepared to deal with him, Louie still defaults to the "con" of "releasing Tenderfeet into the wilderness for his own good." That's just how he deals with problems.
• When Louie out-cons Gavin and they take him back to the woods, why doesn't he reveal his true nature and attack the kids, instead of taking the humiliation from Louie? Scrooge is no longer there to defend them, and he has no more benefits to gain from Huey and Dewey's trust, so he might as well go through with his threats.
  • It’s possible that Gavin may have been bluffing when he was threatening Louie’s family and didn’t actually intend to carry it out. It’s one thing to con someone into letting you mooch off them but physically assaulting or even killing them is another thing particularly when the target in question are kids.
  • That wouldn't have done Gavin any good. He wanted to live in the mansion — without the kids hiding and doting on him, that wasn't going to happen. If he killed them, it's not like Scrooge would suddenly let a wild animal stay in the mansion, even if by some impossibly contrived circumstances, he never found out said animal killed his nephews. Considering how unlikely it was he could get away with attacking the boys and stood nothing to gain from it anyway, it wasn't worth the risk.

Episode 21: The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!

• When did Della hide Donald's hat and set up the clues for him? The piece of paper she wrote the clues on already has a drawing of the Spear of Selene on the other side, along with several dates, including the kids' birth date, so clearly the Spear has already been under construction and Della knew when she wanted to fly it first. Further complicating the case is that, according to Scrooge, Castle McDuck appears only every five years, so it had to be exactly 10 or 15 years before the episode takes place.
  • It might've been around the 10-year mark...just before she was expecting the boys and hoping to try making the Spear. We don't know the month the castle appeared, so Della might've been planning the trip, and used the paper she was writing on top of (notice Huey needed to do a rubbing. It's possible she did the work in invisible ink, but it's more likely it was an impression of something she was working on top of the paper), and then did her silly pranking. Or conversely, it was at the 15-year mark, and she'd been bumping around the idea of going to space for years before having kids.
  • Della designed the Spear (just the outer shell and the inner layout, not the inner workings, since that was expressly Gyro's and she needed the manual to reconstruct it). Scrooge constructed it for her as a surprise to celebrate the triplets' birth. The paper the triplets found could have been from the notebook she used, and the date is written being when the doctors correctly predicted the triplets would probably hatch. So "10 years and a few months ago" seems to work out fine.
• What are the other dates next to the drawing of the Spear of Selene? The one on the bottom is April 15th (the kids' birth date), above it is May 14th, August 18th, and October 13th. The year is obscured, so we cannot see whether they are earlier or later dates.
  • Potential mysteries/Easter eggs for season 2?
  • Donald's birthday is June 9th, which isn't on the list, so it's not a list of birthdays.
• How does a castle Scrooge rebuilt contain secret rooms from Scrooge's grandfather's day that he knows nothing about?
  • Presumably the parts of the castle Scrooge restored/rebuilt did not include the portions with secret rooms that he hadn't seen before.

Episode 22: The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!

• Does Donald know how much effort Scrooge put into finding Della or does he think that Scrooge just gave up as the boys do?
  • We saw Donald talking the boys away from outside Scrooge's control panel sometimes into his quest, so it's safe to say he does. However, its clear that Scrooge pushing his every resource to the brink wasn't enough for Donald to forgive him, he probably wouldn't have forgiven him even if Scrooge succeeded and brought Della back.
  • Donald perhaps doesn't know exactly how much effort Scrooge put into finding Della. We see him taking the eggs, which would seem to imply it was fairly early in the search. So he knows that Scrooge put effort into finding her, but perhaps doesn't know that he eventually became desperate enough to put "near-complete bankruptcy" levels of effort into finding her. Coupled with the fact that he was angry with him and not particularly inclined to take the most favorable view of his actions, it's entirely possible (perhaps even likely) that Donald also doesn't realize exactly how far Scrooge was willing to go to find Della.
  • Shadow War seems to indicate the second theory as true given how he was willing to forgive Scrooge once Beakley told him and the boys how far Scrooge went in saving Della.
• Why was Duckworth also leaving the mansion? What did Scrooge do to him and where has he been? He would have been really helpful in some of the other episodes, like when Goldie captured Beakley and Webbie.
  • In the Prime Universe, Duckworth usually served as the voice of Scrooge's conscience, much as Beakley does in the DT17 universe; presumably, this is also the case with 2017!Duckworth, albeit more subdued. So he probably agrees with Beakley that Scrooge has made a big mistake in alienating his family again, and also quits in disapproval. As to why he didn't help in the previous episodes, he tried, but he just plain isn't good enough. He's a ghost, not a Physical God, and was no match for Goldie, who, remember has managed to nick an artifact that was the crown jewel of an entire demon dimension. (As for why we didn't see him, perhaps he's mostly out at night and handles the cleaning and tidying that Beakley doesn't do.)
• Is the show implying Della was the first person to go to space? When smartphones (which use GPS satellites) are often shown? Just how old are those kids?
  • In the Prime Universe timeline this made sense, because Della's expedition took place in 1937-1938. However, any lingering "implication" in this continuity is only that: an artifact of the old continuity. In this world, we must presume that space exploration in 2005 was more or less the same as it was in our world, meaning that people had been to the Moon but not farther than, at the most, the planet Mars. Della isn't the first person to go to the Moon, but she was the first to seriously plan to go to visit other galaxies.
  • The fact that Lunaris, the Moonlander with the most knowledge of the Earth and their space program, only refers to his father "seeing things launch from the Earth" and not any case of "Earthers invading the Planet Moon" implies that the space program worked out differently than it did in reality. There's explicitly a satellite system, so there has been some measure of space exploration, but it's probably limited in comparison. Not to mention all the hype that Elon Musk got for his work in space travel despite NASA having been a thing for decades at that point, meaning that even in a universe where things proceeded exactly as they did in ours, a multi-billionaire crafting a specialty rocket as a surprise for his niece and great-nephews would still be a big deal and not an everyday occurrence. Also, Scrooge had some knowledge of the cosmic storm Della got trapped in (enough to at least identify it as such) and was able to get a working space-program going in less than a year to search for her, all of which implies that Della was far from the first to go to space, it was just the particular circumstances surrounding her journey that make it exceptional.

Episode 23-24: The Shadow War!

• Wait Della Duck, she needs a suit out there...How is she alive? She needs heat, also air!
  • There are some suggestions to this under the related WMGs: 1) she was in a time warp, so she crashed the Spear relatively recently, so there's still enough air, food, and fuel for heating inside the Spear; 2) it's a blessing by her friend Selene, goddess of the Moon.
  • Also, it is a Disney cartoon based around exotic old-school adventures. There's no guarantee that the moon works in the same way in the DuckTales universe as it does in ours. For all we know there is an atmosphere of some sort.
  • Answered in the first few minutes of "Whatever Happened to Della Duck." She had Gyro tech.
• Related to the above: how come the dozens of astronauts that Scrooge sent out there never bothered to look on the Moon and never spotted the debris of the Spear of Selene?
  • One possibility (that could also account for how she is still alive on the Moon) is that she hasn't actually been on the moon all that long (that cosmic storm could have done any number of fantastical things). Another is that space travel in the duck verse may not be as advanced as we think, Scrooge spoke of space as if it was somewhere no duck had ever been before, and the ships were not up to the task of doing a thorough search. And there may well be obstacles to reaching/observing the moon that we don't know about yet.
  • Or, tying this up with another so-called Plot Hole, they might have assumed that if Della had ended up on the Moon, her good friend Selene would know about it, and since they heard nothing from her (or maybe even asked her and she said she hadn't seen anything), they assumed this was not the case. Ignoring that Selene, like the other Greek Gods, is retired and presumably doesn't monitor the Moon all that closely anymore.
  • We're also assuming that Della has been stranded on the moon all this time. For all we actually know at this point, Della's been all over the galaxy having adventures and has only relatively recently crashed on the moon.
  • Answered by "Whatever Happened to Della Duck." They made some flybys of the moon, but due to one circumstance or another they just never spotted her.
• If Lena was Magica's Living Shadow rather than an actual person, and Magica never saw her as family, then why did Lena refer to her as "Aunt Magica"? And why does Magica suddenly scoff at Lena referring to her as Aunt if she never did in previous episodes, despite Lena constantly calling her that?
  • It's likely it's all linked to an existential crisis Lena could have had at some point as she developed more sapience, and Magica allowed/suggested she be called her aunt to give Lena some sense of attachment to her and in turn give Magica more influence over her (until late in the series Magica couldn't fully force Lena to do specific things, and sometimes used familial obligation to try to coerce her). Her nature as not a "real" person certainly didn't come out of nowhere though, as back in Jaws! Magica said the ducks would turn on her if they found out "what" she really was, and in The Other Bin she said they would call her a monster.
  • The above speculation may be correct. There's also the theory that this was a fallback-plan — so that even if anyone eavesdropped on the shadow-conversations and learned Lena worked for Magica, they'd still have no clue what Lena was. While a little more contrived, this would actually explain why Magica scoffs now when she didn't earlier: as the Ducks are now fully aware of what Lena is there's no reason why she should continue the "charade" of calling her "Aunt".
  • She tolerated it before because she needed Lena's help. Now that she no longer does, she can indulge her cruelty freely (and she probably hates Lena for her disobedience and foot-dragging).
• In the last episode, Mrs. Beakley turns her back on Scrooge and abandons him with everybody else. But in this episode, she strongly disagrees with the abandonment of Scrooge by his nephews and calls them out on it. Why did her viewpoint suddenly change?
  • At this point 3 days have passed since they left and, much like Webby, Beakley seems to have cooled down from her anger at Scrooge snapping at her and is looking at things in a more logical way. She knew all along that the nephews were wrong about Scrooge regarding Della, she just got too angry to defend him after Scrooge insulted Webby and herself. Plus neither side was likely to listen right after the initial fight, but after a few days, she hopes that has changed. Also, even in the previous episode, she didn't intend to "abandon" Scrooge so much as take a vacation from him, even asking for his permission (and perhaps hoping he would ask her to stay), whereas the nephews intended to never see him again.
  • Mrs. Beakley presumably had no intention of staying away forever but was just taking some vacation days to let some water pass under the bridge and give Scrooge a chance to cool down and sulk in private. Considering her last words to him are a guilt trip, in keeping with her emotional manipulation of the triplets later on it might also have been a bit of tough love to remind him how much he needed his family by forcing him to spend some time by himself.
• Selene is the goddess of the Moon… but she didn't know her best friend Della was stranded there for 10 years?
  • The Classic Duck Universe and its DT17-Continuum incarnation both have an All Myths Are True thing going on. In the Classic Universe, this is explained as the Greek Gods had once been in charge of the universe, but now being retired (see World Tree Caballeros, for example). This may very well be true, which would explain why Zeus, Storkules, Charybdis, and Selene are hanging around on the "vacation island" of the Greek Gods seemingly full-time. If they're retired, that should mean they've stopped fulfilling their initial godly duties, so Selene probably doesn't check on the Moon all that often.
  • Also, at this point we don't know if Della has been stuck on the moon all this time. For all we know, she's been involved in all kinds of crazy adventures across the entire universe and has only relatively recently crash-landed on the moon.
  • Whatever powers Selene has over the Moon, it doesn't seem like they include being aware by default of what's happening there. In "The Spear of Selene," Selene didn't even know Della was missing at all, and no one back home knew Della had been lost on the moon specifically until she returned to Earth and told them. Scrooge had sent rockets to survey the lunar surface so he probably eliminated it as a possibility in his mind, and as he had already stopped going to Ithaquack before Della's disappearance the place wasn't foremost in his mind. It's tragic if Selene had known she could probably have rescued Della in a heartbeat.
    • "Moonvasion" seems to confirm at least part of this. As soon as Selene's physically able to intervene in the situation (after the invasion has been defeated anyway, of course), she's able to trap Lunaris in a permanent orbit of Earth (a lunar Ironic Hell, considering his distaste for being "subordinate" to Earth) meaning she does have some degree of moon-related power. If she'd known Della was anywhere in the vicinity of the moon, she most likely would have been able to intervene (alert Scrooge to her presence and keep Della company, at the very least), but even once she learns Della is missing, she's never given any hint that she's missing in space, so why would she bother checking out the moon, when Della getting lost on one of her numerous terrestrial adventures is a more logical assumption? After Scrooge cut himself off/got cut off from his remaining family, he probably wouldn't be too keen to ask outsiders for help, but even if it did occur to him that Selene might be able to help, he probably realized that Zeus would prevent it, to spite Scrooge if nothing else. Why bother invoking the wrath of the King of the Gods (even if it's just a minor inconvenience to Scrooge) when he has a more realistic means of finding Della and fighting Zeus would just be a distraction?
• Any reason why Donald wasn't included in the TV news interview at the end of the episode with the rest of the main group (Scrooge, HDL, Webby, Launchpad, and Beakley) given how he's the one who led the attack against Magica?

Season 2

Episode 2: The Depths of Cousin Fethry!

• Why do Scrooge and the Nephews keep referring to Fethry as the boys' cousin? Since he's Donald's cousin, shouldn't they call him Uncle Fethry instead?
  • It's common to shorten long terms of relation like "second cousin" or "cousin once removed" simply to "cousin" for convenience's sake (in the United States, at least — can't speak for the rest of the world). "Uncle" can be used as a substitute, too, when said cousin is at least one generation older than you, but it's not a rule. The boys have never met Fethry, so referring to him as "Uncle" might've felt unnatural, as that term is not only used to describe biological relation but closeness (again, in the United States, at least).
  • By technical definition an uncle is the brother of a direct ancestor (your father's brother is an uncle, your grandfather's brother is a great uncle, etc). Any descendant of an uncle is a cousin. Since Donald and Fethry are first cousins, he is Huey and Dewey's first cousin once removed.
• Assuming Donald kept his nephews in the dark about Fethry's existence and their relation to him until this episode, why would he do that when he had no apparent issue with them knowing about his smug, insufferable cousin Gladstone Gander? True Fethry has his eccentricities, but wouldn't it count for something that he's a genuinely Nice Guy compared to Gladstone?
  • A line from Louie in Gladstone's debut episode, "Why'd I wear green? He always sees me in green", suggests that the boys had met Gladstone before and that Louie in particular looks up to him. It's possible Gladstone just showed up at some point or another, making Donald unable to avoid bringing him up to the boys. Fethry, however, has been down in the deep sea research facility for several years.

Episode 7: Whatever Happened To Della Duck?!

• Unless Oxy Chew also gives you a dolphin's ability to move while you sleep, how does Della breathe while she's sleeping?
  • Maybe she found a way to pressurize the indoor rocket cabin so that wasn't an issue for her? Or maybe there's some way that the gum can store oxygen for you for prolonged periods?
• According to Word of God, Donald and Della are 36, and Gyro is younger than them (from posts made between seasons 2 and 3). That means Gyro must have built the Spear of Selene when he was in his early twenties, having enough responsibility for the entire project that he wrote all of the notes and the manual. Does this seem a little young to anyone else, even for an Omnidisciplinary Scientist?
• If Della is on the Moon, how did Selene, the literal goddess of the moon, not be aware of it? Also, the Moonlanders while we are on the topic. Don't Greek gods constantly watch over their domain as if their life depends on it?
  • Oh, gods no. In the original mythology, the gods spent most of their time having illegitimate children, carrying out vendettas, and turning people into things. The only god really portrayed as making an effort to do his job was Hades, and modern conflation of Hades and the Devil means you'll barely see it. And even then, the Greek gods were not omniscient. Selene would have to specifically go looking for Della on the moon to find her, and as other Headscratchers have already pointed out, she never even knew Della was missing until "The Spear of Selene."
    • Point taken. I am no stranger to the Greek Gods' constant domestic shenanigans. To be more specific about the "watch over their domain", I was referring to that they are while mostly apathetic to their domain, hate having mortals being compared to them on an equal footing to regarding it (See: Arachne, Athena, and sewing) and stealing their stuff is a one-way ticket to being subject to a Forced Transformation at best. Sure, Selene isn't even aware that Della is missing but an entire race of Lunarians boasting that they are the masters of the Moon didn't even get her attention? It's like screaming in Zeus' face that you are the king of the skies while expecting no lightning bolts to your face or more likely, your wife getting claimed by him afterward.
    • It could be that Selene viewed the Lunarians indulgently, similarly to how one might view a kitten or a very young child. You know, "oooh who's a cute little master of the moon? You are!" And thus didn't really take them seriously.

Episode 8: Treasure of the Found Lamp!

• Why would freeing the Genie necessarily entail making him human? Precedent dictates that genies getting freed doesn't mean they're no longer genies, though it does diminish their powers. Yes, Gene in DuckTales: The Movie turned into a real boy upon being freed, but the wish was specifically worded that way. By Mr. D'jinn's account, on the other hand, his g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandmother only wished for the First Genie's freedom. So…?
  • Perhaps they wanted to get legally married, and the laws of the country did not allow marriage between a human (well, dogface) and a genie? We don't know how her wish was exactly phrased, so she may have specified that she wished him free so that they could marry.
  • While Ducktales 2017 is in canon with much of the Disney Afternoon, it's not in canon with Aladdin. Freeing a genie in this universe may require making them mortal.
  • The First Genie was the one who granted the wish, so it was up to him to interpret it. The First Genie wanted to be human, so he interpreted the wish that way. Aladdin's Genie wanted to keep as much of his power as he could, so he interpreted it the opposite way.
• Why "the Lamp of the First Genie", anyway? Nothing in D'jinn's story implies his genie ancestor was the first of his kind.
  • Maybe it's an in-universe "Blind Idiot" Translation? The genie, being the founder of the Djinn family, could have been called "Djinn the First", which then got mistranslated as "the First Genie". Although this is unlikely because if anyone, Djinn would use the correct name for the lamp.
  • It also doesn't state that he wasn't the first genie. Both can be true. We still refer to kings by their number even if it isn't essential to the story to know that the Henry notorious for divorcing his wives happened to be the Eighth one. Djinn wasn't telling the origin story for genies; he was explaining the significance of the lamp to him personally. The genie being his ancestor is important to that story (it's the whole point of the story); where the genie came from or details about other genies aren't.
• If the Lamp is worthless, what was it doing in Collie Baba's loot? Wouldn't he have realized it was worthless, just like Scrooge and Ma Beagle? Of course, Scrooge kept it, but that's because he's a stingy bastard who'd never throw away anything, on general principle. Baba is not noted as particularly miserly, and, if we take Scrooge's word, had placed the Lamp right in the middle of his treasure.
  • We don't know practically anything about Collie Baba, so he might as well have been as miserly as Scrooge. But even if he wasn't, he was from the same country as Djinn's ancestors and probably stole the lamp directly from them. Since the lamp was the Djinn family's most valued possession, Collie Baba must have also treated it as valuable despite its lack of magical powers.
  • It's not worthless, as it probably has great value as an antique. Scrooge has giant chests full of antiques he barely even thinks about; if Djinn hadn't shown up Scrooge would never have even known the Lamp was gone. What excited Scrooge was that it was the treasure of Collie Baba and promised genie wishes; naturally, he'd be disappointed that it was just a curiosity. And he didn't throw it away — he stuck it in the garage. It was Louie who sold it for a pittance.
• A tiny thing, but how does Scrooge know about the "got your nose" joke, if he and his family are ducks with no noses? Furry Lens is not an excuse since it's established the characters are actually humanoid ducks (there are references to their bills and feathers, they lay eggs, etc.).
  • The 2017 Continuum isn't inhabited only by anthropomorphic ducks; the plentiful anthropomorphic dogs, for example, do have noses. There's no reason they wouldn't have the joke.^note  Tangentially connected: it occurs to me that the "dogs with no noses" joke if it exists, is probably considered a racist joke in Duckburg. Plus, Ducks may refer to the part of their beak with the nostrils as their "nose". I'm fairly sure that, in the comics at least, they have occasionally talked about their mouths at least.
• So... Djinn's plan was: Go to Duckburg, find the famous Scrooge McDuck, tell the duck to give him the lamp, and if he doesn't want to cooperate/he misplaced it... he destroys his home? Does he know that doing that to Scrooge McDuck will get him in a lot of trouble? Even if he didn't know Scrooge is the richest duck in the world, it wouldn't take much time for him to figure out that a person/duck with a big mansion and a lot of historical artifacts is well known in the city and thus threatening him with a sword may end up in said duck calling the police (or Gizmoduck) to arrest him.
  • Djinn threatens to destroy Scrooge's home because Scrooge claims the Lamp was misplaced. If it's misplaced, it's in the building somewhere, and dismantling the building is an extreme overreaction but will have the desired effect. As for him not accounting for police and Gizmoduck, well ... Djinn isn't shown to be particularly stable or rational, and with his ludicrous combat proficiency, he might actually be able to hold them off.
• Why didn't Duckworth recognize Gladstone, the nephew of his longtime boss? I know Scrooge hated Gladstone, but enough that he never met Duckworth, who has been Scrooge's butler since at least his first annual company Christmas party.

Episode 9: The Outlaw Scrooge McDuck!

• When Louie asks Scrooge about one of the details of the story, he mentions "the inventor", implying that Scrooge only ever spoke about "the weird inventor" in his narration without calling him Gyro. And the ending seems to imply that only with Gyro crash-landing the Time Tub in his office does Scrooge realize he was "the inventor" all along. How is this possible? Even allowing the implausibility of Scrooge not recognizing Gyro when he "properly" met him further down the timeline, how could he possibly have spent an hour recalling the Gumption adventure without it hitting him that the inventor was Gyro all along?
  • The adventure took place nearly a century ago; Scrooge encountered thousands of people since then and couldn't remember every single one of them.
    • And if he'd forgotten the story I'd take your point, but how can he remember the adventure in the detail depicted, yet not the face of the chicken? As I said, I could buy that he didn't put two and two together when he first met Gyro in the regular timeline. But I would have expected him to finally connect the dots when he started recalling his adventure with “the Inventor”, surely.
    • It is possible to remember certain things in excruciating detail and yet skip certain others. Either way, Rule of Funny is also in action.
    • If Scrooge at the time, didn't believe in time travel (he's learned about it since then) then he may have already dismissed everything because there's no reason to be considering whether this guy was the same person as Gyro, just like he never thought about the idea that Sheriff "Deputy" Marshall might be Fenton's ancestor.
    • The point where Louie calls him out on "remembering" details he didn't witness proves Scrooge is employing at least some degree of narrative license with the retelling. Just because we're seeing an incredibly detailed rendering of events does not mean that's what happened or that's what Scrooge actually remembers. He's trying to engage Louie and depart a life lesson, after all, and "One time I got scammed out of a giant gold nugget, but I persevered with the help of a few others and managed to turn it into a profitable business venture," doesn't quite do it. Especially considering that "the Inventor" was a man Scrooge met briefly in one of his many, many, many adventures over a century before he met Gyro properly, he probably remembered "the Inventor" as a generic figure. When he needed to flesh him out for the story, he did so by borrowing traits from a more prominent inventor-figure who'd stick out in his mind, like Gyro. It's just a coincidence that they happen to be the same person. Likewise, Sheriff Marshall Cabrera (if that's his actual name and not an embellishment on Scrooge's part) probably isn't quite so similar to Fenton as he appears in the story, and Scrooge is just borrowing mannerisms from him in order to make it easier for Louie to get invested in the story.
• Does the episode, from Gyro's point of view, take place before or after the Time Tub gained sentience and turned evil (as mentioned in "The Great Dime Chase")? The Tub doesn't show any sign of sentience or evilness in the episode. Due to the nature of Time Travel, Gyro could have easily visited the Old West, then ended up in the future when Scrooge was telling the story, before returning to his own time preceding "The Great Dime Chase". What contradicts this is that Gyro already knows Fenton (as he finds Marshall Cabrera "annoyingly familiar"). Or maybe he found a way to fix the Time Tub's villainy?
  • Who says he has corrected the Time Tub's villainy? It certainly didn't seem to be very docile to his commands… I'd say he's in the process of fixing it but having some trouble. (At any rate, Angones has promised on Suspenders of Disbelief that we'll see more of the Time Tub soon enough, so there'll probably be more clues then.)
  • "Timephoon!" has now come and gone, and hoo boy, the Time Tub is not a piece of technology to be used by anyone with a lick of sense. Whether its gaspingly dangerous design flaw is active malevolence or merely a glitch is an exercise for the troper.

Episode 10: The 87 Cent Solution!

• Why would DJ Khaled's "All I Do is Win" exist in the Ducktales universe if he and the other singers in the song don't even exist?
  • They do, but not as humans.
  • Yeah: the Duck universe (whether this rebooted one or the classic one) is broadly Like Reality Unless Otherwise Noted, with the exception that most real people who also exist in the Duckverse are probably anthropomorphic-animal versions of themselves rather than Homo Sapiens. No real headscratcher there.
  • Confirmed by Word of God: in this universe, he's an anthropomorphic quail. DJ Quailed.

Episode 11: The Golden Spear!

• How can the Moonlanders have the technology to conceal an entire underground civilization on the hidden face of the Moon, yet have rocket science be totally beyond them? You could argue that they never could develop it because they lacked the proper materials (the Moon seems to be pretty much all dust and gold), but then, a fat lot of good plans are going to do Lunaris.
  • From what we know of their history they never even considered leaving their world, indeed they were so afraid of Earth that they moved underground. It seems likely that any efforts to make or research rocket technology would have been forbidden. That they are going to be able to copy and mass-produce the Golden Spear though, with instructions, means that the technology is not beyond them. The knowledge they gained form Della just save them a lot of time and effort.
  • Also worth noting that they lack a reliable source of fuel until they have a copy of Gyro's gold-tech to use their abundant supply of gold.
• Is that tiny crowd really the entire Moonlander population?! Their city covers the entire hidden face of the Moon, and there are about thirty of them. How do they even maintain a breeding population?! Whut?
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale hitting pretty hard, I assume.
  • Perhaps those people (who were more like about a hundred in some shots) are just the population of that particular neighborhood within Tranquility, rather than the entire Moonlander population? And when Penumbra implies Della is stealing their entire people, she was exaggerating? Or projecting that, if the entire neighborhood got interested in Della's stories in that short amount of time, soon it will spread to the rest of the Moon?
• How would Lunaris carry out his plans if Penumbra in a moment of self-control didn't flip the emergency launch switch? Flip it himself?
  • Yes.

Episode 12: Nothing Can Stop Della Duck!

• Since Della blasted into space before Beakley became Scrooge's housekeeper, how did she know about the incident and inform the boys of Scrooge's futile search?
  • There are 2 ways to look at this. A) Beakley was in their lives way longer than just as scrooge's housekeeper, so she was familiar with Scrooge's affairs before joining. B) when she was hired specifically because Della disappeared, she was Scrooge's only friend he trusted with the truth of what happened and watched the process unfold before her eyes as everything fell apart. Plus, wasn't there a hint in Shadow War that Scrooge spent several years searching?
  • Beakley definitely was in their lives before she became their housekeeper, as Della immediately recognizes her as Agent 22. She could even have already worked for Scrooge before Della's disappearance, just as a personal bodyguard rather than a housekeeper.
• Why in Dismal Downs did Scrooge turn the car alarm off while they were hiding from the Gilded Man?! It was keeping the thing distracted! Instead of taking the time to form a plan, he turns it off, and the thing finds them.
  • Unless I'm wrong, the idea is that Scrooge, unlike the viewer, hasn't yet realized that sound weakens the Gilded Man.
• As far as Scrooge and the boys know, Donald is on a cruise that Scrooge paid for, meaning he must know the name of the company and have access to their contact info... so WHY THE DUCK DIDN'T THEY TRY TO CONTACT HIM?! I don't care how badly someone needs a relaxing vacation — the reappearance of the sister they've been mourning for 10 years is the kind of thing you interrupt them over! It's certainly the kind of thing someone would get extremely upset over learning later no one told them! Yes, when Scrooge called to try to contact his nephew, he'd learn, "Sorry, he never showed up, and we have no idea where he is," but they don't know that! They think they know exactly where Donald is but show no intention of making a call to tell him, "You want to come home NOW! Your sister's back!"
  • They specified that the ultra-relaxing cruise banned phones on the boat as part of the "away from your trouble" package, so I guess that's supposed to be the idea; this is a cruise so secluded and quiet that you can't contact it till the boat comes back ashore.
    • That's not what the original poster asked. They asked why Scrooge and the boys don't call the people who work on the cruise and ask for Donald, not calling Donald directly.
    • But I'm saying that the "ban on phones" should be interpreted to mean the people who work on the cruise aren't allowed any phones either. Just. No phones on the boat, for any reason.
    • It's not really a good idea to ban phones for such a long peperiodecause someone will NEED contacting in those five weeks, such as with what happened here or for business inquiries. It's possible that when Webby said "no phones", she meant "no phones ringing off the hook with work", and so Donald simply didn't bring his because he thought he wouldn't need it. Also, how would he possibly interrupt a cruise? He can't exactly turn the whole boat around when it's halfway across the Caribbean.
    • Given that Louie is going to be flying to an obscure island by helicopter in a couple of episodes, it kind of boggles the mind Scrooge didn't send one out to pick up Donald. This is one of the most important things that ever happened to the Duck family.
  • Louie flies to the island using the Sunchaser.
  • While Della did ask about Donald shortly after arriving, "He's on a cruise" was enough of an explanation for her to drop the subject, and she later agrees that he's earned the vacation. If she'd pressed the issue, Scrooge probably would have tried to contact Donald, but since Della wasn't concerned about it, no one else would have any particular reason to be either. Her focus (and everyone else's focus) is on her relationship with her sons. Yes, she missed out on ten years with her brother, but she does already know him. She knows nothing about her boys, and there are three of them. A reunion with Donald would have distracted her from that and potentially robbed her or the boys of personal time with each other. It is okay to be selfish sometimes, and the cruise was for Donald's health in the first place. As far as anyone knows, he'll spend a month relaxing and recuperating and then return to the ultimate surprise. Donald's also never talked about missing his sister (or possibly he did, but no one understood him), and no one really takes the time to consider his feelings anyway. It's entirely in-character for the rest of the McDuck/Duck family to not realize how badly Donald would want to be there. Or, to give them a little more credit, Scrooge did recognize immediately that Della was going to need an adjustment period. He might have been hoping that month would be enough time so that both twins would be in a stable mental place before they reunited, rather than setting each other off with their own conflicting issues.
• After facing all sorts of supernatural monsters ever since they met Scrooge and shrugging off many of them with ease, why did the boys find the story of the Gilded Man terrifying at all?
  • It was probably less the monster itself and more the description of it apparently inflicting a violently bloody massacre. Combined with how she added at the end that the Gilded Man is stored nearby.
  • Generally the boys haven't seen the previous horrible deeds of the monsters they've encountered. They've seen dead bodies, but those were skeletons and mummies; scary, but not "gore smeared across the walls" scary.
• Della's planned names for the boys were Jet (Huey), Turbo (Dewey), and Rebel (Louie). In-universe, why did Donald give them different names?
  • The dramatic explanation: he was upset because of the tragedy and thought that the names would remind him too much of Della, so he went with different names. The comedic explanation: he lost the note where Della wrote the names down to him, and people completely misheard what he was saying.
    • Related to the comedic explanation: maybe, after nobody understood what he was saying, he said his trademark "phooey, phooey, phooey" in exasperation, which got misunderstood as "Huey, Dewey, Louie", and at point, he just decided to go with it.
    • The above explanation (Donald saying "phooey, phooey, phooey") is confirmed by Frank Angones on his Tumblr page.
  • Alternately, Della may have never told him what their names were supposed to be, or perhaps, Donald thought he was doing them a favor (Huey and Louie appear to agree).
  • Huey can always go by Bert if he wants to, which is only a mildly unusual name. Louie's name is super common. Dewey is the only one whose name is weird as a given name, and if you're going to have a weird name it might as well be a cool one. (I've encountered people named Rebel, too, but all of them were women. Yet to meet a Jet or Turbo.)
• How come Della knew Mrs. Beakly was Agent 22 and Donald didn't?
  • Beakley doesn't seem to like either of the Duck siblings very much, but with Della, she limits it to snarky comments. She let Donald set his houseboat on fire while she sat sipping tea. She could have spent much more time with Della.
    • Wouldn't say Beakley doesn't like the Duck twins persay given how Donald seemed to be on good enough terms with her in Woo-oo to call her Mrs. B (and as for the houseboat on fire thing, she knows he's survived worse than that in his adventures with Scrooge). As for the spy thing, it could've been the tense she was using it in. When saying "I'm a spy" (implying she could still be a spy) to Donald, it can easily be interpreted as Donald being thrown off by the tense is was using (he likely wouldn't have been confused if she said, "I WAS a spy").
• What's the sword in the stone doing on Scrooge's property if "only the one true king of England" can pull it out?
  • Scrooge collects a lot of weird shit on adventures, that's why. He probably found it on a trip and the UK government probably just decided to let him have it if they even know he has it.

Episode 14: Friendship Hates Magic!

• The question already presented itself in The Shadow War!, but… how does Magica's kind of magic work, anyway? Is it entirely dependent on the medallion/staff thing, or do you also have to have some inherent aptitude for magic? Here getting the medallion is enough for Violet to start using magic, but what happened to strip Magica of her powers in The Shadow War seemed considerably more complex — breaking the Staff seemed to cause a chain reaction that led to Magica's own powers being sucked out of her (in a very painful-looking way). So which is it?
  • It was pretty heavily implied that Violet does have an aptitude of her own and that at least some knowledge is necessary. Lena initially dismisses her as knowing nothing about magic, but soon admits she is "very good." Presumably, the damage to the amulet caused the power that Magica had absorbed or channeled into herself to be lost, but the amulet itself retained a fair amount of magic that could still be used by someone with the right capability (they just have to be in direct contact with it, whereas Magica could use magic even when she wasn't holding the amulet).
• What is up with the medallion randomly changing appearance every now and then, anyway? Does it have a mind of its own, à la Felldrake?
  • In Magica's words: "Its just magic, ok?!".
  • You mean when it turned from a staff back to an amulet? Presumably, the amulet is what it really looks like, and without Magica keeping it in a staff shape it soon reverted back.

Episode 15: The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!

• Was the "deadly ninja", one of Launchpad's dates, really referring to Ziyi from the "The House of the Lucky Gander!" I mainly ask this since that episode's location is in China, and the TvTropes page of that episode claims to make that connection. Though there aren't any ninjas in China, they are Japanese.
  • It's unclear whether Macaw is indeed in China. It is named after Macau, there are pandas in its population, and Liu Hai is based on a figure from Chinese folk lore, but the country may incorporate elements from other Asian cultures and have ninjas. Alternatively, Macaw is in China (or the Duck-verse's equivalent), and Ziyi is from Japan, but she went on a mission to China that Launchpad, somehow, knows about.
  • Or Launchpad, being Launchpad, is simply using "ninja" in a looser sense (it is in common usage as slang for someone stealthy, regardless of Japanese connections and/or deadly intent), the Japan/China Interchangeable Asian Cultures thing being unrecognized Unfortunate Implications on his part (i.e. he doesn't recognize the term "ninja" as implying a Japanese connection in the first place, so he'd apply it to any Action Girl).
• All of the characters in Fenton's close orbit (Mama Cabrera and Gandra Dee) were completely redesigned from their DuckTales (1987) versions. They're completely unrecognizable. Changing Mama from a Senior Creep to a Fair Cop made sense, as with Burger Beagle and Doofus Drake they were eliminating a frankly offensive joke, and Fenton being a mama's boy is part of his character. But 1987 Gandra Dee's name was a pun on Sandra Dee and a No Celebrities Were Harmed caricature of her, her role was that of Fenton's hopeless crush, and she was The Scrappy. 2017 Gandra bears no resemblance to the actress, she returns Fenton's interest, and she's a badass Transhuman instead of a Brainless Beauty and an Ensemble Dark Horse. Why re-use the name when it no longer fits and the characters have only very minor things in common?

Episode 16: The Duck Knight Returns!

• When did Dewey record his dance over the fight sequence? After the fight ended, Boorswan found the flash drive under the ruins and watched it immediately. Dewey could have recorded the dance only before the fight - but Boorswan specifically says it was recorded "over the entire fight".
  • It's possible Dewey recorded it beforehand, and that he planned on having his thing recorded as a prank of sorts after a certain amount of time. Like reaching the end of a set amount of time, then ending up with only Dewey dancing from then on.
• The trailer says the movie "isn't suitable for children". Two things: 1. Why would the adults care about Dewey's opinion and let him have input for the movie? 2. Why would Drake Mallard think the movie will inspire other kids?
  • Answer: Drake wanted to change the movie and, among the other adults, Scrooge says he wants to appeal to a younger demographic.
  • When Drake signed up for the movie, he probably didn't know about the Darker and Edgier approach and believed that it will be as child-friendly as the version he grew up with. And as an actor, he didn't have much say in the director's approach, but he already had a contract so he went on filming.
  • There's also the fact that a harsh rating doesn't tend to stop children from seeing a movie (or stop fast food places from doing kid's meal toy tie-ins to a movie). Just because the director intends for the audience to be serious adults doesn't mean that's what the audience is going to be. If Scrooge (i.e. The Studio) believes the target audience is children, that's who they're going to be advertising to, regardless of the actual content of the movie. Especially considering the in-universe knowledge of Darkwing Duck is "That whacky show with cartoony violence," most parents aren't going to suspect it's a gritty psychological drama, so when their kids ask "Can we go see a movie?" and the choice is between a straight-up horror movie like the Mole Men and "that movie based on that show I watched a few times growing up," they're probably not going to have a problem picking Darkwing. Children are going to see it and be 1. traumatized, 2. bored/confused, 3. inspired by the determination Drake Mallard brings to the role of a hero who is his own worst enemy but continues to fight the darkness (both outside and within himself) regardless, or 4. some combination of the above. Obviously, Drake is hoping for #3.
• Why was Allistar Boorswan so unaware of who Jim Starling was when he met him? Even taking away the fact that Starling doesn’t seem to have very many fans anymore, I would think any director worth his salt would at least try to learn the history of a show he plans on making a movie about, especially the most iconic roles, so how was he expecting to make a decent movie without having basic knowledge of the original actor who played Darkwing Duck?
  • It's possible Allistar looked up who Darkwing was in terms of theming and character, but wasn't interested at all in the actor who portrayed him. Calling him an overcommitted hack or something like that, and just going for the "dark duck of St. Canard" instead. An In Name Only adaptation.
  • It's also possible that, like Batman (1966), the Darkwing Duck show was based on an earlier comic book. Allistar may have deliberately ignored the series as silly and dated and started over with the source material (much as Tim Burton did for the 1989 Batman film).
• If Launchpad the Darkwing Duck Fanboy didn't recognize the name Drake Mallard, what was Darkwing's name in the show?
  • Maybe there was no civilian life in the original Darkwing Duck show. That it was only the masked hero rather than any of the "humanity" underneath.
  • The Duckverse TV show obviously wasn't the same show we saw on the Disney Afternoon (or a live-action equivalent of it). For one, Launchpad couldn't have been in it, since he's a real person who was probably a kid at the time. So we can't really draw any conclusions beyond the actual clips of the old series we've seen. TV Darkwing may have had a different secret identity or none at all.
  • The Darkwing Duck pilot shows no hint of Darkwing having a secret identity and implies that he resumed life as Drake Mallard only for sake of adopting Gosalyn and giving her a (somewhat) normal life. Seeing as the in-universe show didn't have a Gosalyn, it, therefore, had no reason for the ego-obsessed Darkwing Duck to bother pretending to be some nobody. It's possible that the in-universe show went with something more like the backstory presented in "The Secret Origins of Darkwing Duck" episode if it bothered giving him a backstory at all.
• As great as it is, that we're finally getting the real Darkwing Duck on this show, isn't Drake bound to get sued for using the characters' likenesses, without the creators' permission? I know the Darkwing Duck show isn't that popular in canon, but I don't think the people behind it, would be too thrilled to learn there's an actual vigilante out there, dressed as their creation.
  • According to Frank, Scrooge has bought the rights to Darkwing Duck, so it might be a Gizmoduck-like situation.
    • "Moonvasion" has Darkwing as part of the "allies of the McDucks" that Scrooge gathers to fight the Moonlanders, and Scrooge doesn't bring it up. He doesn't value the Darkwing trademark much anyway, and by not taking action he avoids alienating Launchpad and gets a moderately competent martial artist ally as a bonus.
  • You might as well ask if cosplayers worry about getting sued for dressing like Harley Quinn or Tifa Lockhart. There's a lot of weaseling around in copyright law, but as a rule, if you aren't actively trying to profit from the IP and aren't flat-out ripping content from it you have much leeway in how you as a consumer can utilize it (aka cosplaying, fanfics, fanart). As long Drake isn't trying to profit from the Darkwing name or otherwise step on the toes of big business it's doubtful Scrooge or DW's creator/s (if he's/they're even still alive) would give a damn enough to sue. As far as anyone who knows about DW (the television character) cares Drake would just be a really devoted cosplayer.
  • As long as Drake doesn't get arrested or accidentally out himself, how would they know who to sue?
• In universe, whose idea was it to have a working weapon and a box of real explosives on a film set, when those things are normally produced with CGI after filming? Was Boorswan so insistent on realism that he went for practical effects which, while harmful, were not strong enough to be lethal (doubling as Fridge Brilliance)? Or did Dewey, who had already added stuff like chainsaw jugglers to his Grand Finale, ask for a cool-looking weapon to be added to the film without thinking of the consequences?

Episode 18: Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake!

• Why did Doofus allow himself to be punished? He kept half of the inheritance, so he can remain independent from his parents.
• Why did Mark Beaks not give Boyd any fake memories or other fake information such as when Boyd's birthday is? If he did that then Boyd could have easily brushed off Louie's attempts to shut him down.
  • Beaks is established to be Brilliant, but Lazy who does not put any more effort into his projects than he absolutely needs to. He just assumed nobody is smart enough to figure out that Boyd's a robot. Just like in the case of B.U.D.D.Y., when he didn't take any measures against the robot turning evil despite finding the blueprint in Fenton's post asking how to avoid that exact scenario.
  • None of the guests seem to have planned ahead much. Just like Louie, they probably figured they'd show up, get a free bag of gold, and leave. Beaks' fake photos actually show unusually good planning for him; he wasn't expecting any scrutiny.
  • "Astro-B.O.Y.D." establishes that Beaks found B.O.Y.D. in a landfill; he didn't build him. (B.O.Y.D. looking like the same species as Beaks has not been explained.) Beaks may not know how to do any of that; B.O.Y.D. acting like his son may just mean the robot imprints on whoever activates him.

Episode 22: Glomtales!

• What was Della thinking, leaving her son with DT-87? She knew that the robot was dangerous and could get out of control, even joked about it. What if it had happened and the robot had crippled Louie?
  • Given Bouncer Beagle wasn't hurt when the robot tried to fend him off, chances are Louie would have been fine and unhurt.
• Why didn't Louie try to break the robot (for example, throw something heavy at it or get to the bathroom and use the water)? This is a more reliable option. After all, even if the boy left the house, the Dt-87 would follow him.
• Just how much richer is Scrooge than Glomgold? And just how rich are the other villains? Just by adding the wealth of Ma Beagle, Magica, Don Karnage, and Mark Beeks, Glomgold was able to surpass Scrooge as the richest. Even with Beak's money, unless Glomgold was already fairly to Scrooge in wealth, pooling their money shouldn't work. This either means, that Scrooge isn't THAT much richer then Glomgold, or the other villains are insanely rich with multiple hundreds of millions or billions of dollars apiece.
  • This does not appear to quite be the case in the 2017 Continuum, but in the comics, it's actually a running gag that Scrooge and Glomgold's fortunes are extremely close, in a way that maddens Glomgold and beats all odds to Gladstone Gander extent. For in, once they tried to compare fortunes and Scrooge came out on top because he owned a few more inches of old string than Glomgold.
  • Beaks was shown to have become a billionaire and Don Karnage has been stealing untold riches for who knows how long. Magica was shown writing an impressively large check as well. Ma Beagle's wealth isn't known but she can support all of her children in the junkyard and has a lot more abroad who also steal a great deal.
  • Knowing that the other villains are a tech billionaire, a pirate captain with plenty of stolen treasure, a mob boss, and a sorceress with power over dead souls (she wrote "1,000,000,000 dead souls" on her cheque), I'm actually surprised that they've surpassed Scrooge with only that little.
• At the end of the episode, Don Karnage's pirates are carrying back his loot into the Iron Vulture. Doesn't the contract mean that Karnage's treasure now belongs to Louie? He's pretty chill with the pirates taking it back (although he's probably just glad that he managed to scam Glomgold out of his money).
  • The Sky Pirates and Beagles would obviously have stolen wealth that Louie couldn't keep without legal troubles. Glomgold is obviously crooked but would have juuust enough legit cash that Louie wouldn't just lose it all to the authorities.
  • Besides that, we're talking about criminals here. The loot belongs to Louie but that doesn't mean they're gonna let him keep it.
• Why is Magica working at Funso's Fun Zone if she has one billion dead souls which are apparently acceptable finance? That's several times more then what most people make in their lifetimes.
  • I think it's one of those cases where it's acceptable finance somewhere, and so counts for the bet, but can't actually be used for practical purposes in Duckburg by someone now devoid of magical powers. Those dead souls can probably buy favors from the Demons of Demogorgana or something, but they won't buy her a hamburger and a roof over her head. Hence, Funso's.
  • Given what we learn about Funso in "Moonvasion," he might have offered her the job so he could keep an eye on her. Having someone like Magica running around unsupervised is bad for business.
• Why does Glomgold never consider finding a counterpart for Donald for his Leigon Of Doom? He is aware of who he is, as shown in the first episode and he was trying to find a counterpart for each of the main characters, so why did Glomgold never consider finding an evil Donald counterpart?

Episode 23: The Richest Duck In The World!

• Why didn't Scrooge immediately realize that his nephew wouldn't return the company to him? After all, yesterday, when Della asked Louie to do it, he refused.
  • More like delayed it, as Louie here seemed willing to return it if Scrooge got angry with him. Scrooge didn't, instead seeking to give Louie a lesson and give himself a short break.
• So did Louie end up on Big Rock Candy Mountain or not? In the last episode, he tried to run away from home, he violated his mother's direct ban. And now he's forgotten about it. And in the future he will never remember. Why?
  • He was more interested in what he gained via Scrooge's company, and after that was humbled enough to not run off on his own.
  • Does it really matter regarding if he got to go there? It isn't plot relevant and we can just as easily assume he went at some point offscreen.
• Scrooge's calm attitude to the loss of the company looks strange. Yes, his nephew can't handle it. But Louie could just hand over most of the powers to the assistants. Or just be stubborn until bankruptcy. If it wasn't for Bombie, Scrooge could have lost his business forever.
  • Scrooge was simply confident that the stress of playing any role in the company would have Louie giving up in short order. and trusted Bradford would stop him from doing too much damage.
• Why didn't Louie figure out who the magical protection was hiding before disabling it? He forgot about the dime, where was Magica imprisoned?
  • He's a kid who made a foolish decision while high on power, I don't think there is much more to it than that.

Episode 24: Moonvasion!

• In "Timephoon!", Launchpad got zapped into the future and saw how the world would end. Didn't anyone think of asking him whether it was destroyed by an army of Moonlanders or not? Or would that create a paradox and upset the timeline? Or do they just think he's too much of a Cloudcuckoolander to tell properly?
  • From Last Christmas!, there is an implication the Duck family is uneasy about learning about the future since "it'll disrupt the timestream!" "Haven't you seen every movie ever?" So perhaps they decided it was better to just not know, because what if this was the end? Then they'd have no hope to stop it.
  • Being conquered by Moonlanders wouldn't necessarily count as "the end of the world", though. I think what Launchpad beheld, whatever it was, was much more… definitive than simply an alien conquest. Perhaps the destruction of the Earth, perhaps the outright end of the universe itself. (Also, Timey-Wimey Ball has always been in effect in the Duckverse either way. No future is really fixed, except when it is.)
  • "Timephoon!" provides an excellent explanation for why they wouldn't ask him or allow him to tell them. Carrying objects through time with the Time Tub is insanely dangerous, it's prone to creating paradoxes at random, and it nearly destroyed the world. The information gained using it could well be all of those things too.
• How did Penumbra get out of her predicament in "Whatever Happened To Donald Duck?!"? For her betrayal, Lunaris would've had to place her in a holding cell, and she'd have to escape that and fight her way to a ship, and we've seen that even escaping was not going to be easy.
  • She's a fighter. No doubt after a month of being held, she figured something out. Maybe a flashback for the future? Or a deleted scene?
    • But wouldn't Lunaris have planned for this? That's kind of his thing.
    • Penumbra's knowledge is what makes her dangerous in the first place. She's a respected hero just like Lunaris; all she has to do is get one person to listen to her to get access to a radio. As to how she gets a ship ... even Gibbous eventually realizes Lunaris is evil, and any Moonlander on Earth could have radioed back to tell them Lunaris has to be stopped.
  • Looking closely during the brief time it's visible, the ship she uses is the Spear of Selene, which was left crashed on the Moon again back in Whatever Happened to Donald Duck?! That much does explain how she got access to a ship at least, since she would've known where Donald crashed, and Lunaris likely would've accounted for all of his new ships. It also explains why she goes for a ramming attack on the engine rather than using weapons - the Spear doesn't have any. How she escaped is left up in the air though, and considering the Spear was damaged again during Donald's crash she would have needed to make repairs, which adds more time between her escape and her eventual Big Damn Heroes moment in the climax.
• Also, why is Drake Mallard/Darkwing Duck suddenly so egotistical? I know in the original show that DW was very ego-driven and egotistical, but in his debut episode, he was a fairly humble actor. So where did the ego come from?
  • It could be a case of insecurity. While the original DW (and the Jim Starling's incarnation) have big egos, this Darkwing is trying to overcompensate for his doubts about being Darkwing Duck for real and his true purpose in Duckburg. That no one besides Launchpad cares who he is AND the Moonlanders not taking DW seriously and calling him a "purple weirdo" should have contributed to his (already big) pile of insecurities.
  • Saying Drake is humble from what we saw of him in his debut ignores him looking forward to sales of his merchandise and attitude towards Gizmoduck. That he's not acting outright murderous like Jim Starling (who's this universe's Negaduck) doesn't mean he's not vain or arrogant. If anything, this universe's Drake serving as an actor provides more background to DW's iconic traits. Also, recall that while the original Darkwing was vain and glory-seeking, he NEVER outright threatened innocents or sabotaged rivals as Jim did.
  • Drake isn't acting that egotistical, given that he's getting flat-out snubbed in "Moonvasion." He expects that he'll be treated as a valuable ally, his suggestions considered, and his contributions valued when instead he's "that guy Launchpad brought along" and dumped in the etcetera file with the Ottoman Empire guys. That's gotta sting. The only egotistical thing he does is offering to be a symbol for the Moonlanders to fear, and it's not an illogical suggestion as he's the only one at the table who has "being scary" as a core part of his schtick.
• What the heck was Storkules doing back on Ithaquack? In his last major appearance in season 2, Zeus exiled him from the island until he became a responsible adult, and the ending of "Storkules in Duckburg!" implied that Storkules would get his own place in Duckburg with Donald's help. So what was he doing back there in the first place?
  • As Selene says, Zeus grounded them to keep them from helping the Ducks. If Zeus doesn't want Storkules helping the Ducks, step one is to get him away from them. Zeus merely ended the exile and forced Storkules to come home.

Season 3

Episode 1: Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks!

• Aside from being a neat little Mythology Gag, how exactly did Doofus become a Junior Woodchuck when he's pretty much the opposite of everything they stand for?
  • The exam to become a real-world Boy Scout is pretty basic, and you already know what the questions are going to be in advance. Doofus could have gotten past the character tests by having his parents write answers for him to memorize. He's unlikely to advance very far past that, but there's no indication he has.
  • Buy an organization a building and they'll generally let you in no matter how vile you are.
  • What's important to remember is that Doofus' last major appearance on the show ended with him gaining a new younger sibling and losing both halves of his inheritance money and control over his parents, who now have the backbone to treat him as a son and ground him as such. Chances are that they enrolled him into the Woodchucks in hopes that Doofus will clean up his act.
  • Doofus lost only half of the money. It is unclear why he obeys his parents at all.

Episode 2: Quack Pack!

• So is Goofy real and does he actually know Donald or was their entire relationship simply the creation of Gene's magic?
  • His being in the area might have been due to magic, but it's been confirmed by the writers that Goofy is indeed real and the family has known him for a while.
  • The only explanation Gene gives about Goofy's presence is the power of a big-name guest star is more powerful than magic.
  • Word of God is that not only did they always know Goofy, but Goof Troop is in fact canonical to the 2017 Continuum as a whole, at the same time as being canonical to the Prime Universe. Though a Cosmic Retcon (i.e. they have now always known him, but this would not have been the case if you'd asked Donald in Season 2) can't entirely be ruled out.
• Just how many treasure caves with magic lamps did Collie Baba have? This one is clearly different from the one in "Treasure of the Found Lamp".
  • Louie asks the exact same question in the episode. Anyway, the original show also had at least two different genie lamps (the one from "The Master of the Djinni" and the one from "Treasure of the Lost Lamp").
• Why was Huey the only one other than Donald who was aware?
  • Because he's the one with the most logical mind, thus he was the first one to figure out something's not right.
  • It might also be an Actor Allusion to Danny Pudi's role in Community, Abed Nadir, who is also something of a Fourth-Wall Observer.
• Gene's lamp is explicitly called out as one of Isabella Finch's Lost Treasures. Isabella Finch's exploits helped give Scrooge his taste for adventure. Therefore the lamp has to have been lost for well over a century. So, how exactly is it that Gene was out in the world as recently as 1990?
  • Maybe the rule is that after granting three wishes, Gene returns with his lamp to Collie Baba's treasure cave, waiting for the next adventurer to find it - which happened back in the time of Isabella Finch, then again more recently in 1990?
  • If Isabella Finch mentored Scrooge, and Scrooge's reaction to time travel sightings of himself at Christmas Parties are any indication, Finch might have just time traveled about a bit too and left the lamp in the future.
  • The Missing Mysteries are specifically treasures Finch never found, her book merely gives what information she did find while trying to locate them. Given how much time had passed, it's not unreasonable to think someone else found Gene's lamp around 1990 (and then eventually it returned to its resting place as the other troper speculates). Similarly, F.O.W.L. located the Third Eye Diamond at some point in the century or so after Finch presumably passed away.

Episode 3: Double-O-Duck in You Only Crash Once!

• According to Word of God, they initially weren't allowed to use the Rescue Rangers characters, so they snuck them in, after which Disney relented. So, if Ducktales has done crossovers with Gummi Bears, Darkwing Duck, and Goof Troop and is doing a crossover with Darkwing Duck again, along with Talespin and even the Wuzzles! Why was Rescue Rangers initially a no-no?
  • My guess is the Rangers are/were being planned to be made into a live-action/CGI movie and the writer isn't allowed to refer to them as the Rescue Rangers.
    • Confirmed.
  • Note that the Gummi Bears also had a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo, always referred to as The Great Ones, and their potion is never called "Gummi Berry Juice" either. The most explicit they get with their identities is their silhouettes appearing in a flashback and Black Heron Waxing Lyrical of their theme song.
• If St. Canard is real in their universe, then what city the old Darkwing TV show takes place in?
  • Probably St. Canard. New York didn't suddenly become fictional when Marvel created Spider-Man.

Episode 4: The Lost Harp of Mervana!

• How is the harp that knows the truth unable to determine whether or not the Mervana ducks are up to something sinister?
  • Its power is detecting truth and falsehood, not omniscience. If the Mervanans said, "We're not up to anything sinister," then the harp would be able to say if they were telling the truth or lying, just like she did about everything Beakley said despite never meeting her before. She was only able to tell them the backstory of the king because she knew it firsthand.
• Webby's optimism and need to learn the harsh truth that not everyone can be trusted seems strangely naive, even contradicting her behavior in previous episodes. She interrogated the triplets in the first episode and Violet last season and while not to Louie's "assume the worst" degree, is still far from her optimistic "everyone has good" attitude seen in this episode.
  • Remember that she dropped the interrogation the moment she got a fitting answer, and turned very friendly right after that. From this we can calculate that she is naturally naï ve, but her grandmother's training mitigated it. From this, we can assume that after gaining more friends and getting more outgoing, this side of her shows up more.

Episode 5: Louie's Eleven!

• If Falcon Graves would recognize Dewey from DuckTales (2017) S1E7 "The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks!", then why doesn't he react to seeing Louie? They're identical triplets. He may only have personally met Huey and Dewey before, but even if he's savvy enough to tell them apart with a glance his reaction should at least be "There's a third one?!" instead of nothing at all. Indeed, he doesn't want to make a lot of noise so his scheme can succeed, which explains why he doesn't call them out for the fake invitation despite checking it with a UV light, but he did react strongly when he thought he saw Dewey. He should have some kind of reaction to Louie's face.
  • Did he even know that Huey and Dewey were brothers or even biological family in the internship episode? If he doesn't, he's not going to care and just believe they're friends or a couple of kids hanging out.
  • They're not identical, they're fraternal. If they were identical, they'd have come from the same egg and have identical voices.
  • If they're not identical, then what about Louie's Twin Switch in "Glomtales"? It's heavily implied that he could have successfully posed as Huey if Huey hadn't chosen just that moment to call.
• Panchito has a fantastic voice, and he plays the guitar; you can play the guitar and sing at the same time. Donald plays several instruments. Why isn't Panchito the lead singer/lead guitarist with José and Donald backing him?
• It's sweet and romantic that Donald has finally found someone (besides maybe Della) who can fully understand his voice without help. But that doesn't change the fact that he's a godawful singer; he's not just incomprehensible, he's way off-key and his tone is terrible. This is confirmed at the end when the Caballeros are on stage and everyone else is reacting the way the viewers are — Donald isn't a good singer with a speech impediment as the earlier Disney Acid Sequence suggested, but really, really atrocious.
  • It's perfectly in character for Donald to think he's a good singer when he really isn't.
  • Maybe Daisy has a weird hearing impediment? Would be weirdly fitting if Donald’s speech impediment and her hearing impediment had the side effect of making him sound better to her than he actually does.
  • I took that scene to mean that if you could COMPLETELY understand Donald, then that's how he would sound to you. Daisy can hear Donald's "real" voice and not just the unintelligible one we and everyone else hear.
• How on Earth did Huey manage to miss the fact that he was forging an invitation? He must've been staring at the paper for a long time. A paper that obviously would've said what it appeared to be. This goes double if he actually copied the UV security print, which would've explained why Falcon didn't reject it.
• If Louie needed an enforcer for his "perfect scheme" in the event things went sideways, why didn't he try contacting Storkules? The guy's both strong enough to push the planet back into orbit and is an unwaveringly loyal friend to Donald, so what was stopping Louie from bringing him on board?
  • Zeus was probably stopping Storkules from even leaving Ithaquack in the first place. After all, Zeus wanted nothing to do with General Lunaris's invasion in the season 2 finale, and after being tied up against his will he most likely extended Storkules and Selene's grounding after they disobeyed his orders to not get involved in the effort to stop the invasion.
  • Louie's plan is completely unheroic, which would upset Storkules. It also requires stealth and subtlety; he can trust Manny to wait in the wings until he's needed, but Storkules would probably charge right in and make bombastic declarations, blowing the whole "heist."
• Wouldn't it have made more sense for Louie to have given Dewey the job of "The Diversion" instead of some random harpy? Dewey knows how to keep someone's attention on him and most likely would be able to distract Falcon Graves from his duty, assuming Falcon was still sore at him over what happened the last time they crossed paths back in season one.
  • They didn't know Falcon would be there until they saw him, and Louie seemed to loathe to change the plan unless he had to.
• What possible reason would Mark Beaks have to hire somebody who almost threw him off the roof of his company to his death the last time they encountered each other?
  • It seems to be a running gag now that Beaks doesn't take Grave's threats against him seriously. Plus my impression was that Beaks didn't really hire him this time, the heist was all Grave's idea and doing and he sold the phone to the "highest bidder." The winning bidder just happened to be Beaks.
• Why did Louie bother going along with and making an elaborate heist to try to make the Caballeros famous when he knew Donald had a terrible singing voice?
  • He probably just wanted to make Donald feel better considering Donald is practically his father figure. Or maybe he assumed Panchito and Jose would've tried to talk Donald out of being lead singer.
  • Louie also wanted to receive 50% of the profits of the Three Caballeros. So, he was interested in success, and not only in making his uncle pleasant. He probably just forgot about Donald's voice. Louie's plan wasn't that well thought out.

Episode 6: Astro B.O.Y.D.!

• The episode reveals that one of the Beagle Boys, Bully Beagle, is a member of the Junior Woodchucks. Yet, back in "The Day of the Only Child", Bouncer and Burger had to disguise themselves as Woodchucks to capture Huey. Where was Bully and why wasn't he included in the kidnapping?
  • He probably wasn't enrolled as a Woodchuck yet.
• Why is it that B.O.Y.D. bears so much resemblance to Mark Beaks when he was never actually invented by him?
  • Other than it being a coincidence, one hypothesis I've seen is that Gyro was a fan of Emma Glamour's It List and that perhaps 20 years ago she saw fit to put her young son on the list. Wanting B.O.Y.D. to be well-received/popular, Gyro made him look like Mark Beaks.
  • He could also have been designed to look like Glamour herself, meaning the resemblance is to her, not Beaks.
• This episode carries the strong implication that Louie never bothered to tell his family what he learned about B.O.Y.D. back in season 2, so why would he have refrained from sharing that information?
  • It wasn't exactly a positive experience for him, and would have likely required him to admit he'd been used and tricked by Goldie. Beyond confiding in Scrooge he probably didn't want to talk about it.
• Given B.O.Y.D. is a Japanese robot, how did he end up in an American landfill where he was found by Mark?
  • The best explanation I can come up with is that the incident wasn't a full breaking point for Gyro, and he took the unconscious body with him as a memento, and later threw it out when his cynicism fully took effect.
  • If you're looking for innovative tech to steal, Japan isn't a bad place to start.
• If Dr. Akita's complaint about the sun getting brighter in the last 20 years isn't an exaggeration, how did he survive or remain hidden for that long?
  • He only ventured outside at night?
  • It's only his perception. He's been in a dimly lit bunker so long it's very painful for his eyes to adjust.
• What was with B.O.Y.D.'s pupils changing from black to blue after he broke free of Dr. Akita's control when in all his appearances before this episode, he seemed just fine with having his pupils be black like everyone else's?
  • The Doylist explanation is that they wanted some kind of visual signal to show that B.O.Y.D. was back to normal. The Watsonian explanation is ... hey, look at the pretty bunny!

Episode 7: The Rumble for Ragnarok!

• Scrooge states that every 10 years, Jormungandr challenges the champion of Earth for a wrestling match, and if Jormungandr wins, that will bring the end of the world. We see evidence for this as Earth starts cracking when Jormungandr is close to victory. So how is that possible that he never won a single match in millennia? And how can he keep his title as the People's Champion if he always loses?
  • Perhaps he's so beloved because he's an underdog, always losing yet never giving up.
  • From the point of view of the Valhallans, Jormungandr is the hero. It doesn't matter whether he wins or loses; they love him because he's fighting to achieve the Valhallans' goals. This is why the crowd didn't turn on him when he kept losing (since he was still nobly trying) but did abandon him when they realized he was sadistic and cruel.
• Why do people in Valhalla watching the fight see Ragnarok as a good thing? I don't know that much about Norse Mythology, but don't people have to die a warrior's death to gain entrance? Innocent unsuspecting people dying during the literal splitting of the earth in two is not a warrior's death.
  • In this version the death apparently only needs to count as "glorious," and perhaps to them dying at the literal end of the world is a glorious way to die.
• When the wrestling results tip in Jormungandr's favor and begin to end Earth, why is Valhalla cracking (the locker room and area between the wrestling ring and audience)?
  • We see outside near the end of the match that Valhalla is perfectly intact, so perhaps the cracking inside the stadium/arena is simply for visual effect, to play up for the audience how close the Jormungandr team is to win.

Episode 8: The Phantom and the Sorceress!

• Why didn't the Phantom Blot kill Magica while she was working at Funso's Fun Zone? He knew that she was depowered at the time, and could have easily called her to his office since he was working as the dayshift manager. One could argue that his glove wasn't ready at the time, but Magica's shadow puppet shows that he had the glove and nearly killed her with it back when Magica still had her magic. So why didn't he attack sooner?
  • It's possible that FOWL had him under orders not to do so. Or it could just be that they hadn't worked out the Blot's motivation when they originally did that episode.
  • Why on earth would he? She's depowered and largely helpless. Magica considers it a fate worse than death. What better revenge is there than watching her wallow in misery? And if she does get her powers back, he'll have an idea of where he can find her. (Possibly a perfect idea, since you have to give your employer your address ...)
• How did Lena get the Sumerian Amulet on the outside of her body? Didn't it get fused with her after the sé ance back in Friendship Hates Magic? Or was it just placed under her sweater during that ritual so that it was still removable?
• When Lena was still lost it made sense that the friendship bracelets would be important; they represented a link back to the real world that was keeping her alive. But now they seem to be a source of magical power stronger than Magica's amulet!
  • The bracelets are just means of channeling the natural magical powers of Lena. It seems Lena (and possibly Webby and Violet too) can tap into the power of friendship and goodness, just like Magica's amulet can tap into the power of the dark side, creating evil shadow versions of people. The bracelets work as sigils that allow them to focus and use that magic, but they're not the source of it.
• Given what we learn in this episode about the Phantom Blot's origin and motivations, why would he even be working with F.O.W.L.? Scrooge strongly dislikes magic, and Magica is his nemesis too, so wouldn't it make more sense for the Phantom Blot to ally himself with Scrooge instead of his enemies?
  • We find out in "The Fight For Castle McDuck" that the Blot isn't just after the Missing Mysteries, he's out to steal immortality from Scrooge's parents. The Blot also seems to be a loner — until Pepper pointed it out, he hadn't a clue that the rest of F.O.W.L. didn't like him.
  • Scrooge may claim to hate magic, but in practice, he keeps several magical artifact and creatures in his mansion, has many magical friend and allies and he even use magic for defense purpose. The Blot would hate him as much as every other magic user besides Magic, even more so since he could see him as a hypocrite. As for F.O.W.L., they want to rid the world of everything chaotic, and what is more chaotic than magic? Actually, if you think about it the Blot goals are more in line with Bradford's (even if more specific)than the others who seem to be in either for power, money, personal reasons (Gandra) or For the Evulz.

Episode 9: They Put a Moonlander on the Earth!

• Why is Launchpad having so much trouble trying to figure out what Penumbra might want from him when the series has shown that he's been in several previous relationships? Wouldn't he be experienced with this by now?
  • We never actually saw his past relationships. Also, Penumbra is an alien (who unlike the rest of her species), hasn't adjusted to Earth culture yet.
  • Launchpad is also probably used to dates where the girl is obviously interested in him and he can work off of that.
  • (whispers) Penumbra's a lesbian.
• Why does Penumbra need to rebuild a rocket to return home? Whether the Moonlanders want to stay on Earth or return to the Moon, there was never shown to be anything wrong with their ships.
  • Keep in mind that Penumbra's ship in particular was last seen crashing into the side of Killmotor Hill, so it'd make sense that it'd need extensive repairs. Also, seeing as how the other Moonlanders decided to stay on Earth, perhaps they destroyed the other rockets as there was no need for them anymore.
  • It would be in character for Penumbra to be too proud to borrow anyone else's ship. This ship is hers and she's going to fix it.

Episode 10: The Trickening!

• Louie believes in the legend of the Hazel House where kids lose their candy in there and there must be years worth of candy piled up in there. However, if it were true, the candy would've expired. Maybe melted or having attracted ants. Why would any amount of candy be worth getting if it's no longer good?
• How did Launchpad, as a child, never learn about Halloween?
  • Launchpad seems to be incredibly capable of being selectively oblivious, and generally seems willfully ignorant of anything that doesn't interest him. The bigger question might be why his parents and peers never explained it to him.
• If Launchpad threatened children with a buzzsaw every Halloween night, how come nobody called the police on him yet?
  • They thought it was just a scare and not real?
  • It's possible that until this Halloween Launchpad simply stayed at his house yelling at people and waving the saw to ward them off. This was the first time he flat out attacked.
  • If this wasn't Duckburg, I'd say that merely threatening people with a chainsaw would be enough to get you arrested, but in this city, people seem blasé about things like cursed gems, flash floods, Bombie, etc.
• How on earth has Scrooge been going around Duckberg every Halloween for years and yet never come across Launchpad's decked-out horror house, complete with hockey mask Launchpad? And as his employer, how has he not learned of Launchpad's Halloween beliefs beforehand?
  • It's possible Scrooge was too busy with his own trick-or-treating to pay attention to Launchpad's Halloween delusions. It is quite telling that the first thing Scrooge did after Launchpad attacked him and his candy was to attack him back rather than pull off his mask and explain everything.
  • As Scrooge's chauffeur, Launchpad would be expected to come to Scrooge's house for work, and that doesn't change when he becomes the general-purpose pilot. Most likely, he never knew that house was Launchpad's — remember, Scrooge sells candy on Halloween, so he wouldn't go to a house that looked like they went all out on decorations — and knew only that Launchpad acted weird around this time of year. After all, very few employers ask in-depth questions about Halloween.
• Scrooge is supposed to be an "adventure capitalist" this time around; he doesn't care about just stacking up money, he wants experiences and bragging rights. When we do see him acting as a businessman it's usually about a really big score. How is this penny-ante scheme worth his time when he could be off (I don't know) recovering the Bowtie of the Pumpkin King (or the Lulav of Maimoniduck), or fortifying his house against an expected attack from Magica deSpell?

Episode 11: The Forbidden Fountain of the Foreverglades!

• In "The Golden Lagoon of White Agony Plains", Goldie mentions finding a fountain of youth in Uruguay, so why do they treat this fountain like their only chance at youth?
  • One could presume that for some reason or other the fountain she found back then is no longer usable, works differently, etc.
  • While Goldie looks massively younger than her real age, she doesn't look young. There are different versions of the Fountain of Youth legend, and one of them just freezes your age in place. Being permanently forty is awesome, sure, but wouldn't being permanently twenty-five be better?
• When Scrooge and Goldie were following the river, why would two seasoned explorers travel downstream to look for the source instead of upstream where it's all coming from?
  • Because they turned into teenagers and their spending time with the person they're interested in romantically.
  • They're often trying to beat each other to the prize and didn't realize they were going the "wrong way". Scrooge especially can't pay attention when his focus needs to be on Goldie's tricks.
  • None of that makes sense. They've always been distracted by each other. There's no reason they would be so distracted that at no point they mess up such a basic concept. It would be akin to saying you need to follow the setting sun to go east and never wondering why you're lost. If they were looking for the other to use a trick, going away from the source of the river when you're looking for that source is a major red flag. It would make more sense if there had been a line about following the journal, but they don't really mention it until they happen upon the entrance to its location.
• The previous episode was Halloween and this episode is mentioned to be during Spring Break which is usually at the beginning of April. Did the family seriously not do anything major for the past 5 months? Why wait until now to learn the mystery of the fountain during a busy time?
  • Given how Frank Angones has said The Trickening was designated to take place anywhere in the season and the fact we get the standalone Christmas episode later on not to mention Astro BOYD taking place in March (which would mean almost a year has passed between Astro BOYD and The Forbidden Fountains of the Foreverglades if there had been a Halloween between those episodes or a few weeks if we didn't take The Trickening in account), maybe The Trickening and How Santa Stole Christmas could've easily taken place at the start of the season before Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks.

Episode 12: Let's Get Dangerous!

• The original Darkwing Duck cartoon is practically acknowledged as alternate universe canon within the Ducktales show itself, with many of the episodes and characters existing within the original show. No mention is mentioned of Gosling, Taurus Bulba, or even Steelbeak for that matter. Does that mean they didn't exist in the 2017!Ducktales version of the original!Darkwing Duck? This would be especially strange given how integral Gosling was in the original show. It is possible for certain characters there were expies, for example of Gosling or Launchpad, or did they not exist at all?

Episode 13: Escape from the Impossibin!

• Why would F.O.W.L., and by extension, Goldie, want to steal the Fountain of Youth when it's empty?
  • Analyzing it for possible traces of the magic that made it work the first time?
  • It was empty because it had been diverted. Perhaps the Ducks put it back?
• What would F.O.W.L. want to do with Gene the Genie since he was captured?
  • The same reason anyone would capture a genie: wishes. This raises another question.
• Given how powerful Gene the Genie is, how is his capture by F.O.W.L. not game over right there? A crafty guy like Bradford could whip up a wish in the form of an ironclad legal agreement and be assured of getting everything he wants right there.
• Among the four treasures taken (Fountain of Youth, the Harp of Mervana, Solego's Circuit, Gene the Genie), Donald was only around for the Mervana trip and the search for the lamp. How did F.O.W.L. know about the other two if the bug was on him the whole time?
  • The bug was only following Donald during "Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks", it wasn't in the other episodes.
  • Rockerduck was after the Fountain a couple of episodes back. He would inform the other F.O.W.L. members of its location so they can get it. Bradford (the head of F.O.W.L.) went to St. Canard himself in the previous episode and knows about the Solego circuit.

Episode 14: The Split Sword of Swanstantine!

• Why would Black Heron need one of Scrooge's tail feathers?
  • It is most likely a Chekhov's Gun whose purpose will be revealed in a future episode.
  • The Law of Contagion is a magical principle that states that if an object (like the feather) was once a part of a larger object (like Scrooge), magic worked on the first object can affect the second. The most common use of it you see in TV shows is making a poppet (vulgarly and incorrectly known as a Voodoo Doll).
  • As revealed in the finale it wasn't Scrooge's tail feather. It was Webby's and used to create the clones May and June.
• Why didn't Lena just levitate Steelbeak onto a roof or something and tell Huey to make a break for it?
  • Huey wouldn't learn anything like that, would he? If someone begins to do things for you, you'll be reliant on them at best or be utterly helpless if they're not around at worst.
  • Except that teaching Huey isn't Lena's job, nor has she shown any interest in doing so before. It also doesn't make sense for her to just assume Huey has the capacity for superpowered rage — he's Della's son, not Donald's, and while he's thrown temper tantrums he certainly didn't gain any fighting ability or special power from them. ("The Duke of Making a Mess" is a callback to when Huey ... jumped up and down on a desk and spilled office supplies. Truly an Avengers-level threat.) In this situation, Huey is the brains and Lena is the (magical) brawn. She could have flattened Steelbeak herself in half the time it took to walk Huey through the "Teach Him Anger" routine.
  • Maybe she found out about Huey's repressed Duke side from either Webby, Violet, Dewey, or Louie given how they all have witnessed him going crazy when stressed out in episodes like The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks!, McMystery at McDuck McManor!, Timephoon!, Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks!, and Quack Pack! and GlomTales! even shows he does have a fighting style similar to Donald's so it isn't as if the idea of him having a temper similar to Donald's is that out of the question. As for why Lena wanted to help him, she outright says she can relate to Huey in having to accept the bad parts of himself rather than repressing them (seen with her having to accept her magic side during The Phantom and the Sorceress) so that's probably why.
  • Doylist's explanation is the writers likely wanted to try some new dynamics with Lena interacting with a triplet with Huey being the first one they choose to interact with her.
• How did Scrooge not notice that Webby was having a sleepover?
  • It's been established that Scrooge can be fairly inattentive about others (not knowing Launchpad is a pilot despite him saying so several times in the first episode, and still not being certain if Dewey's the one in blue in "Game Night"). He probably just didn't pay attention to there being a sleepover.
• How did Webby know Gandra Dee was a F.O.W.L. agent?
  • Gandra is mentioned by name and shows her face to Scrooge, Della, and Louie in the previous episode trying to figure out what was wrong with the robot piloted by Bradford. One of them probably told Webby about that.
• How did Louie and Violet know Rockerduck is a F.O.W.L. agent? There is nothing in Scrooge's previous clash with Rockerduck that would suggest this and as far he knew Rockerduck was after the fountain of youth simply to restore himself to his old self (well, young self anyway), and as far as Louie and Violet know Rockerduck could simply be buying part of the show for private reasons.
  • Rockerduck is the only person besides Scrooge and Goldie who knows the exact location of the Fountain of Youth, and since he knows F.O.W.L. were the ones who stole the fountain, so he must have reasonably assumed Rockerduck was the one that aided them.
• The three parts of the Sword of Swanstantine are not exactly well hidden - especially the handle, which is placed so anyone can see it. So how come they still reside in the same spots Isabella Finch described in her journal, which was written over 100 years ago? Wouldn't someone have found them in the intervening decades?
  • Louie's piece was found in the intervening decades, by that gallery of rogues. It's not hidden behind riddles any more; it's up on the wall as a trophy. Huey's piece could have escaped discovery because it's hidden in plain sight with a clever trick. The real headscratcher to me is how Dewey's piece escaped discovery; the building it's on has construction scaffolding, which means people have been up and down that way and come very close to its rather obvious location.

Episode 15: New Gods on the Block!

• Why did Donald think that hiding his garbage bags in the pool was a good idea? Wouldn't Daisy have been able to see them since the water is clear?
  • This is Donald we're talking about here, probably he didn't have any other choices.
  • It's also possible that — given that he's living on Scrooge's property — he can't take the trash out to wherever McDuck Manor takes it's trash. Since Scrooge practically owns the town and has a finger in most of its businesses, he may be the one paying for waste disposal. Knowing how thrifty he can be, he doesn't want to pay for more than he has to.
  • Given how weirdness tends to flock to the Duck Family, they probably dispose of their trash through some interdimensional garbage chute and Donald tends to avoid McDuck adventures when he can help it. Wherever Donald does his trash-disposal, he probably takes it somewhere too far for him to do right before a date.
  • Donald is probably used to living at sea, where trash bins are hard to come by.
  • In most American cities garbage collection is paid for out of your taxes and isn't based on quantity. When communities charge per garbage bag it's usually an initiative to bully people into recycling. There shouldn't be any reason not to put his garbage with the rest of the manor's aside from laziness.
• So given how much time may have passed since Louie's Eleven (either a couple of months or several depending on where you think The Trickening takes place), how come it took so long for Donald and Daisy to go on their second date? It's not like being too busy on adventures is an excuse since Donald hasn't gone on any adventures since the Mervana trip (before Louie's Eleven).
  • In "The Phantom and the Sorceress!", Magica's tallies say it's only been 330 days since she "possessed dark magic". Assuming that number is accurate and assuming that corresponds with the Shadow War, it probably hasn't been that long at all). Plus, we don't know what Daisy's schedule looks like.
• So any reason why Della, Scrooge, and the kids didn't really acknowledge Daisy or the fact Donald had a date at all? Considering how invested Huey and Webby were with Fenton and Gandra, it's a bit confusing they didn't do the same with Donald and Daisy.
  • Donald probably didn't tell anyone. He wants a normal date with a normal girl before they meet his weird family.
    • Still doesn't explain the fact they didn't even have a reaction whatsoever when they did see her (heck when Storkules was holding Donald and Daisy, Scrooge, Della, and the kids didn't even look or react at all) when the Titan attacked. And besides, pretty sure Daisy did meet Dewey and Louie in Louie's Eleven so Donald had to have mentioned his weird family to her at some point by then.

Episode 16: The First Adventure!

• Tying in with "Last Christmas!", what were the buzzards doing at Scrooge's party? Scrooge hired Bradford partly from remembering his attending the Christmas party which was when Scrooge had just started the company. Plus, it was present Scrooge talking to them as past Scrooge stepped out.
  • The buzzards might have been there due to Bradford's connections with SHUSH. As for Scrooge remembering him, past Scrooge had been greeting arriving guests before the future Scrooge showed up so he would have at least seen Bradford once.
  • Regarding what they were doing at the party, Bradford at least is related to someone who was important to Von Drake (as he later got a job due to said relationship), and thus linked to SHUSH and Scrooge by extension. That could be enough to get him an invitation.
  • Judging by the attendees (and Scrooge's comments) it seems to be less a "family and friends" party and more a "schmoozing and networking" party with mostly business contacts. There are no doubt plenty of people there that Scrooge doesn't directly know, but who might be valuable contacts.
• Scrooge says that he walked away from the Treasure of the Golden Suns without even a souvenir. But he has got a souvenir — a giant disc with that design is clearly visible in his garage, and the family even hides behind it in "Woo-oo!"
• Why does the S.H.U.S.H. detention area not have any cameras? You'd think they would want to be able to know how a prisoner could potentially escape, and if there was any footage then Bradford would have been incriminated immediately since it would have shown him talking to and shaking hands with Heron, along with letting her escape.
  • Given how long ago the scene takes place, they may simply not have had the technology available. In the real world, closed-circuit television/security cameras didn't get commonly used until the 1970s, due to various shortcomings they had before this (such as the inability to record information, thus requiring constant monitoring, and later magnetic tapes that were expensive and unreliable to use).

Episode 18: How Santa Stole Christmas!

• How did Scrooge even pull his stunt without Webby or Santa noticing until the last house what with a ribboned box (and invoice) for each piece of coal? The load would've been doubled. And Webby delivered some of the presents, wouldn't she get suspicious of how light and mildly noisy the gifts are? She was even shown identifying some of the presents just by shaking them
• How are 10 people able to compensate for the lost time from Scrooge's blunder?
• Scrooge apparently gave everyone coal, but when delivering Doofus' present, it was clearly something sticky that grossed out Webby and Scrooge. Did Scrooge deliver coal after the Drake family?
  • I thought it was Doofus' stocking that was wet and gross from who knows what
    • It's most likely honey. He seems to have an obsession with it in almost every episode he's in.

Episope 19: Beaks in the Shell!

• In "Glomtales!", Mark Beaks lost his entire fortune to Louie, but here he clearly has his company and money again. How did he get it all back?
• If Officer Cabrera knew that Louie Duck was running Louie's Kids, why didn't she do anything to stop the activities of this organization? Of course, she couldn't arrest him (he's just a child), but why didn't she tell his family or just demand that he close the organization? She's a police officer. Has she forgotten her direct duties? And no, the version that "Louie's kids" is already closed does not work. Podcast (episode 3) further understand that the organization still exists despite being under investigation in 49 states.

Episode 21: The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck!

• What was with Scrooge's guilt over his inaction with Poe and Louie's inability to defend it? At the end of the day, he and Magica were monstrously evil tyrants who inflicted the same fate on who knows how many other villagers and the only reason he even found them was because of their stealing. Shouldn't it be considered Laser-Guided Karma for everything they did?
  • It's probably because Scrooge knows what it's like to lose a family member. He's feeling guilt over this in hindsight because now he knows exactly how Magica felt when Poe flew away, and it's not something he'd wish on anyone no matter who they are. Louie didn't try to defend him because he realized this.
  • Magica and Poe being awful people doesn't make Scrooge's own actions any less heartless and cruel. Two wrongs don't make a right. Louie is a triplet himself and considered the evil one at that, so the idea of breaking up a set of siblings is especially horrible and unforgivable to him.
  • Yeah that felt off. As callous as Scrooge was there, Magica was a tyrant. For all anyone knows, if Scrooge had helped her she would have just turned on him again as soon as she had Poe secure. Even Poe himself is arguably worse than her and he might have sought revenge once turned back - for all his pragmatic villainy, he does nothing to actually rein in Magica - he actually encourages her, in fact! And once it's revealed he's the one who can turn people back, it should be obvious he'd been knowingly letting the villagers rot as mindless animals, that is literally Laser-Guided Karma!
• Why were Glomgold and Ma Beagle still allowed compensation when their cases were previously disputed? If anything only Magica should get anything.
  • All the villains are part of the same case if one wins they all win. Scrooge more or less admitted guilt so they won the case until Glomgold ruined it.
• Why is Magica getting the number one dime as her compensation? The reason she wanted the dime in season 1 is to restore her physical form and it was never stated on the show that she needs the dime as part of the Midas spell (like in the comics) or to rule the world (like in the original show). True the dime played a part in the demise of her brother but that's hardly a reason for Magica to seek the dime as her main goal again.
  • The dime was shown to still enhance her powers a great deal (such as how she explicitly got weaker when it was briefly shaken from contact with her), presumably because as a "symbol" of McDuck luck it has some kind of power as a mystical totem or something. Hence she would still like to have it. She's powerful without it, but not powerful enough to threaten a major city like she can with the dime.

Episode 22: The Last Adventure!

• How exactly does the magical deal work? It says Scrooge will never adventure again but he will get to keep his family, yet the first thing Bradford does when Scrooge sign it is trying to kill Donald. Shouldn't the deal be broken in a split second?
  • Also isn't Scrooge being unable to move while being attacked by a demonic warrior still a form of adventure? Feels like another massive contradiction.
  • Given the jerkass tendencies of the scroll, one can presume that to the first question, the contract never specified that Scrooge would keep his "entire" family, so Bradford could still kill a few if he wanted to. As for the second question, perhaps to the scroll, Scrooge battling for his life would be an adventure, but being restrained helpless while his head gets cut off would simply make him a tragic murder victim. Presumably, the lengthy contract went into extreme detail as to just what characteristics make an "adventure."
  • That was annoying for sure, I thought that Bradford grabbing the Villain Ball would break the contract immediately, especially since Bradford wastes absolutely no time in going against his own wording - "Scrooge gets to keep his family as long as he stops adventuring" - by trying to kill Donald and generally threatening Scrooge himself For the Evulz. Instead they had to contrive a family is the real adventure call back to void it. Even with the papyrus being a literal or jackass genie equivalent, that felt out of place when the easier solution was right there.
  • Well, Bradford's attempt to kill Donald did fail. Maybe if the cavalry hadn't shown up to save him, the papyrus' magic would have kicked in to protect him per the terms of the contract.
• Why was Gandra shocked after watching Bradford kill his clones and Heron? She knew he was evil.
  • Well there's knowing someone is capable of something and then there's actually seeing it happen.
• Why didn't Bradford just make more clones of Scrooge after he lost his first one? He worked with the guy for decades - it would have been far easier to get his DNA than Webby's.
  • He didn't just lose Webby back then though, Beakley's campaign left his organization in tatters. Restoring it would take time, plus with Scrooge no longer adventuring he had no reason to continue with the plan to get him to stop adventuring. A decade later and Scrooge becomes a threat again, and Bradford had a new problem with his old plan. Namely, as noted elsewhere, making another child from Scrooge would mean that the descendant would be younger than Webby and thus potentially not viable as an "heir" (as normally that applies to the eldest direct descendant). So he tried to find a loophole by cloning Webby, only to find that it didn't work. That convinced him that Webby herself was the only option.
• Why do viewers assume Webby is an Opposite-Sex Clone? May and June clearly are clones, but nobody uses that term when referring to Webby — not Bradford, Heron, Ludwig, nobody. Given everyone's instant use of the term "daughter", not "clone", she could just as easily be the product of IUI or IVF — no dialogue contradicts this.
  • This may well be the case since Von Drake goes into no more detail than confirming Webby was made "from" Scrooge. Plus, one would think that the same Magic that Lena used to show May and June were identical to Webby would also let her know Webby was identical to Scrooge, but it seemingly doesn't (presumably Lena's magic would not be able to so easily tell someone is the genetic child of someone else). However, since the show omits such details, the easiest thing for viewers to decide is that this means Webby must have been made the same way as May and June, i.e. some type of cloning. So many viewers go with that theory.
  • The Reveal comes after the question "If May and June were made from Webby, then who was Webby made from?" so fans assumed Ludwig meant "made" in the sense of cloning. Also, while she is only referred to as Scrooge's daughter, May and June are also referred to as her sisters, even though they are technically clones. If she isn't a clone, she would need to have a mother, but none is mentioned. As for why Lena couldn't detect the relationship, if she is an Opposite-Sex Clone, she would not be a perfect clone: the sex of birds is determined by what are called ZW sex chromosomes, in which ZZ is male and ZW is female. (These seem to have a completely different origin than mammalian XY sex chromosomes.) Assuming Webby was cloned from Scrooge, she would have one of his Z chromosomes and a W chromosome from...somewhere else.
• How did the Stone of What Was allow for cloning? It's stated Bradford used the stone to create his older clones long ago, but the stone's ability is combining different already living things, turning two into one, not one into two. How could that be harnessed to make clones, albeit sometimes apparently questionably sapient ones?
• Why did Bradford say he needed Webby to come willingly and not as a prisoner? He would have gotten the same results if, say, he'd held Lena or Violet at swordpoint and told her to follow him.
  • Perhaps the answer to that is connected to the unstated reason Webby had to stand in front of that artifact in the Lost Library to make the papyrus appear. Perhaps whatever magic was at work there required her to go to that location willingly.
  • To make it easier for her to cooperate. He did it with Huey saying he only wishes to safely catalog the Missing Mysteries. After Beakley unknowingly reveals the truth to Webby about her life, Bradford makes a deal to tell her everything in exchange for her help, namely getting the papyrus to appear as Scrooge's heir.
  • Bradford doesn't see himself as a villain. Talking Webby into helping him willingly would give him the moral pretense to continue asserting that he's doing the right thing. It's harder to justify taking the high ground if you just kidnapped an innocent child and coerced her to follow your will.
• Why did Bradford need Scrooge's signature or even cooperation? The Papyrus doesn't limit you to only writing stuff about yourself. Bradford could have simply written hundreds of pages of legalese that translate to "Scrooge McDuck shall never adventure again" on his own, and the Papyrus would have done it.
  • He could have, but perhaps Bradford thought that adding that level of control over others to things would just add too many chaotic variables, or believed that if he did something like that then Scrooge would inevitably find a way out of it (given he believed even being erased from existence wouldn't stop Scrooge). His goal seemed to be to force Scrooge into a business deal, as he knows Scrooge keeps his deals.
  • The Papyrus only makes what's written on it come true, not related materials. In order to make the whole thing work he needed Scrooge to sign the contract, making the whole thing count.
  • Also, the Papyrus makes a point of screwing over whoever writes on it. Why should Bradford take the chance at being the one who gets screwed? He's probably (at least hypothetically) okay with a Taking You with Me outcome since he would see it as a Heroic Sacrifice, but risking his own life without a guarantee at stopping Scrooge McDuck isn't something he's willing to do.
• Shouldn't Scrooge tell Bradford to erase himself from existence for his hypocrisy? For a guy who hates adventures, he sure is doing a lot of adventurous things throughout the series. Even though what he is doing isn't heroic, he is risking his life, fighting his foes, and doing supernatural things just to achieve his goal.
  • Even if Scrooge thought it was possible to make the fanatic realize You Are What You Hate, Bradford couldn't do it until he was sure he'd stopped all other adventure and adventurers first. An (in his mind) Heroic Sacrifice would still have to wait until after he'd finished his mission, so such an epiphany would be of no help to the heroes anyway. Scrooge knows him and the strength of his denial well enough to know this.
• Why the duck does Bradford literally THROW AWAY the Sword for no reason after the contract dissolves? Fine, so your plan to destroy adventure using the Papyrus is no longer an option — you can keep on attacking everybody like you were seconds ago! Yes, he was likely outmatched, but that just makes it all the more important to keep your superweapon and superpowers in order to effect a safe retreat.
  • He didn't throw the sword away. He dropped it because he was desperately trying to grab the disintegrating pieces of the papyrus. A foolish move but understandable in the heat of the moment given his focus was entirely on the contract.
• When did Bradford find out Webby was April? He definitely knew by "Split Sword of Swanstantine," and FOWL definitely knew Beakley was Agent 22 by "Confidential Case Files..." Did he put 2 and 2 together and deduce by that point that her "granddaughter" must be the girl he assumed died the last time she infiltrated FOWL's base? And how long after his boss got a new housekeeper did he figure out her identity? The way he focuses on Scrooge and Webby in the last shot of Season 2 could be a coincidence (he's focusing on Scrooge, and Webby just happens to be in the shot), or it could indicate he knew by then.
  • He likely knew the entire time. He knew Beakly was Agent 22 the whole time, and he was already working for Scrooge when she showed up with Webby he just wasn't ina position to do anything about it since Beakly had torn down nearly his whole organization by that point. With Beakley busy hiding Webby he was able to rebuild and continue where he left off.
• Why did Bradford throw Donald into the vortex after he got what he wanted? What did he gain from that, even on a petty, emotional level?
  • He hates the McDuck/Duck family for being adventurers, and as much as he tries to justify his actions, he wants to see them suffer. He trapped Della on the moon for ten years and convinced Scrooge to make a Sadistic Choice, but he hasn't gotten direct revenge on Donald yet. Besides, the Sword of Swanstantine is amplifying his inner villainy, so you could say it's acting as a literal Villain Ball.
• Here's another question about Bradford: while I do understand the reluctance of going on dangerous adventures (to an extent, obviously), back when he was a child, why didn't he just simply tell his grandmother that as much as she liked it, he didn't want to be just like her? You can't tell me that in between all the trips and journeys they went on he couldn't have sat down with her and had a heart-to-heart talk about what he wanted to do instead of helplessly going anyway.
  • It's scary to confront someone, even if you know they care about you.
  • Or he did at one point and she didn't care, or thought "The right adventure will change his mind".
• Why was B.O.Y.D. lumped in with the other kids that the adults didn't want to come along? Even though he looks like a kid, he's existed for at least 20 years and a superpowered robot could very well come in handy.
  • Regardless of his physical age he's still programmed to be a child mentally and he's viewed as one by Gyro, his creator.
  • Regardless of how competent or powerful he is, Gyro didn't want to risk him getting hurt.
• We know from "Nothing Can Stop Della Duck" that Duckworth was still alive when Della disappeared, but was he alive or already dead when Beakley showed up on Scrooge's doorstep with Webby?
  • The most popular conclusion, based on the scowl on Scrooge's face when he first opens the door, is that Duckworth has been dead for a while, and Scrooge has been left all alone to grow more miserable. This seems logical, as his absence would make Beakley able to assume the role of Scrooge's housekeeper right away without attracting suspicion.
• Why didn't Bradford just throw Scrooge into the vortex? His reasoning for not is that he thinks Scrooge will be able to escape the vortex but...that doesn't make any sense. The vortex erases things out of existence, I don't see how Scrooge could escape being erased from existence after he is thrown there.
  • Scrooge has done the impossible often enough that Bradford saw it as a given he'd overcome somehow even cessation of existence (assuming it's even possible to truly erase a person body and soul). That's the point of the plan. Get Scrooge to agree to a deal, as he is just as known for keeping deals he makes.

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