YMMV / DuckTales (2017) S2E16 "The Duck Knight Returns!"

• Crosses the Line Twice: The Darker and Edgier trailer for the Darkwing Duck reboot is Stylistic Suck, but the idea of Darkwing Duck, of all superheroes, getting a Dark Knight-esque reboot where he terrifies civilians makes it absolute gold. The true kicker is the repeating shot of pearls falling to the ground, much like how Batman's mother died. Yes, apparently if weren't for Dewey and Launchpad's intervention, Scrooge's studio would've made a movie where two Funny Animals get mugged and shot.
• Evil Is Cool: Negaduck was always this, but his new origin story only made him even cooler in the eyes of fans.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Darkwing Duck and Negaduck exist for real in the DuckTales universe. Just that idea alone is enough to make fanfic writers scream in joy. It leaves the doors open as to if and how Negaduck will get the other famous villains in DW's rogue gallery to appear, or the interactions between Darkwing and Gizmoduck.
  • As she had yet to appear in the show when the episode came out, fanfic writers quickly took to introducing their own versions of Gosalyn to the universe.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Launchpad's moments of gushing over the original show become a little hard to watch after this episode.
  • Not long before this episode aired, Jim Cummings was hit by allegations of domestic and animal abuse by his ex-wife, which give Starling's descent into madness and pure evil and Launchpad's loss of admiration for him a frightening new dimension.^note The judge in the case dismissed the charges, though the judge chastised both Cummings and his ex for being more concerned with dragging each other through the mud than worrying about their kids.
  • Jim Starling lamenting that Darkwing Duck ended before they could conclude the story about his evil counterpart serves as this considering his Negaduck character appeared, but because DuckTales ended after the third season, they couldn't conclude that arc either.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The animation error of Darkwing switching to Negaduck's colors in the Darkwing Duck episode titled Life The Negaverse And Everything ends up predicting Jim's Darkwing costume switching to Negaduck's colors in the episode's ending.
  • Jim Cummings also voices Pete from Mickey Mouse productions, while Chris Diamantopoulos is the voice of Mickey Mouse for the current shorts. Meaning Mickey defeated Pete once again and replaced him as Darkwing.
• He Really Can Act: It might not be that hard to tell the difference, but Chris Diamantopoulos really pulls off a convincing Jim Cummings impression playing Drake Mallard.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • There's no denying that Jim Starling is a conceited, self-absorbed has-been who doesn't appreciate what few loyal fans he has left, but given his current situation it's hard not to pity him. To recap, his career as an actor went down the toilet after Darkwing Duck was canceled and he's since been desperately clinging onto what little fame he has left while being unable to find work outside of making public appearances at furniture store openings that only a very small number of fans even bother to show up for, let alone stick around to get an autograph from him. Then he finds out that his show is being remade as a major film, except nobody invited him to be involved or even bothered to tell him the movie was in production so he naturally acts with hostility over being a replaced with another actor. Unable to accept that he was passed over in favor of somebody younger, he desperately tries shoehorning himself into the movie through both unethical and unlawful means, which sours the opinion two of his most loyal fans have for him and slowly drives him to insanity. Once he manages to pose as Drake in the movie's finale, he goes into a full-on Villainous Breakdown when he's instructed to surrender to the picture's villain instead of being the triumphant hero like in his show, leading him to trash the set and put the film crew in danger as he tries to take command over the movie himself. And even when Launchpad and Drake manage to make him see what he's making himself into, his act of saving them from an imminent explosion is cruelly repaid by him getting caught in the blast radius, which shatters his sanity completely and leads him to become this show's incarnation of Darkwing Duck's most lethal foe.
  • It's hard not to feel a little sorry for Alistair Boorswan. Yes he's shown to be a pompous hack of a director who clearly failed to understand the point of the original Darkwing Duck show and failed to capture the spirit of the series through his movie, but he wasn't doing so for the sake of it. He genuinely thought he was making a good movie and later had to deal with Scrooge and Dewey hijacking his production just as he was finished and making it even worse, and then found himself almost getting killed by Jim Starling. The movie might've been garbage but he didn't deserve to almost die over it, and in the end everything he went through was for nothing when Scrooge shuts production down.
• Memetic Mutation: "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."^explanation Pairing this quote with pictures of Jim Starling/Negaduck is becoming increasingly popular. For bonus points, the gritty Darkwing Duck film the episode is based around is a parody of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy.
• Shocking Moments: Darkwing Duck finally becoming a "real life" thing and an origin story for this series' incarnation of Negaduck? Yeah, this episode made the Darkwing fans scream.
• Spoiled by the Format: Closed Captioning for the television airing, when the Darkwing Duck actor starts speechifying offscreen, clearly labels him as "Drake", spoiling part of the episode's twist ending.
• Viewer Species Confusion: It's easy for viewers to mistake Alistair Boorswan for a duck since he looks more like one than a swan, aside from the black markings around his eyes.

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