Mark Hamill is voicing Drake Mallard, though!
If you’re a Millennial of a certain age, there’s no doubt that Darkwing Duck holds a special place in your nostalgia-laden heart. We got a taste of the purple-caped vigilante in the 2017 reboot of DuckTales, and way back in 2020 there was news that Disney was working on a standalone Darkwing Duck series.
According to Variety, that project has finally been ordered to series, with Mark Hamill (Batman: The Animated Series, and a Star Wars or two) voicing Drake Mallard (aka Darkwing Duck), and Seth Rogen (The Muppet Show) voicing Launchpad McQuack.
This is all very exciting, but based on the official logline, it appears that the premise they were teasing in the DuckTales reboot is not the story that this new series will tell. On DuckTales, Darkwing Duck was originally just a fictional character on an old TV show, played by an actor named Jim Starling. A new movie with a new actor is in the works, and Starling and his biggest fan, Launchpad, try to stop production. Stuff happens, but in the end, Starling is presumed dead and the new Darkwing actor, whose name is Drake Mallard(!), is encouraged by Launchpad to fight crime for real. Little did either of them realize, however, that Starling survived, is crazed with vengeance, and sports a different-color cape to become Negaduck, a villain from the OG cartoon series.
This all seems to have fallen by the wayside in the upcoming Darkwing Duck reboot. Here’s the official logline:
For the last 35 years, Darkwing Duck has been trapped in his worst nightmare: an alternate world that’s never heard of his superhero exploits. Now a rebellious teen named Duckie who knows all about his heroic past shows up to pull this ego-fueled vigilante back into battle. Together, this unlikely duo will get dangerous to fight old enemies like Negaduck and Megavolt and reunite with allies Launchpad, Gosalyn, and Morgana to save the entire universe.
The voice cast for the new series, however, looks great. In addition to Hamill and Rogen, it features Dan Stevens (The Terror: Devil in Silver)as Glade McTowers, Lizzy Caplan (Party Down) as Gosalyn Mallard, Lilimar (Inside Out 2) as Duckie, Tiffany Shepis (Star Trek: Picard) as Rosa, Kathryn Newton (Avengers: Doomsday) as Firecracker, Teo Briones (Final Destination Bloodlines) as Timb, Tyler Dean Flores (Neon) as Pondsy, Katie Rich (Saturday Night Live) as Officer Shanks, and Nat Faxon (The Descendants) as Officer Webb.
No news yet on when the series will make its way to Disney+.
Vanessa Armstrong
Vanessa Armstrong is a writer and editor with bylines at The New York Times, The Atlantic, Smithsonian magazine, Vulture, and many other outlets. She is also the creator of tubetalk.media, a newsletter that focuses on the weird.
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