PIRATE MONTH: The Darkwing Dubloon (Darkwing Duck) Review: Our Flag Means Darkwing (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)
Ahoy lubbers and welcome to Pirate Month, a whole month of pirate themed reviews on this fine ship of a blog. I”m your captain jake and starting us off is a weird one.. well by darkwing duck standards.. by my blog’s standards..
IT barely reaches the top 20. And I didn’t even get a photo for the “pants sundae” from austin and ally.. mostly because I don’t want to end up on some form of watchlist for doing my job.
So reviewing an episode where for no reasons other than the creators thought it would kick ass, which it did so.. touche, we go to the past/some form of pirate au where Pirate Era verisons of Team Darkwing, Gizmoduck and Stegmutt battle pirate era versions of the Fearsome Five. Why is there suddenly a lineage of darkwings? Is this canon? How do all the villians exist in this timeline when most of their origins should be impossible? why does negaduck have a 14 year old’s mustache?
None of this is really explained. We just get a narration of darkwing leading us in and we’re off. So you’d think just plunking us in to Launchpad’s Pirate AU Darkwing Fanfiction wouldn’t work.. but it does. As I oft have to remind myself Darkwing Duck.. is not a very continuity driven show. Even putting the episode order that i’m convinced is really the sacred text of some elder god designed to drive mortals to madness, while it HAS continuity, the main goal is always jokes.
It’s a comedy first, and an action show second and while it delivers on both, it’s mostly there to deliver a good episode. So if they want to take a break and just.. plop the characters in pirate times and make a swashbuckling, more dapper version of darkwing. Why the fuck not? As I said it works
This is a solid episode> Admitely there’s not a ton to talk about: character wise the characters are almost all 1:1: The five are their usual selves and resent their boss but are too scard of him, Negaduck is unhinged and resents his arch, Launchpad is stupid but loyal, Gosalyn is still gosalyn... it’’s mostly the same.
But it works since w eknow the characters well and it’s more about having fun with the premise than really spotliting the sheer amount of characters in this.
They also DO have a lot of fun with Gizmoduck,w ho still acts like a chivlarous superhero with darkwing frustratedly having to remind the dipstick he’s a pirate and i’ts okay not to play fair or announce what your doing.
Drake is the only real diffrence. In civies instead of being the same he’s servile, working for King Muddlefoot.. who is in the episode at th ebeigning nad end. Also why Drake needs a cover id when just being darkwing full time would make more since here, I don’t know. It’s the one part of the episode that dosen’t make no sense in the fun way. IT’s just dumb. But as the Darkwing Dubloon, he has darkwings ego, but also a touch of class, speaking a bit more posh and heroic, but still being himself. It’s a ncie little touch as it makes drake fit the pirate fiction drama a bit better. Also a touch our flag means death which I REALLY need to watch. I’ve only seen the trailer. I”m dumb, we’ve established this. You’ve seen what I cover. WOuldn’t change it for the world.
Really the episodes strength is the clever back and forth as Dubloon tries to rob the fearsome five and they try to rob him back with the treasure going back and forth. It’s why I don’t have a ton to say this go round even if the episode is really good: it’s really just a fun game of cat and mouse, basically looney tunes but with more pirates and superheroes. It knows i’ts just a silly, one off au episode and decides to just have fun instead of trying to dive deeper into characters, or at least versions of the characters, we don’t see again. It’s a really fun episode I highly recommend and a great way to kick things off.
