Please don’t fool yourself into believing all of these unnecessary and over extensive hiatuses are because the cast and crew are taking the time to work on the show.
This is not the reason for any of the hiatuses.
Yes the cast and crew do fantastic work on the show and make it as best as they can, it’s evident. And certain hiatuses they are working on the show and others are because they are required vacation days.
However, the show going on 4-5 month hiatuses in the middle of ONE season is not because they decided to extend the time they have to work on the show.
That’s not how this business works.
DuckTales’ episode are all done simultaneously. Ending of season one airing, and the start of season 2 airing, production of season 2 was either close to or completely being finished and production on season 3 was already started, and this was back in 2018. I gurantee around 6-7 episodes of season 3 are already finished and animated ready for airing.
The hiatuses we have been on are not at the fault of the cast and crew at all.
It’s the network and it’s decision to air 10 episodes in a burst of two weeks instead of letting the episodes air weekly. If those 10 episodes aired weekly, we’d have a little over 2 months worth of content and the hiatus from middle of season 2 to the last few episodes of season 2 wouldn’t have been such a drought.
Instead of waiting May-September, the weekly schedule would’ve only had us wait July-September. That’s barely a 3 month hiatus, and the fandom wouldn’t have any drought because we just had 10 episodes aired to explore and discuss to fill in that two month gap.
This applies to the the hiatus we’ve been on since September. Had those 10 episodes leading up to the finale aired weekly, this hiatus we’ve been on wouldn’t have started until early-mid November. Again that would be about a 2 month hiatus versus the 4 month hiatus we find ourselves in.
This is an issue season one didn’t have. We had our first 9 episodes air, we had a December-May hiatus (which was annoying), but then 4 episodes aired in May followed by a two week hiatus until June 16th and the season remained on air with a weekly schedule for the rest of the summer until August 18th. And finally, Season two aired on October 20th, meaning there was around a 2 month hiatus between seasons 1 and 2.
These hiatuses won’t stop being as omnipresent or extensive until Disney decides to ditch the airing episodes in daily burst formula and go back to a weekly schedule.
I hope some of you have had this myth dispelled from you and understand how lack luster the network has been with its schedule in the recent year.