Nothing Can Stop Della Duck! is the twelfth episode of Season 2 and the 35th episode of DuckTales 2017. It first aired on May 13, 2019 on Disney Channel.
Synopsis[]
Della Duck has faced every danger the moon has to offer to reunite with her family, but her greatest challenge is one she might not be able to fight her way out of.
Plot[]
Picking up where "The Golden Spear!" left off, while Donald has accidentally blasted himself off from earth with the Spear of Selene, Della nervously climbs over the gates of McDuck Manor and makes her way over to the entrance, where she tries to figure out the best way to re-introduce herself to the family. Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Webby have already started packing for a new adventure and heading for the door themselves. Scrooge shows the kids an ancient artifact known as the Cartographer’s Quill, a glass mystical artifact that has the ability to mark down the spots of the world's greatest undiscovered treasures on any map given.
| “ | This could be the most important moment of our adventuring lives! | ” |
Scrooge opens the door to reveal Della, who gives a hammy introduction that she quickly regrets before nervously greeting Scrooge. Completely shocked by seeing his niece for the first time in ten years, Scrooge promptly drops the Cartographer's Quill, shattering it to pieces.
Scrooge quickly embraces Della in happiness, and Della tells him about her adventures on the Moon. Scrooge expresses pride in her survival, complimenting her prosthetic leg by adding how she's still every bit the woman she was ten years ago. Della greets her sons, despite initial shock that Donald named them "Huey, Dewey, and Louie" instead of her preferred names "Jet, Turbo, and Rebel". They each have different reactions to her arrival: Dewey immediately embraces her as his mother and bemoans the fact he could've been "Turbo"; Huey questions if she's really their mother by asking her a series of questions, all of which she answers correctly and reveals she also follows the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook rules, confirming her status; Louie has the most emotional reaction, initially refusing to believe the reunion is anything other than a trick, only to finally give in and embrace his mother. Webby watches from the sidelines and cries emotional tears over this long-awaited reunion.
After eating as much as possible following a decade of living on black licorice gum, Della is informed of the developments in her absence: Scrooge's former acquaintance Agent 22 has become the housekeeper of the mansion, and Duckworth passed away but still resides in the mansion as a ghost. Scrooge suggests the kids give Della some space, but Della insists that she needs to make up for ten years of lost time as a mother. She starts things off by making them cakes for every holiday that she missed. Dewey quickly digs in as Huey gets all hyped up on sugar after taking a bite out of his cake, but Louie shows reluctance to her cooking. Della also serves a cake made from fizzy rocks, which Dewey loves, but it causes him to spout foam from his mouth and leave him with a stomachache.
After tucking in the boys, Della offers to tell them a bedtime story. Upon realizing they are all a little too old for a baby-themed story, she instead tells the story of her adventure in El Dorado when she fought the Gilded Man, a legendary being that took the lives of so many within the city, the streets were stained with blood. She was only able to defeat it by sneaking inside and dismantling it piece by piece, and the monster's last shriek was a vow of revenge on the one who defeated him and the entire family. She ends the story by noting they tossed the broken pieces in the garage before bidding the boys goodnight. Huey, Dewey, and Louie stay up the entire night out of fear that the Gilded Man will get them.
The next morning Della, now with a new hair cut and clothing, wakes Huey, Dewey, and Louie up with a blow horn, leading Huey to have a temporary loss of hearing. As a form of bonding, Della decides to teach her boys how to sled like a pro, using a shield from a suit of armor. Dewey is the first to volunteer but is still sick from the cake, so Huey goes in his place. Della attempts to instruct Huey how to sled properly down the stair railings, but because of his hearing loss from the blow horn, he is unable to hear her instructions properly, collides with Louie, and destroys much of the parlor, nearly injuring Mrs. Beakley. The boys quickly take the blame for the incident to protect their mother. Mrs. Beakley, who is not fooled, remarks to a remorseful Della that she is used to cleaning up after children.
Della decides to take a look inside Donald's Houseboat, and notices all the photos on the wall of the years he spent taking care of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, with Della believing he did a great job raising them in her place and deserves his vacation, unaware he is crashing on the moon at that exact moment. Launchpad McQuack arrives to greet Della, but Della immediately considers him a threat as she believes he replaced her as the family pilot. She marches off to confront Scrooge, but Launchpad still considers it a mutual greeting.
While searching through the halls, Della overhears a conversation between Mrs. Beakley, Scrooge, and the kids, who are all concerned about how to handle Della's sudden return. Huey, Dewey, and Webby defend Della's recent actions, but Louie admits he is having trouble adapting to suddenly having a mother after an entire life without one. Scrooge declares that the issue is Della is not actually a mother yet. Hearing this, Della runs off crying, and thus misses the final part of Scrooge's statement: she has been gone a long time, and they need to give her time to figure out who she is now and how she fits into the family.
Della is left believing the family would have been fine without her return. Out of anger, she kicks a nearby statue, which quickly comes alive, revealing itself as the Gilded Man from her story. Della decides she can prove she's a good mother to her family by fighting the Gilded Man again, just as Scrooge walks in and is forced to help her. Failing to notice a nearby car horn is distracting the monster from attacking them, Della tells Scrooge to bring the kids in so she can gain their trust by showing off her heroics. However, Scrooge attempts to explain that it isn't natural to force a relationship with your children simply through monster fighting. Eventually, the monster finds their hiding spot and chases them out of the garage onto the front lawn. The kids and Mrs. Beakley run outside to help after noticing the statue, but Mrs. Beakley is knocked out of commission before she can help. Della attempts to climb inside the statue again like in her youth but gets stuck due to being much bigger than she was last time.
While the group tries to fight off the statue, Dewey blows one of Della's blow horns which distracts the monster once again. Realizing the statue has a weakness to loud noises, Louie orders Huey to grab some duct tape from Donald's houseboat, which he uses to tape together three blow horns at once. The kids pass them to Della, who stuffs the horns inside the statue and stomps on it, setting off a loud enough sound to cause the statue's insides to malfunction and to rupture its core. As the statue begins crumbling towards Louie, Della instinctively removes her prosthetic leg from the statue and jumps towards Louie to save him from getting crushed. Luckily, the statue's pieces barely miss them.
Soon after, Della explains to the boys that she knows they are not used to having a mother, and she is not used to being one, but she intends to figure that out as they move forward in life. The family all embrace each other, excited for new experiences and adventures now that Della is back. Della lastly remarks that she wishes Donald were here for this moment.
After crash landing on the moon, Donald manages to get his hands on a pack of Gyro Gearloose's Oxy-Chew. He is then approached by Moonlanders Zenith and Gibbous and tries to explain he comes in peace, but neither can understand his voice. Lunaris then arrives in front of the group and orders Gibbous and Zenith to seize Donald.
Cast[]
- David Tennant as Scrooge McDuck
- Danny Pudi as Huey Duck
- Ben Schwartz as Dewey Duck
- Bobby Moynihan as Louie Duck
- Kate Micucci as Webby Vanderquack
- Beck Bennett as Launchpad McQuack
- Toks Olagundoye as Mrs. Beakley
- Paget Brewster as Della Duck
- Tony Anselmo as Donald Duck
- Lance Reddick as Lunaris
- April Winchell as Zenith
- Rob Paulsen as Gibbous
- David Kaye as Duckworth
- Sam Riegel as Gilded Man
Trivia[]
- The episode's title is a reference to Della's catchphrase.
- Della wanted her sons to be named Jet, Turbo and Rebel, but in her absence, Donald named them Hubert (Huey), Dewford (Dewey) and Llewelyn (Louie) instead.
- Della's way of trying to remember Huey's name - "Huey has a hat and the hue is red" - incorporates an element from a common trick used to tell the traditionally identical triplets apart, which includes variations of the following;
- Huey's color is red, which is a bright hue.
- Dewey sounds like dew, which is water, and water is often colored blue.
- That "leaves" Louie, and "leaves" are green.
- The Sword in the Stone in Scrooge's grounds resembles the titular object from the Disney film The Sword in the Stone.
- The Gilded Man was once fought by Donald in the comic "The Gilded Man" resembling an Indian. Here it is commonly based on robotic monsters-of-the-day found in earlier anime such as Mazinger Z.
- Sliding down slopes while standing on the inside of a shield is identical to shield surfing, a game mechanic in the video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
- When Scrooge catches Della in the garage, he shouts, "What in Dismal Downs is going on in here?!", which is also what he said previously in the very first episode, "Woo-oo!", when he caught the nephews and Webby in the garage, but this time he also adds, "I really need to start locking this door."
- The sun emblem that Scrooge and Della take cover behind resembles the sun symbols from the 1987 pilot "The Treasure of the Golden Suns".
- The candles on Dewey's cake change colors from white to blue in the last shot. Also, the inside of the cake changes from brown to white when Dewey starts eating it.
- The anchor symbol on Huey's cake changes positions between shots. Also, the pirate patch appears on the back of the cake instead in the final shot before Della removes the tray.
- The Daeus Excalibur from the first episode is mentioned by Della when she tries searching for something to defeat the reactivated Gilded Man with.
- The length of Della's amputated leg varies between shots after saving Louie from getting crushed to death by the falling android.
- Despite having cut her hair, the length of Della's hair varies between shots during the battle with the Gilded Man.
- When running away from the pursuing Gilded Man, unlike Dewey, Huey, and Louie each carry a horn with their left hands, but when they separate, each triplet carries a horn with his right hand instead.
- Each triplet separates with a horn in his hand, but when Huey goes to their Uncle Donald's houseboat to get some tape, he doesn't have a horn. Once Huey throws the tape to Louie, he has all three horns with him, and Dewey doesn't have a horn until Louie throws the taped horns to him, which he passes to their mother to defeat the Gilded Man with noise once and for all.
- When Della rushes to save Louie from certain death, her hair quickly turns brown momentarily, matching her jacket's color, at one instance.
- When Scrooge asks Della, "What idiot said you weren't a good mom?", Della replies, "You, like five minutes ago," while showing only her four fingers instead.
