In just one week, the ducks will indeed fly together on Disney+. A brand new series called The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers will soon debut on the streaming service, but one episode will see the return of many original team members.
Entertainment Weekly has reported that six members of past teams/movies are set to return together. In episode six of Game Changers, fans will be able to see Elden Henson as Fulton, Matt Doherty as Averman, Vinny La Russo as Adam Banks, Marguerite Moreau as Connie, Garret Henson as Guy, and Justin Wong as Kenny Wu.
“It starts with a fun encounter Coach Bombay [Emilio Estevez] has with Fulton — they have an interesting run-in on the street reminiscent of ways they used to meet each other back in the early days,” creator Steven Brill tells EW. “This chance meeting between Bombay and Fulton leads to a bigger story.” In a case of life imitating art, Henson first heard about the idea for this reunion when he ran into Brill on the streets of New York while filming Daredevil, and he immediately said yes. “There is a Spirit of the Ducks gala where they’re honoring the current coach and the history of the Ducks and that’s what brings us all back together,” Henson says.
Estevez reveals that Fulton invites Bombay to a smaller, more casual Ducks reunion at a pizza parlor where “we discover that Bombay hasn’t been invited to the gala because he doesn’t represent the best of what the Ducks stand for now; they’ve become this ultra-competitive, sort of new bad guys.” The scene where Bombay reunites with his old players is “great,” Estevez adds, “but Bombay doesn’t tell the gang that he wasn’t invited to the gala, and it gets a little dark. He splits from the gang because of a miscommunication. So the beginning of the sequence is super positive and super exciting, but subsequently, it goes off the rails.”
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers picks up 25 years after the events of D3: The Might Ducks. Things may seem the same at times, but a lot has changed for the incredibly popular hockey team.
“Either the Ducks fell short or he fell short of expectations of where they’d be at this point in their lives,” Estevez says. “The show is not without the Disney magic that has to exist so I think ultimately it will be satisfying. But it leans into reality a little bit more than one would expect, which excited me. That’s really like life; something that looks like a curveball that you couldn’t hit ends up being something that’s a gift later on.”
Ultimately Bombay is “re-inspired” after reuniting with the original Ducks. “He is reminded of the values that he instilled in them when they were young that led them to go on to lead productive lives, and that these were lessons they’d never forgotten, and maybe he did,” Estevez says. “Maybe he wasn’t feeling like he was as valuable to their lives as he was, and he rediscovers that.”
Many may wonder just how members of the original Ducks have turned out, and Henson says that this flashback is incredible.
“Fulton will always be a Bash Brother at heart. It was incredible to revisit that. It really hit me when we had the wardrobe fitting and they broke out the bandanas and the boots and the camouflage. It was so surreal and awesome.”
As for the rest of the crew, Brill has all of the details on them.
“Connie is a Democratic state senator in Minnesota, sort of an Amy Klobuchar type,” he says. “Guy is her husband — they’ve remained together for all these years. They have three kids and a great relationship. Kenny Wu made a lot of money in a tech startup in California and now he actually sings in a cover band. I can’t tell you what Averman does because that’s part of the big story line, but let’s just say Averman is Averman. Adam Banks is still teased mercilessly for being a cake eater even though he hasn’t had cake in 25 years because he’s been on a really good diet. He’s actually a public defender now and he does what Bombay used to do, funny enough. Dwayne Robertson the cowboy is still a cowboy; he has a ranch in Texas. Julie ‘The Cat’ Gaffney is a chef in New England. And Dean Portman teaches meditation in Sedona, Arizona.”
Many fans of the original movies have been wondering about other members of the franchise. Most notable by his absence, so far, has been Joshua Jackson who player Charlie.
“We don’t know where Charlie is, unfortunately,” Brill explains, adding that “he’s going to come back somewhere but him and Gordon aren’t necessarily talking right now, they’re in a down period.” According to Brill, Jackson “was too busy, just working, and the pandemic hit so it wasn’t really possible with his schedule. But I hope Josh makes a reappearance in the future, for sure.”
Kenan Thompson, who played Russ “Knuckle Puck” Tyler in the second and third films in the franchise, also didn’t return for this episode. “Kenan is on Saturday Night Live, and I feel like Russ Tyler would be on Saturday Night Live too because Russ is Kenan all the way through,” Brill says, before adding with a laugh, “That’s not to say that Josh Jackson has been having an affair with someone else for years or whatever because he was on a show called The Affair!”
Coach Bombay (Estevez) hopes that there are more reunions in the future of the Disney+ series. “If there is a season 2 and 3, we are holding the door open for any and all of the Ducks from the original films to return,” he says.
When asked if the former Ducks bring back the Flying V or a “Quack!” chant, Brill only teased, “Stuff like that could very well happen. That would be nice if we could see that. I’d love to see that!”
He laughs, then adds, “There’s so many easter eggs to lay into this entire series and I love it. It’s so fun that we can drop asides and make allusions and talk about things people will remember from the three movies before, and I’m always aware of that. Like what happened to the Panthers hockey team? They had the measles in Ducks 1 and they couldn’t play and that’s why the Ducks advanced and won. I always wondered if they got over that and if they were back as a team.”
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers will premiere on Disney_ on March 26, 2021.
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