DuckTales' Matt Youngberg and Frank Angones on the Series Finale's Biggest Reveals

And so it was that the DuckTales reboot officially ended its three-season run last night with the 90-minute blowout episode and series finale "The Last Adventure!" Ahead of the series finale, ComicBook.com actually had the opportunity to speak with executive producer Matt Youngberg and co-executive producer/head writer Frank Angones all about it, and while we previously published the non-spoiler-y version of that interview, we saved the best for last. Because we had the chance to actually watch the finale, we were able to ask the duo all about the biggest reveals.

Warning: beyond this point, there be spoilers for the DuckTales series overall and especially the finale which just aired yesterday.

First and foremost, the finale revealed that Webby is not actually related by blood to Mrs. Beakley and is instead a clone grown from the genes of none other than Scrooge McDuck himself. (There are also two further clones grown from Webby, May and June, which essentially gives her sisters.) The themes of what makes a family a family, found or otherwise, are extremely strong throughout the finale, and the reveal that Webby is about as much of a McDuck as you can be without having the last name was just the cherry on top.

Also? While not technically, directly related to the plot... the show did finally manage to sneak a Gargoyles homage in with Keith David himself, the voice of Goliath, providing the voice for a newly speech-capable Manny the Headless Man-Horse. There's plenty more that happened in the finale, and all of it is certainly worth dissecting, but the two previously mentioned points will help give context to Youngberg and Angones' answers.

ComicBook.com: You sneaky devils managed to put a whole mess of stuff in just under the wire here, but let's talk about the big change, the big reveal here. When did you know Webby was going to be a clone grown from Scrooge... and why?

Frank Angones: The pilot.

Matt Youngberg: Yeah. We knew from the very beginning.

FA: We knew from the very beginning, and there were little hints to it. There's this great reference to it in the pilot, when Webby says, "I'm going to eat a hamburger." And she does a little pose. And you realize that she's mirroring a Scrooge McDuck ... A pose that a statue of Scrooge behind her is in the same pose, down to the design elements, where the little swoops on Webby's hairstyle when flared out mirrors Scrooge's cheek tufts. And the idea was we knew that the kids were each going to represent different parts of Scrooge's famous motto.

We knew that Huey was going to be smarter than the Smarties, we knew that Dewey's going to be tougher than Toughies, we knew that Louie's going to be sharper than the Sharpies, and we knew that Webby was going to earn her way into this family square.

And over the course of three seasons--I always say, each season belonged to a boy. And then we followed Webby's story, earning her way into this family, throughout the entire series. So the notion of Webby and the entire theme of the finale being about found family and who you consider to be your family.

Sometimes a family is a mom and a dad and kids. Sometimes it's a great uncle and your triplets, and your mom from space, and a spy, and a clone, and several robots. But what matters is that that definition of the family is people who would sacrifice everything to love you. And that really hopefully comes through. The notion that, and you can see it in certain episodes, you could see the notion of building that relationship in Season 1's "Confidential Case Files of Agent 22," in "Fight for Castle McDuck" in Season 3. Knowing that, that was the goal to ...

Going into this series and knowing that traditionally characters like Webby and Launchpad were very limited to the original DuckTales series, and meant DuckTales. And to bring them to a place where hopefully they are more firmly integrated into these characters' lives, was something that felt really gratifying.

On a less serious note, that was Keith David, right? And that was-

FA: Mm-hmm!

MY: [laughs and laughs in the background]

How stoked was he for that Gargoyles homage? How did that come about?

FA: He came in, and we said, "Thank you so much for doing this." And Keith said, "Anything for Goliath."

MY and FA: [more laughing]

FA: No, it was the best. It was just like, we were always looking for some way, because we knew Gargoyles was going to be hard, because it was a human-based cartoon. And we didn't do a lot of human-based stuff in our show, or we had to find workarounds. But Matt came up with this idea that I hadn't even come up with.

When we were talking about Season 3, we talked about doing potentially a Headless Man-Horse-based episode. And Matt was the one who said, "Well, he's obviously one of the Headless Man-Horses of the Apocalypse, right? And his family would be the three other ones?"

And from that point, it was like, "I love that." And you look at, "Hey, there's a big partially stone monster thing that could gain sentience." I mean, who else are you going to get to play him on this show?

MY: And then once we had the bagpipe, the blessed bagpipe-

FA: The blessed bagpipe.

MY: ... that could turn things from stone and vice versa, it was like, this is our in, this is our in to getting the-

FA: It would make no sense to not use Keith David!

MY: Exactly. And so yeah, we had to do it. And we had to do it too, because it was like, we really wanted to pay homage to all of the Disney Afternoon, everything that kind of led to us being able to make a show.

The fondness of the Disney Afternoon is ... It really was kicked off in DuckTales, in the original series of DuckTales, and so many of the things that came after it built on the success of DuckTales. And all of these series are beloved to different people for different reasons. And we wanted to be able to say like, "Yeah, and we love all those things too." There's a reason that we were making the show; it's because we love it, and we love these other shows.

And so, yeah, it's always been our MO to try to fit as much of those little Easter eggs as we could. And this was like the biggest Easter egg. I mean, it's not even-

FA: It's so dumb. It's so dumb.

MY: It's just like throwing eggs at somebody's house.

FA: You could guess a lot of spoilers in the finale, but you're not going to get that spoiler.

MY: Nope, I don't think so.

*****

As noted above, the DuckTales series finale aired on Disney XD yesterday, March 15th, at 7PM ET/4PM PT. An original scripted podcast called This Duckburg Life inspired by the DuckTales series featuring the same voice cast reprising their roles is set to debut on March 29th. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the popular animated television show right here.

Have you already watched the DuckTales finale? What do you think of the big reveals at the end there? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk about all things animation!