DuckTales season 3, episode 3, introduced the Rescue Rangers with a wild new origin story tied to Darkwing Duck’s classic spy enemies at FOWL.
Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for DuckTales season 3, episode 3, “Double-O-Duck in You Only Crash Twice!”
The third episode of DuckTales season 3 introduced Chip N’ Dale Rescue Rangers into the reality of the reboot series, with a wild new origin story that also involved a continual Darkwing Duck nemesis – the Fiendish Organization for World Larceny, aka FOWL. This marks the latest effort to create a shared universe between the various shows that made up the Disney Afternoon line-up of the 1980s and 1990s.
First airing on The Disney Channel in 1988, Chip N’ Dale Rescue Rangers cast the perpetually pesky chipmunks (who were the bane of Donald Duck’s existence in many a short cartoon) in a new role as aspiring detectives. Aided by a fly named Zipper, a burly bruiser of a mouse called Monterey Jack and inventor Gadget Hackwrench, the Rescue Rangers worked their way around a human-sized world, helping other animals in need and taking on those cases that the police often ignored. This brought them into frequent conflict with villains like the diminutive human mad scientist Norton Nimnul and feline crime-boss Fat Cat.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view.
While the Rescue Rangers’ introduction into the DuckTales reboot was teased in a poster at San Diego ComicCon 2019, it was unclear just how the pint-sized team would be able to exist in the new reality. While a wide variety of anthropomorphic birds existed in Duckburg alongside man-sized dogs like Goofy, there were no intelligent rodents. An explanation came in DuckTales season 3, episode 3, “Double-O-Duck in You Only Crash Twice,” as FOWL agent Black Heron attempted to explain her latest evil plan to the dim-witted Steelbeak with a convenient video presentation.
FOWL intended to weaponize the Third Eye Diamond; a mystic artifact believed to enhance the intelligence of whoever possessed it. Black Heron successfully built a ray gun that harnessed the power of the gem, allowing her to increase or decrease the intelligence of whoever she zapped. Being a responsible evil scientist, she tested the ray gun on unintelligent animals before trying it out on her henchmen. It was at this point in the video that two familiar looking chipmunks and two equally familiar mice could be seen in Black Heron’s lab.
The presentation went on to show how Black Heron blasted one mouse with the gun and centupled her intelligence. The mouse was then shown to be donning a pair of goggles and a purple jumpsuit and dragging a wrench around. Though she didn’t speak, the mouse was instantly recognizable as Gadget Hackwrench.
By the episode’s end, it was made clear that the rest of the Rescue Rangers were similar enhanced, as they take a hand in helping Launchpad McQuack and Dewey Duck escape from FOWL’s custody after Gadget builds the famous Ranger Plane from Chip N’ Dale Rescue Rangers out of garbage in Launchpad’s cell. It seems a safe bet that we’ll see more of the Rescue Rangers later in DuckTales season 3, along with more familiar villains from Darkwing Duck, like Steelbeak.
