In general, this season is probably the darkest one of all three seasons, due to ongoing threat of F.O.W.L, horrifying creatures appearing in nearly every episode, and one of the one-shot villains actually dying on-screen. If that's not enough evidence, see below to see that every episode in this season has its own section.
Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks!
F.O.W.L. is continuing to spy on the McDuck family through a mosquito drone that was pestering Donald throughout the episode, and now they're plotting to race them for Isabella Finch's Missing Mysteries.
The imaginary Junior Woodchuck Guidebook suddenly bursts into flames, and he dies asking why Huey imagined this.
The ginarmous Nandi Bear that attacks Huey, and later Duck Family.
Quack Pack!
Huey spends half the episode as the Only Sane Man who can see they're in a sitcom, with everyone else blithely brushing off his concerns and unable on their own to notice (or in Donald's case refusing to admit) there's a single thing odd about what's going on.
The wish basically erased the memories of who they are from the Duck Family. Dewey could not flashback on his own, and the whole family (except for Donald) had to put in a great deal of effort to flashback. The wish essentially rewrote their whole lives and changed them. AND THEY HAD NO IDEA.
Upon everyone realizing the situation and saying they want to leave, the wish-verse turns on them to preserve itself with a Zerg Rush of the human audience, all with deranged smiles the whole time.
Not helped by the fact that these characters live in a world with no humans. When they see these weird, furless apes for the first time, they scream in ABSOLUTE HORROR.
Huey: WHAT ARE THOSE THINGS? HORRIBLE FLESH-FACED MONSTERS!
What makes it even more freaky is that the humans aren't just any humans; they're styled awfully similar to the human characters from late-90s era Disney Afternoon shows like Quack Pack or Bonkers, complete with one of the audience members looking almost identical to Kent Powers from Quack Pack. A simple change of framing is all it takes to make those exaggerated designs outlandishly horrifying.
One of the human women grows sharp nails to attack, especially jarring since it's completely out of the blue.
While Goofy was real, some of the other supporting cast from the sitcom was not. Most notably the three girls that Launchpad had planned to go on a date with. They start having static stutters that drastically change their personality. The first girl that shows up very quickly has a side-head squeal of nightmares before phasing back to seeming like an innocent college girl. All three of them end up keeping a creepy smile of death while they all attempt to attack Launchpad.
Double-O Duck in You Only Crash Twice!
While he’s rather dim, Steelbeak is no slouch in the villain department. He's outright happy when he finds out the adjustment he made to the intelligence-draining weapon will kill the entire city by making everyone so brainless that they will cease to know how to breathe, and only Launchpad and the Rescue Rangers keep him from going through with it.
The fact that even though Launchpad and Dewey successfully thwarted Steelbeak, Dewey was under the impression that he was in a simulation, and Launchpad's intelligence was altered after thwarting Steelbeak - and along with Bradford Buzzard's intervention, both of them essentially have no memory of actually fighting F.O.W.L. at all.
The Lost Harp of Mervana!
As it turns out when Mervanans stay in the water too long, they turn into bestial fish monsters with sharp teeth and claws that are really tough. While this had only happened to Honestus so far, if the ducks hadn't come along, it would've happened to all of them.
Louie's Eleven!
Falcon Graves and his goons capture everyone at the party (including Webby) with little effort.
The fact that Falcon hates Mark Beaks so much he was willing to kill both him and his mom right then and there.
Daisy Duck in general: DON'T MESS WITH DONALD DUCK. She's capable of an Unstoppable Rage, which Falcon Graves endures when confronting her.
The Reveal that B.O.Y.D. destroyed Tokyolk 20 years previously thanks to Akita's reprogramming.
B.O.Y.D. is powerful enough to take down Gizmoduck, and even crack the visor by crushing it between his hands. He attempts to do so while Fenton is still wearing it.
The Rumble for Ragnarok!
The fate of the Earth depends on the outcome of a once-per-decade wrestling match, and the residents of Valhalla are apparently in favor of that.
Even worse is that Scrooge is easily injured and almost completely taken out of commission - the fight continues on regardless, with Scrooge barely being given any time to recover. If Scrooge had taken a hit like that at any point before he had his family to fight for him, Earth would've been absolutely doomed.
The Phantom and The Sorceress!
The Phantom Blot is clearly slipping into He Who Fights Monsters territory; besides draining non-evil magic like Gladstone's luck, he doesn't care if he kills Lena in the process of draining her, just to get back at Magica, who doesn't care about Lena at all.
The above reinforces just what an unhinged, depraved witch Magica is. If threatening her relatives won’t break her, nothing will.
The fact that Magica regains her magic at the end of the episode, meaning she could be a threat once again.
They Put A Moonlander on The Earth!
Launchpad finds being around Penumbra so awkward that he jumps out of the limo while it’s still moving.
Glomgold's Ferris Wheel is insanely unsafe, and nearly ends up killing Webby and Dewey. And this isn't the first time he's made something so dangerous, either.
There's something a little disturbing about the fact Dewey is so obsessed with fame that he had No Sympathy for someone who got trapped on a rollercoaster(which anyone who has in real life can tell you is utterly terrifying) but actually wants to go on a ride he knows is dangerous.
The Trickening!
The kids coming across the Demonic Dummy versions of themselves. The Dewey one in particular mimics the voice of the real Dewey, does an Exorcist Head spin, and has one of its eyes pop out and roll onto the floor.
When the monsters realize they are not going to get any candy for Halloween, they resort to nearly eating the kids.
Nosferatu: Monsters need our sweets. Our appeasements. Wereduck: No moreAAAAWOOOOOOOoo tricks! Witch Hazel: You owe us treats! And we don't scare so easily... Dewey: Uh, Webby? What happened when the Celtics ran out of treats to appease the demons with? Webby: Usually they fed on children... oh, dear.
Launchpad, believing that the trick-or-treating children are actual monsters, goes crazy and chases after said kids with a functioning buzzsaw. He even manages to scare the real monsters.
The realization that Ponce De Leon had built a luxury resort hotel to trick young people into swimming in the Fountain of Youth, thus having their youth sapped from them so he would maintain his own. And he's been doing this for five hundred years!
What's even worse is that he didn't need to do it: the Fountain water works on plants, and presumably livestock too. He chose to use people.
The second Louie catches on that the resort owner is stealing other people's youth, Ponce De Leon traps the triplets in his office, threatening them with a sword, and tells them that he plans to steal their youth too. Not even children are safe from his scheme.
And then when he finds out Scrooge and Goldie took some of the youth water, he tries to outright murder them there on the spot.
"You fools! You don't deserve eternal youth!"
Just to make Ponce de Leon even creepier, he has similarities with Scar. Not only do they have similar head designs, they're both Manipulative Bastards who become Ax-Crazy the moment their plans go wrong. They also both meet horrifying ends, which is clarified below.
The pool's Life Drain properties are shown when a teenage flamingo jumps into the pool. When he comes back out, he's become an old man.
Flamingo: What happened? I was just on spring break...
Ponce De Leon's Karmic Death. The guy rapidly ages to a corpse then to dust after falling into his own pool, and while some of it is obscured by the water, his brief surfacing before dying leaves no ambiguity whatsoever about his grisly fate. Good god, Disney. As if Mother Gothel's death after losing her youth wasn't horrific enough.
If anyone dares to compares this episode to Donovan's death, it's totally horrific.
Thought Scar getting torn apart alive by hyenas and burning in fire was bad? The death of this evil lion tops that one. And given the two lions look similar, it's like watching Scar disintegrate into dust.
Also, though the show so far avoided Never Say "Die" and was very willing to show the aftermath of death (skeletons, ghosts, etc.), this is the first time a character's death was shown on-screen.
Rockerduck actually managing to win via restoring his age. And he didn't reveal his involvement in F.O.W.L. either! Though it's still a Pyrrhic Victory on his part now that Jeeves has been turned into a baby by Goldie using the pool water.
Let's Get Dangerous!
Taurus Bulba starts out as a charismatic businessman / scientist who hides his more devious nature with his showmanship, and plans to use the Ramrod for more benevolent goals. But after the first half, Bulba has gained a scar above his right eye and lost both his right horn and his sanity, now planning to use it to take over the world...even if it's not the same world he started in.
After so many uses, the Ramrod will become unstable and break reality if it’s used too much. Worse is that Bulba knows this and simply doesn't care, outright saying "Who cares about this world? We can make a better one!"
Dr. Waddlemeyer's fate. Trapped in one of trillions of alternate realities, with no way back thanks to Gosalyn having to destroy the machine to save reality.
Bradford Buzzard's rant to the triplets about how the Mc-Duck family's adventures have inadvertently endangered the world gets chilling as his voice rises with frustration and rage. It's little wonder the triplets end up suspicious of him even before he strands them in an alternate reality.
After various humorous attempts to hide his true allegiance, Bradford reacts with calm resignation to being found out. He argues that "bad" is a matter of perspective, before admitting that from the nephews perspective he is certainly bad. Then, with a surprising turn of speed and strength, he proceeds to casually toss all three of them into the dimensional rift, trapping them in a And I Must Scream state in a fictional reality as they apparently are forced to act out being their characters from the original series.
With Bradford outed as the director of F.O.W.L. at the end of the episode, he's got no more reason to hold back for the sake of appearances. If his threat to Scrooge as he makes his escape is anything to go by, F.O.W.L. is about to bring all its resources to bear on ending the family once and for all.
Bushroot. While the personalities of the other Fearsome Four members mirror their original versions, Bushroot represents a complete departure from the previous lighthearted affably evilmad scientist. Here, he is a blank-eyed plant monster who never speaks and only reacts in bestial shrieks.
Even worse, Launchpad and Darkwing both insist he's "not a villain, per se," implying that he still started out as a similar guy but is now stuck unable to talk and desperately lashing out.
At one point, the triplets and Bradford have to cross a room filled with Bushroot's plants, noting that disturbing the vines will alert him to their presence. The creepiest part of the scene is that Bushroot is clearly visible in the background slumped over like a dead body, and as soon as Dewey trips over a vine, he stands up and screeches.
Huey injures his leg with a Sickening "Crunch!", reminiscent of what happened to Della.
The Split Sword of Swanstatine!
Webby and Dewey having to navigate up a dangerous and unstable set of scaffolding while blind. And both nearly fall off several times.
While they manage to get out of it pretty easily, Louie and Violet end up visiting a Bad Guy Bar that tortures people.
Unlike Gandra, Steelbeak shows no hesitation about hurting children as shown when he roughs up Huey.
Huey's repressed anger takes shape in "The Duke of Making a Mess", a scary-looking, ferocious, unintelligible version of him, with red eyes and sharp teeth.
F.O.W.L. actually wins. The sword wouldn't obey them. But they got what they really came for: a tail feather.
New Gods on the Block!
Webby's trial goes pretty well, until she starts going Drunk with Power and forces friendship on everyone.
Zeus resorting to manipulating a heartbroken Storkules into releasing one of the Titans for him.
Louie accidentally turning everything and everyone around him into gold.
The First Adventure!
The Papyrus of Binding killed Yellow Beak's crew by drowning them on dry land when he asked for water, then causing him to drop dead when he used it as a will and asked to be free of the curse.
Black Heron flat-out attempts to killDonald and Della using the Papyrus of Binding. The only thing saving them is the artifact running on Exact Words.
She later holds both Donald and Della hostage, for the scroll. When Scrooge starts writing in the scroll to save them, only her Bond Villain Stupidity keeps them alive as she fires twice into the air before he finishes writing!
Scrooge has to fight Yellow Beak's reanimated skeleton.
Bradford uses the same Papyrus of Binding to make it look like he was never there in the first place, meaning as far as they knew, only Black Heron was the one they were dealing with. Later, when Scrooge hires Bradford, he just remembers him as part of the Christmas party.
The Fight For Castle McDuck!
While it quickly turns funny because the statues start bickering, it doesn't change the fact that they have Glowing Eyes of Doom for a few seconds
Pepper would have been crushed to death if Blot hadn't saved her.
Seeing how quick the family is to turn on each other and start fighting.
How Santa Stole Christmas!"
The monstrous snowman that was guarding Feliz Navidiamond. Unlike the reindeer, he was untameable and would have eaten Santa had Scrooge not been able to save him.
Bradford: You have your secrets, Agent Dee. And I have mine.
Mark Beaks is extremely unhinged in this episode, with certain points in the episode making it appear that he's gone outright insane, as shown when he goes power crazy in the Gizmocloud.
The Lost Cargo of Kit Cloudkicker!
The horrifying transformations that the Sky Pirates undergo when touching the Stone of What Was. One has her lower half replaced with an insect's, one is merged with a snail, one basically has his face inside of the head of a parrot with lifeless eyes, whose screams seem to be merged with the bird's shrieks, and one is practically nothing but hands(and is still screaming)! And to make it worse, we never see them turning back.
Despite the fact he lost the Stone of What Was, Don Karnage was still able to snag a piece of it, meaning that he can still fulfill his contract to F.O.W.L..
The fact that the Wuzzles are now hostile, purely-animalistic abominations in this universe, with Rhinokey attacking the Ducks upon sight. Made worse in that this isn't normal behavior for a rhinoceros or a gorilla. And then out of a giant chrysalis emerges Butterbear, a ferocious grizzly bear with both butterfly wings and tongue, although she turns out to be more tame than Rhinokey.
Now try to imagine what Eleroo, Bumblelion, Moosel, and Hoppopotamus must be like in the same way. For that matter, imagine what Crocosaurus must be like.
The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck!
Louie's reaction to seeing that the prosecutor being Doofus Drake. Louie may have encountered supernatural threats on a regular basis and could talk himself out of it, but the thing that truly traumatized him is this mentally unhinged child with a vendetta against him.
When Scrooge keeps getting upset over Glomgold, the Bailiff decides to shut him up by literally muzzling his beak. Thankfully this is only temporary, but imagine if Louie wasn't there to defend him ... he would've completely lost against the case along with everything he valued.
While Magica ruling over villages and forcing them to pay her tribute was mentioned previously, here we get to see exactly what her rule was like. She transformed the villagers paying her tribute into non-sapient frogs For the Evulz, and she only stopped when her brother Poe asked her to... in order to encourage her to turn the villagers into more useful animals like goats. She promptly demands fifteen gallons of goat milk by sunrise, and then Poe tells the kids of the man she transformed to thank them for deciding not to kill him.
Further, it's implied their victims never turned back, as only Poe knew how to undo the magic and the best Scrooge could do was build a farm for the transformed villagers to live on.
The Last Adventure!
This friendly shot of June stealing the Sword of Swanstantine from Donald's boat can be very terrifying, considering that to this point, we were led to believe that she and May were harmless clones. Huey witnesses this and tells Webby, who doesn't believe him until the last minute.
Lena's reaction when she magically "scans" May and June. Gyro is able to determine they're genetic clones of Webby with a simple DNA analysis, but Lena senses something different. Sensing her best friend's spirit/soul in these other two girls clearly unnerves her.
Lena (stunned): They're Webby...
Steelbeak using the intelligence ray on himself, becoming a much more dangerous threat, even modifying it to turn Magica, Glomgold, Ma Beagle, and the Original Classic Beagle Boys into his mindless slaves.
Bradford manipulating Webby into helping him by exploiting her desire to learn her origins at her most vulnerable point.
Bradford: Welcome home... April.
Before this, Bradford attempts to manipulate Huey through using his knowledge of the Junior Woodchucks along with The Reveal that he's the grandson of Isabella Finch. He claims that he wants to simply archive the Missing Mysteries in memory of his grandmother. His attitude here is really creepy and almost comes off as a child groomer. Huey even trusts him until Ludwig von Drake explains that all of that was a lie and that Bradford only wants to destroy adventuring for good.
Bradford using the Sword of Swanstantine to become a Tin Tyrant who's Red and Black and Evil All Over. And he becomes even more intimidating as the episode goes on, and he loses his patience with the Duck family.
The smile on Bradford's face as he admits this. An unholy fusion of Psychotic Smirk and Slasher Smile, it shows that for all his insistence that he's not a supervillain, he took a sadistic delight in revealing just how thoroughly he'd broken Scrooge and his family.
There is also the none-too-subtle implication during his slide-reel presentation to a captive Scrooge that he flat-out murdered Duckworth in order to "isolate" Scrooge.
Bradford was probably content to work from the shadows and wait until either Donald or Della was named Scrooge's heir in hopes that the Papyrus of Binding would re-appear. Then Della got pregnant with the triplets, and three new potential successors appeared out of nowhere. So Bradford decided to eliminate that threat and focus on his cloning scheme. Bradford separated newborn babies from their mother and a twin from his counterpart because she interfered with his plans.
Manny regrowing his head and wings — with bones, muscles and tendons forming, incuding a closeup of his eye — is more akin to something out of Sleepy Hollow (1999).
Bradford's endgame plan is to use the modified Solego Circuit not to send the Missing Mysteries to another dimension, but erase them from all reality entirely, something he's planning to do to the rest of Scrooge's family, friends and allies (and even his own agents, as well as all acquaintances such as Daisy Duck herself), as well. He even planned to do the same thing to the rest of Scrooge's enemies (including Glomgold, Magica De Spell, Ma Beagle and the Beagle Boys).
He sends Donald down even after Scrooge signed the Papyrus of Binding. Donald would have been erased at the last second had the others not arrived.
Among all the characters Bradford planned to erase was Santa Claus! He was fully willing to ruin Christmas just to destroy Scrooge once and for all!
He even managed to capture Flintheart Glomgold, Ma Beagle and her sons, and even Magica De Spell, all because of their past conflicts with Scrooge that Bradford himself want to eliminate.
Bradford tossing Bentley and Buford into the vortex, and later Black Heron as well. Even though he worked with her for decades he doesn't even flinch when killing her.
The sheer fact that Black Heron is happy that Bradford killed her, just because she finally turned him into a villain. In the end, she was a Card-Carrying Villain to a truly frightening degree, caring for nothing beyond spreading evil and villainy, not even her own life.
Donald Duck almost DIED! But thank goodness that he’s okay and thanks to Ludwig, Gandra, and Gyro for shutting down the Solego Circuit. Still, you can't ignore the implications behind such an act—Donald being the unluckiest duck makes him the most vulnerable of the bunch. Bradford singling out Donald for his bad luck to coerce Scrooge, then throwing him down is the kind of thing you'd expect from a spineless coward like him.
Keep in mind, the last time the Solego Circuit was used, it almost destroyed all of reality. Given there's no indication F.O.W.L. found a way to counteract this, Bradford was so dedicated to destroying adventure that he risked destroying the world, or possibly the whole universe.
Bradford had all of the McDuck family's friends trapped, including the Rescue Rangers, Goofy, Bonkers, and eventually Darkwing. If he'd gotten away with it, Bradford could have eliminated the entire Disney Afternoon.
The most terrifying part of this? He was going to kill Goofy! Someone who, aside from being friends with Donald, only got involved in the Ducks' adventures once! And by accident (at least in his and the Ducks' parts)! Not only that, but Max is implied to still be a young teen in this continuity. Meaning that Bradford was okay with killing an innocent person and leave a child orphan if it means ridding the world of the chaos Goofy causes.
Building up on the above, who is to say that Bradford didn’t kidnap Max too and that he was going to kill both Father and Son and just because the two would get mixed up in their own adventures in Goof Troop whether it would be the original or a Reboot of the original?
