The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers: Lights Out-Recap

credit: The Mighty Ducks

Whether people are happy to have had two seasons of The Mighty Ducks or not depends on whether they were satisfied with what the story has become since, in some ways, it does appear that the franchise has been upheld. In other ways, it would appear that the show has gone off in a couple of different ways to differentiate itself from the movies that made this franchise possible. It was necessary for certain things to happen, but the amount of cheese found in this show is indicative of what Disney has been doing since the 90s to try and cater to a younger audience and a family-oriented environment. It might be entertaining to those that don’t want to see the edge in a story and don’t want too much confrontation, but for the rest of us that grew up in the 80s or earlier, it’s sweet to the point of inducing a cavity. 

credit: The Mighty Ducks

The Ducks kind of had to win to make this an upbeat show. 

There was no way that the Ducks could have lost after the re-emergence of Coach T since losing to him would have been an impossibility that fans might have actually responded to in a negative way. It’s very easy to think that a lot of people would have written the Mouse House demanding removal and a rewrite of the episode had such a thing happened. But apparently, the Canadian league wasn’t up to the challenge of a unified team of Dominate and the Ducks, since in true form, the Ducks made this look as easy as they did in the first season thanks to cinematography that, sadly, was not challenging in the least. It’s fair to assume that no one was thinking that the series was going to look every bit as impressive as the movies when it came to playing the game, but a little more effort might have helped the overall effect. As it stands, this show was kind of underwhelming after a while, especially given that it came from a franchise that had laid such great groundwork, to begin with. 

The dialogue isn’t nearly as effective as in the movies. 

There’s something about good and bad dialogue that can elevate or wreck a movie or series, and season 2 makes it clear that whoever was in the writing room wasn’t too far removed from their high school days since the frantic pace of the dialogue and the fact that it didn’t appear to fire on all cylinders was a little too obvious. There were times when it was too quick, times when it slowed down too abruptly, and then times when it was simply too hokey, even for a Disney series. If one takes a look at other shows that work in terms of dialogue on the platform, one might see that it doesn’t take a great deal of effort to make the dialogue work in a manner that would be easy to follow and make the story come alive in a realistic manner. This series was a miracle in the fact that it had none of that. 

credit: The Mighty Ducks

Coach T became a bigger joke; there’s no other way to say it. 

In the first season, Coach T wasn’t much to get excited about other than that he was one of the main antagonists, given that he cut Evan from the team and the fact that he embodied what was wrong with the Mighty Ducks at that time. Bringing him back for the finale in this season was kind of an odd choice since not only had he already been defeated and shown to be an ill-tempered bully in the first season, but he’d managed to get worse in the second season, considering that his outburst essentially ruined his chance to keep coaching hockey in the US. As a result, he was forced to go to Canada, where he could continue to coach hockey. But the downside of this is that he never got over the loss and was bitter as possible when it came to the final game. Usually, when a villain returns, it means that they’ve found a way to avenge their loss to the main antagonist or because they’ve had a change of heart. 

There’s no telling if there will be another season yet. 

Right now, it doesn’t sound as though a third season has been given the green light, which is either great news or bad news depending on who’s being asked. But to be fair, it might be best to leave this experiment at two seasons and perhaps come back to it later on, when the current Ducks have grown up a bit or when a promising new group can come along. As of now, it’s simply great to see that season 2 is over and done with.