Disney may have recently announced that a new Darkwing Duck series is on the way, but the most interesting news came from former Darkwing Duck voice actor Jim Cummings at Fan Expo in Toronto this past August.
Cummings voiced Drake Mallard / Darkwing Duck in the character’s first animated series for nearly 100 episodes. The much-beloved voice actor was even brought back to voice an aging actor who originated the role in the DuckTales reboot episode “The Duck Knight Returns!” In this version, the character of Darkwing Duck was a series that Drake Mallard grew up watching. In this version, Mallard was voiced by Canadian voice actor Chris Diamantopoulos. Jim Starling is the actor who played the role in the fictional series, and it was voiced by Cummings. He would eventually become the villain of the story, NegaDuck. It was a nice nod to include the actor who helped create the iconic show.
It was always believed that the reboot of DuckTales would bring in Darkwing Duck characters and could allow for the possibility of a backdoor pilot to reboot the show. An episode of DuckTales 3rd season titled Let’s Get Dangerous did, in fact, serve that function, but nothing seemed to happen after the episode aired.
Cummings revealed during his panel that he was aware that a new Darkwing Duck was in the middle of production. The series had even started recording actors for the show; however, unfortunately, he was not involved in any capacity. At the time of this panel, Disney had not announced any new upcoming series. Mark Hamill will instead be providing the voice for the titular character. Cummings did not hide his feelings about being left out of the series. Hopefully, bridges can be mended, and the acclaimed voice actor can be brought in to voice another character in the same way that DuckTales was able to pay respect to the actor.