The Phantom and the Sorceress is the eighth episode of Season 3 of DuckTales 2017. Written by Colleen Evanson in addition to the rest of the usual DT17 writers' room (including Benjamin Siemon), it was codirected by Matthew Humphreys and Stephanie Gonzaga. It is feature the Phantom Blot, Magica De Spell, Well-Travelled Teen Lena, Webby Vanderquack, Gladstone Gander, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck, Scrooge McDuck, Della Duck, Violet Sabrewing, the likeness of Donald Duck, and, in her debut, Pepper (an Egghead). The Mythical Goat plays a part in the plot but is not seen on-screen.
Plot[]
When the Phantom Blot arrives at McDuck Manor and sucks out all the magic he can find — not only taking away Gladstone Gander's luck and trapping Scrooge, Donald, Della and Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck in Goatoom when the Portal to it closes behind them, but also threatening the very life of Lena De Spell — Webby and Violet must convince Lena to seek magical training to defend herself from the person she hates most in the universe: Magica De Spell. But although Lena unquestionably needs to learn to better harness her powers, is Magica's brand of witchcraft really what she needs?
References[]
- It is established that different magic users in the 2017 Continuum all have a specific colour keyed to their magical signature — Lena De Spell's is a light blue while Magica De Spell is an “evil-looking” light purple.
- Decades prior to the events of the series, Magica De Spell used her powers to oppress a village into obedience, but razed it to the ground once she had squeezed it dry. The Phantom Blot is established to originally have been an inhabitant of said village, his descent into evil having been sparked by his thirst for revenge over Magica.
- The Blot wields a high-tech Glove capable of sucking magic out of people and artifacts, including Gladstone's luck.
Continuity[]
- Magica De Spell is still living in the woods near Duckburg as established in A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill (2019).
- Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck are first seen playing the same video game as in Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake! (2019).
- The Ducks are once again called to Goat'hool by the Mythical Goat, as first seen in The Golden Spear (2019).
- This story properly introduces the 2017 Continuum's Phantom Blot, revealed as a cliffhanger at the end of Moonvasion (2019).
- Outright flashbacks are seen in the climax to The Beagle Birthday Massacre (2017), JAW$ (2018), The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck (2018), The Shadow War (2018), Friendship Hates Magic (2019) and A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill (2019).
Behind the scenes[]
The Phantom and the Sorceress was released on September the 21st, 2020, the eighth episode of Season 3 of DuckTales 2017.
Francisco Angones revealed on Frank Angones and the Suspenders of Disbelief shortly after the episode aired that a deleted scene was originally going to establish that the Blot had not been the Funso Host all along, but instead simply taken over the position a short time after GlomTales. Another one of the writers who pitched ideas to the original synopsis, Benjamin Siemon, revealed on Twitter that another deleted scene was going to feature Black Arts Beagle and Ma Beagle: he, too, having been zapped by the Blot Glove, was going to try to use prestidigitation to avoid appearing a failure to his Ma, foreshadowing Magica De Spell's even more ludicrous attempt to prove to the Blot that she was still a witch in the climax. Another scene would have taken the old wisdom about love being a kind of magic literally, and featured the Blot zapping a couple “out” of love.