Webbigail Vanderquack from DuckTales (2017)
When it comes to remakes, reboots and sequels, characters like Webbigail Vanderquack present a challenge to the writers’ room. Much like Chani in Dune, who could no longer be presented simply as a concubine and mother, but a fierce warrior with opinions and outlooks of her own that ran counter to Paul’s, or Bo Peep from Toy Story, who went from love interest and sounding board in the first two films to an active free agent in the fourth (again with opinions and outlooks that opposed Woody’s) many older incarnations of certain female characters no longer pass muster in the court of public opinion, contemporary writers, the executive boardrooms, or with focus groups and/or test audiences.
This shift is also true of Webbigail in her move from the nineties cartoon to the 2017 reboot of DuckTales. She was originally depicted as an extremely young child, with a baby-voice, a fixation on her dolly, and a tendency to be treated as a nuisance by Huey, Dewey and Louie, who were considerably older and more active participants in the adventures. As someone who grew up with the original cartoon, I have to admit she wasn’t all that compelling, and it’s a bit of a bummer when a show’s only notable female character is heavily coded as little more than a toddler.
So, when the inevitable time came for a DuckTales remake, Webby was heavily retooled. Here, she’s much older – the same age as the triplets – and as a result, not only included in their adventures, but given her own storylines, with her own group of friends. Not exactly a tomboy, as she wears a skirt and pink accessories, she’s now characterized as quirky and talkative, with a fangirlish love of adventuring and a tendency to pull things like grappling hooks and night-vision goggles out of Hammerspace. An added wrinkle is that despite her friendliness and enthusiasm, she’s also rather socially awkward.
The process of updating a female character for modern audiences is a fascinating one, though one that potentially has a lot of pitfalls. On a Watsonian level, there’s technically nothing wrong with the inclusion of timid, dainty, domestic, feminine women/girls – after all, the real world is filled with them, and they’re no less important than the assertive, independent ones, and you can’t magically make a female character more compelling simply by giving her more boy-coded attributes (that’s what’s known as Xenafication, and it’s generally not a good thing). In the case of Webby, it’s safe to assume that retaining her pink outfit was a very deliberate decision to demonstrate that “girliness” isn’t inherently bad.
But on a Doylist level, there’s no doubt that the latter incarnations of these female characters are far more dynamic and interesting to watch than their predecessors. Though there might be a bit of pushback from audiences, they’ve got more personality, more agency, and far more relevance in any given story than simply filling the role of The Smurfette.
Other examples that spring to mind are Kayo from Thunderbirds Are Go, Arwen in The Fellowship of the Ring (though they tamped down on it in the next two films) and the collective development of the Disney Princess line-up (just compare Snow White and Aurora to the likes of Moana and Merida!) Heck, even Webby’s own grandmother Mrs Beakley has been upgraded from a housekeeper to a former spy in the 2017 remake. This post exists as much to draw attention to this phenomenon as it is to commend Webby herself, though I definitely think she’s one of the most pronounced examples.
Can you think of any others? Because the reverse is also true: nobody has ever adapted Mina Murray or Irene Adler as well their original authors wrote them in the first place.
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