The Darkwing Duck Theme is the opening song for every episode of Darkwing Duck. The song's lyrics and music were composed and made by Steve Nelson and Thomas Sharp.
There are five different versions of the Darkwing Duck intro sequence. The first one was aired on the Disney Channel when the show first premiered and featured alternate animation and a rock-based version of the theme song. The second, more familiar version of the song was used in syndication and was plastered over other versions of the theme song in later broadcasts of the show's reruns as well as on the video releases. The third is the version used on The Disney Afternoon and is the same as the second version only cut for time. The fourth and fifth introductions were used on the ABC Saturday Morning airings and contained mostly scenes from those episodes.
Lyrics[]
Daring duck of mystery
Champion of right
Swoops out of the shadows
Darkwing owns the night
Somewhere some villain schemes
But his number's up
(3-2-1)
Darkwing Duck (When there's trouble you call DW)
Darkwing Duck (Let's get dangerous)
Darkwing Duck (Darkwing, Darkwing, duck!)
Cloud of smoke and he appears
The master of surprise
Who's that cunning mind behind
The shadowy disguise?
Nobody knows for sure
But bad guys are out of luck
'Cause here comes (Darkwing Duck)
Look out! (When there's trouble you call DW)
Darkwing Duck (Let's get dangerous)
Darkwing Duck (Better watch out, you bad boys!)
Darkwing Duck!
Trivia[]
- In the English, Arabic, Czech, Danish, Finnish, German, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, and Romanian versions of the theme song, the second time "Let's Get Dangerous" is said, a deep voice says it, while in other languages, Darkwing himself says the "Let's Get Dangerous" line the second time.
- On the captions of the Darkwing Duck VHS releases, the captions say "Travelin' duck of mystery" for the first line, instead of "Daring duck of mystery".
- The initial Disney Channel version of the "Darkwing Duck Theme" plays when using Darkwing Duck's Ratcatcher in the Disney Infinity games.
- The song is directly mentioned in the first issue of Joe Books' Darkwing Duck comic. Right before heading off on her class's field trip, Gosalyn tells Launchpad to keep Drake out of trouble, to which Launchpad replies, "Wait, what? When there's trouble, I think I'm supposed to call DW!", with Drake adding, "It's in my theme song and everything."
- In the DuckTales reboot season 1 episode "The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!', the instrumental closing credits of the theme are playing off of an old VHS tape a few times, as in-flight entertainment aboard the Sun Chaser.
- In the series' season 1 finale "The Shadow War!", when Launchpad McQuack goes to fight some shadows, he sings a song to the tune of the Darkwing Duck theme.
- Lin-Manuel Miranda, who voices Gizmoduck in the DuckTales reboot, has said that the song was "important to [his] development as a man, as an artist, as a songwriter".[1] He also said that the line "When there's trouble you call DW" was "[his] first awareness of a triple internal rhyme", which he later used in his musical In the Heights.[1]
- Darkwing Duck and Launchpad sing the first few lines of the song in part 2 of the season 3 DuckTales reboot episode "Let's Get Dangerous!".
- In the first issue of Dynamite Entertainment's Darkwing Duck comic, Gosalyn and Honker, under the guise of the band Bad Ducky, sing the song to distract Megavolt; however, they get the song's lyrics completely wrong. This is one of many reasons the Dynamite comic is not considered canon to the cartoon.
Videos[]
