El Kuiper is a Junior Editor for ScreenRant. She writes about entertainment news, upcoming streaming releases, British TV, and classic TV shows.
Three years ago, Disney+ permanently deleted one of its best legacy sequel series. While the streamer has produced a deep catalog of Disney+ Originals for its biggest franchises, including Marvel and Star Wars, other Disney-owned brands and IP haven't been as lucky.
While shows like Percy Jackson and the Olympians have thrived, others, like Sally Wainwright's historical fantasy romp Renegade Nell, have been canceled after one season, and even more have been removed from the streaming platform entirely, never to be heard from again. In May 2023, Disney announced a cost-cutting effort that involved removing a host of Disney+ and Hulu original shows and movies from its streaming service.
This included high-profile projects like Willow, a high-fantasy sequel show based on Ron Howard and George Lucas' 1988 fairytale film of the same name, John Stamos' Big Shot, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, and The Mysterious Benedict Society. Disney+ was far from the only streamer to do so at the time; it was simply following in HBO Max's footsteps, forever changing the promise of streaming and further eroding trust between studios, Hollywood's creatives, and consumers.
Included in Disney+'s 2023 deletion spree was the two-season show The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, a legacy sequel series for Disney's 1990s The Mighty Ducks movie trilogy. The Emilio Estevez-led hockey movies became a cult phenomenon, inspiring the founding of a real-world NHL team and launching the careers of young actors like Joshua Jackson and Kenan Thompson.
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers brought back franchise favorites like '80s and '90s icon Estevez as the grumpy but lovable Gordon Bombay, Marguerite Moreau as the cunning Connie, Elden Henson as bruiser Fulton, Vincent LaRusso as prodigy Adam Banks, and Justin Wong as Olympian Kenny Wu, while also introducing compelling new adult characters played by A-list talent like Gilmore Girls' Lauren Graham and Ransom Canyon's Josh Duhamel. Most importantly, the show captured the spirit of the original trilogy, bringing together a group of wildly different kids and teaching them the value of teamwork, fun, and above all, friendship.
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers Offered A Modernized Take On The Mighty Ducks Franchise The original Mighty Ducks movies are undoubtedly a product of their time. Watching them now is like the best kind of nostalgia trip, a memory of days spent playing outside in the street with neighborhood friends and dreaming of something bigger. They're fun, silly, and genuinely heartwarming, the perfect comfort movies for a rainy day.
There's a reason their legacy has lasted this long, and why Disney+ greenlit a sequel series in the first place. The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers provided that same sense of childhood joy and growth for a new generation. This cohort's kids, led by Brady Noon's hockey-mad Evan Morrow , live in a completely different world.
Social media and video games have taken over their lives, and the Minneapolis Mighty Ducks are no longer a small, underdog peewee hockey league team. They're now the gold standard, with their own state-of-the-art practice facility, grueling tryouts, and overwhelming financial obligations. Cue the creation of a brand-new hockey team, bringing together an unlikely group of charismatic, fun young characters to be trained by Alex and none other than rink owner Gordon Bombay .
The premise, while simple, allowed the show to build on the Mighty Ducks trilogy's foundation without trying to copy it entirely. Like Bombay in the original movies, Alex provided a compelling character for now-grown '90s kids to relate to, and the team's diverse roster allowed more youngsters than ever to dream of a life spent on the ice, playing hockey. All in all, Game Changers was a genuinely great legacy sequel series.
It may not have won any Emmy Awards — though it did score a very respectable 87% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes — but it did exactly what a legacy sequel is supposed to do: create a fresh new story and introduce interesting new characters while upholding the spirit of the original series.
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, like the other shows deleted in Disney's purge, deserved so much better. 6.0/10 The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers 10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Like Follow Followed Comedy Family Sports Release Date 2021 - 2022-00-00 Network CBS Showrunner Josh Goldsmith Directors Josh Goldsmith Writers Josh Goldsmith Cast See All Creator Steven Brill, Josh Goldsmith, Cathy Yuspa Powered by Expand Collapse
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