The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, breaking the ice on March 26, is the latest revival series celebrating how everything old is new again. The Disney+ show picks up decades after the original Mighty Ducks trilogy, but this time the iconic hockey team are actually the antagonists.
Once a sports superstar, Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez, reprising his classic role) has now lost his spark and is over the game. That is, until young Evan (Brady Noon) and his mother Alex (Lauren Graham, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist) come looking to rent space for their new team meant to go up against the Mighty Ducks and have fun while doing it.
Estevez spoke to Screen Rant about how Bombay's life has changed in the last few years, and what it means to him to be helping coach the new kids on the block.
Can you set the new series scene for us? Because now we're not even with the Mighty Ducks now. What has changed for Gordon?
Emilio Estevez: Well, specifically for Bombay, what's changed is that life has not been particularly good to him - certainly the hockey world hasn't been good to him. And when we find him, he's living at the Ice Palace, which he's inherited from Jan; he's living in his office, sleeping on his couch, subsisting on pizza and birthday cake, which is left over from kids' birthday parties at the skating rink.
He's in a pretty bad place. He's not the guy that we last saw at the end of D3. He's a guy that is kind of broken and disengaged and sad and hiding. So, it takes Lauren's character and the new group of kids to re-engage him by way of practicing at the ice rink.
The beauty of doing a TV show is that you have 10 episodes, and you have five hours to tell your story, as opposed to a film where you have an hour and a half or two hours. This allows Bombay's character to develop and evolve over the course of the entire season, which is new for me because I've only done movies. This is the first time I've ever done a TV series, so it was an adjustment for me in so many ways.
I'm used to seeing the whole script. I'm used to knowing, "Okay, here's the story. Here's what we're shooting this day." But you show up in September to start the show, and you don't know what you're going to be shooting in December, other than the summary or the outline that you've seen. You never know what's going to show up in the script. It's full of surprises, for you and for us.
Speaking of Lauren's character, how does Bombay view Alex, and how does she change his perspective on hockey?
Emilio Estevez: Well, she really brings him out of his shell. She connects with him, because she is also a bit of a broken character, as well. I think that one of the things that connects all of us as human beings is our shared brokenness and our shared trauma, whether it's generational or systemic. It's present; nobody walks the earth pain-free.
I think Alex has her own problem and her own pain that she brings to the table, and she recognizes that pain in Bombay, connects to him, and helps draw that out of him and helps him to re-engage.
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers premieres on March 26 through Disney+.