Fans Of The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers Just Received The Best News

As they used to say in the olden days, the quack attack is back, Jack.

Deadline reports that Disney+ has given the go-ahead for a second season of the decades-later sequel series "The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers." The series, which stars Lauren Graham, Brady Noon, and Emilio Estevez, follows a new team of underdogs, the Don't Bothers, taking on the now-formidable hockey juggernaut that the Mighty Ducks have evolved into since 1992.

After her son, Evan (Noon), is cut from the Ducks, single mom Alex Morrow (Graham) decides to help him form his own team in order to push back against the joyless, win-at-all-costs youth sports culture that the Ducks have now come to represent. Her search for a rink for her new team leads her to Gordon Bombay (Estevez), down-on-his-luck and running a raggedy Minnesota ice rink while firmly in the "off-again" phase of his on-again, off-again love affair with hockey. In the surprise of the century, that changes when Alex and Evan's rabble of kids with strange and conveniently-conducive skillsets show up to start practicing at his rink.

The renewal makes sense, at least to those of us without precise streaming data revealing when and how the show was consumed on Disney+, because the series has been quite popular. "Game Changers" received an 89% score on Rotten Tomatoes for its blend of drama focused on kids and nostalgia aimed at their parents. Now that Season 2 is confirmed, it'll be interesting to see where the story goes.

There weren't any plot details dealt out in the renewal announcement, but it isn't hard to imagine what sort of direction a second season of "The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers" might take, given how the first season ended. Though the Don't Bothers were forced to forfeit their state championship game against the rival Ducks after one of their key players suffered an injury, the teams played an unofficial match with some interesting stakes at Bombay's rink to determine true supremacy.

The Don't Bothers won — and in so doing, they also won back the right to use the Mighty Ducks name. 

Whatever the old Ducks are going to be called now, they likely won't be happy about having to play a hated rival who's co-opted their identity. Look for the rivalry between the two teams, and the human drama of teammates, friends, and crushes navigating their complicated pre-teen feelings for one another, to take up much of the show's storylines. Of course, if the show wanted to go the "Cobra Kai" route, then perhaps Coach T (Dylan Playfair), the young but cruel coach of the now-former Mighty Ducks can get tips on winning at all costs from former Iceland coach and "D2: The Mighty Ducks" villain Wolf "The Dentist" Stansson (Carsten Nørgaard).

Production is set to begin in early 2022, so expect a late 2022 or even 2023 premiere for Season 2.