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The Ghost & Molly McGee: Bill Motz & Bob Roth Talk Season 2 & Darkwing Duck
The Ghost & Molly McGee: Bill Motz & Bob Roth Talk Season 2 & Darkwing Duck,The Ghost & Molly McGee Executive Producers Bill Motz & Bob Roth sit down with CBR to discuss Season 2 and how'd they approach a modern Darkwing Duck.

The Ghost & Molly McGee: Bill Motz & Bob Roth Talk Season 2 & Darkwing Duck

Disney Television Animation'sThe Ghost & Molly McGee focuses on the titular Molly, a bright and energetic young girl who turns a haunting experience into an excuse to make a new friend. The ghost in question, Scratch, spent the first season steadily growing attached to Molly and her family — and eventually, working together to change the ghost world for the better.

With Season 2 just around the corner, Scratch and the McGee find themselves dealing with a number of new changes to their lives, including the addition of some friendly neighbors who could alter the trajectory of their entire world. Ahead of The Ghost & Molly McGee's second season debut on Disney Channel and Disney XD on Apr. 1, Executive Producers Bill Motz and Bob Roth sat down with CBR to discuss the evolution of the season's new antagonists into more complex characters, straddling the line between multiple tones, and how Darkwing Duck might have been different it had been produced in the modern era.

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CBR: The first episode of the new season does a lot of heavy lifting — setting up the new status quo and introducing complications like the Chens and Scratch's new responsibilities. Was this always the plan for the series?

Bob Roth: Well, that's an excellent question. I'm trying to remember. I think it's a little 50/50 sort of answer there. Some of the things that are moving forward in Season 2, we had vague notions of back when we were making Season 1. Certainly, the notion of Ghost Hunters moving in — but I don't know that we had the Chens, necessarily. We knew that in Season 2, we wanted to bring in Ghost Hunters.

Bill Motz: I think the original idea was almost that [the Chens] came in as just pure antagonists. It was obvious from the get-go. We got to protect Scratch from these antagonists that were not as interesting. You bring in this Chen family, who are delightful, and who the McGees want to spend time with, and then it turns out, "Oh, wait a second. They're ghost hunters."

Roth: We love the idea of putting the McGees and Molly in a quandary of, "We want to be friends with these people. And yet, that's endangering our beloved Scratch." In [the Chen's] minds, they're the good guys. They're doing what's right and stopping an evil ghost.

Which, if we're being completely honest, isn't too inaccurate of a description of Scratch.

Motz: Yeah, that was very intentional. We felt like it's easy to vilify people who have different points of view than you — and that the ability to learn to listen and communicate and find commonalities so that your point of view can be expressed well and be received… We felt like that was an important thing to try to model [in the show]. Whether or not we succeeded, we'll find out.

Between the Chens and the events transpiring in the ghost world, there's also the family dynamics with the McGees themselves. How do you approach balancing all these elements while still introducing new ones at the same time?

Roth: The fun of starting the season is sitting down in the writer's room with the whole team and just sort of blue-skying what we can do and seeing the stuff that starts to thread together naturally. The stuff where you're like, "Oh, if we do this middle of the season, then these streams can cross" — to take something from Ghostbusters. They can weave together to bring us to a good finale. All the threads coming together, that's the real fun of the season.

Motz: I think what was fun about Season 1 was [that] we had this nice arc that completed with Molly's joy defeating the Chairman. Now, there's a new normal — hence the title of Season 2's first episode, "The New Paranormal." What is it like when the Chairman has gone, and the dynamics have changed, and all those elements that we've been used to in the ghost world are now up for grabs? So that's a different dynamic. I think part of the fun is when, as Bob said, in the writer's room. When we create these threads, [they] help us see the intersections that we can play throughout the season [and] give us a nice trajectory as to where we're headed. That's a lot of fun.

Two seasons in now, what surprised you both the most about Molly and Scratch?

Motz: One of the things that surprised me about Molly and Scratch is that their friendship is now established. It's kind of comfortable. Much like any friendship, they are now exploring new levels [of] it. So there are some times when they're a little freer to critique each other or be a little more real with each other. Molly is sometimes a little blunter with Scratch than she was in the first season in some respects.

You both worked on the original Darkwing Duck series when superheroes meant something very different in the pop-culture lexicon. If you were to approach Darkwing Duck in a post-MCU world, how do you think it would differ?

Roth: Well, I don't know if I have an answer for Darkwing itself. But I would say just that we've seen, over the course of our career, the kind of storytelling that is allowed and even desired changes. We're now telling stories that are much more relatable to the audience. Darkwing stories were silly comic book stories, and I love silly comic book stories. But the notion of doing a story where [Gosalyn] faced economic troubles because her dad fell off the roof and broke his arm and the family couldn't make the medical bills, that wouldn't be Darkwing at all. So it's the kind of storytelling that has changed. The line that we're given to explore new things is different from what it used to be.

Motz: I feel like in a new version of Darkwing, you would have a little more about how you balance your work/life/career, kind of stuff — the balance of superheroing, mentoring Gosalyn, getting Gosalyn to soccer practice, and that kind of thing. Some of those kinds of tension points, I think, would be a little more family-relatable, superhero kind of messaging. There'd be more PTA meetings.

Roth: The other answer is, we might get more into Drake as a single dad, you know? I don't know that we ever approached dating on the old show.

The Ghost & Molly McGee returns for Season 2 on Apr. 1 on Disney Channel and Disney XD and the next day on Disney+.

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