So is Donald Duck eating hot wings cannibalism, or …?
I don’t think it’s too much of an exaggeration to say that Hot Ones has grown into one of the most popular and beloved interview series in the U.S. I thought, when Conan O’Brien lost his mind on the show, it had braved its final frontier. But then the next guest was announced: Donald Duck.
And not, like, some guy in a costume, either. The cartoon character Donald Duck is on Hot Ones. And it says a lot about the internet that people’s immediate question wasn’t, “How are they going to pull that off?” but something much more fundamental: If a duck eats a chicken wing, is it cannibalism?
Donald Duck’s Hot Ones is entertaining but real weird
For the unfamiliar, here’s the setup: Host Sean Evans asks his subjects a question after they each eat one of an increasingly hot selection of hot sauce-dipped wings. By the end, when the Scoville level of the hot sauces surge beyond what’s possible for mere mortals, the guests are typically chugging milk—and possibly crying, screaming, hallucinating, and/or cursing.
The YouTube series has been running since 2015 and currently boasts over 300 episodes, under the tagline it will provide “hot questions and even hotter wings.” This sounds rough, because it is. But Evans is a phenomenal interviewer and an even better guide through the world of hot sauces. His mix of empathy and encouragement, as well as his own tastebuds of steel, make the show. As such, a shocking number of celebrities have agreed to go through the gauntlet. Everyone from Pedro Pascal to Shaq to Ariana Grande has been on.
But never before has the guest been a cartoon character, and even more importantly, never before has the guest themselves been a form of poultry. The moral dilemma jumped onto social media immediately after the announcement. A duck eating chicken. Totally cannibalism, right?
The episode itself is fun, but bizarre. You can feel the scripted nature of it—which, obviously it has to be in this case. But it’s a stark contrast from the slow unravelling of the “say what you normally do” psyche of Hot Ones. Disney provided not only the hot sauces (a li’l two-for-one there), but wisely, subtitles for their star.
The best part is that Mickey Mouse stands just off-camera the whole time, looking kind of embarrassed for his friend whenever the camera turns to him. And hey, Donald did better than DJ Khaled!
Oh, but his hot wings? They were cauliflower.
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