The ‘Hot Ones’ Fandom Debates Whether CGI Donald Duck Destroyed the Show’s Charm

Did Hot Ones lose its fire when it became just another stop on every overexposed celebrity’s publicity tour? Would it be less “tacky” if fewer of those A-listers were cartoon characters?

The meteoric rise of First We Feast’s flagship talk show Hot Ones is one of those internet success stories that other aspiring food influencers and celebrity interrogators will study for decades to come. Inspired by the since-canceled website-turned-U.K.-talk show Popworld, First We Feast founder Chris Schonberger and host Sean Evans debuted their food, drink and pop-culture-focused online magazine’s unique spin on the internet interview show in 2015 as they subjected rappers and athletes to the increasingly spicy Wings of Death challenge while Evans grilled the guests on their wildest Instagram posts and their funniest locker room stories. 

Thanks in equal parts to the show’s unique conceit and Evans’ immense aptitude for interviewing, Hot Ones gradually rose from a niche web series that was mostly popular among online hip-hop communities into a massive mainstream platform where all of the entertainment world’s biggest stars promote their blockbuster films or platinum albums. The Independent writer Louis Chilton recently suggested that, 25 seasons later, the show’s rapid corporatization has come at the cost of its novelty and its charm in an article titled, “The Unlikely Rise and Tacky Decline of Hot Ones.”

As First We Feast continues to fill new Hot Ones new seasons with awkwardly scripted “interviews” featuring fully CGI characters like Donald Duck or Michael Keaton talking to himself in his Beetlejuice makeup, Chilton argues that the shameless commercialization of the show has ruined the unique appeal that made it a hit in the first place. In the Hot Ones subreddit, fans of the show recently debated Chilton’s points and argued both sides of the suggestion that going mainstream made Hot Ones mild.

While fans acknowledged that Hot Ones leaning into its utility as a promotional tool in order to secure brand partnerships with The Walt Disney Company is certainly a far cry from watching DJ Khaled tap out after three wings and supply fans with nine years’ worth of memes, some commenters argued that, as long as Evans is asking the questions, the heart of Hot Ones will remain intact. “It’s gotten big and more appealing to a wider audience, some of the DIYness of the earlier seasons is gone, but it’s still great,” one Hot Ones fan wrote. “Sean is still the same thorough and thoughtful interviewer he’s always been, the fact that the brand is getting a bit too active at promotions and collabs doesn’t really change that.”

At the same time, the fandom seemed united on the stance that watching a CGI Donald Duck eating CGI vegan wings was about as charming as rubbing Da Bomb into our eyes. “I didn’t even try to watch that,” one fan wrote of the above video. “The whole point is watching a person. If Disney wants to put someone out there, get Bob Iger.”

“Yea that was the point where I started to get iffy, naturally refused to even click on the video so they didn’t get the engagement,” another concurred.

Beyond the “tackiness” of animated characters blowing steam out their ears and pretending they completed the challenge, other fans took issue with the way superstar guests approach the show now that Hot Ones is practically a part of the late-night circuit. “Sean is a great interviewer, but this article identifies the main issue: A-listers. Most of them are insipidly, boring people living insulated, bubble-wrapped lives with nothing interesting to say. The more obscure or creative the guest (no coincidence that Eric Andre and Conan are listed in a positive light), the more interesting interviews,” one fan suggested.

“Two things can be true: 1) The show is still (mostly) entertaining and 2) It has definitely fallen off in recent seasons,” one more fan summarized to general agreement.

Of course, we can see exactly why Evans and First We Feast have taken Hot Ones in the more corporate-friendly direction just by looking at the view count on the Donald Duck “interview.” With 20 million pairs of eyeballs on the CGI segment, it’s hard to argue that the new approach isn’t working to make Hot Ones an even more formidable force in the entertainment world. And, ultimately, long-time Hot Ones fans are under no obligation to tune in every single week if they don’t like the “guest.”

That said, if Hot Ones makes too regular a habit of putting out mostly CGI episodes that are the creative equivalent of a TikTok advertisement, more and more OG fans are going to walk away as if they’re DJ Khaled and they just tasted some tabasco.