Returning of the Key Ring! is the 16th episode of Season 2 of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? and first aired on March 7th 2021 on Teletoon in Canada.
Written by Benjamin Townsend the episode sees the gang teaming up with Sean Astin to solve the haunting of a hardware store.
Some cool trivia, John Astin, who is Sean Astin’s father appeared as Gomez in Wednesday is Missing. Pretty cool to have a father and son appear in the same franchise decades apart!
Returning of the Key Ring! – Episode Review
The episode opens with a woman getting attacked by a plant monster who coughs purple smoke while she’s out shopping for some socket-head-screws at a hardware store called More Walls! Doors! Stuff! The woman screams and sends the staff a run’n only to find that she has vanished. All that’s left is a flower with a demonic/skull like face.
We then cut to the outside of a diner where Daphne explains the gang is about to meet Sean Astin. Due to Sean never being able to hold the ring in the Lord of the Rings films, Sean gets super-anxious when he hears the word ring. True to life, when you are told not to say a word, it’s tough to not say it. Thus, when Daphne and the gang sit down for lunch with Sean, Daphne says she was glad she gave Sean a Ring on the Phone. Meanwhile Scooby orders Onion Rings.
After wrapping up their dinner, Velma spots a keyring outside which Sean declares that they will have to go on the Quest of the Alliance of the Ring. Spotting that their is a loyalty card to More Walls! Doors! Stuff, the gang hop in the Mystery Machine and head off to the hardware store.
Entering the empty store, the manager explains that all of the customers have gone missing. They also notice that a key copying machine looks very well used. The manager explains that it’s his not so smart assistant who is new to the hardware business has been keeping busy using the machine.
The plant monster than comes up from behind the store manager and puffs some purple smoke into his face before dragging him away. Scooby, Sean and Shaggy try to save the man but come up short. We are also introduced to a man wearing round glasses who is spying on the gang using the security monitors and cameras.
Another chase ensues and we get a scene where Scooby, Shaggy and Sean pretend to be store employees. As always, the disguises almost work, however, Fred, Daphne and Velma show up just in time to rescue our trio. The store assistant is also rescued as he had been entombed in vines, and for gratitude he simply wanders off muttering that the store is the worst.
Fred picks up some weedkiller to destroy what is left of the plant monster but is stopped by the garden department lady who says the human race deserves what it gets for how we treat plants.
The gang then split up for clues with Daphne, Fred and Velma going one way and Shaggy, Sean and Scooby going another way. Daphne finds some red hydraulic fluid on the floor while the plant monster sneaks up on Sean and steals the key ring. Scooby is able to steal the keyring back but not before falling into a purple smoke filled hole where Velma deduces the hole is a start of a tunnel.
Assembling a trap the plant monster shows up before it is fully completed and Fred improvises using a leaf blower while Velma shreds it with a chainsaw. The battle continues and Sean tries to destroy the ring by tossing it into a chimenea burning with fire, but unfortunately the turns out to have a fake paper fire that blows with a blower fan. While the monster is distracted by the tossing of the keys Fred drives in with some sort of woodchipper/bailer vehicle and bales the plant monster into a rectangular cube.
Sean unmasks the monster revealing it to be the garden department lady. We learn she’s been using the key copying machine to cut security deposit box keys. Meanwhile the hole Scooby, Shaggy and Sean fell into earlier was a hidden tunnel that was leading to the bank. The man who was watching the gang on camera confirms this before the gang head off on a Goonies adventure after Sean finds a pirate map in the parking lot.
My Score
I give this episode a 7 out of 10. The ring jokes at the start and all of the Lord of the Rings (and Goonies) gags in this one had me cracking up. I also liked the design of the plant monster, especially the demonic vines.
While not the spookiest episode, the haunted hardware store certainly makes for an interesting backdrop and I feel the team behind this episode took great advantage of all that they could do with this episode. I can’t see any way where they could improve this. If you aren’t a Lord of the Rings fan, however, this one might fall short as you won’t understand the gags and the one environment.
And now, if we could only get that second adventure with Sean. Maybe with one of Sean’s children in 35 more years.
