Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Miraculous is a show that can be summed up in two words: failed potential. All the ingredients are there for something amazing. Interesting concepts, likeable characters, decent animation (on occasion), an actually engaging romance and great drama potential. However, it’s like a chef who has been given five-star ingredients, put them all together, and then burnt the cake. What you get is ultimately going to leave you feeling disappointed and unsatisfied. And all of this is largely a result of the show’s terrible writing.

In these essays, I will explain my biggest problems with the show’s writing and provide suggestions for improvement. Now let me be clear, a lot of characters are going to be criticised here. This is not intended to be salt. This is intended to be a criticism of how the show writes its characters and story. I actually like a lot of these characters. The rewrites are intended to be as close to the original as possible to showcase that these characters are actually good. They just need to be written in a way that makes sense. This won’t always be possible, but that’s the spirit of this work.
This work will deal exclusively with the writing of the show so things like animation, non-relevant lore or production are out. Having said that…

Shameless plug, one of my problems with the show is with the miraculouses themselves. There are enough problems with them alone that I have a whole other work devoted to them which you can read here https://archiveofourown.info/works/41978178/chapters/105384813. I will be using the revised rules for the rewrites here, so if you get confused then check it out.

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Miraculous is a plot driven show and it shouldn’t be. On top of that the plot isn’t even that good. From day one, the plot has always been the weakest part of the show. What drew people in were the characters, the setting, the miraculous, literally everything else. But time and again, as the show goes on, it constantly destroys its own internal logic and, even worse, its characters for the sake of plot. Remember when Alya was best friend goals? Remember when Nino faced down Anansi to protect the one he loves? Great characters are getting constantly trod upon for the sake of plot. No one should have ever believed Lila and Cat Noir shouldn’t be getting trashed by everything that moves, yet they do and he does. Because the plot demands it. What makes me feel even worse about it is that the characters are all engaging enough to watch and are proactive enough that a character driven story would be amazing. But, for whatever reason, we must suffer. Because the plot demands it.

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The big one. Now I know a lot of people hate the love square and want it gone (me included), but I think that would be a huge mistake. Why? Because I think the love square is one of the show’s biggest draws. Case in point, just about every fan work has resolving the love square as a core plot point. You don’t dedicate that much effort to something you don’t think is important. It’s the most interesting part of the show and it’s where almost all the compelling drama, angst and emotional weight is coming from.

The problem is that the show knows that it’s the best part. They keep doing fake out reveals and dragging it out to milk it for all its worth to the point where the audience is wondering if it really matters at all, or worse, it kills the main draw entirely. For example, it’s reasonable to wonder if, after everything is done, these two will end up together. It’s a classic will they, won’t they with a twist. They are both in love with eachother, but not necessarily at the same time since both sides are very different people. We can’t say for certain that after all the drama and hurt they’ve been through that they’ll be able to love the other as a whole person. The problem is that we know from Oblivio, Cat Blanc and Ephemeral that these two will end up together no matter what, so why do we care anymore? To me it’s symptomatic of a show that knows it has nothing else to keep viewers invested so it constantly exploits the one thing it has going for it to the point of ruining it and killing the show completely. They don’t even do anything with it other than tease its resolution. The writers could get so much more emotional milage if they played with it more. They could reverse it, have the characters be in love with both sides, fall out of favour with eachother, there are so many interesting things to do, but they keep it stagnant and boring.

So how do we fix the story’s biggest hook? Give the show other interesting plot points to focus on so they don’t have to rely on just one and play around with the love square to keep it interesting. I would make it so that Marinette starts falling for Cat Noir after Glaciator and Adrien starts falling for Marinette after Heroes’ Day. However, since Ladybug is starting to reciprocate his advances, Adrien stays committed to her. They don’t outright date, but there is something there now. Suddenly, Cat Blanc happens and Marinette can’t afford to love her partner, so she shuts him out to try and prevent it. This hurts Adrien, eventually driving him into the arms of Marinette in season four. I would end season four with a reveal and all the secrets coming out, but have it be the result of Marinette being akumatised. This leads her to renounce the Miracle box and lose her memory. The love square story in season five is the natural fallout from these events.

On a related but slightly off topic note, in other chapters I talk about making Marinette and Adrien deuteragonists rather than making one the protagonist and the other a secondary protagonist/love interest. I have many reasons for doing this but the one most relevant to this discussion is the romance. Miraculous is a love story at its core and I think that in any good love story, both sides should be equal parts (or at least, active participants) of it. It’s a story for two, not one. It’s so much better when they both get to be an active part of it. A loving relationship is their reward for facing the challenges and confronting the problems in their partnership. They are yin and yang and they accomplish so much more together than they ever could separately.

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Now let me make this clear. All of the characters, when they are allowed to be characters and are not warped for the sake of the plot, are good characters. Marinette included (we’ll get to the stalking later). So why does she seem to be so controversial? Because she is the biggest sacrifice on the altar of poor character writing and plot contrivance. She is the main protagonist of the story and the one the audience spends the most time with. Given that Miraculous is a kid’s show, she is also the main engine for whatever moral lesson the writers want to impart this week. This is where the problems start.

In early seasons, each episode was self-contained and there were no overarching plot threads over multiple episodes. This means there is also no character development for anyone and Marinette suffers the most for it. As the main protagonist, the audience spends the most time with her, so her lack of change becomes even more noticeable. Because of this, the moral lessons the show teaches and the nature of her role as the protagonist, Marinette becomes a flat character who only gets cosmetic changes rather than deep personal growth. The flat character is a perfectly respectable one, but this is not the right way to use it. The flat character should be the one teaching lessons, not the one receiving them. This is especially frustrating when the lessons the show is trying to teach, clash with how her character has already been established or the lessons are just straight up bad. For an example of the first, Penalteam. In it, they outright say that Marinette is not a team player even though it actively contradicts an entire series worth of evidence to the contrary. Hell, Marinette being a team player is presented as half the conflict between her and Cat Noir in season four. For an example of the second, Zombiezou is everything wrong with how society treats bullies. In it, Marinette is told to turn the other cheek and be an example for the bad people to follow. Anyone who’s ever been bullied knows this argument and knows it’s horse****. Worse, it even implies Marinette is in the wrong for sticking up for herself when that is more than likely the correct course of action. All these moments do is frustrate the audience.

These problems are made worse because a lot of things around her have the potential to be much more interesting. Adrien comes pre-packaged with an emotional and mature story about coping with loss, an excellent lesson to teach kids. Instead, we’re stuck with watching Marinette be a bad babysitter. It makes her seem boring by comparison, and eventually, she becomes so. This feeds back into another issue which is her role in the story.

One of the problems people have with her is her role as the show’s main protagonist. People are divided on whether or not she is a good protagonist or if she should have even been one in the first place. Questions that also feed into the debate of whether or not she’s a Mary Sue. The problem I think she has is that she suffers from being a relic of a time when the story of miraculous was much different. A story and world that has since evolved and left her behind. Back when she was created, she was the main protagonist. The story and universe revolved around her. Then, as time went on, the story of Miraculous changed while Marinette’s role in it stayed the same. There’s a reason why people say Adrien should have been the main character. He is central to the story. He is intrinsically connected to everything simply by virtue of who he is. His mother’s ‘death’ kicked off the whole show, his father is the main villain, and he has one of the miraculouses sought by said villain. Marinette just doesn’t have the same narrative weight as Adrien does and she just seems boring by comparison. Yet she is still the main protagonist because she was already established in that role before Adrien’s character was even conceived.

This leads to some strange things in the show. It’s like it knows its main character doesn’t have the weight to carry the story, so it warps itself to make her seem better. Even at the cost of its other characters. She is always the one who saves the day, she is the best fighter, she’s the smartest character, she gets way too much screentime and the universe always makes sure she’s in the right. This is why she gives off Mary Sue vibes. She has enough faults and failings that I disagree that she is one completely, but I can see why people think so. She is the only character who is allowed to shine. There have been exactly two occasions where she took a backseat in saving the day and that was during SentiBubbler and Hack-San. And even in those, she was still the one to save everyone. Not even Adrien, who is probably the second most important character, gets a chance to save the day. And that’s why people hate her character, not because of who she is, but because of the way the show uses her. That and the stalking, but we’ll get to that.

People love to criticise her for the decisions she makes as the Guardian. Yes these decisions are poor, but I think that if they were handled correctly by the writers, she would be better off for them. Right now, the formula is Marinette makes a dumb decision like freezing Adrien out with no explanation. But rather than giving her understandable reasons like she’s afraid of falling in love with him and causing Cat Blanc, the show just makes it so she was magically right all along and the decision was never the wrong choice in the first place. It’s poor writing and she loses a lot because of it. Instead of an engaging piece on the psychology of trauma and how it affects people, we get the hand of the author favouring its pet. What’s worse is that when the show does portray her as being in the wrong, it’s for the wrong reasons. The worst offender is Kuro Neko. Rather than being the payoff for a genuinely interesting plot about trust and partnership, the whole episode is reduced to Adrien going “Waah, Ladybug doesn’t love me! I’m sooo sad!”. And worst of all, it portrays Marinette as being in the wrong here for not loving Cat Noir. No one owes anyone anything just because they are in love with them.

In terms of personality, Marinette’s fine. She’s kind, compassionate, funny and genuinely fun to watch at times. Then there’s how she loves. If this Thomas Astruc’s idea of love, then I understand why his ex left him. The show plays the stalking off for laughs, but it isn’t funny anymore. For one thing, it’s the same damn joke told over and over again. Secondly, it’s a really toxic way to express love and just live life in general. Girls are meant to look up to Marinette and they’re either going to emulate her or be completely turned off because they can’t relate to her. Then there’s her whole crush on Adrien in general. It is almost literally all she does anymore. We don’t get to see her do anything interesting as a civilian anymore. No more designing, no more gaming, literally none of the things that made people like her. I don’t know many girls whose entire lives revolve around one guy and I think that’s a stereotype that needs to go. She is the perfect fictional counterpart to that one person you know who has literally one thing that’s their entire personality. If she were allowed to do literally anything else other than obsess over Adrien, I think she would be vastly more popular.

This is where everything we discussed all comes together to create her most egregious sin. The worst part about her, her greatest fault, is that she’s boring. Simply, boring. She’s never in actual danger, she always solves all the problems, the lessons she serves to teach suck, she never grows, everything around her is so much more interesting and all of our time is spent with her. She’s a good kid, and that’s all the solace we have left.

So how should she be fixed? By evolving her role in the story. Stop treating her as the author’s pet and let her be an actual character rather than a plot device. The moments where she’s allowed to be human and true to her character, when she’s allowed to express her weaknesses, have always been when she’s at her most compelling. Let her be that all the time. Secondly, elevate her narrative weight to be comparable with Adrien. They’re meant to be partners and equals, act like it. Give her a reason beyond being in the right place at the right time to be involved in this conflict. Imagine if Fu was her grandfather? Then the love of her life would be the son of her greatest enemy and the man responsible for taking away her grandfather’s memories. The drama would be delicious. And lastly, stop making her the centre of every episode. Let other characters have a chance to shine. Stop letting her get all the glory and give it out to some other characters every once in a while. This is an ensemble show now and writers need to realise that.

Finally, give her a character arc. I, based on the show, can give her multiple. Most fan media portrays her as insecure, anxious or having low self-esteem. Things that aren’t really present in the show. Hell, it’s full of examples that contradict them. She stands up to bullies, puts her work out to the public, she’s very sure of herself and battles supervillains on the regular. We get the appearance of her being insecure, but that’s it, it’s only an appearance. Nothing that would be believably different from any normal person. So, I’m going to canonise fanon in the rewrite.
For most of her life, Marinette has been alone. Years of relentless bullying by Chloe Bourgeois has left her isolated and a hot mess of issues. She’s anxious, lonely and she doesn’t believe she can amount to anything. Enter Alya Cesaire! In this version, Alya takes over most of the girlboss moments Marinette has a civilian. She stands up for herself and protects others. She makes friends with all the girls and generally becomes the only one who can handle Chloe. She takes Marinette under her wing and does her best to nurture her. Alya is everything Marinette aspires to be and her role-model as a superhero. Marinette is still quietly helping people out in the background, but the flashy stuff is all Cesaire baby!

I’m also changing her love story. When she meets and falls for Adrien, it’s not just because he’s a kind, honest and good person. He’s the first person to treat her like a person and not a victim in need of saving or a target. He treats her like an equal and she loves him for it. Why she isn’t in love with Cat Noir? Partly because she doesn’t want to jeopardise their relationship and she thinks he’s insincere with his flirting. The big one though, she considers Ladybug to be an act she puts on and that she could never live up to in real life. She can’t bear to think that Cat Noir would see the real her and turn away.

Now for Master Fu and the miraculous. In this version, Master Fu is her great-great grandfather who visits Paris from time to time to check up on his descendants in secret while looking for lost miraclouses. When Hawk Moth attacks and Fu sends out the kwamis to choose holders (I’ll explain more in the Fu rewrite), Tikki chooses Marinette to be hers. He is initially reluctant to send her out, but after she proves herself, he relents. Marinette does still screw up at first and tries to quit. Cat Noir plays a more active role in convincing her to stay and assure her she has what it takes. Fu also takes a more active role in training the heroes. This means Marinette, in this version, is more dependant on others and less self-reliant. Her initial character arc is learning to believe in herself and acknowledging her own capabilities.

After we get to Cat Blanc, she starts a new character arc. The negative character arc. Over the course of season four, Marinette forces herself to shoulder all the burdens and shut out anyone who can help her, leading to her relationship with Cat Noir deteriorating. Alya helps, but all she can do is keep her head above water.

What do you guys think? Let me know your thoughts and if there’s anything I can improve?

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Ever notice that Adrien has never won a fight? He is one of three superheroes who have been shown to have actual martial arts training, is one of the most experienced fighters and miraculous holders and he still takes the L more times than any other character. Every time someone says he is useless or a liability, it makes me sad because I can’t really argue with it. It seems like all he does is get in the way. For those who say that’s a recent development, go back and watch season one. I assure you, he sucks there as well.

This is because the show treats him as one of two things. Comic relief or a chance to show off how awesome someone else is in comparison. It’s a classic case of the worf effect. How do the writers show a villain means business? Take out Cat Noir. How do they show that a new holder is awesome? Have them either kick his derriere or immediately succeed at whatever he was failing at. The absolute worst example is easily Hack-San. There is no way Alya should ever have been able to master the yoyo easily enough to beat Cat Noir on her first day. It even backfires on the writers because Alya can’t look awesome if Cat Noir looks so weak.

To make it worse, in story he isn’t much better utilised. Rather than let him have a compelling character arc, his whole schtick is being in love with Ladybug. It’s the worst part of Marinette all over again. Seriously someone needs to teach Astruc what a healthy relationship looks like. And while I don’t mind most of the flirting he does, the sexual harassment needs to stop. It doesn’t even make sense because it clashes with his character. As Adrien, he hates conflict, is meek and a people pleaser and yet, for some reason, the person he loves and respects more than anyone else, is the one person this doesn’t apply to. The show makes it look like Adrien sees Ladybug as a right rather than as a person when he should be the last person to make that mistake. He’s a model by trade, if anyone knows what it’s like to be objectified, it’s him. Now if he was emulating his father and he did this with everyone, then it would make sense. He would act more like Chloe where everyone who he sees as beneath him gets treated poorly. Not the other way around. It’s also another case of compelling plot threads being pushed aside in favour of the same tired old patterns. When season four was executing its Ladynoir rift plot, a whole engaging arc about trust and partnership is either shelved or boiled down to “Waaah! Ladybug doesn’t love me!”. It’s boring, we’ve seen it before, it sucked then and it sucks now. Find something new to do. God knows there’s a lot more there to play with.

Now I may be completely alone in this, but personality wise, Adrien Agreste is boring. He’s just every teenage girl’s fantasy boyfriend made real. He’s hot, smart, rich, oblivious, kind and a perfect gentleman. He also doesn’t like conflict, so he’s never going to drive any plot because that would require conflict and he’ll cave the moment someone tells him no. Seriously, he’s boring. Anyone who isn’t after him for his money or his looks is going to be cheating on him with someone infinitely more interesting within the year. Sure, he looks interesting from a meta perspective, but that’s only because of his backstory and connection to other characters like Hawk Moth. He himself has nothing to offer that makes him interesting to watch.

That is, until you throw in the fact that he’s Cat Noir. Cat Noir saves Adrien Agreste as a character. Cat Noir is funny and charismatic while still being a good guy. Plus, he’s a cool guy who can play with the rules and is fun to watch at the same time. Put these two together and you get what is easily the most interesting and entertaining character in the show. Each side is so much more interesting to watch because of its contrast with the other. It makes you wonder how much is an act and how much is real? Who is Adrien Agreste really? His dichotomy makes him feel like the most human character in the show and that’s why it sucks that he’s wasted. And that’s not even factoring in the drama that is his father being his archnemesis. What both characters think is an impersonal struggle is actually a horrifying tragedy in the making when Adrien is inevitably forced to choose between his love and his family. No matter who wins, both father and son are going to come out of this conflict worse for wear. This hasn’t happened yet, but my great fear is that this incredibly emotionally charged and engaging storyline is going to be brushed aside in favour of a battle between Marinette and Gabriel.

So how do we put Adrien to use? Elevate him to the status of character rather than plot device. Make him a co-protagonist with Marinette. Buff his powers so he’s more useful as a partner. Make him an actually capable superhero so he doesn’t come off as an irresponsible idiot. Darkblade did a good job of it, let him do that again. Let him overcome his obsession with Ladybug. Give him a character arc so we have something new and engaging to invest in.

How would I do it? Adrien’s new character arc is learning that he doesn’t need to prove his worth to be loved. When it comes to love and attention, Adrien believes it is something he has to earn for his father, and by extension others, to give it to him. He does modelling and all his other activities not because his father makes him, but because he chooses to do them. His tragedy is that he believes that making his father proud will fix everything. This plays into how he conducts himself as a civilian. He is averse to conflict as a civilian, not just because he doesn’t want to give anyone a reason to hate him, but because a scandal would reflect poorly on him and ruin his perceived progress with his father. As a result of all of this, he doesn’t feel like any of his relationships as a civilian can ever be truly real and that’s why he latches on to Ladybug. He loves Ladybug, not because she’s amazing, but because she’s the most genuine relationship he has. She’s the one person who can like him for him and not because of his money, fame or looks. She’s someone who he can be truly equals with and Adrien craves that.

In the rewrite, I’m making it so that after Glaciator, Ladybug does start to reciprocate Cat Noir’s affections. This makes their relationship less toxic and his persistence more acceptable. But, when Ladybug starts to shut him out in season four, it hurts him worse because he feels like it is a reflection on who he is. That she’s pushing him away because he’s not good enough. Fortunately, he finds another person he can be genuine with and slowly begins to fall for her instead: Marinette.

He also has a secondary character arc early in the show that is centred on moving on from his mother’s death, making him a narrative foil for his father. Gabriel was never able to let go of Emelie and becomes worse for it, whilst Adrien can accept her death and becomes better for it. Plagg is going to play a key role in this. As the kwami of destruction, who better to teach Adrien the value of ending. It deepens their relationship and makes the kwamis seem more like mentor figures.

Also, make some of the episodes focus on him. An example, Gamer. Adrien comes to school and learns of the Mecha Strike tournament. Each school has a male and female representative and Marinette has already secured her place as the female rep. Adrien, seeing an opportunity for his father to be proud of him (and spend some time bonding with his ‘just a friend’), decides to enter. Max, dismissing him as a pretty model boy, underestimates him and loses. The rest of the episode happens as normal until it gets to the tournament. Adrien recognises that the tournament means more to Max then it does to him and forfeits his place on the team. The display of selflessness only makes Marinette fall for him more.

This is the end of the Adrien rewrite. Keep reading if you want my thoughts on Felix.

When talking about Adrien, people inevitably bring up Felix. Felix was the original Cat Noir and was kind of the opposite of Adrien in that he was a jerk instead of a gentleman. The creators replaced him with Adrien because they thought he had a better dynamic with Marinette. And I have to say, I think they made the right decision. Full disclosure, I like good people over jerks in fiction. If they’re going to be a douche, then they better either be hilarious or a villain for me to like them. I also think Adrien pulls off the dichotomy of being the extravagant Cat Noir and the reserved, mild mannered gentleman a lot better than Felix ever could. Could you imagine Felix being Felix one minute and then making cat puns and bad pickup lines the next? The personalities clash too much for me to find it believable that they’re the same guy. Finally, regardless of my bias, I do think Adrien does fit Marinette better. Firstly, her canon character (when it’s allowed to be one) isn’t attracted to jerks. Secondly, she works well with good guys (why do think there are so many Lukanette shippers). Finally, it’s a better dynamic for the love square. It’s a lot harder to ship it when one side hates the other. Sure, you can have an enemies to lovers story, but I think that the angst from both sides being able to love eachother from the get-go makes the payoff so much more worthwhile.

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So most of the problems in this show stem from the show’s wise old mentor trope. Mostly because he isn’t very wise or intelligent at all. Seriously this guy makes decisions that make Gabriel Agreste look like he’s playing 4D chess with Alexander the Great. Which is fitting since the mentor trope is often a mouthpiece for the writers and the writers are…

Let’s break down his many, many poor decisions.

His selection process sucks. I get what the writers were going for. They were trying to do the hero instinct test from My Hero Academia. But unlike that show, they screw this up royally. First off, Marinette’s test is pretty good. She puts herself in immediate life-threatening danger to help someone for no personal gain. Pretty solid! Adrien Agreste, he gets the dumbed down shopping cart test version. All he does is demonstrate that he has basic common decency and is a certified good boy. Unfortunately, morals don’t make a hero. It is completely possible for a good person to abandon their morals in the face of immediate danger. What makes a hero is that they continue to act like a good person in the face of that danger. Something Adrien doesn’t do until he’s already a superhero. Secondly, My Hero Academia knows that just because someone has heroic instincts, doesn’t mean they can go out and start whooping evildoers in the backdoor. If MHA handled Deku the way MLB handled Marinette, then Deku would have been out fighting All for One the moment he got One for All. No training, no character growth, nothing. Fu just saw these kids, saw they were decent people, picked them up by their pants and threw them into the open ocean. Then, he has the audacity to sit back on the beach and sip margaritas while they drown. Because seriously, he doesn’t help or train them at all!

You can argue the kwamis serve as mentors in his stead, but they can only offer guidance while de-transformed and they can’t help at all with training the superpowers. Fu could’ve helped where the kwamis could not. Instead, he does nothing and lets these literal children figure it out as they go along in a game where the literal fate of the world is at stake. Marinette’s screw up with Stoneheart wasn’t a surprise, it was expected. Especially when you take some random kid and throw them into a frankly insane situation with no preparation.

Which brings me to my next point. Fu conscripting child soldiers. They aren’t even in their late teens like most teenage superheroes. Even in Qing China they wouldn’t have been considered adults, (I looked it up, 15 for girls and 20 for boys usually) so he doesn’t have cultural values to excuse his decision. And he did pretty much conscript them. “Here you go children, here’s some magic jewels. Now go fight some supervillains or else your entire city will be destroyed.” That’s not a choice, that’s an ultimatum. Tikki even pressured Marinette into doing it. The only way this is justified is because he was pressed for time and needed heroes. But even after Stoneheart was defeated, he never went back and asked them if it was truly what they wanted.

You want to know the worst part? All of the above occurs in Origins. The first thing he does canonically is screw over everyone. But don’t worry dear viewers, unlike most things in Miraculous, Fu is quite consistent and will continue to screw over everyone for quite some time. After Origins, Fu is pretty content to sit on his keister and cackle maniacally at traumatising children and being irrelevant. Again, he never trains them, never gives them advice and never offers to help them in any way at all. He doesn’t even tell them he exists so they have someone to fall back on in a crisis. Imagine if Sapotis or Desperada happened before they met Fu. How about Heroes’ Day? The heroes would have lost because they would have had no idea there were other miraculouses they could call on for backup. We even saw in Princess Fragrance the consequences of his actions. Imagine if he was dead or incapacitated. Marinette and Tikki would have been screwed. And let’s not forget the secret identity rule. Yes, it makes sense to compartmentalise, especially when dealing with an enemy with mind control powers, but not to the degree in the show. The characters have no means to communicate out of costume and we can see that the kwamis don’t notify them when they have messages. Again, we refer to Princess Fragrance. Cat Noir had no idea Ladybug wasn’t coming. He was operating under the assumption she was since she’s, you know, kinda indispensable. And then! Fu passes this incompetent strategy onto Ladybug so it can become even more stupid. Once she becomes the Guardian, she needs to know who her charges are. You can throw Cat Blanc and Ephemeral in my face, I’ll counter with Style Queen, Princess Fragrance, Desperada, New York, Shanghai and of course Strike Back, among others. Hell, even Ephemeral backs me up here with the fight with Moolak and Su Han should have definitely learned who Cat Noir was.

Then there is his decision to pass on the Miracle Box to Ladybug. Believe it or not, this is actually one of his better decisions. Hawk Moth could have killed him in that moment and there was nothing he could have done about it. He was already compromised and the lucky charm showed him a way out only he could recognise and know the significance of. The only play left was to salvage what he could and give his successor the best chance possible. Ladybug was the logical choice for succession because she had experience, training and was available. She was being groomed for the role. Cat Noir had none of that and his civilian life made being a good guardian impractical anyway. Choosing him would have pretty much thrown him in the deep end to drown. At least Marinette had floaties. The problem with Fu’s succession choices is that he never gave himself any other options to begin with. He constantly kept Cat Noir in the dark, despite it not making sense and it causing unnecessary friction among the team. He never got the chance to see if Adrien could be a good guardian because he never made the chance. Again, we see the consequences of this in canon. If Adrien had known of Fu’s existence from day one, then he could have taken the grimoire straight to him. Volpina never would have happened and everyone would have been better off.
Basically, Master Fu is incompetent and I can go on and on about it. I haven’t even brought up the fact that his leadership style can be summed up as rolling dice, blindfolded while screaming YOLO!. Even his backstory sucks. It sucks so bad that I’m dedicating a whole other chapter to it.

So how do we fix such a dumpster fire of a character? For starters, we’re making him proactive instead of passive. He actively trains the heroes, is hunting down Hawk Moth and is always ready in the corner in case things go south. To make him look like less of an African Warlord, all the kids are now aged up to 16-17 so they are more mature. Still kids, but at least they’re nearer to adults instead of prepubescents. Also, I’m making it so that the Kwamis choose the heroes instead of him. It’s easy to diss the choices of an objective idiot, it’s a lot harder to argue with ancient cosmic forces. I’m also changing his relationship to Marinette so that he’s now her great-great grandfather. This gives him a reason to be in Paris at the start of the story as he’s been watching over his descendants in his spare time. It also gives him a reason to trust and accept Marinette, and by extension Adrien, being heroes. It also gives Marinette more narrative weight so she can stand with Adrien and makes her battle with Hawk Moth a lot more personal. It’ll also hurt a lot more when he loses his memories since he has a much stronger relationship with both the heroes and the audience now. Finally, the secret identity rule is still there, but now they have protocols for when things go wrong. They also have burner phones so they can contact eachother out of costume.

For those who want backstory salt and rewrite, see the chapter Feast.

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They say a hero is only as good as their villains. Oi vey

Ahh Hawk daddy. The man who makes the whole show happen and is just about the only one who can move the plot forward (at least when Nathalie or Felix are close by). People say he is a bad villain, and they are completely right. He is a prime example of failed potential in this show. Basically, he is the result of the writer’s attempts to fuse two respectable villain tropes together, the sympathetic villain and the Saturday morning cartoon villain. This is an incredibly difficult thing to pull off at the best of times and it is a testament to the writers’ skills that he turned out the way he did. This is mostly because the strengths of each trope are foils to eachother and are cancelled out when blended together.

Sympathetic villains are villains the audience can understand and root for. Their motivation or goals are justified even when their methods aren’t. They have to be driven enough to achieve their aims that they continue even in the face of great adversity and failure. If they ever achieve their goals, it should be because they earned it through struggle and sacrifice and not through contrivance. Their stories are the hero’s journey with a villainous packaging and that’s what makes them work. It’s also important that whatever villainous means they use are balanced out by how driven they are to achieve the goal. If they are torturing someone, it can’t be for something minor or because they enjoy it. It must be for something serious in pursuit of the end goal, otherwise they just look like a douche. They are a careful balancing act that is amazing to watch when it’s done right. Prime example, Mr Freeze is everything Gabriel Agreste wants to be and isn’t.

Now compare that to the moustache twirling, Saturday morning cartoon villain. These guys are evil for the sake of being evil. They aren’t serious, often being played completely for laughs, and their goals and motivations are simple. They have little to no emotional weight and are just there for simple fun. That doesn’t mean they are bad or boring by any means, some of the best villains ever made are cartoon villains. Zurg from the Buzz Lightyear cartoon show, Negaduck from Darkwing Duck or any of the classic Disney movie villains are all examples of this trope done right and they are all iconic villains. I myself often prefer these guys to a sympathetic villain because they’re just so fun to watch, but they tend to fall apart when you try and give them any depth. The whole point of these guys is that they are evil and loving it. You can’t really justify that with a tragic backstory or noble motivation. Trying usually only takes away from what makes them great in the first place.
That’s why Gabriel Agreste falls flat. One moment, he’s a grieving husband who just wants his family to be whole again and the next, he’s a maniac giggling like a schoolgirl at the prospect of child murder. They’re contradictory traits that ruin what each trope is trying to accomplish. The sympathy the villain is trying to get from the audience vanishes the moment they realise he’s just a total douchebag and the angsty melodrama ruins the fun vibes the cartoon villain is trying to give off. It's a lose-lose all around and it leaves the main villain of the show looking weak and unfocused.
But at least he’s still a threat, right? Wrong! Gabriel embraces the worst part of the cartoon villain trope in that he’s pretty much a joke that no one can take seriously. A good villain should always pose a threat to the protagonist. Without that, they’re just an annoyance that the hero has to deal with before they can get back to what’s really important. That’s exactly what’s been happening to poor old Gabby and the show’s worse because of it. What sucks even more is that he can be genuinely threatening, but the show goes out of its way to ruin it. How many times has Hawk Moth backed the heroes into a corner, only to be foiled through his own incompetence or a deus ex machina? Lady Wifi, Ephemeral, Simon Says, etc are all moments that show the audience that Hawk Moth is never going to win no matter how bad the situation looks. Either through his own incompetence or the universe working against him, there’s never any danger. It’s the reverse of a Mary Sue and every bit as frustrating. This also relates back to problems with Marinette. Rather than having Marinette save the day through her own merit, the show tears down its main villain to make her look better. All of this shows the audience that we should never be worried about what’s happening on screen because there’s never any threat and there is no tension.

Having said all this, Gabriel is actually probably one of the easiest fixes in the show. First off, he doesn’t need to fulfill the cartoon villain role because the akumas already do that. Secondly, I think he would be an ideal candidate for a special kind of sympathetic villain, the tragic villain.

We’ll start by making him an actual threat. First off, Hawk Moth doesn’t have to make an appearance every episode. Keep him hidden as much as possible from the heroes and the audience, especially before his identity is revealed. This means that every time he does show up automatically has tension because it shows that something serious is about to go down. Otherwise, why would the main villain be taking a personal interest? Next, let him have good ideas. Every time Nathalie comes up with a plan, make it Gabriel’s. Sorry Nathalie stans but for the sake of a good villain, sacrifices must be made. On a related note, never have him fail because of his own actions. Let it be because of the akumas themselves or because the heroes earn their victory. Take Thrawn from Star Wars Rebels for example. Thrawn is the scariest villain in that show, even more so than Darth freaking Vader, simply because he is terrifyingly competent. There are exactly two occasions where Thrawn outright loses on that show and they are never his fault. They are either the result of less competent subordinates or deus ex machina. Every other ‘defeat’ is only a setback. Blow up his scout droids to hide your base, now his search is narrowed to the worlds surveyed. Escape his forces, now he knows about the spy in his ranks. Each loss still serves to bring him closer to his goal and he’s terrifying for it and that’s the beauty of a competent villain. Once a villain starts making idiotic slip ups, like not simply removing the earrings when his enemy his immobilised, it just lowers him in the eyes of the audience.

In that spirit, it’s important to outline exactly what he’s capable of. Tell the audience what the scope of his miraculous’ abilities are so we know what we’re dealing with. Thrawn relies on sheer brilliance to win. It wouldn’t make sense for him to start wielding force powers out of nowhere. Let us know what Gabriel is loosely capable of so we can appreciate whether his plans are good or bad. To date, we still don’t have an answer on if he actually controls what the powers of his akumas are in canon and the show is worse for it. If he can, the audience asks why doesn’t he create more effective powers instead of repeating the same thing over and over again? If he can’t, then let the audience know that so we can appreciate when he pulls off things like Heroes’ Day. Do these things and we now have a villain who poses a serious threat that the audience can appreciate.

We’ll now move onto his relationship with Adrien. In the show, he is shown to be both distant and controlling. He is shown to care for his son, but he seems to see Adrien as more of an object than a person (*cough* like Marinette *cough*). This works against his character because he’s an abusive father from two sides and there is no logical reason for it. The show can’t decide on if he is a loving or apathetic parent, so it comes across as spiteful and abusive for the sake of it.

My suggestion, go all in on the distant yet loving side of things. He loves his family more than anything and seeing it restored is still his main goal. The reason he keeps his distance from Adrien, is partially because he has little time to spare due to being Hawk Moth and a fashion designer, but mainly because Adrien is a walking, talking reminder of Emilie and everything he’s lost. Every time he sees Adrien only brings him suffering and reaffirms his own drive to bring back Emilie. This garners sympathy for both characters and gives that sweet, sweet angst.

It is also worth mentioning Emilie’s role in this. In this version, she and the entire family are all fundamentally good people prior to her death. When she used the peacock, it was to help people. She’s also outright dead and not just in a coma. This makes it more convincing that the wish really is the only way to bring her back instead of, say, the rooster. To give her a flaw, she was the one really overprotective of Adrien and it was her idea to home school him. Hence, Gabe’s reluctance to let Adrien go to public school because it goes against his dead wife’s wishes. However, once he sees Adrien’s desire to go, he allows it because it’s what Adrien wants. This shows that Gabriel does still love and value his son, even over the wishes of his dead wife.

He also doesn’t force Adrien to do anything in this version, at least initially. Referring to the Adrien revision, all the activities he does are because he believes it will help him earn his father’s love and attention. This brings us more into the tragic side. I would give Gabriel a negative character arc. Have his grief and determination drive him into a downward spiral of villainy. As the series progresses, he crosses more lines, does more evil actions and eventually starts treating Adrien more like canon Gabriel. It’s an excellent and natural way to escalate the tension and stakes in the show. It also adds a new dimension to the fight. Now the audience is not just wondering who’s going to win, but also if it’ll be over before it’s too late to save Gabriel. Now the audience has extra reason to root for the heroes because we know Gabe was once a good guy and we want Adrien to have his father back. For this to work, it is essential that the audience sees and understands that Gabriel is undergoing this spiral, otherwise it will feel out of character and we’ll just end up hating him.

Now the key to a good tragedy is not just the bad ending, it’s that the bad ending was unavoidable. Either through the circumstances or who the characters are as people, there was never a good way for things to end. And this is why I think Gabriel should be a tragic villain. He starts the series being a desperate, albeit a still redeemable, man. However, as time goes on, he gets worse and worse until eventually there are no good options anymore. If he wins, he still loses his family because he’s a monster now. If he loses, he loses everything he has left. He can’t give up because it’s not in his nature and he can’t ask for help because he's too blind to recognise what he’s turning into. It’s the perfect tragic villain and it only gets better because of his relationship to Adrien and his role as Cat Noir. Put this all together and you get a villain who’s smart, resourceful, crazy and dangerous and the audience can still like and sympathise with.

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I’ve got nothing against Luka and Kagami, but they are completely unnecessary to the story. Simply because the love square means that the main characters are already love rivals for eachother. Luka and Kagami add nothing to the story except unnecessary drama because the audience already knows Adrientte is endgame and the roles they play are already taken. All they do is waste time that can be put to more useful things like explaining what happened to Emelie or training Marinette or advancing the love square. They also breed animosity because if the audience prefers these ships, then they’re going to be upset when they inevitably sink. It’s a poor and unnecessary subplot and I would cut it completely. Frozer can still happen, but make it clear by the end of the episode that the other ships ain’t happening.

Also, off the record, Luka and Kagami deserve better than Marinette and Adrien. We’ve seen how toxic they are with the people they love. They deserve eachother, don’t let more good people get dragged down with them.

Maybe have Luka and Kagami get together at the end of Frozer. It would be a lot funnier and reinforce Adrienette is endgame.

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Luka is just Adrien Agreste all over again. He’s a teenage girl’s fantasy boyfriend only even more perfect and is completely boring. He falls into the trap Adrien avoids because he has none of what makes Adrien interesting. No interesting backstory, no role or strong connection to the narrative and no charismatic alter ego to make him entertaining. Ever notice that most fan work versions of Luka don’t match canon? It’s because he’s a blank slate inserted for unnecessary drama. You can basically impose whatever character traits you want on him and it won’t affect his role in the story. Don’t get me wrong, as a person he’s great, but as a character he falls flat. He’s a perfect gentleman, he’s wise, understanding, patient, has daddy issues, he can read minds (except when you don’t want him to), and he loves music. Name a character trait beyond that, I’ll wait. I’ve also noticed that Luka is someone that people tend to either love or hate. That’s because of how he comes across. In real life, he’s the kind of person nobody would believe is real. He’s unnaturally patient and tolerant to a degree beyond what you’d expect from even gentle people. It’s the kind of behaviour you’d expect from people who are either extremely emotionally abused, or psychopaths. You will almost never come across anyone who’s like that just because that’s the way they are. The show also portrays him as a guy who lets the universe sort things out and has the attitude of what will be, will be. Yet he knows Marinette is desperately in love with Adrien and continues to date her in spite of it. It makes him look like he’s either obsessed with her and nothing matters as long as he's with her, or a scumbag who’s just using her. We’ve all met sleazy guys like that, it’s unnerving to watch. He’s like the uncanny valley of personas. He comes across as either good, creepy or so neutral that you don’t notice him. He feels manufactured and that’s what I have a problem with. This is no fault of the character and is entirely because of the writing and his role in the story. If he was just a background or side character, none of this would matter. But because he is a major character who is meant to serve as a love rival for Adrien, it’s the kind of thing the audience can’t help but notice. Worse still is it stems from Marinette. Since they made Marinette so obsessed with Adrien that she could never fall for anyone other than him, the writers just made a carbon copy of him without the faults. Then they never gave him any substantial development to fix it like they did with Kagami. At least she’s got a distinct personality and grew beyond ‘obsessed with Adrien’. If it weren’t for the fact that Luka’s been akumatised twice, I would think he was a robot (even Markov seems more emotional than him). Furthermore, his entire existence revolves around Marinette. He exists for her. He doesn’t care that she’s in love with someone else so long as he can date her. It’s a boring and toxic relationship. Even worse, as established in the love rivals chapter, this role is already filled by Cat Noir. He adds nothing to the story and even makes it worse at times. The writers tried to make him interesting in season four and they somewhat succeeded, but their attempts were half-hearted and token at best. The “No Luka, I am your father” twist should have given his character something to work with, but the reveal itself has no weight because there was no build-up. We had no reason to believe he even cared who his dad was at all before Truth. On the bright side, we are given glimpses on how this is changing his life. Not much, but given how strapped for time season four is and the fact that Luka is a secondary character, I can forgive the writers for putting it in the background. His other major plot point? He learns Marinette and Adrien’s identities and unless that’s paid off in season five, it was a complete waste of time because nothing changes from him knowing that information. That’s just bad writing and pacing, especially when screentime is already at a premium. Update: Having seen season five I can now say that this was in fact, a waste of time. He reveals that he knows their identities and then he makes the massively consequentially decision to… disappear. The finale shows him training as a guardian and then he returns to Paris to help fight with all his new guardian moves and proceeds to… make absolutely no difference in the final fight at all. You can cut him out of the entire show at this point and change almost nothing. The only impactful thing he ever did was help make Marinette depressed enough to confide in Alya. Congratulations show. You have truly made the time spent with him feel worthwhile. Having said all that, I do like him as the person and character he has the potential to be so I’m keeping him and giving him what he deserves. First off, he’s getting the same treatment Kagami did. Kagami initially had a lot of the same problems as Luka did, but unlike him, she didn’t feel like a rehash of Marinette and got some actual development and characterisation. Luka deserves his own Ikari Gozen and I know just where to put it. Desperada is a perfect place to flesh out Luka’s character. I’m not just doing this because I hate that episode, I swear *sweats nervously*. I genuinely think this is the perfect place for a rewrite. Rather than being another episode of Marinette and her cringey crush, this is now a story focusing on Adrien and Luka’s relationship. Just like how Ikari Gozen did with Marinette and Kagami. This is the episode where we find out Luka’s father is absent and he has some issues because of it. He’s empathic and great at reading people, not just because it’s in his nature, but because he doesn’t trust people. He doesn’t want to be hurt like his mother was so he learned not to be tricked by facades, ironically making him a kinder and more selfless person in the process. He still has some trust issues though and this is one of the few ways to drive him to anger. This version of Luka wouldn’t have been as patient with Marinette in Truth as canon Luka was. He’s still a good guy at heart though, he just won’t let himself be hurt by Marinette. This episode is also where he establishes a brotherly relationship with Adrien. They are both very compatible personality wise, and they can bond over their family circumstances and absentee fathers. He’s also going to lose his crush on Marinette pretty early on. He is allowed to be attracted to her at the start, but once he learns she’s in love with Adrien, he goes “aww shucks” and moves on. Frozer is a great place to do this. At the end of the episode, once Marinette and Adrien return, they find Luka and Kagami making out or something. Funny twist and I do think they would be good for eachother, at first. Now for the evil part. I’m going to break them up at the start of season 4 and make it Marinette’s fault. This will give some extra guilt to Marinette and show her the cost of super heroics on personal lives, sending her further down her negative character arc.

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*Crowd raises their pitchforks*

The Chloe redemption arc, everyone wants to talk about the Chloe redemption arc. There’s just one problem. There never was one. Chloe has never been, nor has she ever acted like, a good person. All her ‘good’ moments are her really being a ‘nice’ person. She has only ever acted nice when she has something to gain from it. Once she has that, then it’s right back to normal. Closest she ever got, giving Sabrina a brooch and taking her back in Antibug. Even that’s only because Ladybug told her to and Chloe was at fault to begin with. She never does apologise or admit wrongdoing. I’m also not entirely unconvinced it wasn’t because it was more convenient for Chloe to have Sabrina by her side. This is not the behaviour of a good person. “Oh! But she’s a victim! Stop victim blaming you jerk!” Shut up and sit-down apologist! Injustice does not excuse injustice. There are plenty of bullies IRL who have tragic backstories and have still driven their victims to suicide. Does that make them any less responsible? No, it doesn’t. Chloe is a victim yes, but that does not mean anyone owes her anything. “Oh! But she has no self-awareness” Yes, she does. In Malediktator, we are explicitly shown she is self-aware, at least a little bit. It’s meant to make her sympathetic, but it actually makes her behaviour worse. She knows she’s hurting people, she just doesn’t care. In fact, she even shows she enjoys it quite a bit.

Secondly, Marinette is not in any way responsible for Chloe’s actions as herself, or as Miracle Queen. The only thing Ladybug did wrong by her since giving her a miraculous was put off telling her she couldn’t be Queen Bee anymore in Miraculer. Yes, there’s the other heroes in season four, but I’ll get to that. Marinette was downright accommodating to Chloe. She had no reason to believe Chloe could be a hero, yet she trusted her anyway. Even after Queen Wasp where Chloe committed what is easily the most downright villainous action of any character outside of Hawk Moth. Taking away her miraculous, except for in dire situations, is actually doing right by Chloe because it protects her and her loved ones. To hold Marinette responsible for anything Chloe did would in fact be, victim blaming. As for character growth, Chloe has none. She is exactly the same in seasons two and three as she is in season one. Her actions in Miracle Queen are completely consistent with who she is as a character. Ironically, she’s actually the most consistent any character has ever been in the show. What makes people think she was poorly written is the illusion of a redemption arc around her. All her redemptive actions only gave the appearance of improvement. There was never really any substance. The point where I disagree with Thomas Astruc is the idea that she is irredeemable. I’m going to leave it here for now because this has been done to death and I think I’ve got my key points across. Now, let’s talk about her sister.

Zoe frustrates me because she has so much promise and the writers squander her. Did she come out of nowhere? Yes. Did they shoehorn her in as a replacement for Queen Bee? Yes. Does she feel like a crappy OC because of it? Yes.

I’m not mad because of her or Chloe. I’m mad because she had so much to add to the entire Bourgeois family dynamic and nothing’s being done with it. Let’s fix that shall we.
In the rewrite, Zoe isn’t present at the start, but her existence is very much felt by the family from the beginning of the show. Why is Andre such a doormat? Because in this version, the one time he stood his ground against his tyrannical wife, she left him and their infant daughter and had an affair with another man. An act that has left a shadow on the whole family. Why does Chloe try and act like her mother? Because Zoe did it first. Everytime Chloe sees her mother in recent years, she always compares her to her half-sister.

“Why can’t you be more like Zoe? Zoe would never let people take advantage of her. Zoe is exceptional like her mother, not like you.”

This constant comparison is part of what makes Chloe act the way she does. Also, her mother leaving and abandoning her forever is a well-founded fear because it has happened before. See my point? Zoe has a lot to add simply by existing. As for Zoe herself, I like her personality and backstory and I think I’ll leave it intact. I have big ideas for what she can contribute to the story as a whole. Among them, the key to Chloe’s true redemption.

In Star Wars, George Lucas had an idea. And that idea was that only Luke or Leia could redeem Vader. The reasons are many, but they can be summarised as they represented a future without being tainted by his painful past. People he could love unconditionally and the last connection he had left to Padme. I like this idea and I’m stealing it for Chloe.

In my rewrite, Zoe is the Luke for Chloe’s Vader. She is the only person in the world who can stand up to her and still love her unconditionally. Because she’s her sister. Marinette can’t do it because Chloe looks down on her. Ladybug can’t do it because, like Obi-Wan and Anakin, Chloe blames her for her fall from grace. Zoe does have her work cut out for her though. Chloe’s spent her whole life resenting her, being compared to her and threatened by her. But then she meets her and everything changes. Here is someone who had her mother’s favour (something Chloe has always wanted) and walked away from it. Here’s my rewrite.

We first learn of Zoe’s existence in Style Queen when Audrey makes a comment lamenting about why can’t Chloe be like her sister. After that, only vague hints are dropped. Audrey likes her, Chloe hates her, she goes to boarding school in New York and her name is Zoe. That is all the audience gets until she makes her debut. Now a big problem with season four is pacing. The writers try and compensate for not moving the plot for three seasons by jamming all the progression into one. This means that, even with the rewrite, I don’t have much time for Zoe. That’s why these early hints are key. They let the audience stew in speculation and mystery so that, when she does appear, she doesn’t feel like she’s dropped out of nowhere and the audience actually wants to see her to resolve some mystery. It helps offset her lack of development and keeps her from coming out of nowhere.

At this stage the audience feels like we know her by proxy because we know the people around her and what they think of her. We're positioned to think of her as a villain like we do with Audrey. Then the opening of Sole Crusher happens and she is the complete opposite of what we expect. Then she starts acting like her mother and sister and, like the characters in the show, we wonder who the real Zoe is. Why does her mother swear by her when we know what Audrey considers exceptional? If she’s so nice, why is there only one nice thing written on her shoe? This gives her an air of intrigue and makes her feel like she has depth because we are already invested in her and have clues to her past. By the end of the episode, we learn her backstory and why she acts the way she does. With these final pieces, the audience has enough to put together a full picture of Zoe Lee. All with one episode and a little foreshadowing.

Now the next stage is simply altering the timeline. In canon, it’s very sudden. One minute Chloe’s the bee and then she isn’t and now she’s got a sister and now she’s a bee and what the hell is going on? Zoe gets the bee miraculous in her second episode and it’s right after the first. It’s very jarring and leaves the audience feeling whiplashed. Bad writers! Easy fix! Move Queen Banana down the timeline. Zoe gets some extra moments in other episodes for the audience to get used to her and in-universe Marinette has some time to bond with and trust her. But I’m making it not quite so clear cut. For those who’ve read my rewrite on the lore of the Miraculouses, then you know what’s coming. Zoe isn’t compatible with the bee miraculous. She can use it sure, but she doesn’t wield it to its full potential. It's part of what makes Marinette trust her with it in the first place. She knows she won't abuse it and it reassures her that Zoe is different from Chloe. The rewritten bee allows one to control the target’s mind and Zoe refuses to impose her will on others beyond immobilising them. It’s subtle, but it’s actually a hint about where I would take her character in the future. This is where we leave Zoe for now and come back to Chloe.

Chloe, meanwhile, isn’t having a good time. She’s lost the bee miraculous, she’s been forced to stay in Paris with people she hates and to top it all off, her no good half of a sister is coming. When Zoe arrives, she tries to play nice at her mother’s behest, but this is Chloe. Sole Crusher happens and Chloe exposes Zoe to her mother for associating with commoners. This leads to a fight where Zoe officially renounces her mother’s way of thinking and Chloe is immediately promoted to golden child. For a while, things are going swimmingly. She’s won her mother’s love and she’s bested her arch rival. Then Lila happens. Lila manipulates Chloe into upping her aggression towards the class and Marinette specifically. She also positions herself as Chloe’s new best friend in place of Sabrina.

Seeing this, Zoe steps in and finally gets Sabrina away from Chloe (this can be Sabrina’s hero origin story and an acceptable reuse of a Chlokuma). Chloe is hurt by this but accepts it because Sabrina was worthless anyway (keep telling yourself that kid) and she has Lila now. This brings us to the season four finale. Chloe doesn’t actually do much here, but the time gap between seasons is important for her. Because of the magnitude of the Princess Justice threat, an investigation brings to light the role Chloe played in her akumatisation. This quickly snowballs into exposing all the misdeeds of the entire Bourgeois family as all their corruption, harassment and bullying is revealed to the world. During this time, Chloe loses everything. Her father is arrested for corruption, she is expelled from school and her mother is too busy dealing with the fallout to pay her any mind. Or at least, that’s what Chloe thinks. Right up until she talks to Audrey and she learns the truth. Audrey blames her for everything that’s happening right now and declares her worthless trash. Audrey then leaves Paris to escape the media storm, leaving her behind. She’s all alone now. Her friends are gone, Lila is nowhere to be found, her family has abandoned her, the hotel is falling apart and she has nothing left. Nothing that is, except for her sister.

Yeah, this is kind of broaching season five territory, but I think it’s the natural way to go given what has happened in the context of the rewrite. Let me know your thoughts on the matter and if this Zoe is someone you would like to see more of. Also, does this seem like a better redemption arc or what? Come on! I can feel your anger. Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey to the dark side shall be complete.

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You know her, you hate her, you love to hate her, it’s time for *dramatic drumroll* Lila Rossi!

Easily the most infamous and controversial character Miraculous ever created, she is singlehandedly responsible for ruining almost every single side character in the show. If a Mary Sue is a character who warps the universe around them to bend in their favour, then Lila Rossi is their evil twin. Now I understand that the producers didn’t want to give children a blueprint for being a master manipulator, buuut given all the other excellent role models they’re making for kids, I think I’ll take some liberties. First off, all she does is lie. Secondly, she’s not even good at it. Thirdly, every time she’s around, every character becomes a brainless puppet of the plot and it shows. There was no Alya or class salt before Lila came around. There still wouldn’t be if she just didn’t make everything so stupid.

Now there are things that are canon which may not come across in their portrayal to the audience, but we can accept are true within the show. Things like Marinette having black hair instead of blue, Alya being a good journalist or Kitty Section being talented musicians. These are things that we can accept because they don’t really affect anything and/or most people don’t know how they work in real life well enough to really object to their portrayal. Lila Rossi breaks this rule because within the show, we are supposed to believe she is a master manipulator and deceiver. But the lies we see in the show are so unbelievably ridiculous that it destroys our suspension of disbelief. Max built a freaking AI, Alya is a renowned journalist and Marinette’s best friend, Rose knows Prince Ali personally and Juleka is Jagged Stone’s daughter. There is no reason for the audience to doubt that Lila would have been exposed within minutes of making her first appearance and every reason to expect it. Instead of making Lila seem like a dangerous adversary, it makes everyone else look like a chump. It’s the writer’s reliance on using the Worf effect all over again. Rather than doing the hard work and setting up a formidable adversary, they just say she is one and leave it at that. Again, it backfires on Lila because every time the writers say “oh my god, she’s so dangerous, what a great villain”, we snort and lose interest because we know she’s not.

So how do we stop abusing our characters and make Lila an actually threatening villain. She tells the truth. Ironic isn’t it. Hear me out. When Lila makes a bold claim like Ladybug saved her life or she’s met Prince Ali, in a technical sense it’s true. Once she’s established a foundation based in verifiable truth, she’s then free to embellish and make small exaggerations as she wishes. This where her charisma comes in. Everyone who sees through the embellishments is ok with it because they think it’s just her being a good storyteller and making the tales better with harmless exaggerations. Or, they are like Adrien was initially and believe she just wants to fit in. This way, when she does start to tell lies, no one has any reason to doubt them or assume any malice behind them. This makes her the worst kind of manipulator and the most dangerous kind of deceiver, instantly upping her threat level and making her a genuinely intimidating villain. Her ability to manipulate the truth and charm those around her also allows her to more effectively discredit her enemies. For example, people believe her over Marinette because Marinette is known to be flaky and have poor excuses, but Lila has established herself as trustworthy. It makes it so much more tragic and believable when people side with Lila over Marinette.

I’m also making it so that she is the original holder of the fox miraculous, which was lost in this rewrite.

Here’s an example in the form of her first appearance. Marinette gets to school and sees people congratulating Alya on the success of her latest scoop. When she investigates, Alya reveals the interview with Lila Rossi about how Ladybug saved her life. Only this time, it’s real. At first Marinette is unfazed, until Alya says how, after the interview, Lila told her about a conversation Lila had with Ladybug where she complimented her fashion style. A conversation Marinette knows didn’t happen but can’t reveal how she knows. This is what raises her suspicions of the new girl and motivates her to follow Lila when she sees her with Adrien. Now let me be clear, Marinette in this version is not a stalker, at least no more than any other teenage girl with a crush, but she does still get jealous. This combined with her distrust of Lila leads to her spying on them in the park. Also sidenote, Adrien doesn’t have the Grimoire in this version since Fu never lost it. What Marinette does overhear is Lila using Ladybug to try to get close to Adrien. Adrien, of course, isn’t falling for it but his gushing over his crush makes both Marinette and Lila think it’s working. This is when Lila reveals the fox miraculous and her legitimate heritage. Marinette thinks Lila is lying and mistakes Adrien’s reactions for infatuation. So, in a case of poor decisions made on impulse, Marinette transforms into Ladybug to call Lila a liar and ruin her chances with Adrien.

Up until now, the audience is on Marinette’s side. We know that Lila lied and we assume she’s doing it again. We may not agree with Marinette’s methods, but we can at least be thankful that she stopped Adrien from being manipulated. That is, until we find out that Lila really is the holder of the fox miraculous. She helps to stop an accident and makes her public debut as Volpina. Cat Noir is willing to give her a chance when she reveals herself, but Ladybug is still too caught up in her own feelings to accept her. This spirals until eventually, Volpina is akumatised. As the cunning and lethal Volpimancer, she has the power to make her illusions reality. As the first akumatised miraculous holder, she’s the most dangerous villain they’ve ever faced. Sensing that this is the closet to victory he’s ever been, Hawk Moth chooses to join the battle, marking his first in-person public appearance in canon and the first time the audience sees him in the flesh. Eventually, Ladybug realises that Volpimancer’s illusions are only real if they believe they real, rendering her powers harmless. She is quickly defeated and Hawk Moth withdraws but not before promising vengeance. Lila is deakumatised but Ladybug and Cat Noir take her miraculous to protect it from Hawk Moth. Because of Ladybug’s actions, Lila has lost her chance to become a superhero and a precious family heirloom. Fu scolds her for actions and Cat Noir deals with seeing flaws in his lady for the first time. The audience is firmly on Lila’s side until, we get a flashback montage from Lila’s perspective and some additional information. It reveals that Lila staged the accident she debuted in, was deliberately manipulating others for her own benefit and has sworn revenge on the heroes. The audience is left with a feeling of dread as they realise Ladybug was right to be wary and that no one knows about the monster lurking in their midst.

Let me know your thoughts on the rewrite and if it’s something you would have liked to see.

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Remember when everyone thought Su Han would be a game changer? Me neither. I’ve never seen a character in this show do a complete 180 as fast as he did. He went from a total badass who can take down superheroes to a snivelling coward in the span of one episode. Also, why is he even here. He does nothing outside of cause trouble when plot is needed and act like a douche. Total waste of time. Now to be fair to the show, they never gave themselves enough time to do anything with him with all the other plot threads and filler they were juggling. So, I’m going to blame them for that instead.

Having said that, I’m keeping him because he opens the door for a whole lot of worldbuilding. Connections to the guardians, new lore, history, that kind of thing. He’s a good concept to have, just make sure to use him properly.

Rewrite time. He is no longer an incompetent coward. That’s it. That’s the only revision to his character I need to make. He is still a douche because the characters need someone who can stand up to them and call them out on their nonsense. He still gets to be a terrible mentor because no one who’s been abducted and brainwashed as a child is going to have a clue about how to handle teenagers. Keeping these traits is actually very essential. If he was a nice guy, it would be all too easy for him to become a new mentor figure to replace Master Fu. This would take away the weight of Fu’s sacrifice. Rewritten Fu is a substantial loss for the heroes, not just as the guardian, but as a mentor. Without him, the heroes have no one to turn to for support or fall back on if they fail. Filling that void with Su Han offsets some of the loss. It would also divide the fanbase on the grounds of whether or not he’s a cheap replacement in addition to demeaning Fu’s sacrifice. Making Su Han into a completely different person from Master Fu makes him different by default. It keeps him from feeling like a hollow Fu copy and his personality keeps him from properly filling the mentor role. And it lets us put more pressure on the heroes to fuel angst without giving them a healthy support system.

In the rewrite, he’s essentially going to be the embodiment of all the flaws the order had. Arrogant, dogmatic and stubborn, he very much believes in the rules of the order and their infallibility. He is a direct foil to revised Fu who was flexible, understanding and adaptable. His character arc is going to be about learning how to accept change. Any filler at the start of episodes can be cut to show him resuming Marinette and Adrien’s training where Fu left off. He is also actively hunting the butterfly miraculous, but he is having even less success than Fu did since he’s completely out of his element in the modern world. This serves the dual purpose of cutting down filler and making it look like he’s doing something and isn’t a waste of time.

His role in season four is minor, he’s mostly just restricted to the background and his appearances are limited. To compensate, I’m moving Furious Fu back in the timeline so he doesn’t seem as inactive for so long. After that, he doesn’t make any major appearances until the finale. Up until this point, his constant criticism and ultimatum to Marinette have only served to make her afraid to show weakness to him, further adding to her spiralling mental state. When Marinette finally does break and is forced to give up the miracle box, he takes over and becomes the guardian for season five. This sets him up to have a much greater role to play in the story and get a greater focus on his character. Now to talk about his debut.

His debut episode is actually really good. We get a sense of what his character is like and the lengths he will go to achieve his goals. There are a few changes necessary though. For one, I’m removing the magic box compasses since my guardian power rules allow them to sense the Miracle Box through a psychic bond. I also have to remove Su Han’s cowardice, otherwise the audience won’t be able to take him seriously when he criticises the heroes. To this end, the rewrite is pretty much going to be the original episode restructured around these changes.

Rather than having magic compasses, Su Han is instead doing some good old fashioned detective work tracking down the last known guardian of the Miracle Box, Wang Fu. When he does find him, he approaches him and asks Fu about the Miraculous. During this interaction, we learn that Su Han was the original guardian of the Celestial Miracle Box and he is actually the one who gave it to Fu to protect when the temple was destroyed. Given this fact and that revised Fu did complete his training, Su Han is initially much more respectful of the man. Pleasantries subside however, as Su begins to chastise Fu for having not yet recovered the Butterfly Miraculous and leaving the Miracle Box unattended.

When Fu expresses confusion, references a boating accident and asks who he is, Su Han realises he has renounced the box and his memories. Frustrated and stifled by circumstance, Su is about to leave when Marianne arrives and asks if he is an old acquaintance of Fu’s. Things happen, Marianne deduces Su is a guardian and he figures out that she knows who Fu’s successor is. He the knowledge that an outsider knows of the miraculous angers him and he begins to harass her for the whereabouts of the new guardian. Marianne tells him that Ladybug is the new guardian, causing Su to become even more enraged that a guardian is wearing a miraculous. Fu tries to get him to back off, but Su Han sees the heroes patrolling and leaves to intercept them.

Things proceed much as in canon. Su is infuriated that the holders are children, Ladybug is breaking the rules and the guardian is wearing a miraculous. He tries to take their miraculous, they fight, Su Han almost gets akumatised but fends it off and the akuma goes after Master Fu instead. The episode pretty much proceeds unchanged except Su Han actually fights Furious Fu and loses instead of hiding and cowering. It is seeing the heroes succeed where he failed that convinces him to give them a chance. However, he still delivers his ultimatum to Ladybug. One mistake and he will take the Miracle box.

Hopefully, with this rewrite, we can have our cake and eat it too. Su Han is still a douche, but he doesn’t seem like an incompetent fool and he can serve as the vehicle for introducing new concepts around the miraculouses. From a narrative perspective, it keeps him from interfering too much with the story whilst also keeping him from being, or feeling like, filler. It also doesn’t diminish the loss of Master Fu. Because of who Su Han is as a character, he doesn’t suit the mentor archetype. His hubris, stubbornness and lack of empathy keep him from trying to help the kids grow rather than admonishing them. This prevents him from being a replacement for Fu and ensures that his sacrifice isn’t diminished. Additionally, Su Han’s ultimatum to Marinette adds to the stakes and lays yet another stone in the path to her downfall.

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The most powerful sentimonster to ever exist. You know, if that’s the case, Gabriel is definitely the greatest threat the universe has ever seen from Strike Back alone.

Master Fu’s backstory sucks. It’s supposed to make him sympathetic but instead it makes him, and the entire order of the guardians, look like incompetent chumps. Which they are but that’s beside the point. My biggest problem is that the greatest threat produced by one of the strongest miraculous in existence is an overgrown frog. Ribbity! There is no saving this, I’m rewriting the whole thing.

Remember how in Origins Master Fu said he chose the wrong holder once and then never brought it up again? Well I’m bringing it up again. I’m making it so that he didn’t create the sentimonster that destroyed the order, I’m making it so that he chose the villain who destroyed the order. For starters, I’m keeping Fu being selected as a guardian from a young age, but this time, he passed the tests and became a full-fledged guardian in adulthood. His final test before inheriting the Chinese miracle box is to choose a new holder for the butterfly miraculous. Fu searches far and wide and eventually discovers the perfect choice. A noble man who’s strong, capable, fearless, compassionate and all that good stuff. The perfect hero and the guardians agree. Fu becomes a guardian and the new hero becomes a butterfly.

Here’s where I add some things. In both the past and the present in canon, the guardians choose who gets a miraculous. In this era of the rewrite, that is still true, but in the present the kwamis make the choice and here is why. Nooroo was wary of his new holder but Fu didn’t listen. How could the perfect hero have darkness in his heart? Sadly, Nooroo was right. The new hero believes he’s too weak and must become stronger to save more people. This leads to him corrupting the butterfly miraculous in an effort to increase its power, turning it into the moth miraculous. This eventually drives him mad, leading him to steal other miraculouses and murder their holders, among them the peacock.

This culminates in the villain leading a superpowered, sentimonster army to attack the guardian’s temple and an all out battle between the two forces. The villain uses the peacock to create a sentimonster born from his hunger for power. It has the ability to absorb anything to increase its strength and power. Material, energy and even the powers used against it. It is the unholy fusion of Feast and Strike Back and nothing the order has can stop it. Every blow only feeds it energy, every weapon only adds to its mass and every power only increases its own.

Everything and everyone is destroyed, except for Fu who Su Han instructed to flee with the last of the miraculous and the grimoire. Unfortunately, the villain catches up to him. Overwhelmed by his enemy, Fu lies defeated on the ground with the box split open and the miraculouses scattered around him. The turtle lands on him and Wayzz emerges from the bracelet. Realising what is happening, Wayzz tells Fu that he has a compatible spirit and must don the turtle if he is to survive. Fu is reluctant, the order forbade their own from wearing the jewels. But Wayzz is able to reason that if he doesn’t break the rules now, those they serve to protect are doomed anyway. Breaking his oath to protect the world and fulfill his sacred duty, Fu becomes Jade Turtle for the first time and battles the supervillain. The enemy is strong but there is a reason why Guardians are prohibited from wearing a miraculous, they would be too powerful. Fu’s skill and willpower allow him to match the rogue holder in an epic duel. Eventually, the peacock is broken, causing the villain’s defeat and the sentimonster to be petrified. Fu manages to recover some of the lost miraculous and seal away the sentimonster, but the villain escapes with the corrupted butterfly and broken peacock. He eventually dies from his wounds, but Fu never is able to track him down again.

It is this event that is the pivotal moment in the show. Fu’s paranoia around the fate of his former chosen leads him to go underground, eventually leading him to meet and fall in love with the great, great grandmother of Marinette. They live a happy life, but due to his extended lifespan, Fu naturally outlives it. Confident that his enemy is no longer a threat and his descendants will be ok, he begins his mission to track down and recover the jewels lost to time and the destruction of the order. He stays unknown for the most part, but he does still check up on his family from time to time, which is why he’s in Paris when the show begins.

You may have noticed some things here. For one, Fu never loses the grimoire. This because it makes no sense for Gabriel to have it at the start of the show and it makes no difference to the story if Fu had it all along. For those wondering, yes it was Fu trusting Wayzz that inspired him to trust the kwamis with selecting their holders. He still chooses which ones to activate and he has to approve the candidates, but the kwamis have more choice than they did under the order. For those paying attention at the end there, yes there are other miraculous in the world. Not all of them were present at the temple when it was destroyed. Many holders had gone underground to escape being hunted or were too inexperienced to help out. With the guardians wiped out, these miraculous would be handed down to the holders’ descendants, given to a trusted confidante or lost to time. An idea I had was to make the rabbit and fox miraculous two such jewels. I wrote this story this way because it perfectly sets up the events of the show and still gives Fu his angsty backstory. It also gives him a reason to trust in the kwamis and Marinette for my rewrite since he knows the kwamis have good judgement and he's been watching over his descendant for a while now. It also opens the door for a lost miraculous sub-plot that I think would work well and incorporated into the Lila chapter.

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So, on paper, I actually have very little against Cat Blanc. It’s a solid episode and one of the best in the series. Its only problem is that the time travel shenanigans make no sense. By all logical reasoning, Cat Blanc should be the natural timeline, not an anomaly. However, this issue, while problematic, doesn’t compromise the integrity of the episode. What does do that is its effect on the wider narrative. There isn’t any or at least not much. Like Wishmaker, Ephemeral or Oblivio, Cat Blanc is an episode that should have massive repercussions to the story but are ultimately treated as filler. The best they get is to appear as fanservice.

Now in the fandom, a lot of people (myself included) believe that Marinette is traumatised by the events of this episode and that it is the main reason why she is pushing Cat Noir away. The problem is that this is never explicitly stated in the show. The best we get is the standard “our identities must remain secret”. That sentence has a lot of interpretations beyond “our love destroyed the world so I must never learn who you are”. If it is referring to Cat Blanc, then it is an insultingly reductionist way to refer to the end of the world. If not, then the episode has no larger impact at all and Marinette’s actions are just her stubbornly clinging to Fu’s guardian malpractice.

This brings us to our first change. Marinette now pushes away Cat Noir and leans more on Alya explicitly because of Cat Blanc. Now, because she has already been falling for Cat Noir at this point, it is a lot more believable for Marinette that learning Cat Noir’s identity will finally push her over the edge into love. And since “our love destroyed the world”, she can’t let that happen. This is why she pushes him away. But since she nearly gets overwhelmed without him, she has to lean on Alya. It’s also important that she has trauma symptoms that the audience can see. Marinette is the main protagonist and as such, the audience needs to be able to know what’s going through her head. We need to see her perspective otherwise she isn’t a protagonist, she’s just a character we’re watching on a screen. If trauma is going to affect her decisions, then the audience needs to see the symptoms so we know that that is what is happening. This could be nightmares, reacting to the colour white and an inability to tell anyone about her experience, even Alya. This makes her seem a lot more sympathetic to the audience, makes her decisions more understandable and creates drama in a natural way instead of forcing it.

Now eagle-eyed readers might remember that I said my revised miraculous rules apply here. And for those who’ve read it, they would know that time travel doesn’t exist without tearing about space and time. This means Bunnix can’t fulfill her role in the plot and the episode can’t happen. Fortunately, I have an out. Traveling to the past may instantly destroy time, but the future is a little more robust. Since it’s more dynamic rather than fixed, future time can take a little more of a beating before it collapses. There are also many alternate futures that can occur. Keep this in mind because it’s going to be very important later on.

The next change has to do with the plot of the episode. I took inspiration for this from early reboot era Doctor Who. For those who don’t know, the early seasons would often leave breadcrumbs throughout the episodes that would foreshadow the conclusion of the season. The best instance is easily Matt Smith’s first season (fight me, I will die on this hill). From day one, the audience is introduced to the cracks in time, but they aren’t treated as significant enough for us to worry about them. Until they keep coming. First as teasers at the end of episodes, then as major plot points slowly building their mystery. Finally, it all comes together in an epic season finale that ties everything together. But what really stuck out to me was just how unsettling the moment that first crack appeared was. A single, insignificant moment that became terrifying just from the proper building of tension. I believe Cat Blanc is an ideal episode to introduce this kind of tension building.
No longer is Cat Blanc a ‘What if?’ filler arc. Now, it is a horror mystery that spans seasons. The episode starts with our heroes battling the akuma of the week. The villain, who shall henceforth be known as Propheteer (pun intended), has the power to send people to their darkest future. Unlike going to the past, going to the future is less destructive to the timeline, but the more he uses his powers, the more likely it is that time will break. Things are getting tense until Ladybug gets struck by the akuma’s power and everything turns white.

The next seen opens with Ladybug waking, and the world she finds is a nightmare. All around her, Paris is in ruins with not a hint of life to be found. She looks to the sky and sees the shattered moon looming overhead. Scared and confused, Ladybug begins to travel the city in search of answers. What she finds only raises more questions. Why is the city flooded? Where is everyone? What happened? Eventually, she manages to come across an old newspaper and sees the date, early next year. Marinette is smart enough to figure out what’s going on and the realisation that this is a possible future turns her blood to ice. Desperate, she pulls out her yoyo in hopes of contacting her partner. If anyone is still alive, he is. She gets her answer.

A white figure drops down behind her. Shivers run down her spine and goosebumps cover her skin. She gazes into the uncanny blue eyes of the partner she knows is akumatised. Things proceed as in canon; Ladybug asks Cat what happened and tries to help him when he suddenly attacks and demands her miraculous. Their fight is fierce but Cat Blanc soon overpowers the heroine, forcing her to flee. Enraged, Cat Blanc taunts her by calling out her real name to the shock of her and the audience. Licking her wounds, Ladybug flees to the one place she feels safest, home.

The sight of her family’s bakery still standing fills her with hope, only for it to be crushed when she finds it empty and abandoned. The ground floor is flooded but upstairs is still dry enough for her to stop and rest. Finally making it to her room, she begins to investigate to find out what happened that could have led to this. That’s where she finds the pictures. Pictures of her and Adrien dating, pictures of her and Cat Noir, kissing. Her confusion is intensified as vivid images begin to flash through mind. As she begins to recall the moments the pictures were taken, she realises what they are, memories. She doesn’t belong here and the timeline is trying to compensate by syncing her with it. Continuing to walk around the bakery, she discovers two piles of ash sitting in the living room. It’s obvious they were destroyed by Blanc’s enhanced cataclysm, but she has no idea what they might have been.

Ladybug’s thoughts are interrupted as Cat Blanc catches her from behind and clasps his hand over her mouth. His gentle whispers meant to reassure her only drive her to fight harder. Calling on her power, she manages to escape his grasp and flee the bakery with Blanc in pursuit. A running retreat begins as Ladybug desperately tries to escape his clutches. She does manage to win a few victories, but it quickly becomes clear that the only reason she is still alive is because he doesn’t want to hurt her. Throughout the battle, she asks Blanc for information. He’s not very forthcoming, but he does reveal that they were in love and dating and that Hawk Moth discovered the truth. Suddenly, she remembers dating Adrien, of Gabriel forcing them to break up and of Cat Noir saving her from an akuma. More visions come of her embracing Cat Noir and the romance they shared. As they fight, Ladybug notices that the synchronisation is speeding up. More memories are forming and even her body is starting to be affected. That’s when she falls off the Eiffel tower.

Plunging into the water, Ladybug tries to swim away when something catches her eye. Swimming towards it, she discovers the petrified remains of Hawk Moth and herself. The final memory comes. Of Cat Noir succumbing to the akuma while she stood helpless and terrified, of Hawk Moth laughing and of everything turning white. Placing her hand on her own face, causes it to fall apart at the touch. Seeing her statue crumble makes her realise what the ash piles in her home were, her parents. Emotions overwhelm her, causing her to freeze up underwater. It isn’t until in her fingers start to tingle that she’s brought back to reality. She checks her hand and discovers her fingertips turning grey. She’s living on borrowed time and it’s almost up. The panic begins to consume her and she slowly begins to drown. As her consciousness fades, a white figure pulls her from the water.

When she comes to, Cat Blanc is melting down. Manic mumblings of “I’m sorry, It wasn’t my fault, I didn’t mean to” are all he can say as he clutches his head in pain. It’s the moment Ladybug realises her partner is still in there. She asks to help him, to let her save him, to tell her what went wrong so she can prevent it. That’s when Cat Blanc finally calms down. For a brief moment, his eyes flash green. Getting to his feet, he tells her what to do. The akuma is in his miraculous and if it’s destroyed, then there is no way to repair all the damage. Fighting the echo of Hawk Moth’s last command and his own insanity, he uses his power to tear a hole in the fabric of spacetime and sends Ladybug back to the present, telling her to fix everything and that he believes in her.

The jump in time is jarring and the white portal spits out Ladybug in her proper era. As she gets up, she realises that night has fallen and she briefly panics that she is lost in time. Panic that only abates when Cat Noir arrives and calms her down. Telling her she has been gone for hours, Ladybug realises that for as long as she was in the future, she was gone in the present. She asks about Propheteer and Noir reveals that he has captured the akuma. Joining hands, they purify it and use the miraculous cure to undo the damage it did, including the wounds Ladybug suffered.

Cat Noir asks her about her ordeal and through broken sobs, all she can manage is to thank him for saving her. That even in the future, he is still looking out for her as the credits start to roll.
Important recap, Marinette does not know Cat Noir is Adrien or that Gabriel is Hawk Moth. All she knows for sure is that she dated Adrien which led to her dating Cat Noir, her partner said their love destroyed the world, Hawk Moth found out about them and her partner knew her name. We the audience can make a few more observations since we know who both of them are but, as to the exact chain of events that led to it, we are as much in the dark as she is.

This is where things get interesting. In my new timeline, Cat Blanc takes place right before the finale. The fallout is what causes her to slip, not Adrigami. Marinette becomes the guardian and Gabe becomes Shadow Moth. Information that either wasn’t available or contradicts what is presented in Cat Blanc. This leads the audience to believe that the danger has been avoided and that Marinette’s making a huge mistake by pushing people away. But then small things start popping up. Photos from Cat Blanc start getting taken, the love between Ladynoir drives them to hurt eachother, Adrien starts getting closer to Marinette, little things that are just significant enough to make the audience go “Oh shoot! Are they screwed?”. Then my version of the season four finale happens, Marinette renounces the guardianship and Cat Noir isn’t looking too good. Then during season five, Nathalie becomes Mayura again, Gabe goes back to being plain old Hawk Moth and suddenly, all the pieces are in position for Cat Blanc to occur.

The episode goes from being just another filler episode to the most pivotal and terrifying event in the series and its ghost continues to haunt everything right up until the end of the Gabriel Agreste arc.

As always, what do you guys think? Love it? Hate it? Couldn’t care less? Do you prefer the original? Do you like where this story is going? Let me know your feedback. Your comments sustain me.

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Two problems with Kuro Neko:

First, the inciting incident sucks. Cat Noir is being a jerk and deserves every bad thing he gets.

Second, it is way, way, waaaaaaay too short.

Easy fixes! First off, the inciting incident is now the culmination of all the problems that have been building up between Ladybug and Cat Noir. It’s the end of a battle, he offers to help, she refuses, he confronts her about keeping things from him and she refuses to explain herself. This boils over into a major fight where Cat brings up Rena Furtive (who he has discovered by this point) and Scarabella knowing who she is. In Ladybug’s mind, she can’t explain herself because then she’d have to tell him about Cat Blanc and she thinks it would destroy him. In Cat Noir’s mind, she doesn’t trust him anymore and that it’s a reflection on him and he’s not good enough for it. Love is just a background factor at this point.

The fight climaxes when Cat Noir declares “If you don’t trust me anymore, then maybe you should find someone else to be your partner!”. Ladybug swings off in a huff, saying she has a job to do and Cat tells her to grab his miraculous when she’s done. Things proceed as in canon. Everybody’s sad.

The big difference is now Marinette is actually devastated about losing Cat Noir. Enough to almost be akumatised were it not for Alya’s intervention. Otherwise, everything’s normal and Plagg enacts his scheme. He convinces Adrien to try again with a fresh start. However, this time he is reluctant and only agrees when the sentimonster shows up because the black cat is needed. He becomes Cat Walker, but he has no intention of sticking around once the battle’s over (Cat Walker behaves exactly as in canon. He doesn’t want Ladybug to recognise him, so he acts the opposite).
That changes when he sees the state Ladybug is in. During the fight, it isn’t Cat Walker who’s on her mind, it’s Cat Noir. Adrien helps her pull herself together and they win the battle.

In the aftermath, the pair have a heart to heart where Ladybug thanks him for helping her and apologises for being distracted by Cat Noir. Adrien asks her why she did what she did if she cared about Cat Noir. Ladybug is hesitant because she doesn’t think she can trust him and doesn’t know who he is. This is when he takes a leap of faith. He says to her “You can always count on me, you already have” and reveals himself as Adrien, aka former superhero Aspik (not Cat Noir, he doesn’t want her to clam up). Seeing her first love in front of her, Marinette knows she can trust him and does something she never has before, open up. She reveals to Adrien that she is in love with Cat Noir and she tells him the truth about Cat Blanc and her distancing herself from her partner.

Adrien is shaken but covers it up by saying he is afraid he could become like Cat Blanc. Ladybug assures him she won’t let that happen and that she won’t lose another partner. Adrien, moved by this, decides to stay.

Now, it’s time for the second revision. Cat Walker sticks around for multiple episodes. He’s going to stay right until the season finale where he will reveal who he really is. Like where this is going? Let me know and stay tuned.

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“Happy 100 episodes everybody! To mark this special occasion, watch this lump of mediocrity.”

That right there is my main problem with Ephemeral, it’s mediocre. If it was just another episode, I wouldn’t even bother with it. But, given that it’s meant to be a special event, I will give it special attention.

So right off the bat, the opening is solid. The conflict is believable, Moolak is a great villain, it finally makes use of Su Han and honestly, Adrien’s civilian duties vs superhero duties should really have been addressed by now. Then we hit the first problem. The argument between Su Han and Marinette is very understandable until Su Han proclaims, “I don’t care”. This is where things go off the rails. A better response would be, “If you believe either of you are at serious risk of being akumatised, then you shouldn’t have the miraculous or the box.” It’s logical, it’s justified and it puts the pressure on because he’s right. Once Marinette becomes the guardian, it is far more important for her to know who her charges are then to worry about the secret identities. The proof is right there at the start of the episode.

Hope is restored when Marinette suggests Su Han learn Cat Noir’s identity in her stead. This is actually a fair compromise, and possibly an even better solution then her knowing. It would mean that, if Marinette is akumatised, Hawk Moth still can’t make the wish. The problem is how they go about it. What follows is the scummiest abuse of trust in the entire series.

Marinette outright intends to manipulate her partner’s feelings and abuse his trust on the basis that she doesn’t think he would accept the solution. What makes this even better? The only thing that makes her change her mind is finding out who he is. Not a well-reasoned argument, not being called out a realising what she’s doing is wrong, but finding out she finally has a chance with Adrien. This right here validates all the trust issues Cat Noir has had. Ladybug never once thought to simply ask him about the issue directly concerning him. She never seriously considered him romantically until now and she was willingly lying to him to achieve her goal. She didn’t care about Cat Noir, only the billboard. Don’t worry, it gets worse.

Then there is Luka. In this episode, Luka fully solidifies that he is not, in fact, a good friend and is most likely a psychopath. He knows! He knows better than anyone exactly how Adrien is going to react to this. An already abused child with trust issues getting gaslit by the women he loves is not something Luka could possibly think could end well. Yet he is complicit. He doesn’t tell Ladybug that he already knows and can avoid the whole issue (that would make Wishmaker mean something and we can’t have that). Instead, he goes along with it so he doesn’t cause himself any trouble. Also, wouldn’t Luka knowing still compromise Cat Noir’s identity and invalidate the rules she’s so obsessed with?

But, putting aside this absolutely disgusting behaviour for a moment, I will say that I like how they handled the aftermath of the reveal. Marinette questioning her feelings and her understanding about who her partner and love interest are, is completely believable for her based on how she acts in the show. She is completely in character here and I love the show for it. She never had a clue that Cat Noir was Adrien and the subsequent existential crisis gives me faith that she isn’t irredeemably obsessed with Adrien. If she had simply jumped him then and there, well, there would go my hopes.

The rest of the episode from here on out is fine. It’s a montage, what do you want from it? Then Adrien becomes akumatised into one of the dumbest Akumas ever. Come on! He can accelerate time but only if he touches his opponent? If they weren’t on timers he’d be completely useless in the fight. And he can’t even fight back against the akuma? I get that there are explanations for this, but we never get any. The episode just doesn’t have enough time to justify itself. Also, every akuma shown to this point has either been related to the person or their situation. Ephemeral breaks that theme. The only justification I’ve heard and believe is that he just wanted it over with as quickly as possible. Morbid, but still way too weak to be the akumatised version of one of the main characters. I can understand now why Gabe never akumatised him before if this was the result. I wouldn’t either.

Anyway, world ends, second chance, blah, blah, blah, time breaks! And can I just ask, what was the point of resetting the satellite? You already have the correct time, just miraculous ladybug and badda bing, badda boom problem solved!

Overall, this episode isn’t the worst, but it isn’t the best either. It’s another fake out reveal, has more things that don’t make sense and it adds to the pile of toxicity that is Marinette and Adrien’s relationship. All in all, completely unworthy of being a 100th episode celebration.

New plan! Scrap everything! Just being another fake out is reason enough for me to scrap the whole plot. What am I replacing it with? The emphasis is now on the whole hero squad teaming up for the first time and being awesome (Infinity War style). My goal is for this episode is just to be dumb fun with the gang. But, to do that, we need a worthy villain.
So, I’m keeping the name and time theme of Ephemeral, but making them a lot stronger. Now, Ephemeral is Timebreaker, Timetagger and the revised Rabbit on steroids. They can steal time from the universe around them in order to become stronger and they can do all the time shenanigans you can think of. Time Stop, Time Warp, Time Skip, Rewind and even time travel as an endgame final ability unlock. Basically, if it’s manipulating time, Ephemeral can do it. What we have now is the strongest akuma ever made (with the possible exception of Cat Blanc). A villain strong enough to warrant the whole team showing up.

And so, the stage is set, the characters are in position. Lights! Camera! Action!

The episode opens with the person who will become our villain having a really bad day. Maybe they lost a family member, their SO dumped them, they missed a deadline, maybe all at once. Doesn’t matter. What does matter is they never had enough time and they’re miserable enough for Shadow Moth to create his strongest villain yet. Releasing an akuma and an amok (Gabe can use the Peacock without consequence at this stage, let him), Shadow Moth successfully evilises our down on their luck friend and creates Ephemeral and their sentimonster Chronomatrix. Chronomatrix immediately gets to work siphoning all the time in the world, which turns out to be very problematic for everyone. Our dynamic duo shows up, they fight and they get wiped. They barely escape with their lives. Only the intervention of Rena Furtive saves them (she needs something to do). There’s no question that they need help. So the recruiting drive begins.

By this point, every miraculous in the box has a holder, but only the ones from this season and the rabbit are given out. Bunnix can go toe to toe with Ephemeral, but they’re getting stronger. With the help of the others, she manages to back the villain into a corner, leading them to call on some allies of their own. Using their power, they reach across time and space to call on various akumatised villains (maybe all of them? IDK) and in the process, breaking time canon episode style. Forced to retreat once again, our team calls out for more reinforcements.

Now so far in this season four rewrite, none of the holders who were compromised in season three have made an appearance (that would be quite hypocritical and foolish of Marinette wouldn’t it?). This and the finale are the only exceptions. However, there is another way. Hypothetically, if time is broken, then couldn’t the heroes cross over along with the villains? Then we could have Rena Rouge and Rena Furtive flirting with Carapace. Wouldn’t that be a fun time. But the real kicker? Since this takes place after Kuro Neko and I’ve revised it to keep Cat Walker, Cat Noir can come through to. Imagine the drama!

With no other options, all of the benched heroes get called in and our roster is complete. The team assembles and battle commences. Everything’s crazy, action is awesome, insert epic fight scene here. Against all odds, our heroes finally manage to defeat Ephemeral, cast the cure and save the day. The time displaced persons are returned home with their memories wiped and all is right with the world.

What do you think guys? Epic enough concept to be worthy of the 100th episode special? Or is it hot garbage that needs to be cataclysmed? Maybe you even had something else in mind you can share?

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Confession time. I like season four and I think it takes a lot of steps in the right direction. Why I think a lot of people hate it is precisely because it puts the story front and centre for once. In earlier seasons, the god-awful writing was in the background where people didn’t notice it. Each episode was self-contained and reset the status quo at the end of each episode. But now that season four has actual plot with overarching narratives, it’s right there in the foreground where everyone can smell it. Don’t believe me, I dare you to go back and watch season one and tell me that was good plot writing. The big problem that season four had is that it constantly teased shaking things up in big ways, but the writers wussed out of making any meaningful changes and screwed up some excellent plot lines.

Then there’s the finale. Now I like the finale for the most part, I think it’s the best one after season two, but I can’t help but feel like it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gabe getting his hands on all the miraculous should have been an endgame type of thing rather than setup for the next season. Why? Because I cannot accept the story stretching out that long, especially if they get their hands on just one of the stolen miraculous.

“Hello Fluff. Who’s Monarch?”

“I’m sorry guardian, I can’t reveal identities.”

“I’m the guardian and I override the spell.”

“Oh, it’s Gabriel Agreste.”

My second point. It makes Gabriel way too strong for far too long. Over the short term it’s ok. The audience goes “Oh my god! However will they win?”, the heroes find a way and the conflict is resolved. That’s why it’s done at the climax of a story. Drag it out over a whole season though, and it’s just going to be more of the same. The heroes beating Gabe black and blue, just with shinier akumas. It makes Gabriel look like even less of a threat and the tension evaporates because the audience can see that even stronger than ever, he can’t win. There is no way the show can stretch the story like this without making it seem dragged out for no reason.

That being said, I think it was an excellent way to set up Felix as an antagonist to possibly replace Gabriel. It would serve as a great way to end one arc whilst setting up the next one simultaneously.

With season five coming out now, it seems I’m about to find out if I’m right or not. Until then, here is my season four rewrite outline.

Simpleman, Mr Pigeon 72 and Optigami are cut entirely, Psychomedian replaces Stormy Weather 2 in season three, Penalteam becomes an original akuma instead of another Chloe tantrum and it’s also entirely devoted to Marc’s origin, Lukanette is cut out of Truth and Lies is cut completely since Lukanette and Adrigami never sailed, the Marinette subplot in Gabriel Agreste is replaced with a villain origin story, Wishmaker becomes more Adrien focused and Luka never finds out anyone’s identities (the show hasn’t done anything with that yet and I doubt they ever will at this point), Ephemeral becomes the big superhero team up Penalteam was supposed to be, rather than another fake-out reveal, Dearest Family loses the magical charm subplot since Mr Pigeon 72 never happened and becomes more focused on the Dupain-Cheng family and Qilin becomes actually good.

*catches breath*

The problem with a lot of season four was pacing. Far too many overarching plot points had to be compressed for time to make up for the lack of anything substantial being done in the previous three seasons. Also, too many episodes were just filler like Simpleman while others like Penalteam were way too overstuffed. Hopefully, these revisions will improve the situation. But I’m not done yet, because I’m doing the other overarching plot threads as well. Also, none of the compromised heroes make a return except for Alya as Rena Furtive (except for Ephemeral maybe? A big superhero team up with the whole gang would be awesome for the 100th episode).

To start us off, Marinette’s resolution to give up on love and focus on being the guardian and Ladybug sticks. This time it’s prompted by the events of Cat Blanc, Miracle Queen and her own realisations. Lies will probably be replaced by Ladybug turning Cat Noir down for good and him finally accepting it. Gang of Secrets still happens and Marinette still breaks down and reveals to Alya. This kicks off the Alya arc and feeds into Cat Noir’s arc. Glaciator 2 takes place much earlier and focuses on Ladynoir’s trust issues rather than romantic, with Cat Noir mad about being left in the dark during Sentibubbler, which is also moved forward. Marichat plot soon follows with Cat Noir learning about Marinette’s crush on ‘Buttercup’ and vowing to help her despite Marinette having already given up hope on them being together. Rocketear happens when Nino sees and misunderstands Cat Noir visiting Alya to ask her about Buttercup. Alya takes pity on Cat Noir and reveals Adrien Agreste is Buttercup, prompting Adrien to re-evaluate his entire life and feelings. Nino doesn’t spill the beans on their identities, instead at the end of the episode, Cat Noir discovers Rena Furtive and follows her thinking she’s an akuma. He follows her to Nino where he learns they are Carapace and Rena Rouge and that Alya is serving as Ladybug’s spy. This is when Hack-San now happens.

This time, Cat Noir sees Marinette stop Robostus and is impressed by her. He is still saddened by Ladybug’s actions though, prompting Scarabella to show him the list Ladybug sent her. It’s enough to show Cat Noir she cares, but not to repair the damage. Enter Kuro Neko, everything comes to a head when Cat Noir confronts Ladybug with what he knows. Ladybug remains adamant in keeping secrets and refuses to explain why. Infuriated, Cat Noir finally proclaims that if she doesn’t trust him, then he shouldn’t be her partner and renounces his miraculous. Marinette, heartbroken, falls for Plagg’s trick when he takes the ring back to Adrien and Cat Walker emerges. But this time, he sticks around. Cat Walker reveals he’s Adrien and Marinette reveals the truth about Cat Blanc, her feelings for Cat Noir and why she froze him out.

Other episodes happen with Cat Walker in place of Cat Noir. Marinette slowly grows closer with Adrien and her feelings for him begin to grow strong again. This makes her conflicted because she’s still heartbroken over Noir and she’s still traumatised by Blanc. She remembers that she dated Adrien in the alternate future and it contributed to the end of the world. This makes her emotions increasingly unstable.

Things proceed as per canon and rewrites until the finale where Lila finally makes her move. Despite having Chloe up her bullying of Marinette and continuing to undermine her reputation. Marinette is still staying strong. So Lila tries a change of tactics. Noticing Alya’s newfound hostility to her and renewed dedication to Marinette, Lila gets her expelled. When Marinette confronts Lila about it, she threatens to hurt Adrien next and enrages Marinette.

Finally, Princess Justice is born. Adrien, who has been increasingly falling for Marinette, tries to help but is powerless to stop it. Tikki takes the earrings to Alya and Scarabella makes her return. She then begins handing out the miraculouses to their holders, including the compromised ones, because she knows they’ll need the help. Cat Walker confronts her about it and asks where Ladybug is. Scarabella breaks down and tells Cat Walker that Ladybug is the Akuma. Adrien puts two and two together and figures out who Scarabella is by extension.

Meanwhile, Princess Justice is raising an army and cutting a swath through Paris. She has already caught and outed Lila and no attempt to stop her has succeeded. Eventually, the entire hero team emerges and epic battle ensues. The heroes get nowhere, Viperion can’t see a way out and defeat seems inevitable. This prompts Adrien to try his final gambit, the power of love (always so strong). First, he declares his love for both Marinette and Ladybug. His declaration, verified as the truth by Princess Justice’s powers, gets through to Marinette just enough to shake Shadow Moth’s control. Needing an extra push, Cat Walker transforms into Cat Noir and forgives Marinette for hiding the truth from him. Marinette is able to renounce the akuma, Scarabella purifies it, the Miraculous Cure is used and everything is fixed. However, Su Han appears and informs Marinette she’s been compromised and has to give up the Miracle Box. Emotions are felt, kisses are had and declarations of love are proclaimed. Marinette asks Adrien to become the new guardian but he refuses so long as the cost is her. Su Han takes the box instead and Marinette relinquishes her memories. Cat Noir tearfully takes Marinette home to her parents. The season ends with Cat Noir on a rooftop, all alone without his lady.

Couple of notes. Alya never found out Cat Walker was Adrien, the whole team knows Cat Walker is Cat Noir by the end, no one except Su Han knows Cat Noir is Adrien and every holder Marinette chose is out of action because Shadow Moth knows who they are. Princess Justice revealed their identities during the battle. However, since the connection was disrupted before Cat Walker transformed, Gabe has no idea his son is Cat Noir. Adrien gets to keep his miraculous since he’s the only one left uncompromised, but going into season five, he’s the only one left to stop Shadow Moth.

Let me know your thoughts on the rewrite. Did it make you laugh? Did it make you cry? Did it make you hurl verbal abuse through the internet? I hope it did. The rewritten season five is naturally going to be massively different from canon season five but I have ideas for how it could go. Let me know if you want more.

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*Takes a deep breath*

So the time has finally come. I know I’m a little late to the party, but I figured since I did season 4, it’s only fair that I do season 5 as well. To start with, first half? Loved it, gold star. Second half? What in Plagg’s name happened? Time for an explanation.

So let’s start with the good. The love square reversal was excellent despite being rushed and short lived. Seeing Marinette be a disaster in front of Cat Noir was both hilarious and refreshing and her finally having normal human interactions with Adrien was like the first breath of fresh air after getting off a public bus. My only critiques are that it should have lasted much longer (at least the entire season) and it should have happened much sooner. I also liked the concept of the alliance rings. They were a creative way for Gabe to use the miraculous without risking them being captured and they actually play into the butterfly’s concept of transmission. The inclusion of Tomoe as a villain definitely had potential and Nathalie telling Gabe to shove it has got to be the greatest thing she has ever done. The idea of Zoe and Alya coming in as the new heroes opened new opportunities for the plot that would have been very interesting to explore.

And now for the bad parts. It is with great sorrow that I confirm that almost all of my fears were realised. With the exception of reclaiming a miraculous every episode, every one of my predictions for the season came true. First off, every fight is pretty much the same as all the previous akuma fights, only now they have miraculous powers instead of sentimonsters. This is made even worse by a lot of the akumas being just recycled versions with shinier powers. There’s nothing here the audience hasn’t seen before and it sucks a lot of interest out of the akuma fights. Most of the interesting moments in them aren’t from the fights themselves.

The second prediction is that becoming Monarch at the start makes Gabriel way too strong for far too long. This one is pretty evident. Everytime Monarch makes an appearance, he gets violated. Usually by plot armour too. This did everything I was afraid it would. It reaffirms to the audience that no matter how strong Gabriel gets, he will never win. It discredits any threat he poses and all the tension is lost as a result. It also makes the heroes look incompetent because they can’t catch him without blundering themselves. Destruction is the worst offender in this case because Ladybug chooses to spend her time gloating rather than incapacitating Monarch. Then there’s Evolution. I’ll save explaining the absolute travesty this episode is for Gabe’s character for later and focus on the heroes. There is absolutely no convincing excuse for the heroes to not immediately use Fluff to track down Monarch. He literally does this exact thing himself in Destruction. They could even just ask Fluff who he is. Ladybug’s the Guardian and Su Han’s a thing. They should absolutely know how the identity spell works and have a way around it. Tikki repeatedly says that since Marinette’s the guardian now, then what she says goes. Why did this season last longer than one episode?!

Then there’s Luka. Waste of time, again! How do they deal with him knowing the identities of the most important heroes? Write him out of the story. Great job team! Way to make Wishmaker feel like a big deal. He doesn’t even do anything in the finale except fight what might as well be faceless robots. Stellar contribution there.

Oh and Felix? Oh God have mercy. Don’t worry anyone who didn’t care for this guy. He’s a total nothing burger. This man could have ended the entire show with one conversation to anyone and he has no excuse whatsoever not to. Ladybug even kind of recruits him and Monarch never comes up. They don’t even have the decency to lampshade it or anything. The writers just ignore it like it never even happened. Then he goes and commits a genocide that makes Gabriel seem calm and reasonable which is never brought up again. And his entire redemption arc is kidnapping and stalking Kagami. Seriously?! The supposed mastermind suddenly becomes a braindead idiot who does everything for lols and love? And she’s into it! How did the writers screw this up so badly?! Actually, scratch that. This is completely on brand for Miraculous. I’m not even mad about it anymore. At this point, I’m just impressed.

Which brings us to the finale. Oh boy, the finale. So Cat Noir is officially pointless to the whole plot. At this point you could probably write him out of the show and it would change nothing. None of his plot points pay off, none of the emotional angst we’ve been waiting for gets paid off and a whole lot of drama is simply never addressed. Adrien has literally two purposes in this story, be a thirst object for Marinette and an excuse to kill Emelie. Both of which can be done without him. This fight had the potential to be better than Alucard vs Dracula in Castlevania, but all the potential drama is simply thrown out the window in favour of a bland, almost ‘just business’ fight between Ladybug and Monarch. The fight choreography was great, but it had none of the emotional stakes that the alternative could have had. The writers don’t even use what antagonism the two did have. Instead of Marinette yelling at Gabe for ruining her life or Gabe admitting he just wants to beat her, they spend the whole fight arguing about Adrien like two toddlers fighting over a Barbie doll. And the icing on the cake? Gabe gets the most superficial and ridiculous ‘redemption’ I’ve ever seen and Marinette gets to replace him as the most toxic person in Adrien’s life. And he doesn’t even know about any of it.

Seriously, how can the writers have Gabe go full cartoon villain and then with a straight face, pretend that it’s all good because he loves his son and kills himself? How can they expect us to believe he ever cared for his family after Evolution? This is completely insane and a horrifying message to send to children. In fact, almost all the worst people in the show get forgiven for some reason. And they better have consequences for Marinette for her part in this, because keeping a secret like this is absolutely wrong by Adrien.

To summarise, the writing for the first half actually had some strong points. Then it became average. Then it did an Olympic nosedive royal flush straight into the toilet. To save us some time, I think I’ll make a separate essay for the finale and skip straight to the rewrite from here.

So to start with, we’re picking up after the events of my season four rewrite. Marinette has renounced her miraculous, the miracle box and her memories. The team has all been compromised and a new Ladybug now fights beside Cat Noir. The first few episodes will focus on the aftermath of the Season Four finale with an emphasis on Cat Noir and the new Ladybug learning to work together and Marinette trying to rebuild her life. Adrien is largely going to be suffering because he loves Marinette more than ever while she has forgotten everything about him. Worse still for him, is that she seems to be thriving post memory loss, so he doesn’t want to risk reminding her and ruining it. With her bullies gone, her trauma erased and all her friends and family now being more loving and supportive than ever, Marinette is blossoming. She is rapidly becoming a social butterfly with all the confidence of her Ladybug persona and none of the old fears to hold her back. As for what happened to her bullies…

After being exposed in the finale, Lila has disappeared. What’s happened to her will be a mystery for a few episodes until we eventually encounter Cerise, an alias created to escape justice. Meanwhile, for her role in creating the most powerful akuma up until this point, Chloe is now under effective house arrest and her actions are pretty much causing the downfall of the Bourgeois family. Investigations into Chloe’s behaviour soon expose her father’s abuse of the school system, causing people to look into his other dealings and eventually leading to a full-fledged criminal investigation of Andre Bourgeois for corruption and abuse of power. This situation only needs to last for an episode or two, we just have to see Chloe be faced with the consequences of her actions. After a bit, presumably after Andre is arrested but before he goes on trial, she goes to speak with her mother, only to learn that Audrey is leaving Paris. Chloe confronts Audrey but is immediately shut down by her and then she chastises Chloe for causing nothing but trouble and being an exceptional failure. Audrey then effectively disowns and abandons Chloe to her face but then orders Zoe to pack her things. Chloe storms off to become another akuma, but what she doesn’t see is Zoe standing up to their mother on her behalf. Zoe rebukes Audrey, saying that real family helps eachother when they need it and declaring she will stay in Paris with the people who see her as more than an accessory and truly care about her. The new Chloe akuma is defeated with Zoe’s help, who then declares that she is her sister and she will always love her and stay by her side. They tearfully embrace and Chloe begins the long process of healing with Zoe. The capstone of this arc is the investigation into Andre ultimately exposes Audrey’s wickedness as well. The resulting scandal destroys her public image and leads to the discontinuation of Style Queen magazine and the collapse of Audrey’s empire.

What I have just done is fix some of the worst episodes and ideas in the show. First off, Lila now has a reasonable explanation for becoming Cerise and not whatever the hell canon is doing. Secondly, it addresses the absolute dumpster fire of the Bourgeois family. Andre does not get a free pass just by having an epiphany, saying he’s not fit for duty and then peacing out. Audrey does not get away scot free for her crimes. Chloe does not get cast as irredeemable in a kids show when ####ing Gabriel gets a statue for ending himself (the only good thing he does in the show, and he can’t even do that without causing problems for everyone else). It also starts an actual redemption arc for Chloe and not the shadow of one we got in Season two of canon. And it works by having Chloe learn what actually healthy, happy people and relationships look like, starting with her sister. And the absolute most important thing it does is get rid of the god-awful Major Chloe arc. The absolute worst thing this show has ever done.

While this is all going on, most our time is spent either with Adrien and Marinette or the new Ladybug. This new Ladybug will eventually turn out to be Socqueline Wang. In this rewrite, she will be Marinette’s English cousin. They might as well be related in canon given that they are almost identical in every way, this just makes it official and her being English gives her a reason to have not been seen until now. Her character arc is going to start with her trying to fill the shoes of Marinette, which is not going to go well. She doesn’t have the same rapport with Cat Noir, she doesn’t have the trust of Paris and she doesn’t quite have Marinette’s heart. Probably about 3-5 episodes in, we’re going to get a flashback episode for Socqueline where we see why she’s in Paris and why she’s Ladybug. Basically, Socqueline and her mum (Marinette’s aunt) have come to Paris to help the Dupain-Chengs while Marinette recovers. During this time, Cat Noir is protecting Paris on his own and is just barely scraping by. One day, she decides to help and dons a homemade Ladybug costume. She fails to do much of anything, but she impresses Su Han enough that he gives her the Ladybug miraculous for real and starts to train her. He doesn’t like choosing someone off the street, but he doesn’t have much choice.

Remember how in Elation Monarch said Marinette was Cat Noir’s weakness, and then did literally nothing with it. Well in this scenario it’s going to be the plot point that brings things to a head. We start the season off with Marinette having no idea who Adrien or Cat Noir are and being in love with neither of them. For the first couple of episodes, Adrien is going to be hopelessly moping about how he can’t possibly be with her and his friends telling him to get over himself. Eventually, he has to save Marinette from an akuma and goes to check on her that night as Cat Noir. She subconsciously recognises him and the two get increasingly closer over the course of several episodes until they finally get together. One day Marinette becomes Multimouse again to help Cat Noir stop a villain. Unfortunately, Shadow Moth realises that Multimouse and Cat Noir are in love and that Marinette is Multimouse. After the battle, they break up because he can’t be with her as a hero. He gives up the ring which then goes to Zoe. Adrien then tries to pursue a normal life with Marinette. Things seem to be going well until things fall apart. Shadow Moth is able to defeat Ladybug and Kitty Noir (now with a new design) and capture Su Han and the miracle box. This is when he acquires all the miraculous and becomes Monarch. Zoe is able to get Plagg and the ring away from Gabe and he returns to Adrien. This is when Monarch goes after Marinette and uses her to draw out Cat Noir. Adrien is able to track them to the mansion and the identities are revealed. After failing to convince Adrien to join him, Gabriel fakes Marinette’s death and akumatises him into Cat Blanc in a final gambit to control him. This fails and Cat Blanc is able to overpower his control and the two begin to battle to the death. Cat Blanc is victorious, but due to killing his father and his lover’s apparent death, he is now insane with grief and power.
While this is going on, Socqueline convinces Nathalie to free them and they free Tikki. Tikki then returns the earrings to Marinette. She uses the kwagatama to restore her memories and then Ladybug uses the power of love to beat Cat Blanc. They use the miraculous cure, Gabriel is resurrected but the two of them together are able to defeat him once and for all. They retrieve all the miraculous and the villain is arrested. No lingering plot threads, just happily ever after. For now…

Let me know what you guys think. I know it seems very fanficy but honestly, this seems like one of those situations where it seems like almost anything else would have been better than what we got. If you’ve got any ideas to add to either the rewrite or the essay, I’d love to hear them.

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This special episode is actually really good. Its only serious flaws come from being far too short or are rooted in the main show itself. Why? Because in keeping in compliance with canon, a lot of the potential gets squandered and a there’s nowhere near enough time in the episode to play with potential concepts. Some cool things I would have liked to see: Evil Gabe vs Good Gabe, Adrien having a conversation with alternate Gabriel and seeing a version of his father who is a good man, Claw Noir and Betterfly actually healing their relationship, and the Supreme themselves. As it is, these and other plot lines simply couldn’t have been included because of the strange choices made regarding this episode’s runtime and the main show itself.

Timeline wise, why did it have to be set during the longest night? It was just an excuse to have evil Gabe back when his role could have been just as easily fulfilled by the Supreme. All he does here is serve as a villain while we’re rooting for Shadybug and Claw Noir’s redemption. He adds nothing here. The emotional drama and tension his presence could have had is lost because no one in the episode knows each other’s identities or motivations. Let’s imagine for a moment what could happen if this took place after season 5 and everyone’s identities was known. Right off the bat, Claw Noir isn’t working with some guy he just met, he’s working with another version of his father. A version that shares his goal of bringing back his mother. This alone turns a casual battle of good vs evil into an emotionally loaded character event. We haven’t even considered anything else like Gabe vs Gabe or a revealed Hesperia vs a revealed Claw Noir. Setting the timeline when the writers did loses all of this.

With the episode as it is, including Monarch adds nothing to the story. In fact, it lessens it. If this was a self-contained story or took place after season 5, the audience would have no idea what to expect. But by tying itself here, the special can’t disrupt the status quo, so all of the dramatic tension has to be carried by the alternate characters. In the other specials, this was ok. We knew and expected these to be isolated events, but this episode was the first content after the end of season 5. It had the freedom to do big things they couldn’t, but it did not. This could have been fine, the other specials weren’t disruptive either, but it leads us back to the issue of including Monarch as a central villain. He is a known quantity that actively removes dramatic tension. Had the writers replaced his role with the Supreme, I think it would have worked much better.

Here is a character the audience has never seen before. He is interesting simply by being brand new. Using him as the driving villain instead of Monarch completely changes the dynamics of the fight. It’s one thing to have Shadybug and Claw Noir rebel while they’re in another universe, it’s another thing for them to do it while their presumably very evil boss is looking over their shoulders. It also allows us to take the tension to the next level, because we aren’t just fighting for Shady and Claw to be redeemed anymore, we’re also fighting for their future. The Supreme knows who they are and who Betterfly is. If he gets back to his universe, it’s game over for all of them. He is also probably the best choice for the audience to explore what the alternate world is like. His personality, capabilities, exposition and dynamics with the other alternates help inform the audience what this other world is really like. This is one of the biggest appeals of a special episode, making the world of our heroes feel bigger. His mere presence elevates the episode to a new level of narrative. Put another way, his inclusion would have been far more impactful than his absence was.

There is an argument to be made here. Leaving him out of the story is a safe and easy way to leave a loose end in case the writers ever want to revisit the alternate universe. But it also leaves several questions unanswered. Who was the Supreme? Why did he choose children to serve him? What happens to the alternates now? The Supreme knows all of their identities, they aren’t safe once they return. These are all questions the writers can address later, but there is no guarantee they ever will, and those answers probably won’t be as interesting as the alternative would have been. Defeating the Supreme avoids all of these questions and delivers a more satisfying story but doesn’t wrap up all future story threads because he still has a global regime to take down. A regime that is now leaderless…

How would I have done it? The first thing I would have done is made the special longer, over an hour at least or maybe even two parts. This gives us more time to flesh things out and include more stuff. What’s the next thing I would change? Have the episode take place a few months after the season 5 finale. I’d also keep the original French name for good Gabe as Hesperia since Betterfly sounds stupid to me (this is just a preference on my part). I’d also fully translate Griffe Noir’s name to Black Claw since I personally think that sounds more intimidating than Claw Noir. Again, this is a personal preference since Claw Noir just sounds awkward to me, so I focus on how weird his name sounds instead of being intimidated. It's almost like Taserface only played straight.

Following on from my season 5 rewrite, my version would go something like this. The episode opens much like it does originally, but we see more of what the alternate world is like. Some scenes of the Supreme’s minions brutally oppressing people, some of Hesperia’s supporters protesting, maybe some visual storytelling and scenery to tell us this Paris sucks. We also see more of the inciting incident with a silhouette of the Supreme himself. It becomes clear that this is the last stand of the rebellion. In their final hour, Hesperia has one last desperate gambit to win and that’s to bring allies from another universe that can stand against the Supreme. From here, things go the same way as they do originally. Alya becomes Ubiquity, Hesperia travels through, Shadybug and Black Claw follow, and they fight. The fight ends in a draw with the villains retreating to Marinette’s house. The scene with evil Marinette reading good Marinette’s diary is perfect and I’d keep it. I’d add more of a relationship between evil civilian Adrien and Marinette. This gives them more of a connection for when Shadybug discovers his identity. This is no longer just a stranger to her. This is someone that she could see herself love.

This is where things start to change, the heroes bring Hesperia to Su Han. In order to get them to trust him, he detransforms and reveals his identity, clearly not knowing why this could be a bad thing. After the two Nooroos verify his story and identity, they debate on what to do. Su Han adamantly refuses as it’s not worth risking losing their miraculous to the Supreme in order to help another world, Ladybug can’t stand by and do nothing, and Cat Noir is too distracted by Hesperia’s identity to really pay attention. Meanwhile, we cut back to the villains who have tracked down Alya again to try and find a way home. When they do, she is once again possessed and the Supreme himself emerges from the portal. He chastises them for failing to eliminate Hesperia and for defying him and trying to use the wish. He then announces that they are going to track down the rebel leader, once and for all. Black Claw protests, claiming that Hesperia is trapped here and no longer a threat. The Supreme reprimands him and declares that as long as he is alive, he is a threat.

We cut back to our heroes where Hesperia gives them the backstory of the alternate world. For over a hundred years, the Supreme has been using a super powered army to build an empire and conquer the world. Thanks to the power of the miraculous no one has defied him and lived. Su Han asks about the Guardians, but Hesperia knows nothing of them. He then continues his story and tells them about his wife, the only person in his lifetime to ever successfully stand up to the Supreme. In this world, she used to be a member of the Supreme’s organisation and the peacock wielder until she couldn’t stomach it any longer. She rebelled against his rule and it cost her, her life. Gabe then committed his life to seeing the Supreme defeated and his wife’s dream realised, so he stole the butterfly miraculous and started the resistance. Unfortunately, this led him to neglect his son whom the Supreme took advantage of and corrupted. Hesperia explains that the villain recruits his minions as young children that he can indoctrinate and mold to his will and this was his son’s fate. They didn’t know who the other was at first, but an attempt by Gabe to reach out backfired horribly. Instead of consoling him, alternate Adrien lashed out and revealed himself as Black Claw. This prompted Gabe to reveal himself as Hesperia in an attempt to reason with him. Black Claw escapes and informs the Supreme, kicking off the events that lead to the scene at the start of the episode. This is when Gabriel’s story is interrupted, because the Supreme is able to track the miracle box in Su Han’s possession and he and his forces attack.

This is when we learn the next key piece of his lore. The Supreme steals the miracle box from Su Han, but in doing so, Su Han recognises him as the villain Master Fu defeated in his backstory (see the Master Fu rewrite). This is when we learn the point of divergence between these two realities. In our world, Master Fu was able to defeat the Supreme after he destroyed the temple. In the alternate world, Fu lost the fight, and the villain went on to conquer the world and become the Supreme. While this is happening, Black Claw confronts his father and Cat Noir, and Shadybug confronts Ladybug again. We use these fights to explore their dynamics and highlight the differences between them. Shadybug gets the upper hand on Ladybug by using her knowledge of their shared identity to gain an advantage. Cat Noir abandons his fight to save her, they regroup and regain the advantage. The heroes save Su Han, but the villains escape with the Miracle box.

While the heroes come to terms with what’s just happened, the villains take the time to re-strategize. The Supreme sees a news report talking about Monarch and declares that if they want to win, then they need some allies. He then returns the butterfly miraculous to this universe’s Gabe and recruits him to his cause, promising him this world’s ladybug and cat miraculous to make his wish. Although silent in the moment, this increases the friction between him and his other minions, Shadybug and Black Claw.

We have one more battle that the heroes lose, but finalises everyone’s character development in preparation for the finale. Since the last fight emphasised Claw Noir and Hesperia, this one focuses on Shadybug. Wanting to learn what made this version of her so different, Ladybug questions her and learns her backstory. In the alternate Marinette’s youth, Tom and Gina ran afoul of the Supreme’s regime and were ‘disappeared’. Rolland never reconciled with them and Sabine’s family are either staunchly loyal to the regime or distant because they don’t want to be associated with rebels. This isolation caused Sabine to become the cruel version hinted at in canon and at the start of the episode. The Bourgeois family, by contrast, is the regime’s instrument in France and wields more power than ever, with all the cruelty that implies. All of these factors, combined with living in a dystopia, have left Marinette in a very dark place and led to her working with the Supreme. Her deal with the Supreme is to get her family back and save her life (she and Claw are both still dying), but given how much her life sucks regardless, she is onboard with dying anyway. This is where the fight ends.

This is when we converge with canon, only adjusted to this version. Our heroes and villains gather for a final battle and have their personal resolutions. Ladybug convinces Shadybug that life is worth living and to try and make things better. Hesperia defeats Hawk Moth after a very heated battle over what Emelie would have wanted, and Hesperia comes to terms with his own mistakes as a father. Cat Noir helps Black Claw grieve and forgive his father. Su Han and some other kimikotized allies keep the Supreme occupied while this happens. Hesperia reveals that the Supreme killed Black Claw’s mother (he never told him and his secrecy about it was a big point of friction) and this is what fully turns him against his former master. Our heroes confront the Supreme, but he unleashes his full power and overwhelms them all. He frees Hawk Moth and orders him to revert the kimikotized heroes to normal again, but Hawk Moth betrays him.

This whole event has been a bit of a wake-up call for our Gabe. Between seeing a heroic version of himself that Emelie would have been proud of, a what could have been with his alternate son and the whole deal with his own son, has shaken him quite a bit at this point. But learning that the Supreme killed a version of his wife sends him over the edge. He betrays the Supreme and this gives the heroes the opening to defeat him for good.

I don’t know what to do with this part and it really depends on where the writers want to take the story from here. If we no longer want the Supreme or Gabe for future stories, then we can have Hawk Moth sacrifice himself to take out the Supreme. Or, if we want to keep either of them, we can have the betrayal simply lead to the Supreme’s defeat. I personally lean towards the Supreme survives but Gabriel dies. Either way, the heroes win. However, during their fight, the butterfly miraculous is knocked from Gabe and into the city to be lost again.

If Hawk Moth survived, then he returns to prison but with a new outlook on his life. If the Supreme survives, then the Guardians imprison him in our world where he isn’t a threat. Meanwhile, the alternates return to their world with a new mission. To overthrow the rest of the regime and restore freedom to the world. Su Han has decided to go with them to help and to rebuild their world’s Guardian order. Before he does, he passes on the mother box to Marinette again (without sacrificing his memories) and making her a guardian once more. They then depart and everyone is happy apart from the missing butterfly. This is when the camera cuts to where it lies and a mysterious figure (cough*Lila*) picks it up.

So what do you guys think? Hopefully it’s just like canon but better. It does things that can’t be done anywhere else, it isn’t forced to comply with the show, it better explores the alternates and it even sets up future stories for both the main universe and the alternate universe (unlike canon which is basically filler). I think the greatest point of contention here is definitely going to be Gabe. Like I said, there are a lot ways this can go for him depending on what we want to do later on. The writers killed him off and said he was a hero anyway, so this still gets us close to where we are in canon but in a better way. But if you have your own thoughts to add, feel free to comment.

Chapter Text

Ok I know this is going to stir up a lot of strong feelings, but I come down on the finale is terrible side of the fence. I get a lot of what the writers were trying to do, I really do. It just completely fails at it. This is easily the worst season finale in the series because everything it tries to do sucks, and it ruins everything that was good in the process.

We shall start with the lowest hanging fruit first, the Endgame moment. Big finale team ups have always been common in fiction, but ever since Avengers Endgame, it’s pretty much become mandatory for superhero media to have big, spectacular moments where all the heroes and their allies come together to battle the villains. The problem is that the writers usually want the big “Hell Yeah!” moment without putting in the effort that makes these moments epic. Miraculous isn’t the worst one I’ve seen, but it’s still pretty bland. To understand why, we need to revisit the show’s best season finale, Heroes Day.

You see, Heroes Day is an Endgame moment as well, just smaller scale. It was all the heroes and their allies up against almost every villain they’d faced up until that point. But, while Heroes Day was fantastic, The Final Day’s fell flat.

Perfect Alliance started out as an awesome threat. A true finale level crisis. Millions of miraculized, each able to wield all of the captured miraculous powers. A force not even Ladybug could hope to stop. This was probably the most dangerous force ever seen on the show. And then these super soldiers immediately get clowned on by a bunch of children. Ex-hero children, but powerless children nonetheless. From this point on, these clowns are nothing more than literal faceless mooks. They have no unique designs (they’re all basically mannequins) and neither the characters nor the audience have any personal stakes in them. We know intellectually that some of these faceless are probably characters we know and love. But because of their uniform designs and personalities, we’d never know. The only one we ever see is Nora and she doesn’t even get saved by Alya. The only unique and interesting thing the Miraculized have going for them is that they are armed with miraculous powers, some of the most dangerous magical forces in the world. And they were being beaten by powerless high schoolers.

Ok, so the Miraculized are just another army of minions to beat up, so what? Let’s contrast this with Heroes Day. On the surface, they share a lot of similarities. Lots of superpowered thugs to beat up and raise the stakes, and they both go down really easily. Ah, but the Scarlet Akumas weren’t taken down by kids, they were beaten by fully powered up and experienced heroes. This moment didn’t diminish the akumas, it showed the audience how far the heroes had come and what they could accomplish by working together. This gave the heroes their time to shine and made the viewers believe that they could actually win. And when the people of Paris do join them and fight back, they are an army themselves. Each and every one of them inspired to do so by their heroes.

There is another important way these two episodes differ; the scarlet army was unique. Every akuma had a special set of abilities that could change the course of battle, and it did. Dark Cupid single handedly turned what looked like certain victory into a crushing defeat. This did several important things. 1. Gabriel was actually being clever here. By keeping his ace in reserve, he could save him for when he would be most useful. This tactic almost won him the battle. 2. By turning the sidekicks into akumas, any audience member who likes them is now invested in seeing what happens. Doesn’t matter if it’s out of concern or interest in their akumatised hero forms, the point is they’re invested. 3. It ups the tension. Suddenly, this fight isn’t just showing off how awesome the heroes are, there are actual stakes now. There is a very real possibility that Ladybug and Cat Noir will lose here.

Compare this to anything we see from the Miraculized fight. They all have the same abilities so clever teamwork that complements their strengths and weaknesses is out. They don’t seem to have any thought processes higher than a Minecraft mob so clever use of powers is out. All they do is bum rush their opponents like fangirls at a boyband concert. This is a viable tactic in some circumstances, pity it doesn’t work and they don’t change course and adapt once this becomes clear. Their designs are all the same and they’re just as bland and boring as they are. Which means there’s nothing visually interesting going on here. So there’s no hope of seeing anything cool from the villains’ side, what about the heroes?

So the kids are all on a boat. They do a whole power of friendship thing to escape the Alliance rings influence, then they team up to try and stop the villains. They do have some cool teamwork moments, but nothing game changing. Too bad the previous episodes have done these guys so dirty that most of us have trouble caring about any of them, let alone all of them. This is why character consistency matters and where the damage that things like Lila do to the story is most apparent. These guys are supposed to be Marinette’s friends, with their own backstories and character arcs and everything. But outside of their special episodes, they might as well be background models. Hell, half of them believe that Adrien and Kagami are dating when they just watched Adrinette make out five minutes ago. This phenomenon is at its absolute worst whenever Lila is on screen. If you make a list of all the times the cast acted out of character or like braindead puppets, I will bet you money that almost all of them will be in a Lila episode. The BEST case scenario here is that the audience isn’t going to be invested in characters that can completely change at the drop of a hat. We’re not watching heroes out of uniform in action, we’re watching plot devices being used for empathy bait.

Which brings us to the Special Episode characters. I’ll admit, I like their moments more than the akuma class. They are definitely the highlight of these scenes. But their presence is just a cameo. If you haven’t seen their respective specials, then their impact is going to be lost on you.

So we have nothing cool or interesting going on with the Miraculized and unless you really care about Ivan and Mylene or have seen the specials, you’re probably not getting much from the side characters. Even the tone of the fight is off. In Heroes Day, Scarlet Moth literally calls for music from Guitar Villain and Frightningale and the heroes’ teamwork is highlighted by cool slow-motion shots. This cues the audience in that they can just sit back and enjoy. You don’t feel the need to question why the heroes are charging headfirst into the lion’s den because they’ve let you know exactly what to expect and appreciate. This fight is going to run on drama and rule of cool and you are going to love every minute of it. Something The Final Day is lacking in abundance. This whole sequence is an afterthought included simply for fanservice but not the good kind. It lacks passion and the understanding of the show and its fans that makes fanservice work. This is why it feels so bland to watch. Fortunately, it doesn’t actually harm the story, something I cannot say about the rest of the episode.

Right from the start, the episode makes a mistake, because it seems to completely ignore Representation, the episode that is LITERALLY RIGHT BEFORE THIS ONE! During Representation, we finally learn the backstory of the show and get confirmation on why Felix did what he did. Way, way, WAY too late, but better late than never. This actually well-done scene confirms that Adrien, Kagami and Felix are sentimonsters and that Gabriel Agreste is Monarch. They start by implying it and then immediately abandon subtext and state it outright. Felix even takes his mask off. So why in the name of all that is holy does Marinette NOT KNOW WHO MONARCH IS!? Her entire motivation for sneaking into the Agreste mansion is not to stop him, but to find Nathalie so she can find Adrien so she can stop being tortured by a nightmare. This is how she figures out who they are, when Monarch de-transforms in front of her. AND THEN the knowledge that Adrien is a sentimonster doesn’t factor into the fight at all. Just like that, the entirety of Felix and Kagami’s contribution to the plot is wiped clean. Cut out literally everything about both of them after Strike Back and it changes NOTHING! The only thing that sticks from Representation is that Adrien leaves Paris. These two episodes actively make eachother worse because they are fundamentally incompatible. Never mind that Kagami suddenly knows who Ladybug is without explanation, the problem is that these episodes seem like they were written by two different writers who didn’t communicate at all.

Complete negation of entire story threads aside, let’s move on from the first five minutes. Nathalie tries to kill Gabriel, showing that she is the only character in this show that can escape from toxic love (little late for this but points for trying). Marinette gets brain damage so she can be surprised by Monarch’s reveal (someone clearly wanted a big reveal for the finale and forgot to tell anyone). Gabriel seems surprised when Marinette says his name even though they are fighting in his house (smooth brain Gabe strikes again). The Miraculized are useless and are completely forgotten about once Bug Noire and Monarch start fighting (probably for the best, you can cut them out of the story and still end up here). They attempt some witty banter (not one reference to the pancakes ☹). Marinette tries to kill Gabe (I would too sister). They land in the basement and have their big dramatic confrontation about whether Marinette is good enough to date Adrien (Dad with shotgun and daughter’s boyfriend is the most compelling nemesis dynamic here). Marinette wins and then proceeds to absolutely fumble the win so she can prove she belongs in the Agreste family (taking Ls is their defining trait). Gabriel makes his wish, kills himself and the world ends.

There are many problems here, but the important ones are the relationship between Gabriel and Marinette, the sheer stupidity of the characters and the fact Gabriel ‘wins’. You see, Marinette and Gabriel have no antagonistic energy. You’d think they would because they actually have a lot in common. Both are fashion designers, both love Adrien (it depends on the day for Gabe), both come up with stupid and convoluted plans, both do stupid, questionable things in the name of love, and both are completely toxic to the people around them. Yet the dynamic the show chooses to use is one centred on Adrien. They could have been really good ideological foils for each other, but any arguments they have about the subject only last a couple of minutes. They could have brought up their own personal animosity, but that’s a sidenote at best. Talking about Adrien takes up almost all of their screentime together. Even resurrecting Emelie barely gets acknowledged in the end. Their dynamic in the final battle is less archenemies in climatic final showdown and more dad who doesn’t like his daughter’s choice in boyfriend. It doesn’t feel like a relationship worth killing eachother over (from an audience perspective anyway). Technically speaking, the stakes of this fight are reality itself (if what Sass says in Ephemeral is true) or a human life at the very least. But the characters don’t seem to care about that much at all. What they really care about is who gets custody of Adrien. Something that comes off as majorly hypocritical since no one is actually consulting Adrien about what he wants. This is his mother for Christ’s sake! Someone should at least acknowledge that he has a right to be involved. This would have been so much more powerful if Adrien was here. Marinette and Gabriel just don’t have a relationship that’s worthy of an epic showdown.

I think the show was actually somewhat aware of this at the start of the season, which explains a lot about the writing choices made. At the start, Monarch throws away his chance to win to try and beat Ladybug and all his interactions with Adrien throughout the season feel like manipulation instead of love. This feels like setup for an arc where all that matters in the end is beating his archenemy. This could have worked but it’s completely undercut by his obsession with forcing Adrien and Kagami together and the ‘plot twist’ that he actually does love his son in the end. There is nothing that works here. Once again, it’s the writers being woefully inconsistent with character and trying to do many things without committing to any of them. Nothing works because the whole story is now a mess of incompatible, underdeveloped and poorly thought-out ideas.

So now we have this frankensteinian quagmire of ideas being milked for all the melodrama it’s worth. Then the writer’s have to screw it up AGAIN by making Marinette lose in the most hilarious way possible. By this point, Marinette is the infallible hero. The one who always has a solution. The one who’s always right, even when she shouldn’t be. She’s the best, the smartest, the strongest and she ALWAYS wins (except Strike Back). The hero who doesn’t fully trust anyone, not even her own partner or best friend. And then she goes and trusts Garbriel. Let’s forget about the obnoxious moralising about forgiveness and the utter hypocrisy of putting trust in her archenemy. Let’s focus on the fact that she does this whilst dropping her transformation FOR NO REASON! She has no time limit and Gabriel is still ‘armed’. Why would anyone drop their superpowers without reason? Why would she? The only explanation is that she did it as a gesture of trust which is hilarious, because Marinette doesn’t trust people (She only trusts Adrien when the plot needs her to be stupid and Alya had to drag her secrets out of her). She chose the absolute worst time to learn how to trust. Any idiot would have seen this coming. The fact that she doesn’t isn’t a dramatic twist, it’s stupidity. Stupidity is the antithesis of drama. An idiot making a mistake isn’t cinematic, it’s comedy. Only I’m not laughing.

The cherry on top? This complete failure of Marinette’s braincells leads to Gabriel winning. I repeat, Gabriel wins. He beats his archnemesis, steals her miraculous and makes the wish he wants with no consequences for himself. Sure, her speech makes him change his wish, but nothing else about him has changed. He hasn’t had some deep paradigm shift or character change; he’s just given up on getting his perfect outcome, so he settles for the next best thing. It doesn’t absolve him of anything. He hasn’t been redeemed. The heroes haven’t saved anyone. The only character to get what they want is the villain. If this were another show, maybe this could work. But let’s analyse this in the context of Miraculous. In the show, it is established that the wish works on the principle of equivalent exchange. If you wish for someone to be resurrected, someone else must die in their stead. No other information about this is provided. Now most writers would include a monkey’s paw or apply some kind of backlash from using the wish, especially for evil purposes and the existence of Gimmi and the kwamis make Miraculous look all set to do this except… it never does. Sure there’s the whole end the world and rebuild it schtick, but if the new world is pretty much the same and you still have all your memories and personality, does it really make a difference? (The show never brings it up, so I guess not.)
The in-universe result is that Gabriel gets exactly what he wishes for with no drawbacks. Sure him and his wife are still dead, but he does get to save Nathalie. Apparently trading a dying person to save a dying person equals an alive person. Going to have to check the math on that. Of course we have no idea what his wish actually was and this where more issues are created. The biggest damage is that we now have no idea how the wish actually works now. Is there a karmic reaction or is it just if Gimmi feels like it? To what extent can the wisher control the results of the wish? What if Gabriel wished none of this had ever happened? All of these questions can cause issues, but none of them on the level of ‘Is it possible to create the perfect wish?’. Given that Gabe didn’t seem to suffer any unintended backlash, the implied answer is yes. Which leads to the conclusion that Gabriel is right, the wish can fix everything.

You’d think this would be the worst of it, but don’t worry, it gets worse. Because thanks to Cat Blanc, Ephemeral and this ending, we are now forced to conclude that the entire battle is a massive waste of time. Because these episodes show us that the villain was always going to win no matter what and fighting him only makes things worse. And it turns out that him winning isn’t that bad after all. In fact, Gabriel winning from the start probably would have been the best outcome based on what we now know about the wish. Let’s say that Gabriel wins in Origins. He gets the miraculous right off the bat and makes his wish. Because he apparently has complete control of the wish, he chooses to trade some random death row paedophile child murderer for his wife. Now the Agreste family is whole again, there is no Hawk Moth and all he sacrificed was someone who the world was probably better off without and would have died anyway. If he used the miraculous cure as well, then even his brief little stint of supervillainy has no consequences. The world is objectively better off. This is the implication of the ending right now. That there was more suffering caused by the heroes resisting than there would have been if they had just given in from the start. From a practical standing, they are in the wrong or possibly even the villains.

So Gabriel was right, he wins anyway and the only contributions of the heroes was to make the inevitable more painful for everyone. Since there’s not even an identity reveal to fully resolve the love story, I am forced to ask, what was the point? The show’s major themes of love, forgiveness and doing the right thing are absent here. The major plot points it set up have been either botched, ignored, forgotten or postponed. The only message we seem to be getting from this is that the villain was right and the only reason we had to suffer through everything was because everyone is stupid. That’s what I’m getting from the story here. If that’s what you wanted writers, then congratulations! You did it.

So that’s it then, right? We have dissected the entire story and discovered everything wrong with it. The end. Wrong! Because the writers are so talented at screwing up, there are still important issues that we need to talk about, because everything that comes after this will be (presumably) affected by them.

We’ve discussed why the Final Day is a failure of a finale already. Now I shall address the best defence I’ve heard so far. This isn’t a series finale, it’s a setup for the future of the story, not it’s ending. This…is a valid point. This isn’t a conclusion, it’s a to be continued. But that argument doesn’t justify not properly resolving existing story threads. Because while this may not be a finale for Miraculous, it is a finale for the Gabriel Agreste arc. Remember, there was a point this was the series finale. Seasons 6 and 7 weren’t confirmed until after Season 4 was already airing and Season 5 was announced as the end of Gabriel. This implies one of two things. The first is that once the writers knew they were getting more seasons, they changed the Final Day to setup new seasons. The other possibility is that this is the direction they were always headed from the beginning. I’m going to be generous and assume it’s the first scenario because that better explains why the Final Day is so bad. The problem with both scenarios is that the writers disregarded all of the work they had already done.

Look the second scenario sucks because the finale disregards all the buildup. The first scenario sucks because the finale disregards all the buildup AND taints everything that comes after it. It basically means that the writers sacrificed satisfying conclusions to existing stories for the sake of setting up new ones. But those new threads will never hit as well as they could have because no matter how good they are, they will always be rooted in the finale. A finale that sucks and leaves people longing for what might have been. The writers have one choice now. They can either pay off what they’ve set up and hope it’s excellent enough for the audience to forgive them, or they can ignore it entirely so the new stuff can exist in a vacuum. In which case, all the nonsense they did was pointless anyway.

And what did they set up? It’s time to talk about Adrien.

I don’t like the sentimonster plot. It sucks. Here’s a dozen reasons why. The easiest reason is that it ties into why I don’t like the peacock miraculous (see that entry here https://archiveofourown.info/works/41978178/chapters/105417129). The second is that it’s obviously a retcon. Adrien defies his father all the time up until season 5. Even season 4 has moments of rebellion. Adrien being a pushover did not need to be explained by magic. All that does is strip away an arc about an abused child learning to stand up for themselves from a character already struggling to be relevant. Kagami isn’t changed at all by being a sentimonster, and Felix is such a narrative disaster at this point that being a sentimonster is a footnote in the travesty. Emelie’s coma could have been explained any number of ways. Hear me out for a moment. What if instead of a filler episode, we got a backstory episode that showed her using the peacock for heroic deeds? Actually show her being the perfect saint everyone says she is?

My point with all of this is that Adrien being a sentimonster does nothing for him as a character. “But this plot hasn’t reached its conclusion yet. You can’t judge it before it’s finished” Fair point. But until Adrien finds out he is a sentimonster, it’s irrelevant to his character. Nothing on screen has done anything of substance with him being a senti so far and we’ve already passed most of the points where this would be interesting (i.e. a battle with Gabe controlling Adrien). Canon has given us nothing of merit with this plot so far. What we have on screen isn’t designed for character or story, it’s a blatantly obvious and lazy plot device the writers are using to strip Adrien of his agency so they can send him to London where he won’t overshadow Marinette.

Exactly one good story thing has come from the Final Day. We shall call this plot, the Lie. The Lie has the potential to be a great story thread. The problem is that I don’t trust the writers to do it justice, and they sacrificed a lot of potential awesomeness to create it.

Considering all the other lies Marinette has put Adrien through, the only story arc I can see that would be a satisfying pay off for the Lie would be a villain arc for Adrien. And I’m not talking Cat Blanc 2.0. I’m talking full blown Adrien Agreste is out for vengeance type of stuff. This kid has been emotionally abused, gaslit and straight up lied to by everyone who’s important to him. His parents, his guardian, his partner, his cousin, his aunt, his girlfriend, his friends and even his ex. The only characters important to him that aren’t lying to him are his bodyguard (who is paid to look after Adrien and is terrible at his job) and his ‘best friend’ Nino (who has nearly killed him while akumatised and believed Lila over him). And since Nino can’t be trusted to keep a secret, Gorilla is Adrien’s sole option for emotional support. This is not a recipe for happy characters folks, this is a villain origin story. However, knowing the writers of Miraculous, the best we’ll probably get is maybe a couple of episodes of drama before they remember they are “made for eachother”, forgive eachother and fight Lila.

I’ve talked a lot about buildup here and I should probably clarify what I mean. Buildup refers to plot points or character arcs that the writer has telegraphed will mean something important further in the story. This may seem overblown since Miraculous is famous for doing nothing with interesting concepts, but that’s my point. By not delivering on promises, the audience feels like nothing they’ve seen matters or is worth investing in. If something doesn’t have consequences, you are showing the audience that this thing isn’t important. If a writer promises something will be important and then doesn’t deliver, it feels like a betrayal. Do it enough and your audience learns to not believe or invest themselves in your promises. Without investment, your story has no impact. It’s just things happening on a screen. A distraction to amuse people.

I’ve focused a lot on Adrien here because his character is by far the biggest casualty of broken promises, but there are others. Given how important Alya is, being Ladybug’s best friend, replacement and confidante, another writer would have her play a more important role. Especially since she takes massive Ls in Strike Back and Kwami’s Choice that she needs to makeup for. Nathalie’s confrontation with Gabe can be cut from the episode entirely and it changes nothing. Given how much of an impact Felix has had so far, and his clear stake in the matter, you’d think he would rescue his cousin and girlfriend at some point. Luka is no better than a cameo that the story continues to pretend is important. Nino and the Resistance make no meaningful contribution outside of the hollow ‘Endgame moment’. Tomoe Tsurugi still doesn’t have reasons for being a villain. Elation is invalidated since Gabe discovers Cat Noir’s feelings for Marinette and then does nothing with this information. And perhaps the worst thing? We still have secret identities. Yeah, they’ve ‘technically’ resolved the love square, but in the most boring way possible and in a way that they can continue to abuse it. They’ve completely contorted themselves to maintain an audience hook that stopped being entertaining long ago.

Every. Single. One of these points is something that the writers telegraphed would have an impact on the story. Each of them is something that could have delivered something awesome, but was utterly wasted so the writers could setup the ‘Lie’. If even half of them had been paid off properly, then we could have had the most fantastic episode in the series. Instead, we are left with broken promises, fan service without meaning and an empty assurance that it will all be worth something later.

In other words, nothing the writers have done has convinced me that ‘The Lie’ was a plot worth pursuing over anything else they could have done. As for something to carry over into the next season? All they needed was Lila to get the butterfly at some point (not even that much actually). A post-credits scene worth of setup was all they had to do. If they want season 6 to be a ‘soft reboot’, then go all the way. Let us enjoy satisfying conclusions to stories we’ve spent years watching. Let the future shine on its own without being polluted by what came before.

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This is the best thing to come out of the season 5 finale. It’s the only thing that gives me hope that the writers might actually be able to make something worthwhile out of that mess. I cannot stress just how much better this episode is then most of the show. Characters are consistent and feel like people again, the plot makes sense and this is the first time I’ve ever felt like Lila can actually pose a threat. As problematic as the finale itself was, this is flawless as a follow-up and the transition to Season 6 was the icing on the cake. That being said, it commits the same crime I have already complained about several times before. The Butterfly miraculous is way too OP for a plot device. Previous essays and my Lore rewrites have stressed just how badly this thing can break stories, but this seems like a perfect place to reiterate my argument.

On the surface, the miraculous of the butterfly is a fantastic concept for a show like this. Firstly, it is a conveniently endless source of villains of the week. The writers don’t have to come up with contrived or tropey villain backstories every week, they don’t have to spend resources creating a heavy weight rogues gallery and it allows the writers complete freedom to set whatever tone they want for an episode. If Superman spent each week alternating his fights between Darkseid and Condiment King, the tone of the story would be incredibly jarring. People would question what kind of story they were seeing, and the writers would have to jump through a lot of hoops to make it work. However, Miraculous is a show where its heroes can stop the literal apocalypse one week and then fight Mr Pigeon the next week without anyone in the audience batting an eye. It’s a level of creative freedom that is all made possible by the Butterfly (the writers don’t always make the most of this, but that’s a separate issue).

Secondly, it allows the writers to focus on building up a single overarching villain instead of dividing their attention. In most media, writers create a diverse rogue’s gallery to keep things fresh and interesting. The heroes can only fight their arch nemesis so many times before it becomes bland, stale and predictable. There is absolutely nothing worse than this for building tension. A rogue’s gallery solves this problem by having a new problem every week instead of the same one over and over. The downside is that it takes a lot of work to make a compelling full roster of villains. Even franchises that tend to do this well like Superman usually only have a few standout villains like Lex Luthor or Brainiac. In Miraculous, the butterfly means that the writers only have to make one villain compelling for the story to work. All the Akumas have to do is be entertaining. They only need the bare minimum of development and they can be as threatening or ridiculous as the tone of the episode requires. They can be deeply personal or they can be total strangers. If the audience likes them, they can be reused* and if the audience hates them, they can be forgotten about just as easily. Only the butterfly holder needs to impact the story, the akumas are complete antagonistic freedom.

*until you start reusing old akumas all the time instead of creating new ones like the show does. Then you’re back to square one.

The problem with the butterfly is that it is an insanely powerful weapon with ill-defined rules. Letting the villain have a broken schtick is fine, but it needs to have clear outlines as to what it’s capable of, otherwise the story can fall apart. If an ability is too strong, a writer might resort to convoluted means for the hero to win. Plot armour, Deus Ex Machina, call it whatever you want, if the audience isn’t convinced by the hero’s victory, that victory is diminished. The next problem is that it runs the risk of the audience wondering ‘if the villain is that powerful, then why the villain hasn’t won already?’ This is a nightmarish question for an audience to ask because it means their immersion is breaking. The only way to win it back is to convince them that the rest of the story is worth overlooking this question for and you do that by having consistent quality with your story. And if your story doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, you lose everything because your audience is more concerned with dissecting it then being entertained or invested in it (like me).

The butterfly miraculous is guilty of both crimes because the writers have never bothered to explain what it can and can’t do. Worse, they use its ambiguity as an excuse to make it do whatever they want it to. As of right now, the butterfly miraculous can: create supervillains, make them loyal but not controlled by the holder (Origins, Robostus), has psychic abilities that can sense emotions and even thoughts from across a city (Risk), can create supervillains independently of the holder (Startrain), imitate other miraculous and their powers with no perceivable flaws (Copycat), create villains capable of empowering themselves (Catalyst), can create multiple villains at the same time (Heroes Day, Gang of Secrets etc.), can create world ending akumas (Stormy Weather 2, can empower and enthral other miraculous users (Queen Wasp, Cat Blanc)), can create time travellers (Timebreaker, London Special), can create multiversal travel (Paris Special), has no limits on how many akumas it can send out in a row (some episodes have multiple akumas in the same day) and as of the London Special, it is confirmed that it is possible for the butterfly holder to have complete control over what powers they will get.

Notice how long this list is? There are exactly two miraculous that can give it a run for its money. The rooster can supposedly do whatever its holder wants as long as they are a good enough rules lawyer and the peacock can do everything the butterfly can do, but without a third party. The ladybug and cat miraculous aren’t even close to the most powerful, these three make up the holy trinity of busted abilities. This brings me to my next point, the butterfly is way too strong. The butterfly’s only rule that we are explicitly told by the show is that stronger emotions make stronger villains. That’s it. No episode even bothers to tell us how many akumas Hawk Moth can send in his normal state. It’s implied to be one, but knowing this show and its consistency with rules…

Hell, just about anyone could probably win the moment they discovered the catalyst cheat code alone. If I were Hawk Moth, I’d create one akuma to draw out Ladybug and Cat Noir and then ambush them with another two. One that blocks powers like Lucky Charm and another that puts everything within a certain radius to sleep instantly. I’d have the miraculous, make the wish and complete my villain arc in time for lunch. That’s the problem with having a powerful weapon with ambiguous capabilities. The audience can’t be invested in the conflicts anymore. If the villains win, the story ends so the writer has to perform mental gymnastics to justify why the heroes win. The villain ends up looking like an idiot for not exploiting the full potential of their powers and the story can’t convince the audience that the heroes are ever going to be in any danger. All of the tension is now gone and the fights are reduced to pure spectacle. The big conflict of the story can’t hold our interest. All of this could be avoided if the writers just created a grounded set of rules for the butterfly and stuck to them. Instead, they opted for a cheap and easy plot device that does whatever they want it to. This is a steep price to pay for one-off story plots.

And this is the problem the London Special feeds into. By having Lila be able to akumatise herself into a time travelling phantom at will, we set the precedent that she can do this anytime. What’s stopping her from trying again later? What’s stopping her from creating a time travelling army and overwhelming Ladybug with sheer numbers? Why is Bunnix incapable of actually doing anything? These are all questions that are created in this episode alone. This special holds up well enough on its own that we can brush these off for now, but these questions are adding up. Each time a new one is added, the story gains another obstacle to immersion. This is a status quo that cannot be maintained. Sooner or later, the only way to pay the bill will be massive retcons and/or writing out the butterfly entirely.

Chapter Text

Ok, I admit it, this movie was a fun time. It is everything the show should have been and then some. However, it wouldn’t be Miraculous if there wasn’t anything to gripe about.

The first and easiest thing? The pacing. There is a lot this movie needs to cover and not enough runtime to do it, so it relies on the assumption its audience has seen the show for the movie’s moments to have their full emotional impact. The romance is definitely the hardest hit by this. Ladynoir shined brilliantly but the Adrienette scenes just didn’t convince me that it was ever a serious love story. Secondly, the heroes totally lose in this movie. The only reason the world doesn’t end is because this Gabriel is a person and not a complete, human shaped sphincter. This is only a minor issue though since the execution was actually good. And lastly? Changing how Marinette fell in love with Adrien was totally the wrong call. The umbrella scene was so much better than Marinette being weird in a library.

Having said that, there isn’t all that much I would change that could improve this movie. It’s a pretty good ride and it does its job of condensing a series into a movie really well. The biggest change I would make would probably be increasing the runtime. Adding more scenes with Adrien and Marinette to develop their romance or a long awaited Emelie backstory would have made the Adrien and Gabriel drama hit so much harder. And keeping the umbrella scene is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, this was probably more to do with production restraints than a writing decision, so I’ll let it go this time. But there is one thing that was pointed out to me and now I can’t unsee it. So now I have to make it your problem too.

The fair scene, why wasn’t Marinette’s motivation to become Ladybug again saving her dad? He was right there. She has a good reason to want to save him, so why does her heroic instinct have to be triggered by Chloe of all people? Why was he here at all if the writers weren’t even going to do anything with him? There are time and fiscal budgets people! If we can’t use it, lose it.

All in all, it’s amazing how much the Miraculous story can be improved just by cutting out all the fat and toxicity. This movie didn’t even have to add anything, it was good just by cutting! However, there are a few details that we should probably talk about. The reason I’m addressing these separately is because they don’t seriously harm a short form story like a movie but absolutely would harm the series if they made the same choices.

Let’s start with two issues that are closely related. Hawk Moth’s ability to akumatise himself into a demigod immediately raises the question of why didn’t he do this in the first place? In the show, he can’t (or doesn’t) akumatise himself while transformed at all. This is a movie original. Normally, moments like these would be framed as either a high-risk high-reward tactic, they couldn’t do it earlier or it’s a last desperate gamble. These scenarios usually come with an explanation as to why the villain doesn’t execute them until the climax of the movie. Perhaps they were missing a key component to make the doomsday weapon work or perhaps the power-up MacGuffin has some serious side effects like terminal cancer or maybe even the villain just doesn’t want to chance a quick victory while safer options are still available to them. The Miraculous movie does none of these things. Sure we see Gabe all dishevelled and looking like an addict whose run out of money, but that doesn’t really answer this question. We don’t know if he’s feeling side effects from being evil or if he’s just depressed. It doesn’t explain why he waits until now to become God. The writers really should have thrown in a little something just to smooth this over, especially since it’s made worse by the fact that it works.

You see, Gabriel wins in this movie. Sure he gives up and doesn’t achieve his goals, but he had Ladybug’s and Cat Noir’s miraculous in his hands. His plan worked and we have no explanation as to why it wouldn’t or couldn’t have worked sooner. This question is one of those immersion breaking ones that can make the audience feel like their time has been wasted. In a long form story like the show, this would have been a critical issue (looking at you season 5), but the movie gets away with it because the conflict between the heroes and villain is not where the tension is coming from here.

The main conflict of this story is not Hawk Moth trying to steal the miraculous, it’s the romance between Marinette and Adrien. The tension of the fight between the heroes and Hawk Moth is not about who’s going to win, but what happens when Cat Noir and Gabriel find out who the other is. Neither of these require Ladybug and Cat Noir to win the final battle to pay off. Hawk Moth’s motives aren’t even a B-plot, they’re a C-plot here. Even though akumatising Hawk Moth was clearly only done to initiate the climax, the finale still works because it delivers on these points and still technically resolves the issue that was causing this story to begin with. This would not have worked in the show.

The show puts a lot more into the hero vs villain conflict than the movie. Hawk Moth is far more than an excuse for the plot to happen. He is a constant danger that adversely affects all aspects of Marinette’s life and overcoming him is a key part of her story. She is the critical thing standing between Hawk Moth and his goal. Given how personal his goal is, the more he loses to her, the more personal their feud becomes to him. They are tied up in each other’s character arcs in a way that they never were in the movie. Having Ladybug lose to Hawk Moth and then still win because he gives up isn’t a satisfying way to resolve their battle (again, looking at you season 5). It undercuts one or both of their characters and makes their entire conflict seem like it wasn’t a big deal after all. The movie avoids this issue because the rivalry between Ladybug and Hawk Moth is virtually non-existent, and Gabriel gives up because of his son. A character he has a whole and deeply personal relationship with outside of being his enemy (unlike Marinette).

In conclusion, the movie was good and you should totally watch it.