Miraculous Ramblings: Adrien
As I've mentioned before (I think), we've been watching season five of Miraculous again, and it is very interesting now that we have all the pieces. I mean, all the pieces they're going to give us until next season anyway. We have many thoughts, and some theories (some of them ongoing), and I'm realizing that it will probably take more than one post to cover them all. We haven't quite made it to the end of the season yet (we just finished Revolution tonight), and I realize the recent Paris special may disprove some or all of our theories. So tonight I'm not going to speculate so much, just talk about what all was going on with Adrien this season.
I think I've said in previous posts that there were some things in this season that had us raising our eyebrows, but that we let those things slide because the other stuff that happened in those episodes were things that we wanted to happen, things that we felt were destined to happen all along. Like, the way the show has been set up, if you're a fan of the main characters, you want two things to happen. You want Marinette to live happily ever after with Adrien, and you want Chat Noir to live happily ever after with Ladybug. And technically, those two things should really be the same thing. So if you get one, you get the other. What this season proved to us is that that is not necessarily the case.
The thing is Adrien. We've watched these episodes so many times, and so many times I ignored all the clues, because I didn't like them. Determination is the best example--while Ladybug and Chat Noir are fighting Manipula and her wax statues, Ladybug is falling more deeply in love with Chat Noir, but Chat Noir is acting...a little distant. He helps Ladybug up after a fall, and instead of taking a second to look into her eyes like usual, he's already running away as soon as she's on her feet. It happens more than once in the episode!
And it's sad, because Chat Noir being in love with Ladybug is one of the very cutest things about this whole series. But we forget all about it, because the writers have convinced us that Adrien has fallen for Marinette, so we're like, "Well, of course he's not fazed by Ladybug's advances! His heart is with someone else!" Only this time, unlike with Kagami, we want Adrien and Marinette to be a couple, so we forget about all the times--the many, many times--he ditched Kagami to run off with Ladybug.
The show has already shown us that Adrien is willing to give a girl a chance if she shows interest, and Ladybug was showing a lot of interest before he and Marinette were officially an item. And when Ladybug first started showing interest in Chat Noir, Marinette was running from Adrien, just like Ladybug was running from Chat Noir when Kagami was showing interest in Adrien.
Then there's Elation, where Ladybug ambushes him with a little romantic chouquette break, and he practically runs away from her. The way he backs away from her when she tries to kiss him on the cheek! Aaaaaagh!
And that's why we're very grateful for Representation showing us Chat Noir's worst nightmare. All this time, Adrien has been terrified that he'll destroy everything, literally and figuratively. All we know about his reaction to what happened after the events of Shadow Moth's Final Attack is that he realized he should have listened to Marinette instead of Felix. We never go any deeper than that, until we find out his worst nightmare, which probably changed after he saw what Strikeback did with his (Chat Noir's) powers... And then he unintentionally Cataclysms Monarch, and intentionally almost Cataclysms Darker Owl and Dark Humor.
So when we watch season five with that nightmare in mind, everything seems to fit much better, and we're a lot less skeptical about the way the series is going. Of course the biggest eyebrow raiser was when Adrien was so quick to give up his Miraculous in Transmission. (In second place is at the end of Confrontation when Chat Noir was all, "People won't need us for much longer! That's awesome!") Of course, Adrien doesn't give up his Miraculous right away--he says, "But Monarch..." He's been fighting his fears all this time because he knows he's all Ladybug and Paris have to help in the fight against Monarch.
This puts that last scene from Shadow Moth's Final Attack in a slightly new light. When he reaches out to Ladybug and she takes his hand, he looks at her with a sad expression before giving her a hug. Now I think that expression was partly his sympathy for her, but more than that, I think it was the most he could do to say he was sorry for his part in all of it. If he had listened to Marinette instead of Felix, Felix couldn't have taken the Miraculouses.
Then there's Plagg. Another eyebrow raiser is in Passion when he goes to Tikki saying, "It's terrible! Adrien's in love with Marinette now!" Since when has he ever cared about that stuff? Even with his claim that Adrien and Marinette would blab their secret identities--that was always the danger with Adrien and Ladybug or Chat Noir and Ladybug, so how is this any worse? Right now, we like to think it's because Plagg, while being Best Kwami, is not the most emotionally intelligent Kwami, so he doesn't know how to verbalize, "I think Adrien is running from his real feelings," the way Tikki and Alya were able to clearly state about Marinette.
Speaking of which. When Marinette was running away from her feelings and being all in love with Chat Noir in Elation, she said, "Can you believe it? He loves me enough to hide his feelings for me!" And that's exactly what we think has been happening! He's hiding his feelings for Ladybug because he's afraid those feelings will destroy her and all of Paris. Aww, poor kitty.
But anyway, it's so clever how the writers were able to have Marinette say exactly what was going on, but in a way that made us all think that wasn't what was going on. In that same vein, there's Andre the Ice Cream Man. He's all, "No... Chat Noir, you're in love with Ladybug, and Marinette, you're in love with Adrien Agreste." His ice cream was right all along! Here I just thought he hadn't bothered checking in a while, but no, Andre always knows, just like he said in his first episode.
Did anybody else notice that they never changed that part of the opening sequence--the part where Chat Noir goes in for a kiss? I noticed it was still there as we kept watching season five, even though they changed all the Hawk Moth stuff and the other superhero stuff and the friend selfie stuff. And I thought it was strange, but I just shrugged it off because I didn't know what they were going for, and it wasn't that different from what was going on in the show.
So, to sum up. It makes me very sad that Adrien has been going through all this mental anguish the entire season and we couldn't be there for him in spirit because we didn't know... We feel like bad friends for not realizing until we'd seen Representation three or four times. And it also bums me out that we have a whole season of Chat Noir being afraid of getting close to Ladybug. But if season four taught us anything, it's that this show can take all these unhappy developments and turn them into something even more awesome than we ever hoped for, and that one detail about Chat Noir's new nightmare gives us a lot of hope that the show will do it again.
Today I'm thankful for finishing work early, all the clever writing that goes into Miraculous, managing to beat that boss in Hogwarts Legacy on the first try, the yummy Nutella biscuits we had for a snack, and the super cute Snow White toy we got at a gacha machine at Tokyo Disney Resort.
I think I've said in previous posts that there were some things in this season that had us raising our eyebrows, but that we let those things slide because the other stuff that happened in those episodes were things that we wanted to happen, things that we felt were destined to happen all along. Like, the way the show has been set up, if you're a fan of the main characters, you want two things to happen. You want Marinette to live happily ever after with Adrien, and you want Chat Noir to live happily ever after with Ladybug. And technically, those two things should really be the same thing. So if you get one, you get the other. What this season proved to us is that that is not necessarily the case.
The thing is Adrien. We've watched these episodes so many times, and so many times I ignored all the clues, because I didn't like them. Determination is the best example--while Ladybug and Chat Noir are fighting Manipula and her wax statues, Ladybug is falling more deeply in love with Chat Noir, but Chat Noir is acting...a little distant. He helps Ladybug up after a fall, and instead of taking a second to look into her eyes like usual, he's already running away as soon as she's on her feet. It happens more than once in the episode!
And it's sad, because Chat Noir being in love with Ladybug is one of the very cutest things about this whole series. But we forget all about it, because the writers have convinced us that Adrien has fallen for Marinette, so we're like, "Well, of course he's not fazed by Ladybug's advances! His heart is with someone else!" Only this time, unlike with Kagami, we want Adrien and Marinette to be a couple, so we forget about all the times--the many, many times--he ditched Kagami to run off with Ladybug.
The show has already shown us that Adrien is willing to give a girl a chance if she shows interest, and Ladybug was showing a lot of interest before he and Marinette were officially an item. And when Ladybug first started showing interest in Chat Noir, Marinette was running from Adrien, just like Ladybug was running from Chat Noir when Kagami was showing interest in Adrien.
Then there's Elation, where Ladybug ambushes him with a little romantic chouquette break, and he practically runs away from her. The way he backs away from her when she tries to kiss him on the cheek! Aaaaaagh!
And that's why we're very grateful for Representation showing us Chat Noir's worst nightmare. All this time, Adrien has been terrified that he'll destroy everything, literally and figuratively. All we know about his reaction to what happened after the events of Shadow Moth's Final Attack is that he realized he should have listened to Marinette instead of Felix. We never go any deeper than that, until we find out his worst nightmare, which probably changed after he saw what Strikeback did with his (Chat Noir's) powers... And then he unintentionally Cataclysms Monarch, and intentionally almost Cataclysms Darker Owl and Dark Humor.
So when we watch season five with that nightmare in mind, everything seems to fit much better, and we're a lot less skeptical about the way the series is going. Of course the biggest eyebrow raiser was when Adrien was so quick to give up his Miraculous in Transmission. (In second place is at the end of Confrontation when Chat Noir was all, "People won't need us for much longer! That's awesome!") Of course, Adrien doesn't give up his Miraculous right away--he says, "But Monarch..." He's been fighting his fears all this time because he knows he's all Ladybug and Paris have to help in the fight against Monarch.
This puts that last scene from Shadow Moth's Final Attack in a slightly new light. When he reaches out to Ladybug and she takes his hand, he looks at her with a sad expression before giving her a hug. Now I think that expression was partly his sympathy for her, but more than that, I think it was the most he could do to say he was sorry for his part in all of it. If he had listened to Marinette instead of Felix, Felix couldn't have taken the Miraculouses.
Then there's Plagg. Another eyebrow raiser is in Passion when he goes to Tikki saying, "It's terrible! Adrien's in love with Marinette now!" Since when has he ever cared about that stuff? Even with his claim that Adrien and Marinette would blab their secret identities--that was always the danger with Adrien and Ladybug or Chat Noir and Ladybug, so how is this any worse? Right now, we like to think it's because Plagg, while being Best Kwami, is not the most emotionally intelligent Kwami, so he doesn't know how to verbalize, "I think Adrien is running from his real feelings," the way Tikki and Alya were able to clearly state about Marinette.
Speaking of which. When Marinette was running away from her feelings and being all in love with Chat Noir in Elation, she said, "Can you believe it? He loves me enough to hide his feelings for me!" And that's exactly what we think has been happening! He's hiding his feelings for Ladybug because he's afraid those feelings will destroy her and all of Paris. Aww, poor kitty.
But anyway, it's so clever how the writers were able to have Marinette say exactly what was going on, but in a way that made us all think that wasn't what was going on. In that same vein, there's Andre the Ice Cream Man. He's all, "No... Chat Noir, you're in love with Ladybug, and Marinette, you're in love with Adrien Agreste." His ice cream was right all along! Here I just thought he hadn't bothered checking in a while, but no, Andre always knows, just like he said in his first episode.
Did anybody else notice that they never changed that part of the opening sequence--the part where Chat Noir goes in for a kiss? I noticed it was still there as we kept watching season five, even though they changed all the Hawk Moth stuff and the other superhero stuff and the friend selfie stuff. And I thought it was strange, but I just shrugged it off because I didn't know what they were going for, and it wasn't that different from what was going on in the show.
So, to sum up. It makes me very sad that Adrien has been going through all this mental anguish the entire season and we couldn't be there for him in spirit because we didn't know... We feel like bad friends for not realizing until we'd seen Representation three or four times. And it also bums me out that we have a whole season of Chat Noir being afraid of getting close to Ladybug. But if season four taught us anything, it's that this show can take all these unhappy developments and turn them into something even more awesome than we ever hoped for, and that one detail about Chat Noir's new nightmare gives us a lot of hope that the show will do it again.
Today I'm thankful for finishing work early, all the clever writing that goes into Miraculous, managing to beat that boss in Hogwarts Legacy on the first try, the yummy Nutella biscuits we had for a snack, and the super cute Snow White toy we got at a gacha machine at Tokyo Disney Resort.