I Can't Speak On This Confidently, As We Haven't Seen The Episode "Gabriel" Yet, But I Think Adrien's

I can't speak on this confidently, as we haven't seen the episode "Gabriel" yet, but I think Adrien's growing resentment towards Ladybug is meant to parallel Gabriel's pipeline into becoming Hawkmoth.

I have also come to the conclusion that Adrien's whole character arc is revolved around the duality of the power of destruction, which I get is obvious, but hear me out. While destruction can cause chaos and harm to others, it also plays a necessary part in tearing down oppressive forces.

Let's talk about this scene.

What this scene has communicated to us is, despite the two of them having seemingly opposite personalities, Adrien is indeed Gabriel's son. What I mean by this is that the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree; both have a tendency to get caught up on their projected fantasies involving the people they love.

The position Gabriel is in right now, being Hawkmoth and all, is a direct result of him being unable to process his grief. Much like Adrien and his fantasy of Ladybug, Gabriel clings onto the fantasy of a "better world" with Emilie to cope with his grief and reconcile his guilt. Consequently, Gabriel has now become Paris' biggest threat and he's dealing out collateral damage onto his family (i.e. Adrien and Nathalie).

Adrien is at risk of falling down the same path; Adrien's grief has led to him becoming emotionally dependent on his romantic fantasy involving Ladybug. Even after everything he went through in this episode, this poor boy is still clinging to this damn fantasy for dear life.

Right now, even after everything that happened in Glaciator 2.0, Adrien is still stuck on this cycle of hoping Ladybug will one day fall for him, Ladybug rejecting him and inevitably breaking his heart, him getting depressed and lashing out because of it, him and ladybug reconciling, and then Adrien slipping back into the fantasy again to rinse and repeat.

In order for Adrien to truly develop as a character, he needs to break the cycle. He needs to break the cycle of damage his father is doing to the environment (as demonstrated in Mega Leech), he needs to break the cycle of complacency in his life, and he needs to break the cycle of enabling his father's actions. In order to do that, he needs to stand up to his father and get him to break the same cycle within himself.

If Adrien can't break the cycle, he's going to succumb to it and end up just like his father... or worse.

It’s interesting how Glaciator 2.0 again showed that there is a big wall between Adrinette at the moment, caused by the fact that Marinette is too caught up in her own crush to really see Adrien for who he is.

Specifically, her reaction to seeing Adrien be sad is more “awesome, I can enact my plan!” than sympathy. And when her plan goes wrong because she picked the wrong gift, she never pauses to notice that Adrien was really happy to get a pottery wheel from her, even if it was unusual.

The frustrating (and fun!) thing is that it was all so close to working. It already did work, back in Gamer, when she gave him her lucky charm! If Marinette hadn’t been so caught up in her fantasy, if she had looked at the actual Adrien and his actual feelings, she could have absolutely made his day here. In fact, she did end up cheering him up immeasurably when he was wearing black and she had stopped with all the schemes and was just herself.

This matches e.g. Malediktator. Marinette was so focused on the fact that Adrien looked hot in the ad to see how it was distressing him. Her crush is in the way of her actually seeing him.

Even though it’s popular, I would not describe that as her putting him on a pedestal. She is not in love with the model and the image (at least not just); she is aware that he’s a real human boy who sometimes feels sad and frustrated. However, she is too much in her own headspace to really see what’s happening with him. And that is, in various shapes and forms, the defining factor in the Adrinette relationship right now.

if you want your female characters to both have agency in the story and be complex human individuals then sometimes bad things have to be their fault

★ 【肉】 「 sakura / sasuke 」 ☆ ✔ republished w/permission ⊳ ⊳ follow me on twitter

I agree!

I'd like to recommend this thread on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/AmeliaSamson7/status/1453883987529719820?t=atSBsHmcN0v7s4ss-mmpWg&s=19

i really have absolutely no thoughts about what's gonna happen in ephemeral the one thought I have is the umbrella scene is just her having deja vu and not her connecting the dots

omg I just noticed something

Alright so Glaciator 2.0 ended with Adrien like this

[The image shows Adrien saying “Maybe if I show her who I truly am, she would fall in love with me!”]

And in Ephemeral, this is gonna happen

[Image shows Chat Noir giving his umbrella to Ladybug]

That’s exactly what he’s doing! He’s being himself! And I think it’s gonna work! LB will either start catching feeling (after all that’s what made Marinette fall for Adrien in the first place) OR she will connect the dots!