Every Season 6 Episode of Miraculous is a Parallel to Adrien's Life-- The Full and Complete Analysis
Hi, I'm Quinn (20) and this is my analysis of Season 6 of Miraculous Ladybug. You're in for a treat--so get comfy.
For those of you who are not familiar with the Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir series, it should be known by now that it is more than a show with a bug and a cat themed superhero. There is lore, there is plot devices, secrets, characters, and so much in one show. However, I think many of you have not truly sat down and thought about what specifically lies in this series. I don't want to be the one to bore you with all the specifics, but if you're at least familiar with the characters and they basic back stories than this should be a pretty simple blog post.
First off, who exactly is Adrien Agreste? For those unfamiliar, Adrien is a 15 year-old boy who is the son of the late egregious fashion designer Gabriel Agreste. This technically shouldn't be considered a spoiler considering it's been almost 2 years since season five has ended, and everyone has pretty much moved on to the newer, much more polished animation and storyline, Gabriel has been 10% defeated and 90% killed---the man known as Hawkmoth, Shadow Moth, Scarlet Moth, and later the super villain Monarch, with all the Miraculous jewels configured into rings---made the grand wish by combining both the ladybug earrings, and the ring of the black cat, yet, however, his ending wish ended up being altered as he ultimately chose to be reunited with his wife and revive his assistant Natalie, who fell ill and [briefly] died in the two part season five finale. We talk about how insane Gabrielle is and was, but I'm not sure if anybody has truly focused on his relationship with his son and how both his existence and his death now officially haunts the narrative going into season six.
Before I get into the specifics, I am genuinely grateful that the animation studio that hosted seasons one through five officially became outdated. Not only does it help illustrate the new narrative in which season six is going in, but the detail is excruciatingly beautiful and captivating and it needs to be talked about more. Thank God for new software.
Season six begins with the episode The Illustrhater. Now, before warned that the writers of the new season explained to people on Twitter/X about a few months ago that the episodes in which everything is airing is not chronologically in order of more specific event events. In this particular episode, ladybug and cat noir have to defeat a little girl who essentially becomes The Evillustrator 2.0. If you guys are little confused about this, a couple users have noted that season six is supposed to be a "soft reboot" of season one, and while I do see the similarities of some episodes it doesn't really seem that way, but for the sake of this blog, we're gonna say "sure why not". The preface of this episode is that a little girl (Maya) is seen sketching on some sort of notepad with a bunch of doodles and non-essential drawings. It is later shown in the episode that she is the daughter of a man who runs a restaurant that Adrien and Marinette.---now a new couple---decide to hang out at for their date. Unfortunately, with Maya's father being busy with the restaurant, he yells at her and becomes frustrated that she keeps asking for him to see her drawings. This is a repeated issue that happens throughout the episode; Maya is trying to show people at the restaurant her drawings, but no one seems interested or is too busy. She becomes frustrated and walks off, which then leads her to her akumatization. Ladybug and Chat Noir save the day, the little girl transforms back, all is well.
What I find particularly interesting about this episode is that not only is it the debut episode of season six, but it directly parallels the main issue that Adrien had with his father. We've seen quite a few characters that have different struggles throughout the series, and Eden is no exception to that. A lot of people did not see some of these signs, however, Adrian is unfortunately a victim of neglect, which is a form of child abuse. Adrien has tried multiple times to talk to his father about important issues, like hanging out with his friends, going to school, even going outside and doing "normal activities like everybody else does". This issue is constantly brought up throughout the seasons of one through five, showing the dynamic between Adrien and Gabriel. The reason that the relationship is strained, is that prior to the series, events, Adrien's mother, Emilie, "fell ill" / "is in a coma" / "passed away". We as the viewers unfortunately have no idea what happened to Emilie, however, it is to be presumed that some illness made her go into some comatose state. Is later proven in the series that apparently her and Gabriel used to do excursions together, looking for different artifacts, and among the artifacts they found was the Peacock Miraculous. Unfortunately, the Peacock Miraculous upon discovery was damaged, and when Gabriel's wife used it, the damage of the Miraculous took hold of her, eventually making her sick to the point that she fell ill/died. There are flashbacks in season six that show Adrien's mother being in a wheelchair, meaning the illness must've been so bad it rendered her unable to walk or speak properly. This also shows that this death had been well over a decade ago, and Gabriel still has not seem to have coped with the fact that his wife is gone (well... not technically, considering the fact that we don't find out until season three that she's actually being kept in a chamber in their basement, which is totally not creepy at all…).
Regardless of this fact, haunting the narrative as one would say, it seems that while Adrien still has fond memories of his mother and still gets sad every now and then, he later becomes frustrated with his father and notes that his father never moved on while everyone else in their family did. We all know that people hold onto grief and experience grief differently, however, the lengths that Gabriel went towards trying to revive his wife and completely neglected his son gives all the more reasoning for this specific episode to directly parallel this relationship between these two characters.
The second episode of this season is Sublimation. In this particular episode, we are introduced to a new character named sublime. I find that interesting because sublime is an actual word meaning to be supreme or outstanding. However, Sublime is not the character that gets akumatized, but rather her mother does. Sublime is introduced as a character who knows multiple languages, has competed in multiple sports with the one being cross country/track that she is excelling in, while also being the first physically disabled miraculous character (YAY!) and she is a multi talented in several different art forms, such as the harp (which is what we see her playing in this episode). Marinette, as overly loving as she is, mistakes, sublime, and Adrien's relationship as something more before coming to the conclusion that she needs to be sublime's friend in order for Adrien to stay with her. It's a really confusing part of the episode, but it's still interesting to know that Marinette is still her over loving crazy self while still being a very kind hearted person. Moving back to Adrien.
Adrien is more than just a 15-year-old French kid. He is an Agreste, and growing up in a family of Agrestes, he has a specific reputation to uphold. His father, Gabriel, being Paris's most famous fashion designer, has ordered for Adrien to excel in a number of different activities all of which Adrien later states in the series that he actually dislikes; he only does these activities to please his father, which is really depressing if you think about it. It is noted in the series that Adrien speaks multiple languages, including Chinese, which seems to oddly be the most present language he speaks other than French and English. He plays a couple of different sports, like swimming and fencing, and on top of that he is also a model for Gabriel Agreste's fashion brand. Thinking about the episode, sublimation, we start to see the very strong similarities between sublime and Adrien. For example, sublime is a young teenager that is being told by her mother that she must excel at all of these different sports to win these metals and essentially become sublime, living up to her name. Adrien on the other hand, is quite similar as well; he excels in many different sports and languages and activities to fit in the branding of being an aggressive. The problem with this is that when you force a specific ideology onto your child from a young age and then instill in them that they have to do every single thing you tell them to do, they can never grow outside of what they truly want to do and what they want to achieve. This is an issue that Sublime has with her mother and an issue that parallels with Adrien and his relationship with his father. Unlike Gabriel, who never truly understood Adrian's point of view or sides of things, and still forced him to do stuff even in his dying moments, where he then proceeded to force his girlfriend to hold onto the fact that his son is not truly "his son" (I am choosing not to drop a spoiler here because Adrien's true identity is a major part of the narrative...IYKYK).
Next episode on the list is Daddycop. Crazy title, but whatever. In this episode, the narrative focuses on Sabrina, who at the end of season five decides to no longer become friends with Chloe, who, as we all know was a major antagonist in seasons, four and five. Sabrina has shown in this episode that she is struggling to make friends. The reason for this is because as stated above, she was friends with Chloe. Unfortunately, when you surround yourself with negative people, people will begin to associate you with that negative behavior or that negative narrative. Sabrina in my opinion is a very interesting character, mainly because of the fact that not only is she one of the few characters in fiction for children that generally shows her struggle with wanting to appeal to others when doing something good and bad, but also her ongoing conflict with her conscience. For example, there have been quite a few episodes in the past seasons, where Sabrina has made difficult decisions that put her relationship with Chloe in Jeopardy because Chloe unfortunately was her only friend, but Chloe never really saw Sabrina as a friend. She saw her as a Patsy, as a dog. It's more ironic, when later on Sabrina earns the miraculous of the dog, but then makes a major transformation in her episode, where she ditches the traditional collar shape of the miraculous because she realized self-worth and realized she did not want to be put on a leash anymore. Because of this relationship she had with Chloe, it made Sabrina feel weak and docile, and made her back into everyone's call. Marinette was one of the few people that told her that she didn't have to do what Chloe told her to do, and as seen in the ending episode episodes of season five, Sabrina ditches this Patsy roll and becomes her own person. Unfortunately, because she was friends with Chloe, as stated above many of the characters chose to distance themselves from Sabrina because she was a bully, and now that Sabrina is no longer labeled as such, she is struggling to venture out and find people that are willing to accept her and forgive her as her new being.
I wanted to specifically talk about Sabrina's situation and Adrien's isolation from other people. Adrien, luckily, was not an individual that was bullied, or was considered a patsy, however, he was one of the few characters that was intentionally forced into isolation from other people because one person in particular put him in that position… AKA, his father Gabriel. People don't understand that isolation is a form of child abuse, and weakening the relationships that your child has with other people their age will slowly deteriorate their mental state and will slowly make your child be unable to hold proper social engagements. Because of this, we often see quite a few episodes where Adrien does not understand terminology or social cues, or even how to play sports with other people because he was never taught. Essentially, not only was he isolated/homeschooled for the majority of his life because his parents probably didn't trust him out in the real world… Again, IYKIYK, he was also unable to understand specific situations that he was being put in. Luckily, at the end of the episode, Sabrina was welcomed into the group and forgiven by all of the girls, which is great which means Sabrina doesn't feel alone anymore. And not to say that Gabriel's death created a domino effect into his social life, but thanks to Gabriel's death, Adrien is now more free to do things that he wants to do which is amazing.
Because this episode deals with a major plot point, I unfortunately cannot talk about Werepapas too much because I do not want to accidentally pull a thread that isn't worth pulling. The only thing I can say about this episode is the fact that Adrien's grandmother was akumatized because she felt like she was unable to make decisions for herself, or was unable to speak her mind. Again, as stated above, Adrien, unfortunately, was in a very controlling and abusive household, and because of that he was unable to do what he wanted or to say what he wanted without backlash from his father. I think this is something important to keep in mind as we continue this post.
In Climatiqueen, Adrien is struggling to find something he is passionate about. All of the activities he used to do before his father passed away were things he was not genuinely interested in. As stated above, he only did those things to please his father. Adrien was not able to figure out what specifically he liked outside of what his father decided for him. Marinette tries to help him find his passion, but by the end of the episode, Adrien is still unsure of what he likes. The only thing that he seems interested in is running, which chronologically speaking, leads into the episode Sublimation and the introduction of Sublime's character. I have already previously discussed that Adrian relationship with his father is very rocky and abusive if you analyze it correctly, and it's very apparent that Adrian taking up the hobby of running is definitely a form of a coping mechanism. Usually when people run it to build up stamina, to compete and race, or in Adrien's case is to cope with the idea of quite literally running away from his problems or running away from home after his day with Marinette, he passes by his house, but instead of going home, he just looks at it with a sad expression, and begins to run at full speed. This greatly signifies that Adrien was deeply unhappy about how he lived his life with his father, and his home holds a lot of dark memories for him. Sure, he definitely understands that there were some happy moments, but there were hardly any happy moments that kept him in a position where he genuinely felt safe around his father or felt loved by his father. He uses running now as some form of a coping mechanism to essentially run away from his past or to run away from the fact that he and his father did not have a good relationship when he was alive.
El Toro de Piedra, directly translating to "The Stone Bull", is definitely one of my favorite episodes so far mainly because I kind of relate to it a little bit in a way. In this episode, the narrative focuses on Ivan, and if you don't know, Ivan, he's the big guy with an even bigger heart. Ivan in this episode is revealed to be the son of a super villain, named El Toro de Piedra. I used to take Spanish lessons and when I read this title originally, I thought it meant the stomping bull, which realistically, if translated slightly differently would make a lot of sense considering that's basically what the villain does a lot of in the episode. However, I wanted to take the time to discuss this particular episode a little bit more in depth because some people who have a life similar to Ivan notice that this particular story is an allegory for domestic abuse. Now, don't get me wrong, everybody can read all kinds of different signs and symbols within different forms of literature any which way you want, but hearing both the French version and the English version with official subtitles and the raw imagery with the episode, it is quite apparent that Ivan is a character that has faced physical abuse at home from his father, who directly believes that Ivan is "too soft" and that he "got it from his mother" and his father repeatedly says throughout the episode that he wants to "shape Ivan into a stone bull". It's rather dark when thinking about the imagery that shows up when Ivan talks to ladybug about his problems: a giant shadowy figure of a bull man towering over Ivan and swallowing him whole.
To add further context, his father is turned into a stone bull character, who goes around the city with a giant whip, and quite literally whips all of the Parisians into stone bulls. It's honestly terrifying. Essentially, it's a direct allegory for two things that can intersect: one, he is "whipping all of them into shape", and two, which seems to be more apparent, is correctional behavior. If you don't know what correctional behavior is, it's a form of discipline where essentially it is believed that by doing specific actions, such as hitting someone or taking something away from someone, usually a child, it will correct the behavior of that child from preventing that action. Not to bring science into this, but research study shows that correctional behavior does not always work, and instead of getting the desired effect, which is the desired corrected behavior, children are more likely to become angrier and more disobedient with their parents. I say this with a heavy heart: please do not hit your kids. /srs
Unfortunately, I do not have sufficient evidence that Gabriel has ever hit or laid a hand on Adrien, however, Adrien has been locked up in small spaces multiple times, both in reality and due to the effect of an Akuma, and has stated multiple times throughout the series that he does not like being locked up. Again, this isn't really a physical correctional behavior, but it is definitely something that could alter someone's mental mind state… Again with the isolation and the child abuse… Very disheartening.
The Ruler. Ah, yes, my favorite episode of this entire series because it quite literally has the biggest allegory for homophobia in all of Miraculous history. It is also one out of the few episodes that explicitly shows an LGBTQ+ pairing---if you didn't know before, Nathaniel is canonically a bisexual character! This episode pretty much repeats the points that were listed above; the major theme of wanting to be able to do something, but you're being held back by something for someone. This episode focuses on Nathaniel and particularly his relationship with Marc and making comic books. The comic books are directly and allegory for homosexuality, and essentially the comic books are a primary force within this episode.
Nathaniel is going head to head with his mother on making these comic books, however, his mother does not believe that he is being "serious", and later in the episode when she finds out, Nathaniel decided to draw the comic books after she had told him not to---and shredded his original copy in front of his face---she becomes akumatized into The Ruler, a super villain that essentially "sets things straight". I would like to note that the language used in this specific episode is very important, especially if you don't know how to read between the lines. There is a line in French that is directly translated to English and I am very glad it did because that way the message gets across in both languages. Nathaniel says he is feeling sick at school and so his mother comes to pick him up. His mother in the midst of Marinette, trying to convince her that Nathaniel was doing a great job with making comic books, becomes furious and decides to attempt to take Nathaniel home to "straighten him out"/ "go to make him straight", which has a couple different double-sided meanings, depending on how you look at it.
First of all, if you have an openly queer character that is trying to express that they are queer, and you are against that, you are 1.) homophobic and 2.) you were attempting to make them "straight". And for those of you who don't understand this type of terminology, a person that is "straight" is someone who is heterosexual, while someone who is "non-straight" is someone who is homosexual. When you as a mother are threatening to make your child "straight" when they are very clearly not, it sounds threatening; it sounds demeaning. It sounds scary. Not only that, but her entire character is surrounded by a ruler, which is a tool to make lines straight. The whole thing is absurd, and something else I want to point out is that someone specifically noted on Twitter/X that rulers back in the day in school settings (and even in homes) were used as disciplinary tools to spank disobedient children. The whole episode is insane, and it alludes to the fact that this woman might not only be homophobic, but has an entire allegory surrounding her entire character that she is literally threatening to "beat the gay out of him" just to be straight up. And no, that was not a pun because this is a serious conversation.
I'm not gonna repeat any old information, but just that constant theme of being held back from doing what you love and being with who you love. In that specific instance, there is an entire arc in season five where Gabriel is going to extensive lengths to prevent Adrien from being with Marinette, and this paralleled the relationship between Nathaniel and Marc, and how the displeasing mother of Nathaniel tried to stop them from being together to make comics… AKA the allegory for being gay.
Because not all of the episodes are out currently, I cannot do a full analysis on the rest of the episodes. I might update this thread with more information as episodes come along. Some episodes that I did not list included Mister Agreste, The Dark Castle, Revelator, and Wreckless Driver, were all released, however, I did not find any specific parallels to Adrien's life or trauma. While they each had one or two elements that impacted a part of him, they were not direct parallels of his life with his father, which is why I left them out. The only episode that kind of does this is the Mister Agreste episode where he has to face a giant statue of his father that basically keeps regenerating every time it gets attacked. I find this interesting because there might be some symbolism behind that, like even though he's dead there's still a part of him that haunts the narrative as explained earlier in this post. The fact that the character was also able to regenerate every time he was hit basically held onto the idea that no matter how many times you have to try to forget about someone they'll always find a way to come back in some shape or form. Luckily, in the episode Wreckless Driver, Adrien decides to seek therapy, which I was very shocked to see in a child animation, but this is really important, especially for kids need to understand the difference between professional help and outside help.
Until I update this blog later, I hope you all enjoyed this very long writing, and if it's really long for you just try breaking up in parts so you'll understand it better because unfortunately writing large paragraphs is the best way I can get all of my thoughts out in one blurb. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you guys on the next episode of Miraculous!
