Lets talk about what Adrien is doing.
When Adrien talks about Gabriel to his therapist in "Lady Chaos", he has this pause like he's expecting a negative response from Dr. Psiquat for thinking so ill of his father, as even she knows Gabriel is viewed a hero, but thankfully Psiquat is shown to be very professional and reminds Adrien she is there to listen to him on anything he has to say, allowing Adrien to feel comfortable enough to be more honest than when he is with others outside the office, which is the whole point of therapy, to be able to talk about things you can't normally talk about with others and make sense of that mess, and in Adrien's case, its how he can't view his dad under the same glorified light as the rest of the population of Paris, because it doesn't make sense to him that the same cruel man he grew up with suddenly became a good man, and a hero at that.
From Adrien's point of view alone, no matter who he turns to, everyone can only say positive things about Gabriel, but he for one knows now first hand that his father was a bad person. In fact, its revealed that as Cat Noir, Adrien expressed just how much he hates and rejects the fact that his father is viewed as a hero, by destroying the statue made in his honor.
Now, Dr. Psiquat notices that to Adrien, his dad is like a picture on a jigsaw puzzle, one Adrien cant make sense of because he is missing pieces, once he finds those missing pieces he will be able to assemble a picture of Gabriel that makes sense to him. Adrien decides to try and find those missing pieces so he can put together a picture of who Gabriel really was by interviewing people who knew Gabriel as part of a documentary. But something Adrien says is odd, he happily tells Nino and Marinette in "Lady Chaos" that his intentions for the documentary he's making about Gabriel is to hopefully see his dad in the same light everyone else sees him in, a kind altruistic man who was a hero. Something feels off.
Adrien, the boy who refuses to see Gabriel the same way everyone else does, wants to now try and see his dad as the hero everyone else thinks he is? Strange, even more so since we have seen Adrien try to deny Gabriel's heroic glory before, but it didn't go so well.
In "Mister Agreste", when Adrien came face to face with the possibility of an even bigger Gabriel statue being built to replace the one he destroyed as Cat Noir, Adrien tried to get everyone in the room to understand that his dad is being viewed far greater than he really was and should not be honored with such a giant statue, but no matter how he tried to explain things to others about just how cruel Gabriel really was, those words only ended up being ignored. Instead, the cruel truths Adrien shared about Gabriel were taken as something completely different than what he was trying to say. We have seen Marinette try and avoid any negative words about Gabriel in an effort to steer Adrien away from viewing his father negatively, believing he would benefit more from thinking Gabriel was not a complete monster, but we see that even when Adrien tries to tell other people who idolized or were associated with Gabriel, like that sculptor Theo in "Mister Agreste", the same result still occurs with or without Marinette's intervention.
Everyone heard Adrien say that Gabriel was as dry and rigid as the pancakes he cooked, but rather than accept Adrien's word, Mrs. Bustier believed it meant Adrien still needed time to grieve and was not ready yet to decide on a new statue, while Theo decided to instead believe Adrien's words revealed Gabriel was a good cook, a clear sign to him that Gabriel was a model father, something Adrien never said to begin with. In hindsight, Adrien wants to know he is not alone on the matter of knowing his father was a bad person, but ever since word spread about the "hero Gabriel" and him having now lost both his parents, Adrien had begun facing something that tends to happen when a person is suddenly faced with a severe tragic loss, a line of pity .
Adrien understands people are trying to be sympathetic towards him and his loss, but the way they are doing it by only focusing and constantly reminding him of the hero they think his dad was and how proud they think he should feel to have been his son, has Adrien feeling powerless, patronized, and isolated rather than supported.
Based on Theo's reaction alone in "Mister Agreste", its obvious the public that continues to idolize Gabriel do not want to hear Adrien of all people going against Gabriel's heroic title, they want Adrien to live up to the expectations they have of him so he can fit into his title as "the son of the hero, and will not hesitate to reprimand him if he fails to do so or just flat out ignore his word, they don't want to listen to him to understand from his point of view why he cannot idolize his dad despite having actually grown up experiencing a side of his father no one faced, and rather than be left to decide on his own how he wants to move past his grief and come to terms with his loss, people are choosing to decide it for him, trying to rescue him at every turn, offering a solution rather than leaving him the chance to handle a situation on his own and accept his choices. All of this has made Adrien wonder if he is alone on the matters of disagreeing about Gabriel and whether or not it means he should consider himself a bad son for not believing his dad was a hero like everyone else has, but regardless, he cannot bring himself to just simply forget about the harm his father did to all of them.
Marinette may be trying to convince the people who knew Gabriel's cruelty to only say good things about him, but she cannot erase what Adrien has already seen. He's seen how Marinette, Nathalie, Amelie etc. expressed their anger and frustration over Gabriel and his cruel ways, he's seen how he wronged them, so to see them now disregard everything they once knew and experienced in favor of a heroic version of Gabriel that he feels does not exist, might be leading Adrien to realize he cannot rely on other peoples word about his father anymore if they are only telling him what they and Marinette think will make him feel better.
Adrien is not an idiot, in "Mister Agrete", we learned that Adrien could sense long ago that Ladybug was not telling him everything that happened to Gabriel in the final fight, so far that has not changed.
If he could figure that out about Ladybug, then he must have noticed that everyone who is closest to him is only saying nice things about Gabriel just to try and make him feel better. Even in "Lady Chaos", when he talked to illusion Ladybug as part of his documentary about Gabriel, what he hears from illusion Ladybug(who's really Alya talking) is no different than what he's heard everyone else say.
Every person he's interviewed has said the same kind things about his dad, that he may not have made all the right decisions but he was ready to do anything out of love and that by the end of the day, Gabriel was a man who still loved his son. With no real difference in everyone's words about Gabriel, I do wonder if maybe Adrien has another reason for why he wanted to do the documentary. Is this documentary really just about him wanting to try and see Gabriel the same way other people do? or is he trying to fully lay out one version of the story on Gabriel before figuring out what pieces don't fit in the picture. But let’s just wait and see what the show has to say.
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