Alix Kubdel: The Spanner in the Works
So, when I first decided on doing this semi-regularly, I did not expect to talk about Alix Kubdel much. She’s a cool character, and she has her fans, but generally speaking the fandom doesn’t talk about her as much as some other characters, and particularly not in the lines of inquiry relating to miraculouses. However, having pursued a few lines of inquiry now, I feel like I need to address her, because something is becoming increasingly clear: Alix is a massive pattern breaker.
Alix so far has kind-of-sort-of put a spanner in the works of not one, but two of my theory posts now. The first is the Akumatisation post – her Akuma form isn’t really related to her flaws, and doesn’t turn her into an over-exaggerated negative version of herself or an opposite version of herself. It instead turns her into Timebreaker/Chronogirl – relating to the watch that got broken. The other post is the most recent one about how the show tends to pair characters with people who likewise tend to have opposite traits; the problem with this where Alix is concerned is that Alix doesn’t have a paired character.
(To clarify before people jump on me – I know Alix is sort-of paired with Kim, and they even have a kind-of-popular ship, but as I said in the post, Kim is far more obviously paired with Max in the show (though not necessarily romantically), and the two are seen in each other’s company far more than Alix is with Kim, which happens in only one episode, and that’s Timebreaker.)
There are a few reasons for why Alix most likely breaks patterns, and I’ll talk about them now.
The first is that Alix’s flaws are a bit ill-defined: she’s a little impatient, but not so much that she’ll ditch her father to meet her friends. She’s a bit pushy and competitive, but not so much as Kim, and at other times she’s just plain unmotivated – she feels no need to run for class rep – but again, not unmotivated enough that she’ll leave Kim to his shenanigans unchallenged. She has some minor problems with responsibility, but understanding responsibility is clearly Marinette’s journey. She’s got a touch of anti-authority about her, but it’s clearly not as much of a problem for her as it is for Nino, as she’s pretty cool with her dad. She’s stubborn, but clearly has a soft-spot for her dad at least. The stubbornness at the very least is the flaw with the most potential, as it could connect to an inability to let things stand: she won’t accept loss, and she won’t accept injustice – and yet, she won’t run for class rep. So close to suggesting Papillon!Alix, and yet so far...
Without a set of clearly-defined flaws, there are three things that immediately become a problem: I can’t assign her a potential miraculous, she doesn’t fit into the Akumatisation theory, and she doesn’t fit into the relationships theory. So why has Alix, of all characters, ended up like this? There is actually an answer, and that’s in a bit of trivia Astruc revealed on his Twitter once: that originally, she was meant to be in a trio with Chloe and Sabrina (thus making them a reference to the trio from Totally Spies!)
So, they would have formed the typical bully trio – in which case my Opposites Attract theory probably wouldn’t have existed. I’m happy with what we got in the end, because bully trios are innately less interesting that bully duos, especially one where the beta bully is someone as interestingly complex as Sabrina. In bully trios, you get the alpha bully, and then the underlings, who inevitably then become either dumb henchmen or they form a sort-of wise-guy-dumb-guy-opposition duo that you’ll have seen a hundred times before. (Hello Crabbe and Goyle, Horace and Jasper, etc.)
But this plan was scrapped and this leaves… just Alix. She sort of becomes a bit of a rogue element, as opposed to everyone else who have likely been paired by now, apart from Nathanael who, as I’ve discussed, is isolated because that’s part of his whole shtick. Instead, she’s given a… rather interesting family with ties to mysterious past artefacts that seem incredibly futuristic. If this doesn’t come back in Season 2 or some point in the future, I’ll be very, very surprised, especially since Season 2 is most likely going to be delving into the series mythology.
I’m not coming to any major conclusions here, but this is just your obligatory reminder: keep an eye on the Kubdels. They break patterns and their connections to historical culture stick out like a sore thumb. This bit of trivia about Alix makes me think that it’s entirely possible her entire family was a late addition in order to attach her to something of interest – and I know from my own projects that late additions have a tendency to be rather game-changing when it comes to overarching plots.
Tl,dr: Alix Kubdel is a pattern-breaker, most likely because her concept was changed in production, but this just makes her – and her family – all the more interesting. Keep up with the Kubdels. You probably won’t regret it.
