Queen Beeâs Damnation Arc
Iâve never seen the Miraculous Ladybug fandom quite this agitated before, and thatâs saying something âcause Iâve been active in this fandom for over six years at this point and Iâve seen all sorts of controversies. But the ChloĂŠ discourse goes above and beyond: anti-ChloĂŠ folks are attacking pro-ChloĂŠ folks, pro-ChloĂŠ folks are attacking the showâs creatorsâŚitâs a mess.
So Iâm gonna make a post breaking down ChloĂŠâs character arc! That couldnât possibly go wrong, right?
A couple notes here before I get started. Iâm a screenwriter, and thatâs the perspective Iâm approaching this from. Iâm not going to take a stance on what ChloĂŠâs arc should beâIâm just breaking down what it currently is. And my goal here is to debunk the misconception that ChloĂŠâs character development was erased at the end of season 3.
SPOILERSÂ are present, up through Penalteam.
Hereâs whatâs happened so far in ChloĂŠâs arc.
In Season 1, we learned ChloĂŠâs status quo. Sheâs a jerk to basically everyone, she pushes around her father ANDRĂ to get her way, and she treats SABRINA like a servant. But at the same time, she admires LADYBUGÂ and wants to be a hero like her, and sheâs also friends with ADRIEN. So from her perspective, she has four potential allies at this point.
In Despair Bear, ChloĂŠ is challenged by ADRIEN, who suggests that if she keeps treating people terribly, heâll have to stop being her friend. ChloĂŠ clearly doesnât want to lose Adrien, so she actually makes an effort, even though she backslides at the end of the episode.
In Style Queen, we meet ChloĂŠâs mother AUDREY, a fifth potential ally for ChloĂŠ. AUDREY mistreats both ChloĂŠ and ANDRĂ, and here the reason ChloĂŠ treats people horribly is because of an attempt to get into AUDREYâs good graces.
In Queen Wasp, ChloĂŠ gets a Miraculous, and she unsurprisingly abuses its power for her personal benefit, which HAWKMOTHÂ capitalizes on. Sheâs taken down by LADYBUG, who takes back the Miraculous, showing ChloĂŠ that she canât be a hero if she only uses her powers for personal gain.
In Malediktator, Queen Bee is given a second chance by LADYBUG, and this time she doesnât exclusively serve her own interestâher selfish instincts are outweighed by her desire to be a hero.
In Miraculer, we see that Queen Bee is quite competent as a hero, almost winning a one-on-one fight with Mayura. Despite this, LADYBUGÂ says she canât ever give ChloĂŠâs Miraculous back to her, because HAWKMOTHÂ knows her identity. ChloĂŠ doesnât believe this; sheâs confident LADYBUGÂ will give her the Miraculous again.
In Hearthunter, ChloĂŠ is manipulated by HAWKMOTH into losing that confidence, and she starts to see LADYBUG as keeping her away from her goal of being a hero. From this point onwards, HAWKMOTH is considered her ally, and LADYBUG isnât.
In Sole Crusher, ChloĂŠ thinks her goal of being a hero is now out of reach, and so her selfish instincts are no longer being overpowered, and sheâs once again being horrible to people. With help from ZoĂŠ, ANDRĂ stops letting ChloĂŠ push him around as much as she used to.
In Queen Banana, ChloĂŠ gets in a fight with ADRIEN and cuts him off, bringing her down to one fewer allyânow, her only allies are SABRINA, AUDREY, and SHADOWMOTH. Additionally, because Vesperia now wields the Bee Miraculous, ChloĂŠâs even further from her goal of being a hero. Now, she doesnât just have to be a better personâshe has to be better than Vesperia.
In Optigami, ChloĂŠ laughs at a joke made at AUDREYâs expense, and AUDREY cuts her off, once again bringing her down to one fewer ally.
In Penalteam, ChloĂŠ cuts off both of her remaining alliesânamely, SHADOWMOTH and SABRINA. For a few moments, she has no allies left, until LILA decides to start taking advantage of that, asserting herself as the one person ChloĂŠ can still potentially trust.
Letâs break that down.
Iâve capitalized specific names in the synopsis because ChloĂŠâs arc is defined by her allies. In season 1, she has four alliesâAndrĂŠ, Sabrina, Ladybug, and Adrien. Season 2 adds Audrey, and at the end of season 3 she switches out Ladybug for Hawkmoth. Then in season 4, she loses each of her allies one by oneâfirst AndrĂŠ, then Adrien, then Audrey, then Shadowmoth, and finally Sabrina.
So even from this alone, we can see that ChloĂŠ hasnât reverted to her status quo of season 1. In season 1, she was comfortable, and in season 4, sheâs spiraling, cutting ties left and right, and digging herself deeper and deeper into a hole. This is a very different status quo, because itâs not stable. Things can change dramatically at any moment, and almost certainly will.
And most importantlyâŚChloĂŠâs character development as Queen Bee hasnât been undone. Even when she was a hero, she still had her selfish and hostile instinctsâshe was just suppressing them in order to achieve her goal of being a hero. Once that goal seemed out of reach, she had no reason to suppress those instincts anymore. But that doesnât mean those behaviors went away and came backâthey were always there; she was just able to temporarily hold them down.
So why was ChloĂŠ written this way?
Thereâs one thing that I never see people recognizing in the ChloĂŠ discourseâChloĂŠâs character arc isnât over. There are more seasons of the show planned, and those seasons will definitely have ChloĂŠ in them. Thomas Astrucâs goal in writing ChloĂŠ was never to write the specific section of her arc that weâve seen so farâit was to write her entire arc. Obviously, I canât know what that arc is going to end up being, but there are some things we can more clearly understand.
When figuring out a characterâs role in a plot, there are three essential elements to considerâa goal is what a character wants, motivations are why they want it, and methods are how they go about trying to achieve it. Letâs break this down for ChloĂŠ:
Goal:Â ChloĂŠ wants to be popular, specifically by being a hero.
Motivations:Â ChloĂŠ grew up in an environment where her mother abused both her and her father, and she never learned how to be a good person, so she has very few allies. She sees how much people look up to Ladybug, and she wants that for herself.
Methods: ChloĂŠâs willing to suppress her toxic instincts if it gets her towards her goal, but she never actually tries to unlearn those instincts.
ChloĂŠâs methods of suppressing her toxic instincts werenât sufficient to achieve her goal of being a hero, and so she abandoned those methods in favor of the new method of siding with Hawkmoth. When that didnât work out either, she abandoned that approach and currently sees her goal as unachievable.
Of course, itâs clear what she actually does have to do in order to achieve her goalâshe has to put in the effort to actually learn how to not be a terrible person. And thereâs a clear metric for that: she has to give Ladybug a reason to give the Miraculous to her rather than to Vesperia. Until ChloĂŠ unlearns her toxic attitudes, Ladybug will always choose Vesperia over Queen Beeâand thatâs where Vesperia fits into ChloĂŠâs arc, and I suspect this is why Vesperia was added to the story in the first place.
Thereâs no way to know whether ChloĂŠ ever actually will manage to get to that point; there are lots of directions her arc can take from here. But this is what her arcâs aboutâwhen someone doesnât know how to care about other people, itâs impossible for them to be a hero. Thatâs the moral, and thatâs why she was written this way.
Oh my goodness, this is amazing! And I like how you described Zoe/Vesperia's part in the story, that it is deeper than her being "a better version of Chloe". The point is that as long as Chloe doesn't change her attitude, Ladybug can and will use someone better.
I would like to point out another Chloe flaw - she has trouble letting go of people in a healthy way. She forces people to stay with her even when they do not want to. Like how she makes Sabrina do whatever she tells her to do. Or perhaps like how even after telling Adrien that he "isn't her Adrikins anymore" she goes back to him the next day like nothing happened, even though he told her that she can't keep being mean to people.
I would not be surprised if Chloe gets another anti hero arc, but a more deep one.
