This is chronologically my first Miraculous Ladybug analysis, and I will be speculating on Félix. I went through and will be covering the episodes Félix, Gabriel Agreste, and Risk. At the time of writing this, Strike Back (episode 26) has not come out yet, so when it does, I will provide a follow up post.
Also I'll be covering my personal thoughts on what his ongoing motive is for targeting Gabriel Agreste and his whole thing with the rings.
Félix
In this episode, we get a sense of what Amelie (Félix's mom) and Félix are like. Amelie enables mischief in her son, and from a casual retelling of when Adrien and Félix dressed up as each other to fool the parents she specifically says "once they had [Gabriel] and Emilie fooled for a whole weekend" which implies she wasn't fooled and/or was in on it. This already sets up opportunities to see Félix with or without his mom as it seems, unlike Gabriel, she is much more hands off and encouraging of her son's freedom, for better or worse.
And Gabriel's firm "I won't be fooled a second time" is so foreboding... And let's not forget the very first interaction Gabriel has with Félix.
Gabriel's hands tense up at the gesture. Either because he's very protective of it, or he is specifically guarded around Félix and Amelie (which could go either way). Also that handshake seems like a premeditated act.
See how Félix looks down to where that ring would be, and how Amelie hums in brief thought (looking in that general area, then immediately zeroes in to that position.
These two can outsmart Gabriel to get their way, and could easily be his downfall.
Also,
I'm not very convinced about the death of the father background...
It could very well have happened and not been covered yet for reasons, but Amelie seems unaffected with all things considered, and though in this episode, Félix is presumed (by Adrien and Plagg) to be grieving... Félix himself never makes mention of anything personal or at least specific about his nameless father. As if the father may as well, not be an important factor in his life.
Félix's first words to Adrien -- which would've been a response to Adrien's apology for missing his father's funeral -- are driven by an objective.
"You always do everything your father tells you to do?"
Adrien: "He's very... protective of me."
And then Félix initiates a hug. First layer to analyze: this is basically how their exchange went.
Félix: Why won't you defy your father?
Adrien: He means well, he's just overprotective.
Félix's hug was meant as a cue to Adrien that there's no hard feelings.
Second layer: Félix's short term objective. Control the conversation to get close to Adrien so he can nab his phone. For what purpose? Basically, he skims through Adrien's things, belongings, seems to squash cheese under his pillow: all very petty as shit things. And then he proceeds to shame on him for his hero crush, and shit on the messages his friends sent to [Adrien] for his mom's funeral.
Seems like a detour from his long term objective in this episode to indirectly check up on how his cousin is doing. And promptly tries to ruin his friendships.
What is with the hostility?
The attempt at assassinating Adrien's relationships seems like a decoy, but it is driven by emotion. In earlier scenes, he (in isolation) seems to have deep seated sadness at the prospect of Adrien's friends being thoughtful.
Is it because he never got that support when he was presumably grieving his father's death? Well, that's never brought up again in later episodes, and again, his father is not even treated as the focus of Félix's motivations in his other appearances, so I'm not inclined to believe the father is important.
I think that's also a misdirect. His only previous relations appear to be Adrien and Chloe. Who knows, maybe he has friends in London, but he doesn't seem like he does. So could his sadness be because he's lonely? That's a possibility, but I feel that could be expanded upon.
With what's to come in the following episodes, I feel like it has to have something to do with the Graham de Vanily twin rings. The Sentimonster theory has been alive and kicking for months, but I'll elaborate on that in the following episodes.
The episode ends...
with Adrien and Félix hugging it out (and Félix saying he'll try and become a better person), and also Félix getting what he actually came for. One of the Graham de Vanily rings: The Twin rings.
And lore-wise:
Amelie has a story about the Graham de Vanily rings, and Félix has been fascinated about them since. In this episode alone, I was more convinced that the Twin rings were a separate important item entirely. But the moment Félix took the ring from Gabriel, Gabriel wasn't able to command Adrien back.
"Adrien stay here!"
Sure, usually the shot would linger on him fidgeting with the ring to indicate something more, but this is one of those cases where it's just a natural thing that Gabriel would bark a command, and that's enough for Adrien to either stop in his place, or protest "but father".
Also I like Adrien's wording to Félix when he invites him to contact him "if [he's] feeling upset or out of control" since if anything, Félix seems to be the most in-control character in this situation.
Also also: the thing with associating Félix as being a magician is very clever. He applies the magician principles very well throughout the episode: principle of force (manipulating the topic of his conversations), sleight of hand (the handshaking and hug), the misdirection (the entire akuma attack), and the verbal manipulation.
Considering the inherent unpredictability that comes with akuma attacks, but the fact that they make PERFECT DECOYS for any second hand objective
Would it be much of a stretch to suggest that Félix was anticipating a negative reaction from Adrien's friends to get an akuma attack, let the chaos confuse and affect everyone... so he could sweep in at the very end while everyone has dropped their guard to get the ring(s)? I mean, y'all realize the moment he gets to bargain with Hawkmoth, he asks for help in getting the rings, and conveniently loses all vendetta against Adrien. Cuz, well, the rings take top priority, and perhaps... most of it was staged from the very beginning.
Here are several lingering questions I have after scrutinizing the whole episode:
Why didn't Gabriel keep both rings with Emilie to avoid the risk of them getting stolen? What the heck is the significance of these rings, and why does he insist on wearing one?
Why did Amelie and Félix choose the anniversary of Emilie's "disappearance" to harrass Gabriel for the rings? Were they anticipating that he'd where the ring on this particular day?
What happened to Félix's father?
At what point did he have suspicions of Gabriel being Hawkmoth? What could he, and by extension, the Graham de Vanilys know about the Miraculous?
For number 4, remember how I said, Félix offers a trade with Hawkmoth in exchange for helping him get the rings. That's not a deal Gabriel would follow through with if Félix did give him the Miraculous.
Does that mean Félix didn't know??? Well, that's just as complicated. Since Félix could also be using doublespeak: "if you get your wish, aunt Emilie can be alive again, and you won't need these rings" or something along those lines. I can't say for certain what to make of it, but I'll cover that in the next part.
I don’t have any insight or thoughts I feel like expressing about the episode itself, but I felt the need to hyperfixate on the reasons each individual camper ended up going to Campbell. I tried to apply the reasons by carefully following his hand movements, but counting up all the reasons he listed, there was only 9 out of the 10 campers.
I considered the last reason he said — “woke up alone and got scared” — as potentially separate individual reasons, but the way he gestured at the same position made me decide he was referring to one person. I considered it referring to Max, but he gestured to our right from the tv, so I concluded he meant Harrison.
As for Max, I just made the interpretation that he didn’t give a reason and just came along at some point probably being one of if not the last camper(s) to go to Campbell.
I implore any Camp Camp fan bothered to read this to try and debunk these placements. What I know for sure is Space Kid, Nerris, Preston, Nikki, and Ered are definitely right, I’m confident with Neil and Dolph position-wise, and “weird rash” and “woke up alone and got scared” must’ve been close to each other since Campbell gestured in basically the same spot.
Anyone ever just think about how Bee and Puppycat is like the undercover Astro Boy reboot we’ve all been sitting our asses on for the last decade? I mean. The show’s slice of life, bathes in casually bathes in sci-fi archetecture design and has a great amount of action and drama that’s comes from episodic temp jobs to different dimensions/worlds/planets(?) — point is, it’s what seems like a natural evolved form of Astro Boy without even just milking the hell out of the angst of being an android version of a deceased kid. And ok, I’ll get on to that part since the situation with — Bee being a robot *cough cough* — is open to a lot of interpretations.
So my current running headcanon/theory is that Bee was the name of an actual girl — a young girl who fell ill during a winter long ago. And the father of that young girl took her to his handcrafted arcade one last time — which could‘ve been made for her potentially because he knew she wouldn’t live past her childhood. After that, the father made a slightly artificial girl of the same look and personality of his daugther. And this is our Bee.
And Bee, for the longest time, has known this about herself. Which might add to the season 1 conflict of her friends growing up while she… remained the same. And Deckare‘s conflict of not wanting to leave Bee behind by going to cooking university; Bee’s guilt over it is further contextualised in the fact that she knows she doesn’t have any long term aspirations of her own, she knows she isn’t going to grow out of her personality fundamentally, and she knows she’s the reason Deckard isn’t being responsible for himself.
As mundane and kinda uneventful as Bee’s life is, she finds herself drawn to the simple life of eating food, watching shows, and being with her friends. It’s just that people naturally grow and change, and that kind of thing is a product of life and time moving forward.
So it’s concepts like this that make me anticipate how Bee and Puppycat season 2 could balance the real life feelings of time and age distancing you from the people you love, with the revelation of Bee’s uncovered revelation of her origins as artificially built. I mean, I wouldn‘t put it past the show to simply keep things light-hearted or specifically for the characters to kind of dawdle on addressing it since Bee is the type of person to put off serious conversations (added bonus if they involve her mental state). Bee’s backstory is just one of the many untold things that are going on in this slice of life show. Honestly, not really sure what to refer to shows with a slice of life format with a tad bit of foreshadow and bleakness to it.
Anyways, this was just a fun lookback at a show that has kinda been in Production Purgatory™ as I like to call it. Haven’t watched Lazy in Space, and won’t be planning on watching it till it reaches Netflix… eventually. Till then, here was my thoughts on Bee and Puppycat.
Ok so, just rewatched Violet Evergarden all over again, And got to say, that ending was so vague yet subtle that I completely forgot it.
(This is not gonna be a structurally-sound rant, just a disclaimer for anyone that actually reads this.)
So, ignoring the special and the movie (that came out just last year), the season officially ends with this little scene of Violet walking up to the home of a no-named individual to write as per usual.
She does her decade’s version of “Hi I’m Connor the android sent by Cyberlife”
But she pauses. And she looks so stunned... only to smile so warmly. At who we the audience can only assume is the person standing before her. And just by going off reaction alone, on the surface....
...maybe this was her beloved Major?
But then... It wouldn’t make so much sense narratively-speaking. This whole show focused on Violet overcoming her past and starting a new life of her own separate from orders and an exploitative environment, plus dealing with the major loss of the one she loved most.
That, and it wouldn’t make sense logically. All this time, these characters were so certain that he was dead. Even if he was truly “MIA”, this show had established itself as being grounded in logic. So to even suggest, that somehow, for some inexplicable reason, Major Gilbert survived the explosion against all odds, consciously decided to abandon Violet, basically tricked the world including his friends and family that he’s dead, and chose to wait nearly a year before he made his presence known to only Violet... It just wouldn’t do the show or character any good if that were the case.
It’d be “Captain America choosing to be with Peggy yet apparently doing nothing during the majorly bad events that took place in history/MCU” levels of unpleasant.
I haven’t watched any theory videos or public analysis discussing this yet, but I think there are multiple possibilities that Violet got abruptly shocked. I’ll look into each of these possibilities in the order as follows:
- the unexpected survival of some other character we’ve met
- a friend that she wouldn’t have expected would request for her/request in general
- an old friend/a rarely-referenced or appeared-in-show friend
- the change in appearance of someone she knows
- two kids in a trenchcoat
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1) The unexpected survival of some other character we’ve met
If we were to look at all the characters that have appeared in the show and could’ve been presumed as dead, we would have; Aiden (from the Ctrigal war ep). Yep, that’s the only notable and closest thing to realistic option we have.
Only glaring issue here is.... Violet knows for a fact that he’s dead, he died right in front of her... so he is in no way alive. So this theory’s debunked.
2) A friend that she wouldn’t have expected would request for her/request in general
Violet at this point in time only considers her coworkers as friends, her boss, some of her clients; Princess Charlotte, Luculia (technically was her client), Leon (scholar from the observatory episode) and Anne Magnolia (little girl w/ deceased mom).
Quick fire round. None of her coworkers or boss would go through the trouble of requesting her under a pen name just to get her to write for them, Princess Charlotte wouldn’t be living separately from her husband in some unassuming house, Luculia isn’t a friend that would elicit shock from Violet for requesting her (and the likelihood of her moving to a new house wouldn’t make sense narratively and realistically), Leon’s more likely travelling then settling down (he’s not the type to have anyone in particular to write to anyway), and Anne never moved (her episode literally disproved any possibility of her ever changing house). So this theory’s dead too.
3) An old friend/a rarely-referenced or appeared-in-show friend
Violet has no previous relationships other than the Major. No dice, not even gonna humor it.
4) A change in appearance of someone she knows
This wouldn’t make sense since Violet’s a very stoic person. Something as insignificant as someone she knew getting a haircut or dressed up out of character wouldn’t get her shocked silent that she stopped her iconic greeting. This reason alone wouldn’t make sense for her character.
5) Two kids in a trenchcoat
Violet has grown to have a notable soft spot for children. While developing empathy, she’s shown to connect with children; whether it’d be substituting as a temporary mother figure for the lonely Anne Magnolia, encouraging the childlike Princess Charlotte to write her own letter to her love, to teaching the spirited Taylor Bartlett how to read and write. I wouldn’t be surprised if children have a higher likelihood of making Violet smile.
Which is why is see this theory actually being possible, seeing as the client(s) that meets Violet stands to eye level with her directly looking at the camera [equivalent of mystery client(s)’s eyes]. Only thing that contradicts is that trenchcoats haven’t been invented yet, presuming that this world vaguely ties to real life history.
In the VE movie, the increased presence of automobiles and the notable construction of the Eiffel Tower would indicate that the time the events of this movie take place in is around 1888 (where the first floor of the Eiffel Tower has been constructed). However, trenchcoats were invented around the time of WWI (1920s). Luckily, a man by the name of Thomas Burberry, invented “gabardine” in 1879.
This might as well have been the 1800s equivalent of trenchcoats.
So, surprise surprise. The two kids in a trenchcoat theory was a no-go. However, I think we’ve reached a sound verdict.
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Conclusion
The mysterious client in the last scene of Violet Evergarden, are two kids in a gabardine. Case closed.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
