Hello! Thank you for the ask! ^^
Oh... Oh boy... Nathalie... *breathes deeply* Nathalie confuses me. Because some of her changes I like and some of them I freaking hate.
When she started out she seemed to kind of fear Gabriel but care for Adrien in a small way. Like an aunt, perhaps. She was pretty much set up as a small mother figure for Adrien. A woman willing to risk her job to stand up for this boy who couldn’t stand up for himself. She walked up to her boss and, despite everything society has taught us on how to treat our superiors, she calmly told him his choice to keep Adrien out of the public wasn’t wise. She did it respectfully, logically, but with a small bit of firmness. I think she was of the opinion at the time that she wouldn’t be listened to. That she would be ignored. But she had to do something because Adrien couldn’t and that wasn’t fair.
I liked that Nathalie. I liked how she could figure out the best possible way to handle such a situation. Nathalie, when not under stress, was always able to come up with the best solution for herself and others. It was never guaranteed it would work but because she took time to process it, the chances were higher than if she had just gone up to Gabe and said, “Hey, your son needs friends, asshole.” Though I’m sure she may have felt like doing that... She was probably the most sound mind in the Agreste household and very much needed for Gabe as well as Adrien.
I found it rather annoying, almost insulting, how she fell back into kind of worshiping Gabe’s actions. I figured, when she helped him as Hawkmoth she was doing it for Adrien. That once Gabe got what he wanted Adrien would be happy or she could get through to Gabe herself and change his tune. But nah... instead she’s madly in love with him? Like, I was okay with maybe them slowly falling in love. Like maybe Nathalie would fall for the more human side of Gabe (which I guess, she sort of did) and Gabe would eventually let go of his wife and turn to her. She could be his sanity and help him get help not just for him but for his son. I figured that would be pretty nice. Though that’s hard to do without teaching young woman you can fix any man so I see why they didn’t go for it, I suppose. You can’t fix a bad man, but you can help them figure out their bad and help them down the path to helping themselves. That’s hard to get across, usually. It’s a tough thing to handle.
I really can’t decide if I would have preferred they went down that route and risk the chance of massively screwing it up or stay with this now mentally unstable Nathalie who is far too obsessed with Gabe in a very unhealthy way. Even Gabe, with how horrible he can be, doesn’t want Nathalie doing half the junk she does for him but she does it freaking anyway and that’s actually kind of horrifying. I know she’s dialed up on evil to try and convince kids that “hey, don’t do this” but it’s a mixed message for kids who knew the Nathalie from the beginning and it’s kind of concerning.
Now, the chances of kids finding a mentally insane man with a nice son and falling in love with him and helping him with his evil schemes... are low... But that’s not really the concern. The concern is them mistakenly believing love is giving up everything for the person you like. Because, believe it or not, when I first saw something like that and I was young... I thought it was cute. I thought that was adorable. Now, I was far more naive than probably most kids but that’s worrisome.
She lacks the strong integrity the original Nathalie had. That voice of reason for the Agrestes that they desperately needed is gone and now I think she’s worse than even Gabe in the mental department. Like, I’m kind of a fan of character analyzing some from my POV (though they clearly didn’t intend this at all) she seemed to have just snapped. Like something happened in her, a trigger perhaps, and she just broke.
I kind of like how she feels like a threat when not coughing and hacking, of course. I loved hearing that she was going to be the superior villain, even if it didn’t happen, or at least not yet. With this new, mentally unstable Nathalie, she seemed like a fitting new villain. One that could do more than just take the place of Hawkmoth. One that could go further. But sadly, they took away a lot of her logic and smarts... her deductive reasoning I liked so much is gone and that would’ve helped her so well in the villain department.
The episode Ladybug pretty much confirmed how much she lost. We all have plans that fall apart sometimes, especially if we aren’t mentally and physically well but... Even then, some of our original smarts does shine through and it didn’t. Her plan was horrible. It had so many holes and she didn’t think it through at all. Not to mention the empathy Nathalie was shown to have seemed to have been stripped away in that episode and it kind of... hurt.
Nathalie... she’s okay. I love the potential she has and the basic idea of her but she (just like most of the characters) wasn’t handled well and needs better writing. I like Nathalie and I find her telling Gabe Adrien was Chat Noir in Chat Blanc... not that bad? Like, she was in shock. You know what happens when we’re in shock and full of emotions? We say dumb stuff or we say stuff that wasn’t meant to be said a loud. It’s why in stressful situations secrets tend to slip out. So, yeah, I don’t really blame her? She didn’t seem happy she told him. She didn’t even seem happy Adrien was Chat Noir because, I think she realized, everything that they were working for was kind of all for nothing since Adrien was on the opposite side. She didn’t even help in the confrontation between the two heroes and Hawkmoth. I think she backed out as soon as she saw that because she was horrified and I would be too.
Basically, I like Nathalie, but she needs better writing because she’s sending mixed signals that can confuse kids. Plus, she’s ticking me off with her obsession with Gabe. Like do these Agreste men have some weird magical power to make the woman that fall for them unhealthily obsessed with them? That kind of sucks... >.>
send me a 👀 + an ml character and I’ll say my honest opinion about that character