God damnit! I knew Monarque’s facial expressions looked familiar!
Even the eyebrows are the same!
It’s actually quite remarkable that the show manages to let Adrien/ Chat Noir and Gabriel/ Hawkmoth (as civilians or whatever miraculous forms) have such individual designs - not even resembling each other too much at all - and yet through the facial expressions, the way they talk and their body language they naturally share one can still consistently recognize them - at least on some subconscious level - as father and son.
Come to think of it. This entire scene of Monarque being fake-kind to Chloé to use her was in general top notch in this regard:
I mean, YEAH. This is absolutely Adrien’s / Chat Noir’s evil and manipulative father.
And the only way to show and convey kindness/ politness this man would acknowledge to be “worthy” of himself to use in a situation like this is either the way his own “perfect” son behaves, or at the very least Gabriel knows exactly what type of kind and polite behavior HE is demanding from Adrien.
I dont have a gif of Adrien moving in the subtle ways like Gabriel copies in the upper one but it’s definitely closer to Adrien’s body language than Gabriel’s own (though by instinct it 300% reminds me of CatWalker
but maybe that's influenced by Monarque being a miraculous identity and so was CatWalker who - as we know - is the perfect [and desperate and completely submissive] prince Adrien was raised to be so my point still stands).
And the second gif is 100% the move we long know from Adrien and also one we know comes from the way Gabriel teached Adrien to express himself for formal politness towards a woman:
Oh, I love that! Look at Gabriel at the end of “Adoration” in the shot where we see him from the outside in Marinette’s POV:
He stands there in a way that we the audience recognize as a visual reference to his Monarque transformation pose and the shadows create a butterfly-like form. The black space between Gabriel’s legs and right under his hands, which are also in a visually similar position again, create the illusion of his staff.
Plus the shadow over Gabriel’s chest leads your eyes right to his tie where of course his Butterfly miraculous is hidden.
But the most interesting I find Gabriel’s hands in combination with the shadows and details of the french bacony (so..regualr balcony in this case? lol). It’s an optical trick depending on you remembering how his hands look like in the transformation pose so your mind makes sense out of the kinda visual mess that doesn’t properly check out when we see him standing there. From afar it looks like Gabriel is once again laying his right hand (with the wedding ring) on top of his left one - as per usual. But when you look closer, that’s not the case: Gabriel’s left hand is on top of his right, which is of course what he has to do to control Adrien with the amok object in this very scene.
All Gabriel is doing is holding his hands in a way that doesn’t make it obvious.
And to really drive that point home, right afterwards after Marinette left we see Gabriel holding his hands in front of his chest:
Reminding us which hand the ring is on and what he obviously has been doing just now.
Has someone else noticed how Gabriel basically made it impossible for himself right now to quickly put on the ring of the Black Cat with his new Monarque design?
The ring placements are accurate btw.
Normally the Black Cat Miraculous is worn on the dominant hand (because duh), which in Gabriels case is the same as Adriens, the right hand. But here we see clearly that Gabriels right ring finger is completely blocked by the Turtle and Rooster rings.
And even if he were to simply wear it at a different finger, he still would need to take of at least one ring to properly put on the Black Cat
Something he was able to do with his previous villain get ups as we saw in "Ephemeral"
And yet, in stark contrast to that, for the first time Gabriels new villain designs make it possible for him to quickly put on the Ladybug miraculous
Which has NOT been the case before
Also I find it a neat detail that Gabriel always wears his wedding ring on his left hand and that's where the Dog miraculous is placed now, because of Félix and the whole Sentihuman-situation in this family.
Theory on what Monarque did at the beginning of “Multiplication”
The beginning of “Multiplication” picks up shortly after the ending of “Evolution”, the only little time skip we get is that we come back to Ladybug and Chat Noir when they are already at the end of their catch-up-on-the-public-media step.
Meaning they are right at the same spot we left them at last episode, this checks out. Its only shortly after:
But what doesnt check out on the surface is that a couple of moments later we see Gabriel again. He on the other hand is NOT AT ALL where we left him off:
No joke, this moment came so out of the blue for me first time watching, I for some reason wrote this off as Gabriel having returned home from the Evolution battle via Wind Dragon. Even though that literally contradicts the ending of “Evolution”. This comes AFTER the endcard, nothing in how anything from the beginning plays out indicates we are making time jumps again to fill in blanks. Also the way Gabriel asserts himself as the Kwamis Master would make more sense AFTER they saw him on his knees and explode in front of Emilies coffin imo.
Anyway. This being AFTER the endcard means that right after Gabriel went off he switsched lairs and transformed again. And for what exactly? Well, in “Risk” we did get this visually amazing moment of ShadowMoth searching for a suitable prey HIMSELF, instead of reacting to a random strong and negative emotion given to him:
And notice how Gabriel can listen to the dialogue from these people. Thats what I think he did right after he went off at the end of “Evolution”: He’s spying on Ladybug and Chat Noir.
In “Risk” we saw him take own initiative but he still followed his usual plan: find a victim with negative emotions to akumatize them. But by nature of his Miraculous he doesnt NEED to look for negative emotions, thats just whats most useful to Gabriel so thats all he usually does (best example here would be Nathalie as Catalyst)
Following the “the only limits a Miraculous holder has are the ones they set themselves” revolution from s4 and combine that with Gabriel loosing it more and more through wearing 15 Miraculous, I would make the argument that Gabriel now could very much be capable of overstepping his previous power limits, despite his health, to such dangerous regards that he pushed himself to be able to spy on Ladybug and Chat Noir. It would also explain why Monarque is on one knee when we see him: He’s pushing himself again, but not anywhere close to what he did to himself in “Evolution”.
But for me the most important indicator is that Monarque here would be stopping right immendiately when SU-HAN arrives. And that actually makes alot of sense:
From s4 “Furious Fu” Gabriel knows that Su-Han is the Celestial Guardian of the Miraculous and that Su-Han is able to BLOCK an akuma through his training:
Su-Han IS a massive threat to Gabriel, even if s4 didnt bother acting like it.
Sooooooo, yeah, Gabriel immediately breaking the connection he uses to spy on Ladybug and Chat Noir the moment Su-Han enters the scene checks out for me. With the experienced Celestial Guardian around who is TRAINED to fight the Butterfly Miraculous on a more “spiritual” level (for the lack of a better term on my part) continuing to spy would simply be way too dangerous.
Also, it would be really sweet if that were the case. Because when Su-Han apologizes he also says that he, as the more experienced and stronger Guardian, should have had been on THEIR side and helped them instead of being another obstacle:
- and if Su-Han having entered the scene here REALLY was the factor that stopped Monarque from spying on them, then in this very scene where Su-Han apologizes for not having acted as their protective shield HE LITERALLY WOULD HAVE BEEN!
Thats so wonderful!
Cause Su-han, just like basically every other character in s4 tbh, was done incredibly dirty til now (and I’m not gonna comment further on the fact that they had the Celestial Guardian of the Miraculous fall to his knees and beg for Ladybugs forgivness, like in some Saltinette Fanfiction, to show that he’s on the good side now) but at least there might be a possibility now that Su-Han and his status as Celestial Guardian were allowed to already be of immense use to our two heros and merely through his presence.
Monarque backing away from spying on them, because he doesnt want to risk Su-Han feeling his presence and maybe using that as a uno-reverse-card, would be a great way of demonstrating how powerful and valuable Su-Han will now be as the heros ally.
Hell YES It wasnt just a one time thing in Risk!!!
Monarque actively looking for specific people to akumatize - or at least looking for a bigger selection and not just jumping on the very first bad mood of the day - seems to be a recurrent gimmick for season 5! It seems as if we are truly breaking away from most of the former status quo’s holding the show back.
