We often talk about "the writers" as if they were some kind of hivemind, and that made me wonder, are they really? Well, let's find out.
But first, some general trends.
For one, with the grand exception of The Mime, which was written by five people, episodes in S1 were usually written by three people at most and there were a lot more solo episodes, which made it easier to figure out who was responsible for what in most instances. S1 also had a larger selection of writers, so I'm only going to focus on those who went on to work on the show from S2 onward.
For another thing, most of the writers don't have a lot of writing credits to their name, let alone experience working on anything good. The only ones that do are Fred Lenoir, who worked on Code Lyoko, and Matthieu Choquet, who worked on the adult series Lastman, based on the comic of the same title. And trust me, it shows.
The creator and the one beefing with people on Twitter, he is the guy the fandom generally tends to point to when the writing goes sideways. However, for how much attention we give him, there's actually surprisingly little to say about the man.
First of all, he isn't even a writer. His actual job is as director and storyboard artist, and the only writing credit he has besides Miraculous is like 3 episodes of Wakfu.
Second of all, for how much shit he talks on Twitter, it's actually really tough to separate out this man's influence. He never gets solo episodes, and his episodes usually tend to have more than three writers total. Closest we ever get to unfiltered Astruc is Zombizou, which he wrote alongside Wilfried Pain, who is himself not a writer and only wrote for this one episode.
In S1, Astruc wrote four episodes:
The Bubbler (w/ Sébastien Thibaudeau)
The Mime (w/ Sébastien Thibaudeau, Michaël Delachenal, Karin Lollichon, and Françoise Charpiat)
the Origins episodes (w/ Sébastien and Quentin Thibaudeau)
He became a full-time writer in S2, which is when you'll notice the show started to become more serialized. From then on, he wrote for every episode except for "Action".
From what little I can gather, toxic positivity and the prioritizing characters' short-term comfort over their long-term development is an Astruc special. In The Bubbler, Marinette lets Gabriel take credit for a gift she made because it makes Adrien happy, which is sweet until you realize all she's doing is giving Adrien false hope, and clinging to false hope is Adrien's fatal flaw. I've heard people say the ending of S5 retroactively ruins this episode, but it left a bad taste in my mouth from the very beginning, subsequent writing decisions just made it worse. The same thing happens in Zombizou, where not only was the class encouraged to "set a good example" for Chloé by being nice to her even when she's treating them poorly, but the entire episode started because Marinette got on Chloé's case for something that was not her business, and Chloé was treated as the bad guy when she naturally didn't take that well. Zombizou is just bad all around.
The head writer and story editor. Basically, everyone else's boss. He's literally only third to Aton Soumache (the executive producer) and Jeremy Zag in terms of influence. He gives feedback and suggests rewrites, works with the other writers to ensure continuity and correct runtime, and approves scripts for production. So, even if an episode was written by someone else, that writer had Thibaudeau looking over their shoulder and that script has his stamp of approval on it.
Like Astruc, he doesn't have a lot of experience writing. His only writing credits I can find that aren't for Zag shows are like 6 episodes of Sherlock Yack: Zoo-Detective, which I don't think anybody's heard of, and 2 live action movies I don't think anyone's heard of either.
In S1, he wrote 10 episodes:
Copycat (w/ Pascal Boutboul)
The Bubbler (w/ Thomas Astruc)
Timebreaker (w/ Michaël Delachenal)
The Mime (w/ Thomas Astruc, Michaël Delachenal, Karin Lollichon, and Françoise Charpiat)
both Origins episodes (w/ Thomas Astruc and Quentin Thibaudeau).
From S2 onwards, he wrote for every single episode.
Thibaudeau is very good at his job. /s He's directly responsible for such memorable gems as that time Hawk Moth and Lady Wifi left Ladybug alone to de-transform despite having her literally at their mercy, or that time Adrien randomly got jealous of a fan that wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell with Ladybug anyway (especially not over her literal partner), or that time Alix had to apologize and learn a lesson about responsibility when she's literally the only one who did the responsible thing in that situation. Generally if an episode fails to make sense, he was definitely involved. Thibaudeau is also the big-brained lad who had the idea to sell Miraculous to broadcasters as a "formula show", despite the fact that it very clearly isn't one. And then tried to walk back on it anyway.
Lenoir is generally one of the show's better writers, at least compared to the two I just mentioned. Her other writing credits include 9 episodes of Code Lyoko, and her favorite character is Plagg.
In S1, she wrote 4 episodes:
Kung Food (w/ Matthieu Choquet)
In S2, she worked on every episode except for Befana, Gorizilla, and Zombizou, and in S3, she didn't write for Animaestro, Miraculer, Startrain, Oblivio, and Desperada. In S4 and 5, she wrote for every single episode.
Out of all the writers, Lenoir is probably the least interesting one to talk about. I can think of really only three things to say about her. One, she's only second to Thibaudeau for the number of solo episodes, and all but one of her episodes in S1 have her as the only writer. Two, she's responsible for some of the best LS moments in S1—Kung Food and to a lesser extent Horrificator are some of the rare episodes where Marinette comes across more like a girl in love and less like someone's caricature of what teen girls are like. Third, she has no idea how contests work. Every single one of her S1 episodes involves a contest that fails to make sense in some way.
The show's best writer, bar none. Everyone else go home.
Choquet wrote 5 episodes of S1:
Kung Food (w/ Fred Lenoir)
Darkblade (w/ Léonie de Rudder)
Princess Fragrance (w/ Léonie de Rudder)
Volpina (w/ Léonie de Rudder)
In S2, he wrote every episode except for Befana, Syren, Zombizou, Frozer, Reverser, Anansi, Sandboy, and Santa Claws. With the exception of Glaciator, generally if an episode of S2 was really salt-inducing, chances are he had nothing to do with it. After that, he wrote less and less. In S3, he wrote Miraculer, Startrain, and the Battle of the Miraculous two-parter, and in S4, he only wrote one episode, Psycomedian. He seems to have left the show entirely in S5, and truly, I cannot imagine why. /s His favorite episodes are the Heroes' Day two-parter, and his favorite character is Chloé.
His episodes tend to be very low on romance, and when it does show up it's usually of good quality. His episodes are also where Adrien is at his most competent (with the glaring exception of Evillustrator), and he seems to show more of a preference for solo Cat Noir. Evillustrator needs Marinette to detransform so she can go on the date with Nathanaël, and Darkblade and Princess Fragrance see him fight the akuma mostly alone with Ladybug not even showing up until the last third of both episodes.
