“The law is a good thing, but you need humanity to apply it as well.”
Many “Miraculous” fans spotted the hidden allegory within this episode, but they may not have spotted all the elements that made it such a powerful commentary on police brutality and how we can stop it.
Let’s start with Sabine herself. The inciting incident in “Qilin”—Sabine’s removal from the bus and subsequent arrest—happens relatively late in the episode, allowing for an extended exposition that follows Sabine through a seemingly ordinary Saturday morning. Sabine is a high-functioning adult and a good citizen that contributes to her community—contrasted with the “blame-the-victim” mentality that portrays the “suspects” in police brutality incidents as criminals and miscreants.
She is also an immigrant and a POC in a majority-white neighborhood. While it's been subtle, Marinette and her family are no strangers to racism--remember how Chloe was throwing out microaggressions aimed at Marinette and her uncle in "Kung Food."
Like so many other victims of police brutality, Sabine ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her scatterbrained teenage daughter runs off with her wallet to make an impulse purchase, leaving Sabine without her tickets, her ID, or any money. She then runs into an officious ticket inspector who refuses to accept her explanation and automatically accuses her of lying to jump the fare. No one else on the bus intervenes—not the bus driver with whom Sabine shares her leftover choquettes, not even the disabled passenger she helped into the wheelchair space.
So the ticket inspector kicks her off the bus, and that’s it, right? No. He insists on hauling her over to Officer Roger so he can take her to the police station for an ID check. At this point, Roger could have intervened, explaining that Sabine is not the sort of scofflaw who regularly “forgets” her ticket. But past episodes have demonstrated that Roger's passion for law and order frequently overwhelms his common sense. He doesn’t allow Sabine to contact her daughter, then he destroys her artwork while rummaging through her bag... and when she complains about it, Roger interprets Sabine’s protests as aggression, and suddenly she's marched away in handcuffs by officers in body armor and face shields.
(Observant viewers may remember the shooting of Oscar Grant, which partly inspired the Black Lives Matter movement and the award-winning film Fruitvale Station. That incident also involved a disturbance on public transport and an unnecessary escalation of force by responding officers.)
Sabine’s understandable emotional distress provides an opening for Hawkmoth to akumatize her. She tries to resist his power, but he appeals to her feelings of persecution and unfair treatment. Brainwashed, Sabine transforms into an anthropomorphic qilin—a gentle and auspicious being that turns ferocious when punishing the wicked. Her attacks are primarily defensive—she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but she makes it clear that no one is getting anywhere near her.
That’s when the police resort to further escalation of force, even though it didn’t work the first time. Paddy wagons full of cops in riot gear are blown aside like dandelion seeds. Police helicopters equipped with nets prove useless. Even the resident superheroes get in on it, trying to help, but their offensive maneuvers prove useless. And Roger’s response? He keeps calling in more cops, even requesting Mayor Bourgeois’s assistance in bringing in a tank.
The entire area becomes a warzone because two law enforcement officers won't listen to or accommodate somebody in a tough spot. It parallels how police brutality creates violence and chaos in the neighborhoods affected by it, and how it radicalizes people and communities and makes them see the police as enemies.
Eventually, Ladybug realizes that the key to resolving the situation lies not in overpowering Qilin, but in calming her down by giving her what she needs: her freedom and someone who will listen. The Lucky Charm that Ladybug receives—a futuristic-looking ray gun—is unusual. It’s only the second time in the whole series that she gets a firearm. Fans will recall Ladybug received a submachine gun in “Malediktator”—coincidentally this episode also involved police officers, the ones standing guard around Malediktator’s throne. But Ladybug never used the gun; she discarded it after snapping off the laser sight, the only part of it she needed for her plan. Here, too, Ladybug subverts the obvious function of her Lucky Charm as part of a creative ploy to grab Roger’s handcuff keys.
Ladybug could have used the ray gun on the officers, but that would only have made the situation worse—Roger had already threatened to arrest Ladybug for interfering in his “duties”. This part of the episode demonstrates that violent counter-reactions to police brutality are understandable, but they are not the best solutions.
Ladybug proceeds to de-escalate the situation by offering Qilin the keys. This gets her to stand down and throw off the power of the akuma. Then Ladybug and Chat Noir deal with the cops. Chat Noir uses his position as a respected superhero to vouch for Sabine’s character while Ladybug persuades Roger and the ticket officer to wait a minute so she can “find” Marinette and prove Sabine was telling the truth.
Marinette even concedes her role in the whole mess, which isn’t the element of “bothsidesism” that some critics of the episode claim. This is hardly the first time Marinette inadvertently caused a friend or loved one to get akumatized, and she knows it. She takes responsibility for doing something wrong—not even that wrong, just dumb—that created the situation, even though neither she nor her mother deserved what the police did in response. Even the ticket officer is convinced, and the two parties reach a compromise they can all accept.
(Going back to the Oscar Grant shooting referenced earlier, the BART police officers had every right to respond to the fight that broke out on the train and detain people who might have been involved. They did not have the right to use excessive force on Oscar Grant or any of the passengers.)
The resolution of this episode demonstrates the need for open dialogue between the public and the police, and that the lion’s share of this dialogue includes law enforcement agencies owning their past wrongs and committing to a change in tactics—specifically, restraint in the use of “escalation of force” while incorporating de-escalation tactics into their training and practice. Only then can we prevent police brutality and overreaction. Only then can we create a civil society we all want and need, one where the public follows the law, and where the police rightfully enforce it.
