Gabriel Agreste is a groomer (in the metaphorical sense). No, I’m not joking.
As Hawk Moth, Gabriel takes advantage of people (especially kids and teenagers) when they’re vulnerable, exploiting them emotionally and using them for his plans. Every time he akumatizes someone, he isolates them, forms a false bond, validates their emotions, and makes them feel understood so they’ll trust him. Once he has their trust, he manipulates them into giving him what he wants: Ladybug and Chat Noir’s Miraculouses.
This is especially clear with two of his favorite akumatized victims: Chloé Bourgeois and Lila Rossi.
In Volpina, Gabriel sees Lila completely emotionally destroyed after the humiliation she suffers at the hands of Ladybug, and he takes advantage of her vulnerable state to get something out of her. He even calls her “his perfect prey” before akumatizing her.
The way he convinces Lila is simple:
He gives her back the sense of power she lost after being humiliated. When Lila is defeated, Hawk Moth says it won’t be the last time Ladybug sees her and he’s right. Gabriel keeps exploiting Lila’s resentment toward Ladybug to achieve his goals.
He makes Lila believe that she can trust him because they both “hate” Ladybug. Because of this, helping Hawk Moth and being akumatized becomes something comfortable for her, the result of the false emotional bond Gabriel builds each time he manipulates her. But in reality, he’s only using her. Both as Hawk Moth and as a civilian, he actively encourages her problematic behavior: he hires her to make another teenager’s life miserable (Marinette) and brings her into the Agreste brand… only to discard her without remorse the moment she’s no longer useful.
And now.. let’s continue with Chloe…
A similar pattern happens with Chloé, especially in the season 3 finale. Since the episode Miraculer, Gabriel had been planning for Chloé to betray Ladybug and join his side by exploiting her insecurities: feeling useless without being Queen Bee, and her desperate need for validation from Ladybug and, above all, from her mother.
Gabriel uses all this to isolate Chloé emotionally. He convinces her that he actually sees her “potential,” and that with him she can be Queen Bee as much as she wants because she’s part of his “chessboard.” Eventually, Chloé is fully convinced to switch sides. His manipulation is so strong that, even when she’s akumatized, Chloé claims that Hawk Moth isn’t her enemy, he’s Ladybug’s enemy. From that point on, her behavior worsens dramatically, fueled directly by Hawk Moth’s words.
You can also say that Gabriel “groomed” Adrien in an emotional and psychological sense. Adrien (besides being a sentimonster) grew up in an environment where having a cold, absent, controlling father was normal. Isolation, lack of freedom, and pressure to obey were part of his everyday life.
Any attempt to challenge Gabriel’s authority terrified him. Adrien constantly justified his father’s behavior using the excuse of his mother’s death, because that reasoning was likely repeated to him by the adults around him (including his own father). And since children are conditioned to love their parents no matter what, Adrien struggled to question anything that might threaten his father’s control because of that reason.
And let’s talk about how Gabriel manipulated Marinette in the S5 finale.
The final disturbing act of Gabriel’s happens right before his death. In his last moments, he asks Marinette (his son’s girlfriend) not to tell Adrien that he was Hawk Moth and not to let him find out the truth. With that, he dumps an enormous and deeply unfair responsibility onto her.
Then he dies, avoiding all the consequences of his actions, while Marinette is left carrying the weight of a massive lie. Confused, terrified, and emotionally shut down, she doesn’t know what to do, all because Gabriel used his dying breath to manipulate her and leave her holding the burden of his crimes.
