Analysis of Adrien - S5 up to Ep 9
I am loving Season 5 so far, and having caught up with all the latest episodes aired in France, I’m more excited than ever.
So, let’s talk about Cat’s behaviour in ‘Elation’. If you’re like me, you were near-screaming at the Marichat kiss - even more so when Cat broke it off, then Mari was akumatised, and then there was more kissy-kissy-meow-meow (my new favourite phrase in life). Their kiss was right out of ‘Amelie’, by the way – adorable. And against a backdrop of a fake Statue of Liberty, as if reminding us that they’re not yet free.
More than just teasing the audience, Cat’s response was so in character. As Adrien, in ‘Determination’ he told Kagami that he’d started seeing Marinette differently in ‘Puppeteer 2.0′. We can go back even further, to ‘Troublemaker’, where Marinette had her chance to confess her feelings but chickened out and claimed to be just a fan. In fact, every time Adrien says she’s ‘just a friend’, we can substitute this with ‘just a fan’. He’s not oblivious - he’s careful.
Because of Marinette’s explanation for the photos on her wall, Adrien didn’t take her feelings seriously (and, I mean, how surreal must it be to have a friend with a fangirl crush on you?). This is evidenced in ‘Puppeteer 2.0′ when they’re in the car on the way to the museum and he tells Manon that they’re just friends. But it’s clear that his feelings are all mixed up, because he then worries deeply about Marinette possibly not liking him. Then he poses as a statue and she kisses him - and he jumps away.
At the time, we weren’t told why he reacted this way. We never got to see his thoughts when he lay in bed that night, no doubt running it over in his mind again. But we did see a future timestream in ‘Cat Blanc’ where the moment Adrien learned Marinette loved him, he was deliriously happy and told her he’d always felt there was something more than just friendship between them and now he finally knew why. We also saw him stare at her with her hair down and call her beautiful, in ‘Heart Hunter’. Then Kagami pushed herself on him and Mari was suddenly with Luka, and Adrien had no time to sort out his feelings. When Kagami kissed him, he was confused and said he wasn’t ready. He then took a step back from the girls while he tried to sort through his Ladybug problems, which shifted in ‘Glaciator 2.0′ - and the moment he began to evolve for the better was when he listened to Marinette’s love confession for Adrien. It was clear on his face that he was seeing her with new eyes.
By the time we reach ‘Determination’, his admission to Kagami tells us he has loved Marinette a long time but been waiting for her to give some indication that she feels the same, so he can clarify those feelings in his heart. I’ve said before: he’s a celebrity, used to being chased down by fans and receiving declarations of love from plenty of people who don’t know him. As long as he thought Mari was ‘just a fan’, he couldn’t allow himself to open his heart to it being more. But it’s all reached a point where he can’t hide it anymore.
As an aside, I loved the line Kagami gave him about needing to look in a mirror and figure himself out…because ‘kagami’ is Japanese for ‘mirror’.
I also loved the parallel of ‘Determination’ with ‘Frozer’, with Luka and Kagami there again, now pushing a different relationship.
Getting back to Adrien: I think that kiss in ‘Puppeteer 2.0′ was nearly what he needed to see Marinette as a love interest - but she dodged it again. It was almost the permission he needed to think of her as more than ‘just a fan’. He pushed her away because he liked it but needed to sort out his feelings…and, more importantly, because he knew he was tricking her and felt he was taking advantage of her.
Let’s jump back to ‘Elation’, when Cat kisses Marinette and then pulls away, yet again. His reasoning is that he’s behind a mask - he knows who she is but she doesn’t know who he is, and he doesn’t want to take advantage of her. He wants to kiss her but doesn’t want to steal that kiss. It has to be fair, honest and open. She just told him she no longer loves Adrien, so he has to be thinking if she knew it was him, she might not want him kissing her. He did the right thing.
When he says she doesn’t know who he is, again this is all about the idea of fandom. From his perspective, she’s just told him over and over and over again, ‘I’m a super, super fan.’ It’s no accident that earlier in the episode, Adrien was shown running from crowds of fans both as himself and as Cat, and getting infuriated by it. In both guises, he’s a celebrity. He wants someone to love him for him, and Marinette once again made herself ‘just a fan’ in his eyes. Of course he can’t pursue that.
The painful irony is that he has no way of knowing that the whole reason she now loves him as Cat Noir is exactly because she’s finally seeing him for who he truly is. She knows him better than he realises. But how to reveal that without sharing her identity? Alya was right - this stuff can’t work unless they can be wholly honest with each other. I maintain that Ladybug needs to tell Cat about Cat Blanc, if they’re ever going to move forward.
His face, though, when Andre just flat out told him Marinette had been in love with Adrien all that time…. All these years waiting for her to get those words out, and they were finally dropped so simply. This house got LOUD, over that one! You just know Adrien spent the whole night looking back over every single crazy exchange with her, reframing all of it and thinking, ‘Oh my god, is that what was going on!?’ And Marinette doesn’t even know this is in his mind. Now we have Adrien knowing things about her that she doesn’t know he knows, just like she knows about Cat Blanc. Like…what can I even say??
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