Episode 1 - The Maelstrom

This one was a difficult one to pick a song for but, in the end, I settled on Thunderstruck by AC/DC because of Climatika’s presence. It’s not a major, or even a minor, plot point, but it was fun to have something cheesy to underscore a fairly grim moment in the story.

The Maelstrom

The title comes from a famous whirlpool off the coast of Norway, about which I learned when I was a kid – I read Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne and a fictionalised version of the whirlpool featured in the climax of that story. It was also the name of the bad guy’s ship in one of the earliest cartoons I remember watching. Given the link to France via M. Verne, it’s not surprising to me that I chose to have Scarlet Papillon call this attack a Maelstrom.

After the ‘cliff-hanger’ I tried to leave season 1 on, I could have gone straight into Ladybug and Chat Noir leading their team to fight Scarlet Papillon. The issue was that some really bad stuff had clearly happened and I wanted to make sure everyone knew what was going on.

Lila/Invisibelle

So, to tell that story, I had to follow supporting characters – I didn’t like starting the season with Lila, but it made the most sense. I really enjoyed the bit where Marinette tripped over in Firesaur and Big Monkey: Part 1: my editor, Lee, commented that maybe it needed to be left out, but the reason was that I wanted it to be hinting at something else going on; a hint that pays off now, when we find out Invisibelle was waiting for her.

Although we’ve seen Lila’s disdain for Papillon before in Miraculous: Contingency, this is the first time we really see that she isn’t just helping the supervillain but has her own agenda behind the scenes.

Tangle and Korvid

When I first started writing Miraculous: Contingency I didn’t want my own characters to take too much of the spotlight from the main characters of the story, but this moment was inevitable. With Ladybug taking most of her team to New York, it meant that there needed to be some other people behind to defend them. In the original draft of the New York episodes, Bunnyx just left a hint but I needed it to be much less subtle when I re-wrote it, which is why we end up with the two Rogues and Ryuko in sole defence of the city.

Even though Korvid and Tangle’s main reason for coming back to Paris was to reclaim their Miracle Chest from the Guardians, all of them (human and Kwami alike) are fundamentally good people. The reason Tangle decided to help Fu and rescue the official Miracle Chest was because she didn’t have any other choice. That’s the choice which really alters the trajectory from the show’s narrative. I wrote this plotline long before the season 4 finale of the show aired, and it was baffling to me that I’d come up with a similar plotline to the one that the showrunners did.

I’ve tried to balance the two characters, they both have smart and dumb moments through the episode. Korvid is understandably furious with her cousin for letting the Chest get away but recovers quickly enough. Having Ryuko along for the ride really helped put a different perspective on the narrative.

Kagami, Ryuko, and Tomoe

I really like Kagami as a character. Because she’s depicted as quite neurodivergent, I felt an affinity for her. It was very interesting watching the show explore other relationship options for the main characters, although breaking them up after one episode was a bit cowardly. I’ve tried to show Ryuko as having a bit more social confidence than Kagami – this isn’t because she’s being ‘fixed’ by Longg or anything, but more because she has the mask to hide behind, without it being as taxing as usual autistic masking.

Tomoe is going to have a very different character arc to her show counterpart. Even in Miraculous: Contingency she’s not an entirely ‘good’ character, but she has a different growth arc. The fact that she knows Gabriel’s secret is hinted at in this episode but won’t become certain until much later on.

Reunion

The first draft of this episode had Ryuko, Korvid, Tangle, and Master Fu literally narrating the story to Ladybug and the team at the base of the Eiffel Tower. I changed it because that was crazy; with a Scarlet attack on the city, they’d never have enough time for that. So, instead I told the story first and had the characters summarise when the team got back, with Master Fu safely hidden away.

We get a nice moment with Chat Noir forgetting about secret identities and hugging Ryuko – she already knows his identity at this point, even if he doesn’t realise that, so she’s fine with it. There’s also that awkward moment between Queen Bee and Tangle, where Queen Bee’s reluctance to show any vulnerability broke the relief. If you can believe it, Tangle was less subtle in the first draft.