Episode 5 - Chamela

This is the second episode with two songs. The first, Non-Believer by London Grammar just fits to describe Lila/Chamela – whether we’re talking about people not believing her, or her not believing Ladybug’s hype. The second only got added when I wrote the new draft of the very last scene – You’re My Best Friend by Queen was the right song for this moment. Ladybug and Chat Noir, at least in this phase of Miraculous: Contingency are the best friends they can be. Queen are the only artist I’ve allowed to appear twice in Miraculous: Contingency’s playlist.

Completely Changed

Between the first and second drafts, almost every episode in Miraculous: Contingency is recognisable from one draft to the other, albeit the second draft is much better quality than the first. That’s not the case for Chamela. The first draft took place in a gymnasium, with an unnecessary cameo from Chloé, and Lila being much more involved with the out-of-costume events.

I just couldn’t make the old structure fit in any way, especially as I now had to introduce Marinette, Kagami, and Adrien’s new relationship to their friends. I sat down with my cousin, Spence, and we talked at length about what the episode needed to include. The key points were:

• Establishing Lila’s supervillain identity as Chamela

• Chamela threatening Ladybug and Chat Noir

• Alya discovering Marinette’s secret identity

• The throuple introducing their friends to what’s happening.

Spence helped me hugely with writing the episode. A couple of sections (the ice-cream sequence and Ladybug & Chat Noir’s tearful goodbye) were genuinely co-written by her, I just fleshed out the words she provided.

When I wrote the first draft, I had forgotten just how big a deal someone knowing Ladybug’s secret identity was in the show. There needed to be a lot more jeopardy and angst. I also needed to work out a way to justify Marinette and Adrien remaining as their superhero selves

Secret Identities (Bigger spoilers than usual in this sequence)

This is something that I struggled with all the way through the writing process. I’d worked out that I wanted the Miraculous holders to be becoming stronger and more agile as a side-effect of their superheroism, and I also wanted the magic that disguises them while transformed to be slightly weaker. It’s a little embarrassing that I didn’t work out that I could link the two points until after I finished the second draft.

This won’t come up in the story for another season, and it’s not strictly confirmed, but the basic situation is that in the Contingency Timeline humans and Kwamis are much more tightly linked when they transform. It’s more like they are fusing together via the Miraculous than just being given some powers. Because they’re fusing, some of the Kwamis’ power is leaking into the humans themselves. We’ve seen strength already and, in a few episodes, we’ll learn that multiple transformations boost the ability to learn languages as well. A side-effect of this situation is that the disguise magic isn’t as effective; the heroes aren’t just wearing a magical suit anymore, being magical is actually part of them.

The disguise magic isn’t completely useless – you need to be able to completely convince yourself logically of the person’s identity, and if something distracts you while you think you’ve almost worked it out then the thought will be forced from your mind.

Making it that Bunnyx Prime’s creation of the new timeline changed some of the rules was the best story I could come up with, and I built on that to restructure how the Miraculous work. Obviously, with Papillon now having the Other Miracle Chest, I needed to nerf Master Fu’s staff. That also really helped, because it helped me explain the delay in the Monastery contacting Ladybug. Unlike in the show, they have to adapt to modern life well enough to watch a news report before they find out that Tikki and Plagg are in Paris

Chamela

Well, here we go. This was always my intention, to have Lila act as a third faction in Paris (possibly fourth, if you count the Rogue Miraculous as a third). Lila has a brilliant mind, which she uses in the most diabolical ways, but she suffers from rage when things don’t go her way, and a degree of overconfidence.

You see that overconfidence at the end of the episode; because she hasn’t found out that Alya has learned Marinette’s secret, and hasn’t realised that Adrien, Kagami, and Marinette are together, her predictions are going to be inaccurate. Chamela won’t be directly featuring in many of the coming episodes, but Lila’s presence is going to be felt across the rest of Season 2.