-
This was another part of the story where I was struggling with new Akumas to come up with. Because of a complicated long story, I’d started getting into the band Marillion, because I saw their original singer guest at a metal show I got. I’ve always liked prog music, so their song Grendel was a good inspiration for an Akuma – being raised in Britain, we learned a little bit about Beowulf in primary school, and Grendel is a scary monster that was perfect for Papillon to borrow.
Finality
In the original draft of this episode, it was set a few weeks after The Revelation and all of the angst over their identities being revealed was over. That was because, when I was writing this part, I’d forgotten just how big of a deal maintaining their secret was. I already covered a bit of this, back in Chamela when Marinette found out that both Alya and Chamela had discovered her identity, and there was a minor bump of it in The Reprise when Luka revealed that he knew too.
When I’d reminded myself of how important this was, Grendel became a sort of part 2 to The Revelation (which was really annoying, because part of my original plan for Season 3 was not to have any two-parters) covering both the Akuma, and the new information from Bunnyx. Grendel became much less the focus of the episode in place of the stress Marinette and Adrien were going through.
One advantage of the angstiness and compressing the two episodes was that it gave us the sweet moment when Adrien and Marinette get to see each other transform for the first time. The moment when Marinette reaches out and touches Chat Noir’s chest was inspired a little by Peggy Carter in Captain America: The First Avenger.
Bunnyx
So, the big problem with Bunnyx is just how powerful she is. The information we learned in the last episode works both as exposition and as a reason to limit Alix’s time for the rest of Miraculous: Contingency. You’ve probably noticed that the show has done the same thing – by writing Alix out into the Burrow until she’s needed. I made the choice to nerf Bunnyx well before even Season 4 had come out, let alone the moment that they sent Alix away basically forever, but I never considered isolating her in the Burrow all that time.
Between now and Bunnyx Prime’s next appearance, Alix and Fluff are going to be very cautious about using their powers, which makes it easier for me to tell a consistent story – we don’t have the “Get Bunnyx to fix it” emergency response, because it doesn’t guarantee things will be fixed in a way you want them to be.
The conversation between Adult Bunnyx and Marinette in the Burrow at the end of this episode has some technobabble to explain why Bunnyx is able to intervene sometimes, but not others. It’s partially a tribute to Star Trek’s habit of throwing a lot of Treknobabble at their audience, but it’s mostly a nod to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld – temporal nodes and point-manifestation are terms I borrowed from the Death subseries.
Team Meeting
This was a completely new scene for the second draft. In the first draft of Season 3 I just started showing Alya and Nino with their Miraculous about halfway through and said “oh, Ladybug’s given them the power permanently now”. I freely admit that was really bad storytelling, and I hope that this scene works. With the fact that almost everyone has access to a high-def video camera in their pockets, and the way that I’ve weakened the secret identity magic, I genuinely believe there is no way for them to maintain secrecy.
I got Bunnyx to prompt the idea, but it’s the set up for the whole remaining story of Miraculous: Contingency. I really quite like the way Marinette introduces the concept, with that touch of mischief she’s picked up from her boyfriend.
When I decided to add this scene, it also prompted some more rewrites throughout Season 3 – now that there is a Core Miraculous Team of Ladybug, Chat Noir, Rena Rouge, Carapace, and Ryuko, I needed to have them make more appearances throughout the story. We get a glimpse of Rena in Chamela 2, and Carapace in Heikegana. Ryuko’s appearance in Regretrix was always there, but her and Rena making an appearance in Chlophidian was added for the second draft too. I really wanted to establish that now there is a super team to fight back.
It's another interesting parallel with how the show has gone – I started doing this back in 2021, so I came up with the idea independently of the show. Now that Season 6 is airing, it’s interesting to see how the official story and my spin-off handle the same idea in different ways. As I said in the commentary on Moonspell and The Revelation, Marinette in Miraculous: Contingency is older than Marinette in the show and has been buoyed up by the support she’s getting (and is willing to accept) from her teammates and her partners. Combining that with the fact that she’s handing out the Miraculous in stages, rather than all at once, means that my version of Marinette is coping a little better than the show’s, who is unfortunately getting herself overwhelmed (at the point I typed this: who knows, maybe she’s got it all sorted by the time I post this commentary).
The Gorilla
He’s only got a brief moment in this episode, but I always like it when we get to see the Gorilla be a good guardian for Adrien.
Social Media
