Episode 8 - Towerist Trap

Picking a song for this episode was really tricky. In the end, I went with A Rose for Epona by Eluvetie (pronounced ell-vee-tay), not for any particular reason, although the band do write a lot of songs about the Gauls fighting off the Romans, so it could fit with the Akuma’s personality.

Towerist Trap

This is another one of my bilingual pun names for an Akuma which I’m inordinately proud of – just in case you don’t know, the French word for ‘tower’ is ‘tour’, so it’s a pun on the phrase ‘tourist trap’. The Eiffel Tower is a regular location in the show, and in Miraculous: le film it was the set piece for the final confrontation. In general, I’ve more or less ignored it, other than occasionally being used to demonstrate how big something is or breaking it for dramatic effect. This episode I really wanted to make the tower itself the villain.

I actually put together a really crude diagram of what Towerist Trap looked like in this episode, by reconfiguring a diagram of the Eiffel Tower in a slideshow program.

Danyll & Maria

It’s been a while since we’ve seen these two properly. Introducing Dany to the group was always the plan; she spends time with Luka, so she’s met Juleka and Rose, plus Alix, it was only a matter of time before they asked her along. The magic protecting her identity is keeping people from realising that she and Aodh have the same surname at the moment, although it would get more difficult if Marinette found out that she’s Maria’s cousin as well – too many coincidences there.

Her scene with Marinette was always interesting. In the original draft, Marinette had never made a move on Luka, back in Firesaur and Big Monkey, so the dialogue was a little different. I prefer it this way though, because Marinette can reassure Danyll much more easily.

Maria being the inadvertent cause of the Akuma was also always the plan. I liked her role being eyes on the inside, and Ladybug has met her now, so she can just ask for help. I hadn’t fully fleshed out the way that the secrecy magic worked in the first draft of Miraculous: Contingency, so I didn’t have the moment at the end where Chloé makes a scene to give Max some cover. I am very amused by the fact that, while Dany was starstruck when she met Adrien, Maria only vaguely thought she recognised him, despite him being on billboards all over Paris.

The Core Miraculous Team

The practice session at the beginning was always how this episode started. In the first draft it was actually the first confirmation that Alya and Nino permanently have Trixx and Wayzz with them now, but it was done in past tense, without actually showing the decision, or even the moment when Nino found out who Ladybug and Chat Noir are. The re-write of Grendel really fixed that whole issue, so instead, this is just a regular thing for the four of them now.

One thing I’ve tried to do as Miraculous: Contingency has progressed is to blur the line between Adrien and Chat Noir. He starts off very proper, sedate, polite as Adrien, because of how his father forces him to be, and understandably rebellious, mischievous, and playful as Chat Noir. As he got comfortable with Kagami, and later with Marinette, the playfulness started to leak into his everyday identity, because he was learning that he didn’t need to pretend around them anymore. Never is that more clearly emphasised than here, where he tells Chloé half of the truth, knowing that the rest is going to get another big reaction.

I suppose that Max has pretty much joined the core team at this point, even if he wasn’t in the initial meeting. He’s got Kaalki with him perfectly, and Ladybug trusts him enough that the little trick at the end of the episode was accepted. He’s also working with Chloé and Zoé on that messaging system, and has worked out that distraction stops people from figuring out identities, which he did with great aplomb here.

Chloé

She’s going to show up in a lot of these commentaries until the end of Season 3. Everything is building up, from Regretrix, where people have accepted she’s changed, to this episode where she’s actually invited to the picnic. Next episode is the next step in the process. There’s still the odd glimpse of the old Chloé in there, with her arrogance about Papillon being scared of her. Then the fun twist at the end where, after successfully keeping herself a secret from Chloé all the way through the episode, Dany comes home to find out Maria has decided to introduce them (out of Korvid’s costume) – given all the teasing Dany directs towards Maria about this relationship, it feels fair.