Episode 5 - The Last Play

I’d originally picked Rezondetoru by Nightmare (ナイトメア) to be the song for The Revelation before my cousin pointed me towards a much better fit for that episode. I still wanted to keep this song – its title is a Japanese version of the phrase “raison d’être” which means “reason to be”. It felt like a good thematic fit to begin the multi-part finale – The Miraculous’ reason to be is here, finally bringing the fight to Papillon.

Title

There are two things about this title. One I planned ahead of time, the other I discovered much later.

The first, and most obvious, is that it’s a joke. Last can be a synonym for end and play could be one for game. Miraculous has a lot in common with Marvel anyway, and this huge ending for Miraculous: Contingency was always going to have some parallels with the MCU, so I decided to make a pun. I suppose we should just be grateful that I didn’t just call this multi-part episode Miraculous: Endgame.

The other one was completely unplanned – the last episode (in narrative order) of the show’s season five turned out to be called “The Final Day”. There’s just something a little too similar there, which alarms me considering I came up with The Last Play as a title some time in 2021, well before season 5 aired.

Gabriel and The Gorilla

We saw part of this scene at the end of Meduma as Gabriel almost works out that Marinette is Ladybug before the Gorilla barges in and allows the magic disguise to protect her again. Now we get to see it from the Gorilla’s perspective. I wanted the Gorilla to finally lose his temper enough to physically threaten Gabriel – he doesn’t know that Miraculous holders are stronger even when not transformed. I’ve always intended the Gorilla to be instrumental in fighting Papillon in the end, so this is how I decided to structure it.

The Plan

So, we finally get an idea of what the plan is. Ladybug and Chat Noir are going to reveal their identities. This goes against the standard process of most superhero narratives, but I honestly thought that this would make a more interesting narrative. This plan is incredibly risky, but it also puts complete temptation in front of Papillon. Kagami is gambling on the fact that Papillon won’t be able to resist the chance to finally lay his hands on Ladybug and Chat Noir. The announcement actually protected Marinette again because, without the distraction it caused, Gabriel and Nathalie would almost certainly have worked out her identity. They have enough clues, they just need the time and no distractions to put them all together.

Even now, we haven’t seen all of the plan, though. There are still some back-ups in place. I had the discussions appear at the end of every episode this season up to this point (The Core team in The Unstoppable Monsieur Pichon, Max and Kim in Blurgeois, Alix and Luka in Doctor X, and Chloé & Zoé in Meduma) and I just needed to finish off with the Rogues. Unfortunately, we had to do those in flashback, but we got to see Maria and Dany here. I’m saving Aodh for next episode for a very specific reason.

Putting the Pieces on the Board

Over season 2 and 3 I’ve been putting pieces in place to build to this final confrontation. When I finished the first draft and re-read what I’d done prior to starting the second draft, I realised how many dangling plot threads I’d left so with the second draft, I’ve tried to bring all of those points together into one coherent sequence. Things like establishing that Master Fu now habitually has a few Kwamis out in the kitchen with him, Caline knowing about Chat Noir’s secret identity, the letter that the Gorilla left all the way back in Renégadaire, it was all building to this moment. I hope people have enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Master Fu

In the original draft, Gabriel and Nathalie attempted to apprehend Master Fu as themselves, which was just insane. They would never risk revealing their identities like that. So I had to adjust it, into the infinitely more threatening appearance of Papillon and Mayura walking into Master Fu’s shop. I wanted to leave Fu’s fate a question for now. We know that Stompp has managed to protect the Miracle Chest for now, but after that we don’t find anything out for almost two episodes, and we don’t find out if Fu is actually okay for three.

Tom and Xia Bing vs. Gabriel and Nathalie

I don’t know when I decided that Xia Bing would already have worked out that Marinette was Ladybug, but it was only something I settled on in the second draft – I’m pretty sure she’s known for the last year or so, but as she said has been waiting for Marinette to be comfortable to tell them. I always knew these two would have a good reaction to learning the truth. Both are understandably worried about their daughter, but they also have an implicit trust in her and believe what she’s told them.

Contrast that with Gabriel and Nathalie – upon being told that Adrien needs to speak to them, they dismiss him and what he ‘wants‘ to say. Honestly, I don’t know what would have happened if they had let him in to speak. Probably something along the lines of Chat Blanc, but Adrien doesn’t have patience for them anymore. After one attempt he was willing to let them find out at the interview. Of course, Bunnyx and the Gorilla altered Adrien and Plagg’s plans.

Ensemble Cast

I haven’t often run episodes without an Akuma, but The Last Play is spread over more than five episodes worth of material. This episode is just an introduction to the rest of the action, but it still needs to be compelling. Apart from the villain sub-plot, I’ve got thirteen Miraculous plus several support characters to get into place. I think that going to each hero one-by-one and seeing how they told their loved ones, we get a little insight into how all the Miraculous work together (plus we get to see Lê Chiến Kim almost propose to Ondine)

I also got to squeeze in a few cameos. Even though they don’t go to the school anymore, I felt like we needed to start the heroes off from their classroom in Francoise Dupont, so that we all come full circle. That meant that we got to have an appearance by the Hibou!

All in all, this was actually a surprisingly packed episode; when I set out to write a five-part finale I was expecting to struggle to hit my target word count per episode, instead the first and last parts went over budget and the other three were about on target.

Ending the episode on the cliffhanger of discovering that Adrien has learned the truth and took it (justifiably) badly felt good. I didn’t want to show too much in this episode when I’d be approaching how Adrien is coping in the next episode.