Episode 6 - The Last Play

The Fire Still Burns by Twisted Sister is about having a rage that you cannot quench, making everything in your life more difficult because you have to navigate through the fury. Adrien has had a slowly rising anger since Season 2 of Miraculous: Contingency (honestly, probably earlier, but that was where he started noticing it) and this is where it’s finally being let out.

Inspiration

It will probably be obvious to a lot of people that I’ve taken a lot of inspiration for this finale sequence from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Honestly, there’s a lot of things I’ve been inspired by to put this together, but the multi-part conclusion episode was definitely most prompted by A:tLA and The Legend of Korra. I didn’t watch those as a child, and actually watched them after I first watched Miraculous, but they are both such good shows that I needed to acknowledge that. I’ve got two incredibly overt nods to the show across the finale – Père-pillon/Father-Lord here, and “That’s rough, buddy” in The Last Play: Who Holds The Cards.

Heikegana

I’m still not completely convinced that including the last two meetings about the plan in flashback was the best choice, but it does mean we get to see a little of what the meetings were actually about with the context of what the plan was. The main reason I chose to have Heikegana’s at the beginning of this episode was because it provided a perfect segue between Chat Noir playfully saying “don’t burst through a wall…”

Adrien and Plagg

… and Adrien bursting through a wall in rage. After he found the letter from the Gorilla, Adrien and Plagg trashed their bedroom before realising they had to go and investigate the sealed room.

I made the choice to show this bit from Plagg’s point of view because we needed to see how stressed Adrien was from the outside before we could get his perspective. Seeing how, when he’s completely furious, he oscillates between the emotional outbursts and going as blank as his father makes us realise just how traumatised this poor kid has been for the last six years since his mum disappeared (and even before that).

I’ve tried to show some character growth from Plagg across Miraculous: Contingency, admittedly slowly. We all know that he loves Adrien like a brother, but showing it is very difficult for him. Here we finally get to see Plagg doing what he can to help – an act of service and some sensible words. Right now, Adrien and Plagg both need each other.

In Chat Blanc, the reason for the whole Contingency timeline, Papillon seizes upon Chat Noir/Adrien’s broken heart when he reveals Émilie’s fate to turn his own son into a timebomb. This time, Adrien discovers the truth with only Plagg for company. Although he’s going to be in panic mode for the rest of the finale, the initial burst of betrayal isn’t something Gabriel can take advantage of. Adrien will be making some poor decisions throughout the next four episodes, but he’s at least had enough time that he’s not instantly going to be turned into Chat Blanc (or worse)

Everyone

In the first draft, this was always the plan. In the second draft, I decided to change that. It was a backup if they knew something big was going down, a show of strength. This whole plan could have fallen apart if Gabriel and Nathalie had been able to slip away, so Adrien and Plagg discovering the truth was essential. The update from Chat Noir, prompting Ladybug to alert Nadja to the change in plans, and the fact that there were four sets of plans written up was my way of showing that Ladybug and her team are actually ready for this. After four years of being superheroes, they’ve all built themselves up for this moment.

The long sequence of them arriving through the Voyage would work so much better in animation, but I’m still happy with how it turned out. Having all of them introducing themselves with a picture of their Kwamis was an affectation which gave Ladybug and Chat Noir a little time to prepare themselves for what was coming next.

Papillon

It was very satisfying to let Gabriel stew in the moment as all of his enemies took their masks off for the first time. He and Nathalie were actually going to leave before Adrien revealed the truth. That moment was tricky to write; I swapped between Gabriel and Adrien’s point of view to show that the two of them don’t understand the other at all.

When I was writing this whole finale sequence I had to remind myself that Gabriel has lost a lot of perspective now – honestly it sometimes feels like he’s completely lost his mind. He’s channelling his rage, which is the main reason he’s able to hold his own against Rena Rouge, Queen Bee, and Carapace at the beginning of the fight. Later on, he has a massive advantage when Mayura Reál uses her Uplift power on him as well.

It's been a real balancing act trying to keep Gabriel and Nathalie from finding out about Adrien’s relationship with Kagami and Marinette, so it was a huge relief that I could just openly show them being together here. That made me think about how Gabriel/Papillon would react to the news. If he’d found out before the finale, I feel like he’d be more concerned with using it as an Akuma opportunity, but now that Akumas aren’t necessary to draw out Ladybug and Chat Noir, I actually had to think about what his opinion would be. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that Gabriel would disapprove of the connection. I’m not sure if that’s actual homophobia/biphobia/polyphobia, as much as his permanent obsession with status and appearances – he would think this makes him look like a weak father and Adrien look bad on the public stage.

The moment where Papillon sends out his last Akuma and it splits into five was great fun to write. As was the moment that Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Ryuko work together to instantly destroy three of them.

Chat Noir

I know I already talked about Adrien, but Chat Noir’s point-of-view is slightly different. For a start, he’s combining all of Adrien’s rage with Plagg’s anger, and he’s completely faced with the truth now. He’s not distraught and in pain, the way Adrien was in Chat Blanc or even earlier in the episode when he actually found Émilie, now he’s furious that he’s been lied to and is letting that anger out. It was difficult to write Chat Noir losing control enough for Queen Bee to use Venom on him, but it felt necessary and, as she said, Queen Bee knows something about mentally abusive parents.

To Chat Noir’s credit, he got control of himself once he’d had a chance to breathe, and he had his friends and girlfriends with him to support him. The anger is still there, but he’s banked it for now. It still must be painful having to fight against his father, and that will come back as the finale goes on, but for now he’s back in control.

Mayura Reál

Nathalie unifying Duusu and Biquué was always my plan here, I needed to balance the odds a little, especially for the first part of the fight where it’s just her and Papillon against thirteen superheroes. I chose the name Mayura Reál (pronounced ray-al) from the Spanish word for royal and added the accent to show that it’s pronounced differently from the English word real. I kinda associate peafowl with royalty, so that was the link there.

In Miraculous: Contingency I’ve worked with the concept that unifying a pair of Kwamis makes the resultant Miraculous a bit stronger than a normal transformation. When one of the Kwamis is Biquué, the Wolf Kwami of Cooperation, that effect is actually a bit stronger. Biquué’s ability is to enhance the power of other magical beings, so when she unifies, she enhances their physical boosts, as well as their powers. At this point, Mayura Reál could probably create two or three Sentis and still Uplift Papillon.

That extra layer of boosting means that the team fighting Mayura Reál are at a disadvantage, even if they outnumber her, and that’s before Papillon sends a pair of Akumas out into the city and splits the party.

The Payoff

I always knew that Lila/Chamela was going to return for the finale, but it wasn’t until I wrote the first draft that I knew how and when. With the rewrite, I spent a lot of time trying to put in some hints that things weren’t over with the Chameleon supervillain, and this moment is the payoff. My editor, Lee, definitely said “I missed you” in response to her smug episode closer.