Characters / Miraculous Ladybug: Hawk Moth

Miraculous Ladybug Main Character Index
Heroes (Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Adrien Agreste, Team Miraculous, Félix Fathom, United HeroeZ) | Kwamis | School Characters | Villains (Hawk Moth, Akumatized Villains – Season 1, Akumatized Villains – Season 2, Akumatized Villains – Season 3, Akumatized Villains – Season 4, Akumatized Villains - Season 5, Amokized Sentimonsters) | Assorted Civilians

Gabriel Agreste/Hawk Moth/Scarlet Moth/Shadow Moth/Shadow Noir/Monarch/Monarchbug

Akumatized forms: The Collector, Nightormentor

"I decide what's best for my son."

^{Click to see him as Hawk Moth}
"Fly away, my little akuma, and evilize them!"

^{Click to see him as Scarlet Moth}
"Nooroo! Duusu! Dual Metamorphosis!"

^{Click to see him as Monarch}

^{Click to see his second Monarch outfit}

Both voiced by: Antoine Tome (FR), Keith Silverstein (EN) ^{Foreign VAs} Hong Shi-ho (KOR), Hesham Shazli (ARA, S1E1 - S2E16) and Mohammed Ashraf (ARA), Roberto Encinas (SP), Dafnis Fernández (MEX), Adam Fietz (SW, Show) and Fredrik Hiller (SW, Movie), Ionuț Grama (ROM), Stefano Alessandroni (ITA), Jiří Valšuba (CZE), Xristo Bonin/Христо Бонин (BUL), Peter Flechtner (GER), Simen Sand (NOR), Hayato Fujii (J), Pavle Jerinić (SER), Volodymyr Tereshchuk/Володимир Терещук and Mykhaylo Zhonin/Михайло Жонін (UKR, voice-over and dubbing, respectively)

Gabriel voiced by: Gadi Levi/גדי לוי (HEB), Gábor Albert (HUN), Jacek Król (P), Ricardo Schnetzer (BP)

Hawk Moth voiced by: Eren Mor (HEB), Zsolt Sarádi (HUN), Michał Konarski (P), Guilherme Briggs (BP)

The evil mastermind of the series, and the overall Arch-Enemy of Ladybug and Cat Noir.

A masked man who seeks to steal the Miraculouses in order to combine them and gain ultimate power. He uses the Butterfly Miraculous to create akumas that corrupt civilians and transform them into superpowered beings under his control.

Unbeknownst to the heroes, his true identity is Gabriel Agreste, Adrien's distant father. He is a famous fashion designer, but is always too busy with his job or his supervillainy to spend any time with his son.

At the end of season 3/the start of season 4, Gabriel repairs the Peacock Miraculous, unifies it with the Butterfly and becomes Shadow Moth.

In season five, after gaining the power of all but three Miraculouses, he renames himself "Monarch" to suit his power boost.

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#-F

• 10-Minute Retirement: After Style Queen is defeated, he declares that no akuma victim could ever top someone as naturally malicious and vile as Audrey Bourgeois, and if she lost then there's no point in even trying anymore. He renounces Nooroo and puts away his Miraculous, but quickly dives right back into villainy when he gets the opportunity to akumatize a transformed Miraculous wielder (Chloé), which is just too tempting for him to pass up.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: His Sword Cane can slice clean through missiles.
• Abusive Parents:
  • While not physically abusive to Adrien, Gabriel can be emotionally abusive, such as micromanaging Adrien's entire life in trying to protect him from an unknown danger. As Hawk Moth, he claims that everything he's doing is to make Adrien happy, presumably by bringing his mother back. However, this could just as easily be his excuse to bring Emilie back for himself. While he toes the line at actually allowing Adrien to come to physical harm, he has no compunctions about akumatizing his close associates and risking him potentially getting caught in the crossfire. In "Riposte", he actually goes as far as to akumatize someone with a grudge against Adrien specifically. However, when she threatens Adrien, he tells her immediately that she must acquire the Miraculous before she can seek revenge. In "Cat Blanc", he first makes a deliberate effort to destroy Adrien's relationship with Marinette so that he can akumatize her, then when that fails and Cat Noir blows his secret identity in the process, he reveals himself to his son and exploits his emotional turmoil to akumatize him instead.
  • Season 5 really has him bring this to new heights. He plays the doting father role he previously never fulfilled, even making pancakes every morning, solely as a ploy to manipulate Adrien and make Nathalie happy. He’s willing to capitalize on Adrien’s heartbreak for the sake of akumatizing him, something he was previously unwilling to do. “Pretension” shows Gabriel making Adrien obey him subconsciously.
• Adaptational Badass: Invoked in Volpina's debut; her illusory Hawk Moth uses a Shadow Walker-esque teleport to zip all over the city, looking untouchable by Ladybug and Cat Noir. The real Hawk Moth only has enhanced physical abilities like every Miraculous holder, and his power cannot be used on him directly.
• Alliterative Name: His birth name was Gabi Grassette
• Amazing Technicolor Population: As Monarch, he gains purple skin.
• Amazon Chaser: Implied. When Cat Noir (Adrien) call his father out on his stubbornness in "Simon Says", Gabriel is taken aback before smiling at Cat Noir's temper and fondly saying he (Cat Noir) reminds him of someone else. After Cat Noir leaves to fight the titular akuma, Gabriel looks at the picture of his wife. The whole scene implies Emilie has a similar temper like Adrien's and was a reason why Gabriel loved her so dearly.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing:
  • Lepidopterans, like butterflies and moths, as his French name translates to "Butterfly" and his English name is "Hawk Moth", the common name for a family of moths known as "Sphingidae". His Miraculous and kwami are butterfly- and moth-themed in each respective dub. He corrupts butterflies to act as his akumas, regardless of dub.
  • Once he gets his hand on almost all of the Miraculouses, he rebrands himself as "Monarch". At first, this seems to break from the theme, but actually there is a species of butterfly called monarch (Danaus plexippus), whose North-Eastern populations are famous for migrating to Mexico to spend the winter there into stasis.
• Antagonist Abilities: His akumas can't be backtracked or traced, and he almost never takes part in fights himself. His akuma continue to function even if he's not transformed, making it even more difficult to determine if he's responsible for them. Finally, unlike the heroes, he can stay transformed indefinitely even after creating an akuma. Therefore, he can continue to attack Ladybug and Cat Noir on an almost daily basis, secure in the knowledge that they have no way to ever bring the fight to him.
• Anti-Education Mama: Gabriel Agreste is an interesting case. On the one hand, he has scheduled his son Adrien for tutoring in a wide variety of subjects ranging from Russian to fencing. On the other hand, none of these lessons are geared towards the usual aim of education - creating a functional, independent adult - but rather are just a way to keep Adrien occupied and isolated and occasionally imparting bits of information that he might need in his modeling career. Meanwhile, Gabriel is ardently against Adrien going to a regular school, only letting him attend junior high because the threat of pulling him out and further isolating him is one of the few levers he has with which to control his son.
• Arch-Enemy: Ladybug and Cat Noir are his biggest enemies, as he wishes to take their miraculous in order to achieve his goal, and they often manage to foil his schemes.
• Archnemesis Dad: He often targets the students in Marinette's class, meaning that he's knowingly victimizing the friends of his son Adrien. Over the course of season two, he begins to suspect Adrien is Cat Noir, though as of "Gorizilla" he's been thrown off the scent for the time being. However, when he finds out in the Bad Future of "Cat Blanc", he doesn't hesitate to manipulate his son's emotional turmoil to Evilize him, even physically assaulting Cat Noir just to twist the knife further.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: His brand's logo is a butterfly, and there are subtle butterfly logos all over his mansion. Given that he only acquired the Moth Brooch just before the start of the show, these must have been in place well before he became Hawk Moth.
• Bad Boss:
  • Downplayed, but he dumps the responsibility of taking care of his son on Nathalie, and tends to be harsh toward the Gorilla, even attempting to akumatize him twice (the second time succeeding).
  • Enslaved the butterfly kwami Nooroo despite Nooroo's warnings about the danger risked by using a kwami's powers for evil. Later extended this to Dusuu after repairing her Miraculous before trading it to Félix for most of the other Miraculouses, gaining fourteen additional kwamis.
  • If people don't follow his orders, he's bound to threaten or try and take control of them unless they do their job.
• The Bad Guy Wins: While it does cost him his life, Season 5 ends with him accomplishing all of his objectives in becoming Hawk Moth. He successfully makes a wish on the Miraculous to (presumably) resurrect his wife and heal Nathalie, dies pretty much content with himself, and (thanks to Marinette agreeing to keep his secret) remains a respected figure in Paris and is never held to account for his many crimes as Hawk Moth.
• Bait the Dog: In season five, following his Cataclysm injury and learning that it is killing him, Gabriel seems to be trying be a better father to Adrien with the time he has left: Making his son breakfast as they spend time together, having heart to heart talks, giving him relationship advice and letting Adrien call him "dad". But it turns out Nathalie was extorting Gabriel into doing most of this, still being the same emotionally abusive and controlling father he has been despite his affable demeanor. The fact Gabriel still places his self interests over Adrien's happiness and his son's gradual sadness over it just worsens things between them.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: As shown in "Mayura", he is more successful in beating Ladybug and Cat Noir barehanded than with his cane.
• Batman Gambit: Gabriel has shown good hindsight, being aware that there is a Guardian of the Miraculous who can translate the Grimoire in his possession. He suspected as much in "Sapotis" when he noticed Ladybug's leaving in the middle of a difficult battle to bring allies. He attempts to location the guardian through out the third season, suceeding in the thrid season finale with Heart Hunter and Miracle Queen, the former to cause enough chaos to force Ladybug to slip up and lead him to Master Fu. While Fu erased his memory to prevent it, Gabriel acquired a means to translate the grimoire's text.
• Becoming the Mask:
  • When he first terrorizes Paris with Stoneheart, he proclaims that he is only playing the part of supervillain so that he could procure the power of the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous so he can revive Emilie. He starts out with using the same plot every time — akumatize someone, let them wreak havoc and try to have them take Ladybug and Cat Noir's miraculous — before he starts upping the ante with more convoluted (and dangerous) plans in an effort to overpower them. By Season 5, he has the opportunity of Cutting the Knot using the Rabbit Miraculous and preventing Emilie's coma to begin with, but by then he had become so intent with winning against the heroes that he ends up losing it in another attempt at taking their miraculous. Losing one of the most powerful miraculouses and the respect of his most loyal supporter Nathalie as result drives Gabriel to track down Ladybug end up slowly dying from being hit with Cat Noir's Cataclysm.
  • Throughout Season 5, Gabriel is forced into the role of playing a better father to Adrien, which he goes along with knowing that he won’t be there for his son for much longer. At the end of the season, he sacrifices his original wish after its pointed out that Adrien wouldn’t want it to happen, and even admits to Marinette that he wasn’t always the best parent, but still tried to be better.
• Berserk Button:
  • He tends to get very annoyed when his victims ignore his orders or jeopardize his mission (namely, when they make the Miraculous irretrievable).
  • As Gabriel, anything that can remotely be construed as an insult towards his wife, including suggesting that he could ever love anyone else. In "Félix", he is in the middle of confessing to Adrien that he is Hawk Moth, when Adrien reveals that he already figured out his father's "big secret"... which is of course that he and Nathalie are in a romantic relationship. This makes Gabriel so angry he berates Adrien and storms off without finishing his confession.
  • In "Illusion", he's rendered furious to the point of almost throwing a pan he was cooking with when cooking oil from it gets on...his white apron. This is further contrasted with how he seemed to be legitimately trying to reconnect as a parent to his son, so he was definitely not in an irritable mood at the time, though he's not so irrational about this that he can't accept his clothes getting stained to help him perform a plan to get our heroes' Miraculous.
• Big Bad: He's the evil mastermind behind all of Paris's supernatural problems.
• Big "NO!": Tends to yell "No!" whenever he comes particularly close to getting the Miraculouses, only for his efforts to be foiled at the very last second.
• Big "YES!": He also usually says a big “Yes!” when he thinks he’s going to win.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Gets a case of this every single time Cat Noir falls prey to an Akumatized victim's attack and becomes Brainwashed and Crazy. It never once occurs to him to take the Cat Miraculous while he can. Rather, he has Cat Noir help take Ladybug's Miraculous. He also does this in "Copycat", where instead of having Copycat take the ring, he's perfectly fine with letting Ladybug do it, even though logically, she'd take the ring off and then try and smash it to get out the akuma. The most likely justification is that when the akumas can take thralls of their own, Cat is generally the most powerful of said thralls, and the only one who could stand a chance against Ladybug.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Zig-zagged. Marinette and Adrien can never get together as long as Gabriel is controlling his son's life. "Cat Blanc" showing that he could exploit breaking Marinette's heart to akumatize her. On the other hand, he and Tsurugi specifically want Kagami and Adrien to be a couple so the pair can carry on their legacies, so he doesn't interfere in that one. Downplayed in season 5, where Gabriel is at least willing to tolerate Marinette for a while since he's trying to be closer to his son and Nathalie encourages Adrien to see her. But Gabriel's patience wears thin when Marinette crashes an exclusive event just to talk to Adrien. After attempting to bribe Marinette into breaking things off with Adrien, Gabriel buckles down on setting his son up with Kagami and later decides to send his son to London.
• Brains and Brawn: In "Gabriel Agreste", Gabriel outright calls Nathalie the Brains to his Brawn. As Shadow Moth, he has the unified power of two Miraculouses, but since Nathalie fell ill after "Miracle Queen", he's been having limited success against Ladybug without Nathalie's planning and attention to detail.
• Break the Haughty: After his The Bad Guy Wins in "The Collector," karma seems to be doubling down on him — in the form of giving him a tougher time with his Akumatized servants. The titular "Robostus" ends up invoking The Starscream and nearly killing him with his own defense system, and the titular "Gigantitan" is so frustrating to work with that Hawk Moth ends up looking like a borderline Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Zigzagged. Marinette looks up to him since he's a famous fashion designer and all, but she and many other people that know him personally are aware that he's an Ice King Control Freak. Played straight in "Pretension" when Marinette completely loses respect for Gabriel after he attempts to bribe her into breaking things off with Adrien and then threatens to ruin any chance she has of becoming a fashion designer when she turns him down.
  • He also becomes this to his most loyal subordinate Nathalie in the fifth season when she gives him the idea of using the Rabbit Miraculous to alter the past by giving his past self the means to repair the broken Peacock Miraculous: Saving both Emilie and Nathalie as consequence. But when Nathalie finds out that he wasted his chance to save both her and his wife for another vain attempt to defeat Ladybug, she becomes so disgusted by his selfish obsession with Ladybug that she refused to help him further. Her disgust towards him only worsens over the season despite his attempts to make amends with her.
• But Not Too Foreign: Implied. The last name "Agreste" indicates he is of Italian descent. Subverted with the reveal that his real surname is Grassette, having changed it to sound more upper-class.
• Butt-Monkey: In season two, Hawk Moth is having far more difficulty controlling the akumatized villains. To wit, he ends up having to say "please" to Befana, has Robostus pull a Starscream on him and nearly kill him, is unable to wrangle Gigantitan with any degree of success, is unable to get Glaciator to attack Ladybug and Cat Noir (they're pretending to be a couple at the time), and initially has difficulty with the Sapotis, although he eventually gets them to focus. Then in "Destruction", he is tricked into going on a wild goose chase around Paris to find Ladybug that resulted in him nearly captured.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Deliberately creates supervillains, refers to his transformations as "evilizing" people, and freely admits his plots are evil. Subtle this one ain't.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "Fly away, my little Akuma/Megakuma, and evilize him/her!"
  • And when the Akuma finds its mark: "[Villain's name]. I am Hawk Moth/Shadow Moth/Monarch..."
  • "NOOOOOOO!!"
  • "YES!!"
  • "MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
  • When threatening to de-power one of his minions, he usually ends his threat with "Or I’ll remove your powers!"
  • Post-"Destruction", when he wants to use any of his captured Kwamis' power: "[Kwami's name(s)], your power(s) are now mine!"
• Classy Cane: His weapon is a cane with a purple gem encrusted on its handle, symbolizing how he commands all the other villains in the show.
• Clone by Conversion: If his akuma are released but not captured, they will clone themselves and infect anyone they can, turning their victims into mindless copies of the villain they originally created. If the original victim can be turned again, all the clones are enslaved to their will.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: His first costume as Monarch doesn't change regardless of which kwami he fuses together. Instead, the moth design on the front of his costume has various colored lights that appear in relation to which kwami he is currently using.
• The Consigliere: What Nathalie is to him. He has a soft spot for her, so she's the only person whose advice he listens to.
• Control Freak: Gabriel micromanages all aspects of Adrien's life, directly and by proxy. "Representation" then reveals that Adrien is a Sentimonster and Gabriel's wedding ring is his son's amok.
  • This extends to his supervillainy. He desires to have every Miraculous under his control, not just those of Ladybug and Cat Noir, keeps any kwami he gains control of under very strict rules with no wiggle room and harsh punishment for even the slightest disobedience and even deliberately reconfigures the Miraculous so that only he can use them.
• Cool Mask: He wears a rather tight silver mask that conceals most of his face, save his eyes and mouth. When he's trying to communicate with his henchmen, a purple butterfly-shaped hologram appears in front of his eyes that matches the lines in his mask.
• The Corrupter: Whenever he senses someone has powerful negative emotions, he sends out one of his akumas. The akuma amplifies those emotions and transforms the victim into an evil creature driven by that desire, who he then convinces to help him steal the Miraculous. It turns out he can do this to himself if he needs to.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • In "Simon Says," we learn that Gabriel has installed DEFCON-like security measures to protect his mansion in case of an attack.
  • He owns the Miraculous spellbook, and has it hidden in a safe that no one should be able to access without the right code. However, in the event that does happen, he has scans of all the pages just in case.
  • In the event someone starts to suspect his civilian identity of being Hawk Moth, he can akumatize himself to throw off suspicion. Even Master Fu buys it, since the wielder of the Butterfly Miraculous is immune to its power... which is why he temporarily renounced the Miraculous after creating the akuma to use on himself.
  • His lair is kitted out with a defense system in the event that someone should break in... though, this ends up backfiring on him after Robostus takes control of it and turns it against him.
  • He carries a spare akuma in his cane in case an opportunity for an akumatization presents itself while he's on the go.
  • In "Party Crasher", it's implied that he has his own nuclear reactor powering his lair.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Deals one to Ladybug and Cat Noir in "Mayura" until Rena Rouge, Carapace, and Queen Bee step in and inverse the trend.
• Dark Is Evil: He taints his butterflies with black and purple energy before sending them off to corrupt someone.
• Death Equals Redemption: At the climax of "Re-creation", he uses his wish on the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous purely to undo the damage inflicted upon the women in his life by the Peacock Miraculous, while allowing himself to die in their place.
• Depending on the Artist: Throughout the first four seasons, his hair often fluctuates between ash blonde and silver, depending on who is animating the episode. In Seasons 3 and 4, silver becomes the more dominant color. In-universe, it is likely due to the stress of his highly demanding job and his constant failure to obtain the Miraculous, as well as his despair and grief towards Emilie's coma.
  • By Season 5, his hair has gone completely white, most likely because he knows, for all his talk of grandure, he's a dead man walking.
  • This also applies to his Akumatization sigil in Seasons 4 and 5, often fluctuating between pink and purple for the former, and lavender and pale blue for the latter.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • His plan in "Style Queen" was to deliberately provoke Audrey Burgeois as Gabriel so that she would be susceptible to akumatization. He didn't count on her going for Revenge by Proxy against Adrien when she couldn't get to him.
  • Revealing his intentions with the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous to an akumatized Markov, who hijacks both the plan and Gabriel's security system. Gabriel learned from it and had Markov infected with a loyalty-inducing virus before akumatizing him again.
  • In "Cat Blanc", he learned of his son's idenity as Cat Noir and took advantage of his emotional turmoil to akumatize him, removing the Cat Miraculous's limitations while forcing his son to obey his order and kill Ladybug. He never expected that his son would actually become so unstable that he would lead to his own Karmic Death.
  • In "Miraculous New York", he attempts to start a global thermonuclear war, which probably wouldn't have exactly helped keep Adrien alive or his lair (containing, among other things, Emilie's stasis chamber) in one piece.
  • In "Simpleman", he gives the eponymous Akuma the ability to reduce the intelligence of everyone in Paris, making them only think the simplest possible thoughts. However, this power is spread through a wave that affects all of Paris without discrimination, meaning that Shadow Moth himself is affected by it. While this still comes closer to success than most of his plans, one has to wonder what his next move would have been if he had actually gotten hold of the Miraculous. Could he even have thought of reviving Emile in his simplified state?
  • In "Strike Back", a wary Gabriel is forced to trade the Peacock Miraculous to get his ring back from Félix. Come "Emotion", Gabriel got himself erased by a Sentimonster that Félix created for him.
• Disappeared Dad: Downplayed. Gabriel is physically present in Adrien's life and even micromanages his son's life to make sure Adrien is safe, but he's too busy with his job to actually spend time with his son.
• Disneyland Dad: He has Adrien's entire life planned out in a calculated desire to protect him from the world, even going so far as to try and keep him home-schooled in-spite of how lonely it makes him. Due to his job as fashion mogul and his excursions as Hawk Moth, Gabriel could not actually be there for him and instead compensates using his vast fortune to keep his son happy and complacent with any material thing he wants.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In the fifth season, the injury Gabriel sustained from Cat Noir's Catacalysm is used as a stand-in for living with a terminal disease with draining the Kwamis of their energy being the treatment to lessen the pain and slow the spread of it across the body.
• Doomed by Canon: While confirmed in "Timetagger", "Destruction" and "Passion" cement that succeed or fail, Gabriel will eventually come to no longer possess the Butterfly Miraculous... but someone will take his place.
• The Empath: A villainous example. The Butterfly Brooch allows its holder to sense the emotions of those around them. Its intended use is to bolster positive emotions and create superheroes, but Hawk Moth uses it to prey on negative emotions present anywhere in the city, with at least enough clarity to know exactly what the incident was that inspired them. As "Partycrasher" shows, he's fully capable of sensing positive emotions as well, they're just useless to him most of the time.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite being the Big Bad, Gabriel has his loved ones. His prime motivation for creating the akuma villains is to save his wife, Emilie, who has fallen into a coma and as time goes by is only falling deeper. In addition, Gabriel does legitimately love Adrien and claims that bringing Emilie back if for him. However, Gabriel has allowed his obsession with bringing Emilie back to interfere with his relationship with Adrien making him controlling and cold. Not including his family, Gabriel cares for his assistant Nathalie. Despite still allowing her to use the Peacock Miraculous, knowing the implications that come with using it, Gabriel detransforms even though he has recreated an army of akuma villains when Nathalie falls ill.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Generally zigzagged. The most consistent analysis of his behavior is that he does have a conscience, but he tends to ignore it if a big enough prize is dangled in front of him.
  • Between brainwashing innocent people and not being the least bit choosy about victims, there aren't a lot of lines Hawk Moth hasn’t crossed already. However, when it comes down to the wire, there is one thing he will never do: let Adrien get hurt. That is, unless he finds out he's Cat Noir. Then that line goes right out the window, as "Cat Blanc" and "Ephemeral" show.
  • In "Sandboy", he forbids Nooroo from communicating, striking the kwami mute. He quickly revokes this order, saying that he was joking and that even he's not that cruel.
  • In "Queen Wasp", he's shown to be torn between his love for his wife and his son. Keep up with the akumas and the villains and risk Adrien getting hurt to save/revive Emilie or give it up for his safety but never get his wife back or save his son's mother.
  • In "Mayura" he's aghast when he realises that Nathalie has taken up the Peacock Miraculous to aid him, since he knows the strain it will take on her body, and begs her not to use it. In season 3 he drops this moral scruple and against his better judgement, actively employs Mayura's aid despite the risks to her health, though he does at least make sure she rest before using it again, but in "Ladybug" the scruple returns when he sees how the Miraculous has affected Nathalie and takes it back for her own safety.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In “Protection”, he assumes that Adrien only likes Marinette because her “mediocrity” allows him to shine with less effort, failing to see that Adrien loves Marinette for who she is. Also, in “Pretension”, he accuses Marinette of only liking Adrien because she’s “under the spell of the world Gabriel has created”, being starstruck by Adrien’s fame and good looks, but she likewise loves Adrien for who he is.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: When Nooroo tries to go out for his birthday, he temporarily removes the poor kwami's mouth before playing it off as a "joke".
• Evil Is Bigger: An official height chart gives Gabriel's height as 7'2"/220cm. The episode "Gabriel Agreste" reveals that the trope is invoked by Gabriel as part of his Miraculous transformation: when Shadow Moth and senti-Gabriel are standing face to face, Shadow Moth is a full head taller than his civilian self.
• Evil Is Hammy: In costume, he embraces being a theatrical supervillain, a far cry from his civilian identity of the aloof, businesslike Gabriel Agreste. Made obvious by his transformation sequence when it occurs, which sees the cold and constantly-frowning Gabriel Agreste flash an evil smile.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Most of the time this is averted; while his akumatized minions can be unruly, they generally do as they're told because he can simply strip them of their powers or torture them into compliance. He typically runs into trouble whenever he akumatizes non-humans, such as the robotic Markov or the supernatural Mei Shi, who can resist his influence more easily and turn against him. He at least learns his lesson with Markov; when akumatizing him a second time, he infects him with a virus first and only agrees to remove it if Robustus actually follows his orders. The only time akumatizing a human blows up in his face is Cat Blanc, whose loyalties are so torn between Ladybug and Hawk Moth (who he had just learned is his father) that it triggers an Angst Nuke that obliterates all of Paris, Hawk Moth included.
• Evil Laugh: He does one in most episodes. He goes for the classic “muhahaha”.
• Evil Only Has to Win Once: If he gets the Cat and Ladybug Miraculouses, it's game over, but he loses nothing but time when his akumatized villains are defeated, and so can afford to keep trying again and again.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Has quite a low, intimidating tone. His voice is noticeably higher-pitched when untransformed, so either it's a side effect of his transformation or he invokes this trope deliberately, perhaps so that nobody recognizes his civilian voice. At the end of "Party Crasher", he speaks deeply while untransformed, so it seems he does invoke this trope deliberately. "Gabriel Agreste" has Gabriel deepen his villain voice further, possibly as an attempt to make a suspicious Félix second guess himself.
• Evil Virtues:
  • Creativity. While he tends to recycle the same Evil Plan — akumatize someone, let them cause havoc to attract the heroes, have the villain take their miraculous — he has proven to have a very firm understanding of his miraculous and has applied Loophole Abuses in order to maximize its effectiveness in a variety of clever ways, including akumatizing himself to throw off suspicion of his secret in "Collector" and creating an army of akumatized villains by creating a villain that makes himself more powerful in "Catalyst".
  • Determination. His villainous champions have lost countless times and it only takes a major loss for him to lose his vigor, and even then it has been proven that it does not take much for him to reclaim his nerve.
  • Love. His end-goal is to procure the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous to wish his ailing wife back to full health, and one of his redeeming qualities is how he cares for his son. The only reason why he is such a Control Freak over Adrien is because he is afraid for his wellbeing and only wishes to ensure a promising future, and even then he is willing to bend his rules if Adrien asks nicely enough.
  • Loyalty. He is deeply offended by any suggestion that he's cheating on Emilie... whether the speaker meant to imply that or not.
  • Resourcefulness. He will sometimes use his civilian identity — aware that everyone sees him as a Control Freak and a tight-ass — to create akumas out of other people's hatred of him or use his power and influence to sow enough discontent among as many people as he can, as was the case with Bubbler, Simon Says, Style Queen and Gorizilla.
  • Valor. Even when the heroes undo his Super Mode as Scarlet Moth and breaks the spell he put onto his villain army, he still sticks by and fights Ladybug and Cat Noir two-on-one without his cane, proving that he was an Orcus on His Throne more out of being a Pragmatic Villain than a Dirty Coward. Even then he only flees after become grossly outnumbered when Rena Rouge, Carapace and Queen Bee join the fight and Mayura creates a sentimonster to be a distraction.
• Expy: To Gendo Ikari: Both are emotionally distant Archnemesis Dads who are secretly Manipulative Bastard Supervillains with apocaliptic agendas because they are Yanderes who want to resurrect their dead wives. Their ultimate ends where they end up Together in Death with their wives and their fan reception are also very similar.
• False Flag Operation: Twice. First, by permitting Simon Says to target him despite the risks and then corrupting himself into the Collector to throw suspicion off of his civilian identity when he believed the heroes were getting too close to finding out who he was.
• False Friend: To any villain he creates. Since he actually has no control over their actions, he has to pretend he is giving them their powers so they can accomplish their goals. In actuality, he is just using them to get his hands on Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculouses.
• Fantastic Terrorist: A magical supervillain who uses his powers to brainwash other people into supervillains to terrorize Paris so he can get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous.
• Fatal Flaw: His single-minded obsession with Ladybug often gets him into trouble as he will sacrifice pragmatism for a chance to take her Miraculous. This bites him in the ass severely in Season 5 premiere "Evolution" where despite having the chance to save his wife by going back in time and changing the past using the Bunny Miraculous (which in turn would save Nathalie as it would prevent her from using the broken Peacock Miraculous), he instead chooses to once again go after Ladybug and Cat Noir, leading to his defeat once again. Nathalie is so disgusted by his selfishness that she not only calls him out on it, but ultimately abandons him.
• Faux Affably Evil: He'll may act like he's a friend to the villains he creates, but only as long as he's getting what he wants; the minute something goes wrong, out come the threats to remove their powers.
• Fist Pump: A stand-by in Hawk Moth's hammy gesture repertoire is to dramatically clench his fist tightly for emphasis, usually as he monologues about how someone's negative emotions are very good prey for his akumas.
• Flanderization: His emotional abuse of Adrien only got worse as the series progressed.
• Fluffy the Terrible: In the French version, he's "Le Papillon", or the Butterfly. This is intentionally averted in the various dubs by the name change; the English dub in particular gives him the more intimidating name of Hawk Moth.
• Foil: To his own son as well; both are famous people who project a calm, professional image to conceal their true selves. Both are also the holders of a miraculous that give them dark-themed alter-egos with more outgoing personalities; but while Cat Noir is a happy-go-lucky, Dark Is Not Evil hero who protects Paris, Hawk Moth is a sinister Light Is Not Good Large Ham villain who corrupts people with his powers.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: With his cold, unfriendly personality, it's obvious. Even more as the true identity of Hawk Moth.
• Fusion Dance:
  • This forms the crux of his ultimate goal: he wants to get the Ladybug and Cat Miraculouses to fuse them together in order to get his wish granted.
  • In season 4, he uses the repaired Peacock Miaculous in tandem with the Butterfly Miraculous, becoming Shadow Moth.
  • In season 5, he redubs himself Monarch after gaining all but three of the Miraculous, complete with new costume. Unlike previous fusions, his costume doesn't change, instead lighting up to indicate which he has active.

G-L

• Gender-Blender Name: His birth name, Gabi, is noted as being feminine or gender neutral.
• Godhood Seeker: He wants Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous because together they grant ultimate power.
• Good Powers, Bad People: When used with its intended purpose, Nooroo's power should be turning people into The Champion or, as shown in "Queen Wasp", grant other Miraculous Users a Super Mode. Hawk Moth, however, uses it to corrupt people to suit his own ends.
• Hades Shaded: Not that he wasn't already evil, but he gains a noticeable tan as Scarlet Moth.
• Happily Ever After: A twisted one: Emilie brought back to life, repair the Cataclysm he forced Cat Noir to inflict on him, and Kagami and Adrien becoming the eternal icons of the new world he wanted.
• Happily Married: Implied. While not much is known about Gabriel's relationship with his missing wife, there are moments that show they had a loving marriage — he keeps many pictures of her in their home, and Adrien explains in the webisode, "Adrien's Double Life", that ever since Mrs. Agreste disappeared, Gabriel has been a "changed man".
• Hazy-Feel Turn: In the finale, he realizes how much harm he had done for the woman he loved and chooses to sacrifice himself to heal Nathalie and Emilie. But he still did it by stealing the Miraculouses from Marinette to grant the wish with their previous reality destroyed in the process, so exactly where this puts him morally is very up for debate
• Hates Being Touched: He's aloof in general, but his sister-in-law Amelie specifically notes that he's "not the physical sort". He refuses to shake Félix's hand when first greeting him and is visibly uncomfortable when a passenger brushes past him on a train in "Backwarder". This doesn't seem to apply as much to his close loved ones, however, as he's given Adrien quite a few stiff hugs and is fairly physically affectionate with Nathalie.
• The Heavy: All the other villains? He creates and directs them in the first place.
• Heel Realization: He finally realizes how horrible a parent he was to Adrien during the finale of Season 5, and opts to use the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous to save Emilie and Nathalie's lives at the cost of his own.
• The Hermit: In season 1 and for much of season 2, he never leaves his house. It seems to stem as much from his grief over Emilie as it does from concealing his identity as Hawk Moth. His appearance during his Villainous BSoD at the show in "Queen Wasp" is stated to be his first public appearance since his wife disappeared. Even when he doesn't give up his villainy, it sticks; he is regularly seen making appearances and going outside as both a civilian and as a supervillain after that episode.
• Hero of Another Story: For a given value of 'hero'. Apparently the story of how he met Emilie and Nathalie could fill its own comic book. Their journey to Tibet to find the Miraculous is similarly alluded to.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: So far, the closest thing we have to his master plan is that he needs both the Ladybug and Cat miraculous to make a wish in order to "erase the past". As the series goes on, more and more hints are dropped that his ultimate endgame is to resurrect his comatose wife.
• Hidden Depths: Beneath his cold, evil, and manipulative exterior, Gabriel is in fact a grieving, depressed, and heartbroken man who desperately wishes to be a happy family again with his wife and son. However, he struggles with an inability to move on from the past and to be be grateful for his only child Adrien, which has caused him to become dangerously obsessed with finding a way to bring his wife back at any cost.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Played with. His unfriendly and callous behavior is responsible for at least three akumatizations; his status as Hawk Moth heavily implies he acted in such a manner not out of malice, but to goad potential victims into being upset enough to be akumatized.
• His Own Worst Enemy: He throws away the perfect opportunity to spare his wife from her fate and Nathalie from illness and disability in "Evolution" in favor of his compulsion to best Ladybug, demonstrating that it's ultimately his all-consuming obsession with victory that's preventing him from attaining happiness.
• History Repeats: He is desperate to prevent any more of his loved ones from taking up a Miraculous and dying, but pretty much all of them have/will. His son has technically died several times in the line of duty.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the Bad Future seen in "Cat Blanc", Gabriel's reaction to discovering that Adrien is Cat Noir is to borderline Mind Rape the poor boy in order to akumatize him. Cat Blanc's initial Freak Out ends up killing Gabriel, along with the rest of Paris (and possibly France).
• Hypocrite:
  • Gabriel is constantly stating how much he worries over Adrien's safety, but often ends up putting his son in direct danger as Hawk Moth, with "Gorizilla", "Riposte", and especially "Cat Blanc" being the most prominent examples.
  • In "Ladybug", he questions why Cat Noir and Ladybug care so much about the destruction of Senti-Ladybug. At the same time, he cares deeply about his son Adrien, who was born through the magic of the Peacock Miraculous.
  • In season 5, he takes issue with Marinette dating Adrien, believing she's not good enough for him as someone who is just the daughter of some local bakers. Gabriel comes from almost identical origins and similarly married someone who, by the standards he's setting now, was way out of his league.
• Hypocritical Humor: Hawk Moth is a Manipulative Bastard who will say whatever he needs to get his More than Mind Control to work, regardless of what he personally believes. However, on occasion he makes some genuine hypocritical remarks to himself when nobody else can hear them.
  • In "Sapotis", he mocks strict parents and declares that kids should be allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Gabriel is an extremely strict parent who micromanages his son's life.
  • In "Captain Hardrock", he expresses outrage at "the suppression of a soul demanding liberty and freedom". Again, Gabriel micromanages Adrien's life (barely even allowing him to leave the house), and is keeping Nooroo prisoner. Corrupting people into becoming your evil minions and using an Agony Beam when they disobey you isn't much in the way of "liberty and freedom" either.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: A Downplayed Villanous example. He gave Emilie the Peacock Miraculous that she implicitly used to create Adrien, and his guilt over her falling into a coma years later as a result caused his Start of Darkness.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Gabriel's light blue eyes fit his cold, unfriendly bearing perfectly, and they can do one hell of a pitiless stare.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • In "Stormy Weather 2", he begins to question whether he's risking too much in his quest, but quickly snuffs out the thought and doubles down on his actions.
  • In the "Queen's Battle" trilogy, he's fully prepared to give up trying to steal the Miraculous and move on with his life after Style Queen is defeated. But once Chloé outs herself as the holder of the Bee Miraculous and becomes vulnerable to being akumatized, Gabriel just can't resist taking another shot at winning.
• Imagination-Based Superpower:
  • Played with. Hawk Moth chooses the powers he gives to his akuma, but they only work if the victim has an emotional state compatible with the power. This is a fairly broad range, however, and he can give them pretty much any power he wants as long it fits thematically. "Risk" further demonstrates that he can think up a specific power before even finding a victim, then simply has to locate a valid target.
  • Once he becomes Shadow Moth by joining the Peacock Miraculous with his own, his amoks can create anything he desires, including copies of people (and past villains) that he can control.
  • Subverted when he gains access to the Rooster Miraculous and is dismayed to learn from Orikko that he can't simply give himself whatever power he wants, the limitations of the power being so specific that he doesn't even bother trying at first. He is able to grant himself invisibility and flight later on, however, showing that more humble requests pan out fairly well.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Downplayed. "Hawk Moth" is the official English spelling, but there are some who spell it as "Hawkmoth", one word, after an art book spelled it that way.
• Ink-Suit Actor: His facial features as a civilian are similar to Keith Silverstein's.
• Ironic Name: Same as Adrien; a posh fashion designer and millionaire whose surname comes from a Latin word meaning, "rustic".
• Irony:
  • The way his akuma minions look design-wise, you'd think that a fashion designer would have better taste (unless he's Not So Above It All or he does it deliberately so people don't realize they're the same person).
  • In "Startrain", he's fully aware of the irony that, with the titular akuma outside of his range of control, he has to root for Ladybug so she can save Adrien.
• It's All About Me: For all of his initial justifications and Freudian Excuse regarding trying to get his beloved family back, his actions (especially many of his later choices in later seasons) have heavy shades of this. Despite claiming to do what's best for his son, he mainly seems to fixate more on trying to dictate Adrien's actions in relation to his own desires. Despite having opportunities to actually revive Emilie without the risk of further terror and trauma for himself and Paris, he ultimately discards them for the sake of continuing down his original intent of stealing the Ladybug and Cat Miraculouses, a decision that costs him the loyalty of Nathalie Sancoeur. Even his final action of sacrificing himself to resurrect Emilie and restore Nathalie's health is tinged with his desire for Adrien to remember him as a good parent, despite his multi-season negligence and Control Freak tendencies.
• It Runs in the Family: He has the same desperate, self-destructive love for Emilie as Adrien has for Ladybug.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While he does tend to be a giant jerk, even to Adrien, to the point he doesn't allow him to do things most normal kids should be allowed to do, he still loves his son. Also, he is quite reasonable and fair most of the time. Though underneath that, he's actually...Hawk Moth.
• Karmic Death:
  • A Bad Future scenario has Gabriel instantly killed by an unstable Adrian/Cat Blanc after learning his identity as Cat Noir and psychologically torturing him to kill Ladybug.
  • The canon timeline has Gabriel dying a slow death after forcing Cat Noir to inflict his Catacylsm on him while still unaware of his identity and Ladybug's. He then dies as consequence of using the Miraculouses he sought for over the course of series to save Natalie's life at the cost of his own, but accepts his fate if it meant saving his companion and reuniting with Emilie in death.
  • In "Gabriel Agreste", Shadow Moth threatens his nephew Félix through a sentimonster Gabriel that he can destroy him with only a snap of his fingers. In "Emotion", Félix creates a sentimonster that removes the real Gabriel from existence with only a snap of his fingers.
• Knight of Cerebus: As Hawk Moth, Gabriel fits the tone of the show perfectly with his Card-Carrying Villain, Pungeon Master and Evil Is Hammy tendencies, but as soon as the Miraculous comes off, he becomes this.
• Knight Templar Parent: Despite regular negligence of his son, Gabriel is actually this. In his introductory webisode, Adrien claims that, until recently, his father refused to let him attend public school because Adrien leaving the house worried him. It appears that, by keeping his son as busy and isolated as possible, Mr. Agreste hopes to prevent Adrien getting into an unspecific danger. The Christmas special pretty much confirms it. When he sees that Adrien is not in his room and the window is wide open, he frantically demands that Nathalie release a statement of his missing son and issue an immediate search party for him.
• Kubrick Stare: Pulls one of these in his transformation sequence, complete with Slasher Smile.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: A villainous example. He has a big chin, but he’s the show’s main antagonist.
• Large and in Charge: His official height is 220cm (~7'2.6"), giving him a towering physique to match his authoritarian personality.
• Large Ham: Despite his dark and serious tone, his VA (in basically any version; take your pick) is clearly enjoying themself.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The revelation that Gabriel is Hawk Moth is rather unceremoniously dropped at the beginning of Season 2, and many of his appearances afterwards make direct reference to this fact.
• Legacy Character: In "Timetagger", it's revealed that the Butterfly Miraculous will end up in the hands of someone else after Gabriel loses it. That person is revealed in "Recreation" to be Lila.
• Light Is Not Good: Stands in a room filled with white butterflies, right in the beam of a large, handsomely wrought window. To some degree justified, at least with the white butterflies: he's perverting his Nooroo's benevolent powers for evil. His true identity, Gabriel Agreste, also wears a white suit, with bright red pants and highlights.
• Logical Weakness: His Miraculous has the power to give other people superpowers. This means that most of his plans involve him having to put his faith in other people to do all of the dirty work, but this has a few inherent limitations that he is forced to put-up with.
  • First, while his minions aren't necessarily in their right mind, they still possess free will of their own. They are capable of either ignoring him or misinterpreting his orders, often snatching defeat from the jaws of victory due to good old human fallibility. While threatening his villains with rescinding their powers or inflicting mild pain on them should they defy him works most of the time, there are times when this isn't enough. Robostus was able to keep him too busy fending off his own security system to stop him, Gigantitan was incapable of listening or focusing on the task at hand due to being a toddler, and the Gang of Secrets were so fixated on Marinette that they instantly abandoned a subdued Cat Noir to chase after an illusion of her while Gabriel ineffectually tried to get them to stop. Also, someone with a sufficiently powerful will can either overcome the akuma (Alya in "Gang of Secrets) or resist being akumatized altogether (Félix in "Gabriel Agreste").
  • Second, the corrupting influence he has on his villains — often amplifying their darker impulses and silencing their civil conscience — tends to make them very easily distracted and prone to irrational behavior. Ladybug and Cat Noir have used this against them numerous times, often using whatever led to Hawk Moth akumatize them as a distraction right before defeating them.
  • Third, the powers themselves sometimes have strange limitations resulting from being drawn from the person's desires of the moment and the object that gets akumatized. Simply being present for the events leading to the akuma has allowed Ladybug and Cat Noir to figure out many villains' weaknesses, and taking away the akumatized object often completely neutralizes the villain even before the akuma is purified.
  • Fourth, he is limited to one instance of his power just like the other Miraculous holders, meaning he can only akumatize one person at a time, barring exceptional circumstances. While they are strong enough to require both Ladybug and Cat Noir working as a team, the longer they fight, the more Ladybug and Cat Noir's teamwork begins to overwhelm them. From the second season on, Ladybug also has the option of using other Miraculous to level the playing field.
  • Fifth, as revealed in "Startrain", he has a limited range when communicating and controlling his akumatized minions. Should they escape that range (in the case of Startrain, the Earth's orbit), they are free to act without Hawk Moth looking over their shoulder, Hawk Moth powerless to do anything.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Nooroo's power can't be used on the owner of the Miraculous, so when Gabriel has to get around people discovering his identity, he temporarily gives up being the holder of Nooroo to allow himself to be akumatized by an akuma he had previously created.
  • Catalyst is an even better example. Normally the Butterfly Miraculous can only akumatize one person at a time. Through giving Nathalie the power to increase his own, he is able to break his one akuma limit and amass an army of villains.
  • The normal rule is "one person, one akuma", but he can circumvent this in specific cases. The Punisher Trio and the Gang of Secrets consist of multiple former villains, reakumatized as a group with a single akuma because they shared a single source of emotional pain and an object of significance to all of them. Similarly, Sapotis and Oblivio are two individuals joined by a single akuma, the former creating identical, endlessly replicating copies while the latter are fused into a single being.
  • He can create Akumas that can acquire minions, such as Belfana and Malediktator.
• Love Makes You Evil: All of his supervillainy is to attempt to revive his comatose wife using Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculouses.

M-R

• Macabre Moth Motif: He has this in the English and Korean version thanks to Dub Name Change. Hawk Moth has a dark color scheme and corrupts the Pretty Butterflies for his own selfish agenda.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Has missiles hidden in his evil lair, which nearly gets him killed when Robostus turns on him.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase:
  • As Hawk Moth, he usually says "[Eloquent description of character and their Moment of Weakness]. What perfect prey for my akuma."
  • From "Ephemeral" and Season 5, whenever he see something doesn't like from Adrien (like questioning his order or do something that not approved from him), Gabriel will rub his ring and said "Adrien, I'am your father.[Mention about the order to Adrien]". After that, Adrien will obey him without question.
• Make a Wish: His goal upon obtaining Ladybug and Cat Miraculouses, merging the Kwamis to be granted a reality-altering wish that requires a sacrifice. He dies in order to have his wish granted.
• Manipulative Bastard: While he doesn't show it very often outside of taking advantage of his victims' Moment of Weakness, his civilian identity will occasionally tweak a situation to make people vulnerable to his Akuma.
  • In "The Collector", he Evilizes himself to throw off the heroes' suspicions.
  • His treatment of Lila in Season 3 definitely shows this side; Knowing how ruthless Lila is, he partners up with her as Gabriel allegedly to protect Adrien from bad influences, but in reality he's merely enabling her so she'll make people vulnerable to his Akumas. Then he callously fires her for failing to keep Adrien from falling in love with Marinette.
  • His master plan in the Season 3 Finale has him taking advantage of Chloé's entitlement complex to turn her against Ladybug.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Just look at that pimpin' purple suit and that Classy Cane. It fits, given he's a fashion designer.
• Meaningful Name:
  • In French, a species of butterfly known as the grayling is called "agreste". He is Hawk Moth, who is butterfly/moth-themed yet prefers minimalist/neutral colors. His initial villian name in the French dub, Papillion, means both "butterfly" and "moth". As Monarch, he is named after the Monarch butterfly.
  • Zig-Zagged with his first name. In The Bible, Gabriel is one of God's messenger angels, who is most famously known for delivering the news to Mary that she was to be the mother of Jesus Christ. This corresponds nicely with what he should be as the bearer of the Moth Brooch, which is used to make ordinary people into extraordinary heroes. But as Hawk Moth, he inverts his name's meaning by using Nooroo to create villains instead of heroes.
  • As with most names ending in -el, "Gabriel" is a theophoric name (names specifically invoking and displaying the protection of a deity). The name "Gabriel" derives from Hebrew "Gavri'el", literally meaning "God is my strength". He's invoking the protection and strength of a Miraculous, specifically.
• Minored In Ass Kicking: Despite the fact he usually sends minions to fight on his behalf, he's a capable combatant with a Sword Cane, able to fight both Cat Noir and Ladybug to a standstill.
• Mission Control: He can see through his minions' eyes, and acts as their strategist and advisor from his lair. Depending on the minion in question, this is either a dangerously useful dynamic or a frustrating impediment.
• Mook Maker: The essential nature of his Akumatize ability and greatest strength. More so because every person that becomes a minion of his has the potential to become a One-Man Army and Person of Mass Destruction with a Superpower Lottery in their own right, each under his control to an extent.
• Morality Pet: He only cares for three people; Adrien, his wife, and Nathalie. Everyone else is either collateral or a tool for his Monster of the Week.
• More than Mind Control: Hawk Moth's akuma amplify the negative emotions of his victims, then Hawk Moth plays on their desires to make them do what he wants.
• Motive Decay: Deconstructed. Gabriel lost to Ladybug so many times by the fifth season that the vendetta he developed towards her overshadows his initial goal of reviving Emilie. The result is that he loses Nathalie's loyalty when that vendetta caused him to brush away his only chance of changing past events to prevent Emilie's coma from ever occuring.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: His akumas can empower anyone, even those wielding other Miraculous, but cannot be used to empower the Butterfly Miraculous itself. Gabriel can akumatize himself, but not when he's transformed.
• My Beloved Smother: Gender Inverted and deconstructed. Gabriel is incredibly protective over Adrien, but it goes into Knight Templar Parent territory — Before allowing his son to attend public school, Gabriel kept Adrien homeschooled all of his life. Gabriel plans out every single detail of his son's life; Makes unfair decisions in regards to his son, the main example being unwilling to allow Adrien a birthday party or deciding that he and Nino couldn't be friends anymore. All of these over-the-top, even emotionally abusive actions, are done in the hope of keeping his son away from some unspecified danger. It is a combination of this suffocating-like over-protectiveness as well as Gabriel's emotional abuse, neglect, and busy work schedule, that strains his relationship with his only child.
• Mysterious Parent: The fact that Gabriel is aware of what the Miraculouses are, secretly kept a book about them, and has the Peacock Miraculous implies that he is more connected to the supernatural happenings in Paris than he lets on. Adrien offhandedly mentions that even as Gabriel's own son, he doesn't know anything about him either. Once it turns out he's Hawk Moth, his connection to the akuma problems becomes pretty obvious — he's actively causing them. But this in turn raises new questions, as it also appears that he was aware of the Miraculous and had the book and the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculouses well before he actively started using them as Hawk Moth and it's even implied they had something to do with Emilie's current condition.
• Mysterious Past: His goal becomes clear in Season 2, yet how he ended up the way he is in the present is yet to be revealed.
• Mysterious Stranger: His non-transformed identity is a complete mystery to our heroes. The Season 2 premiere reveals that he's Gabriel Agreste, but no one else in-universe knows that except for Nathalie.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Named after Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, notable French fashion designer.
• Near-Villain Victory: In several episodes he has very nearly managed to akumatize Marinette, which would pretty much be an Instant-Win Condition for him since she would happily hand the only Miraculous capable of purifying akumas over to him.
• Never My Fault: Especially by season 5, in which Gabriel has become so far-gone and so desperately obsessed with one-upping Ladybug that he refuses to blame himself over her for his inability to defeat her. This selfish lack of awareness and putting the obsession above preventing his wife's coma destroys Nathalie's respect for him.
• Never Recycle Your Schemes:
  • Averted. He tries the Scarlet Moth plan again in "Ladybug" and almost succeeded in akumatizing Marinette, if it weren't for Nathalie's abrupt health issues.
  • More broadly speaking, he's willing to recreate past villains who have lost prior battles with the heroes, sometimes without even changing their powers. Mr. Pigeon has been used at least 72 times, and only once was shown being given any sort of power change.
• Next Tier Power-Up:
  • After Nathalie stole Fu's tablet with deciphered spellbook pages, Gabriel gained knowledge about fusion spells, recipes for the potions which grant more powers to the holders, the process to repair Miraculouses, and the incantation needed for the wish-granting power of Ladybug and Cat Miraculouses. However, just like Marinette, since Master Fu was only able to partially decode the Miraculous spellbook, it is likely Gabriel's understanding is limited as well.
  • As of Season 4, he can unify the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculous and transform into Shadow Moth.
  • Starting from the Season 4 finale, he has access to virtually all the Miraculous, dubbing himself "Monarch" and utilizing all the powers himself. After a couple disastrous outings, he instead develops a method to transmit their powers to his akuma without having to give up the actual Miraculous, allowing him to give his akuma additional Miraculous powers on top of their usual Personality Powers.
• The Nicknamer: He gives the villain names to the citizens that are akumatized, and refers to them solely by these titles from the moment his akumas possess them.
• Necromantic: He wants to use the wish granted by combining the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous to revive his comatose wife.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • His issues with Marinette in the second half of the fifth season stem from "Derision" when he attempted to akumatize her during an anxiety attack, her method to preventing it causes her to reach a psychological breakthrough that allows her to overcome her demons and have the courage to finally date Adrien.
  • The events that led to his Heel Realization and demise started when he became Nightormentor and used his power on Adrien, who later sends Plagg to Paris where he loans the Cat Miraculous to Marinette to fight Monarch as Bug Noir. His act of firing Lila months prior led to her secretly acting against him and acquiring the Butterfly Miraculous after his death.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His global stern and uptight persona, tall and slim figure added with his job as a succesful fashion designer point out towards Karl Lagerfeld, of Chanel's fame. The similarities even get accentuated as time passes on in the show, Gabriel's hair turning snow white like old Lagerfeld's was. He only lacks the Sunglasses at Night.
• No Ontological Inertia: Averted. Gabriel's akuma continue to function when he's not transformed, and even when he deliberately renounces Nooroo's power and seals him in the moth brooch, they persist. The only way to stop them is to purify the akuma.
• Non-Action Big Bad:
  • Hawk Moth's power is to give powers to others, whom he then controls, rather than gaining any powers of his own. As such, he waits in his dark room, sending out akuma to transform others so they'll do his work for him. "Robostus" shows he can defend himself with a Sword Cane in a pinch, but his performance suggests he lacks the stamina for a protracted battle.
  • Averted hard in "Mayura" — despite losing both his cane and his Catalyst buffs, he manages to take down both Ladybug and Cat Noir with just his fists. Only a Big Damn Heroes moment from Rena Rouge, Carapace, and Queen Bee stopped him from achieving total victory.
  • Played with at the beginning of season 5. After gaining almost all the Miraculous except for the ones from the main duo, he dubs himself Monarch and decides to use his new powers against the heroes directly. While initially unstoppable, stacking so many Miraculous weakens and almost kills him, leading to him losing the Rabbit and almost getting himself captured and losing all of them. After that near disaster, he goes back to fighting remotely with Akuma and uses the other Miraculous to augment the powers of his villains.
• No Self-Buffs: In theory, but he's found some clever loopholes.
  • He can empower others, but Nooroo's power doesn't work on whoever holds the Miraculous. When he needs to akumatize himself to throw off suspicion, he temporarily renounces his power so he'll be vulnerable to an akuma he created beforehand, fooling even Master Fu, who was aware of the immunity, but not the loophole. By "Dearest Family", his powers have evolved to the point he can akumatize himself without needing to renounce Nooroo. The only catch is that he can't be both transformed and akumatized.
  • He can't buff himself, but he can give someone else the power to buff him. Catalyst removes his limitation of only one akuma at a time, allowing him to amass an army of nearly every previously created supervillain.
• No-Sell: He is decidedly unimpressed when Chloé introduces herself as the Mayor's daughter in "Mr. Pigeon", being both wealthy and famous enough that the clout of being the Mayor's daughter, even of such a famous city, is peanuts to him. (Since Chloé was Adrien's only friend for most of his life, it is somewhat surprising that Gabriel has to be introduced to her in the first place.)
• Not So Above It All:
  • Gabriel Agreste is a stern, no-nonsense man, but as Hawk Moth he's quite the Large Ham.
  • He's already a Large Ham, but it's to the point that when La Befana asks him what the magic word is when he orders her to get the Miraculouses, he has a Beat before sheepishly saying "Please?"
  • He can be seen singing "Merry Christmas To All" with everyone at the end of "Ladybug In Christmas".
  • In Season 5, after learning the secret identities of Ladybug and Cat Noir’s replacements, he starts dancing to swing music in a sequence that’s just a few visuals short of a Villain Song.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He claims to care about his family and seek the Miraculouses to make a better life for them, but he has way too much fun with his evil actions and manipulations for this to be entirely true. Plus, it's highly doubtful that his wife would want to be awoken from her coma at the cost he's willing to pay.
• Older Than They Look: Overuse of the Snake Miraculous ends up making him age much more faster than the rest of World, as, as he puts it each time he uses it, time rewinds for everyone save himself. Nathalie and himself agree that, combined with his Cataclysm-induced arm injury, it has considerably reduced his lifespan. This makes one wonder just how many times he used it to suffer such lasting effects. It'not physically visible though, probably because he already looked quite old since the start of the show.
• Old Shame: One of his first work was to design Harry Clown's first scene costume (a French fry!). It is something he'd prefer forget and indeed he only has scorn towards the comedian (though not showing it to his face). Harry begs to differ and years laters asks him another costume (a superhero one) for his project of a serious movie.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Season 4 reveals the true cost of the wish he wants to make - the complete destruction of reality as we know it. This is a price Shadow Moth is perfectly willing to pay to get his wife back.
• Opportunistic Bastard: Hawk Moth does not have any obvious day to day Evil Plan. While his overall goal is to acquire Ladybug and Cat Noir’s Miraculouses, even he doesn’t know how he will go about it each day. He Akumatizes whatever civilian he chances upon and from there mostly lets them decide how they will go about things and working it in his favor. The first time he orchestrated an elaborate Evil Plan is the Heroes' Day two part special.
• Orcus on His Throne: Spends most of the series standing in the dark room he is in, and sends his butterflies when he detects a suitable victim. Justified, as his primary super power is the ability to bestow powers onto others. He finally steps out of his lair in the Heroes' Day two-parter special, which nearly gets him caught. In season 5, Gabriel briefly tries getting off the throne when he has the power of all but three Miraculous, and it again leads to him being nearly defeated (twice!), convincing him that attacking from a distance is a far safer strategy than a high-risk, high-reward personal action.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In "Reunion", having hoped to retrieve the Rabbit Miraculous and redeem himself to Natalie, he detransforms after being defeated instead of issuing a hammy revenge speech and makes his way to Natalie's room so he can apologize to her.
  • In "Deflagration", upon learning Scarabella and Kitty Noire's identities, Gabriel leaves his lair and suddenly starts a victory dance.
• Parental Hypocrisy: In "Gorizilla", he gives Adrien a short speech about the need to be honest with each other. This apparently does not extend to telling his son that he's actually the supervillain who's been terrorizing Paris for presumably a year at the very least. Not to mention what really happened to Emilie. He does attempt to tell Adrien he's Hawk Moth in "Félix", but storms off without finishing after Adrien accidentally hits one of his Berserk Buttons.
• Parental Neglect: While Gabriel's success ensures that Adrien is provided for financially, Gabriel himself is never around at home and only seems to contact his son through an iPad. Although judging from what Adrien means by Gabriel 'not being the same' since his mother disappeared, this might not have always been the case.
• Parental Obliviousness: Justified. Like Tom and Sabine, Gabriel is unaware of his son being a superhero, unlike them, it's to be expected given how rarely he spends time with Adrien.
• Parents as People: Gabriel does try to be a better parent to Adrien, but between his obsessive desire to bring back Emilie, his vendetta against Ladybug for thwarting him multiple times and having to manage his business relationships, he seldom has time for his son, even if he does arrange everything for him.
• Personality Powers: As the series progresses, we see Gabriel as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who exhibits a distant personality with an authoritarian grip on every aspect of his life (from business to domestic life) who tends to take the good and wholesome things in his life — like his wife and son — and turn them into an obsession that he is perfectly willing to decimate all of Paris for — casualties be damned — if it means clinging to it. As Hawk Moth, he is able to empower, corrupt and manipulate anyone from the safety of his home, turning a tool that was meant to be used for good (the Butterfly Miraculous) into a weapon to fulfill his own selfish goals.
• Perpetual Frowner: Gabriel is pretty much going to be frowning (and usually if anything, events may cause him to frown more). This contrasts with his Hawk Moth appearance, which is usually wearing a smug smile.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Sure, he corrupts little Manon into Puppeteer without hesitation; but during her villain run, he's nothing but polite to her the whole time. Of course, it's not too surprising that he knows the pragmatism in being gentle to make a child behave, considering his secret identity is a parent.
  • Furthermore, in "Kung Food", before he sends his akuma after Wang Cheng, he remarks that a great artist was wronged, implying he is aware of and respects his abilities as a chef.
  • In "The Pharaoh" he says that there is nothing wrong with wanting to live out a fantasy, which indicates he sympathizes with Jalil's idea of bringing Nefertiti back to life. Since he is Gabriel Agreste and his own goal is to revive his near-dead wife, this makes sense.
  • In "Gorizilla", he can't bring himself to gamble Adrien's life on the possibility that he is Cat Noir and orders Gorizilla to release Ladybug so she can rescue him.
  • Despite it certainly due to being her own choices and actions (that he advised against), Gabriel cares for Nathalie enough that he regards her having been rendered ill from using the broken Peacock Miraculous as his mistake in "Risk (Shadow Moth's Final Attack - Part 1)".
• Phrase Catcher: Both inverted and played straight. One of his Catch Phrases is some variation of "...and all I ask in return is that you bring me Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous!" In later seasons, his recurring akuma victims already know the terms of his deal and tend to cut him off right before he tells them his terms, telling him some variation of "I know, you want Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous!" before accepting.
• Poke in the Third Eye: The episode "Gang of Secrets" revealed that his psychic connection to his victims can hurt him just as much as he can hurt them. When Lady Wifi renounces her power after a Rousing Speech from Ladybug, the psychic backlash actually manage to bring Gabriel to his knees.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Gabriel in Season 5 demonstrates an incredibly classist view of the world, disdaining Adrien's schoolmates and Marinette in particular for being of lower class and opposing Adrien's burgeoning romance with her due to this.
• Powerful and Helpless: While Hawk Moth's powers are dangerous and versatile, he is only able to bestow such powers onto others and thus has to rely on others to do the work for him. Half the time he cannot even get his minions to cooperate, either carrying out his orders incompetently (like with Bubbler), completely ignoring him (like Gigantitan) or outright attacking him before he can incapacitate them (like with Robostus). It does not help that his corrupting influence makes them easily distracted and irrational. While he is capable of defending himself against things like his corrupted defense system or even Ladybug and Cat Noir when he absolutely has to, he typically prefers to hang back and let his akumas do the dirty work.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Before taking on Ladybug and Cat Noir bare-handed in "Mayura".
  All right, kids. Watch what a man who's got nothing to lose can do!
• Psychotic Smirk: He gives these often as Hawk Moth, which is a huge contrast to how calm he is as Gabriel Agreste. His transformation sequence also ends with him giving a wink and subtle smirk.
• Pungeon Master: Occasionally indulges in puns, such as saying that he'll "draw [Nathaniel, an artist] into my evil plot". Which would certainly explain where Adrien got it from.
• Purple Is the New Black: His suit is predominantly purple with black highlights, and his akuma are imbued with (evil) purple energy.
• Pyrrhic Victory: In the "Cat Blanc" alternate future, he succeeds in akumatizing Cat Noir, but the ensuing Angst Nuke destroys all of Paris, including himself.
• Rags to Riches: It's insinuated his career came like this by Audrey Bourgeois, who claims Gabriel was a nobody before she discovered him. Of course, given Audrey's inflated sense of self, the story is dubious. "Revelation" reveals that, prior to becoming famous, Gabriel's real name was Gabi Grassette, and his family used to own and work in a small french fry restaurant called Friterie Grassette, so Audrey may not have been entirely exaggerating.
• Reality Warper: It is his goal to become one with the help of the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous. In "Ephemeral", he succeeds and starts the process of making his wish until Sass goes back in time.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: During the episode "Mr. Pigeon", he acts as the judge for a derby designing contest. When confronted by two identical derbies (the original by Marinette and a copy made by Chloé) he calmly allows Marinette to present proof that her design is the original. He proclaims her the winner, praising her for her hard work and assuring her that Adrien will wear her derby during his next photo shoot.
• Redemption Rejection: While he finds some measure of redemption through his wish-induced death in "Re-creation", this follows Marinette offering to help him find redemption in life. Gabriel responds by attacking her, forcibly taking the Miraculous and making his wish, purely on his terms.
• Red Right Hand: In "Destruction", Cat Noir's Cataclysm hits Monarch's left arm while still in his suit. Since he escapes with Ladybug's Lucky Charm before she can enact her World-Healing Wave, she is unable to do undo it. This results in a permanent, hand-shaped bruise on his arm that he covers with his sleeve, which slowly climbs up his arm as time passes.
• The Reveal: "The Collector" reveals that Gabriel Agreste is and always has been Hawk Moth.
• Revenge Myopia: In the beginning, he starts his campaign of terror on Paris in order to bring the holders of the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous out of hiding, with many of his schemes either involving city-wide property damage, mind-controlling the citizenry, altering reality and nearly starting Nuclear War, all the while vowing revenge on the heroes for refusing to give into his demands and reversing the damage he causes. By Season 5, his obsession with the heroes had overshadowed his real mission (reviving Emilie from her coma).
• Ring of Power:
  • In season 5, he reforges the stolen Miraculouses into rings, with the exception of his own. In this state, he can use their powers without needing to transform or unify with them, simply absorbing the kwami into the ring and invoking their power. This allows him to use their powers even in his civilian guise, though he doesn't gain the benefits of a full transformation unless he transforms into Monarch. It also allows him to transmit their powers to his akuma through the Alliance Rings he designed.
  • His wedding ring and Emilie's also count due to being Adrien's Amok, allowing him to influence his son.

S-Y

• Sadist: To some degree, it's very clear in his tone of voice during episodes while monitoring the activity of the people he akumatizes and him taking obvious pleasure in watching his minions cause chaos around Paris that he actually seems to enjoy the destruction caused by the people he corrupts. He also doesn't seem to care about anyone affected by this and only about the end result.
• Satanic Archetype: He corrupts people with his akumas in a way very similar to Demonic Possession. He tempts those he corrupts and grants them power based on emotions and desires so they can get him the Miraculous.
• Secret-Keeper: As of "Miracle Queen", Hawk Moth is aware of the identities of all of the temporary heroes introduced up to Season 3 other than Bunnyx.
• Self-Made Man: In "Style Queen" and "Revelation", it's revealed that he started out working in a "cramped studio" before Audrey Bourgeois made him a household name. Though it's possible that part of his family's fortune originated from his wife, by now he owns his own successful fashion empire under his name.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • He is essentially Marinette is she became a famous fashion designer, but fully consumed by her Control Freak tendencies and obsession with a blonde love interest.
  • His alternate universe counterpart in Miraculous Ladybug: Paris, Betterfly, is this to him. Betterfly is essentially what Gabriel could have been if he accepted Emilie's passing and used the Butterfly Miraculous to help others in his wife's memory rather than exploit them so he can revive her.
• Shipping Torpedo: Whenever Adrien hooks up with Marinette, threatening the latter. While he did so in "Cat Blanc" in Bad Future scenario to make her vulnerable to Akumatization, the fifth season has Gabriel deem Marinette a hinderance that would not take a hint that he wants her out of his son's life.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Is greatly offended by the mere suggestion that he could ever love anyone other than Emilie.
• Sherlock Scan: He was able to notice Ladybug's earrings and Cat Noir's rings when they officially meet for the first time. Subverted, as virtually everyone knows about their Miraculouses, Hawk Moth having announced it in his debut. Reverted as he was the only one to have actually noticed his son's ring. Given the contents behind his wife's portrait, he clearly knows more than the average citizen.
• Sigil Spam: His butterfly symbol courtesy of the akumas and the glowing masks that appear on the faces of his super villains. It almost proves to be his undoing, but some diabolical skulduggery on his part causes the heroes to wave off the fact that his motif is very similar to the logo of one of the biggest fashion designer brands in Paris.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift:
  • In season 5, to hide injuries sustained after being hit by Catalysm, he switches to an all-white outfit that includes gloves and a much higher neckline.
  • Likewise, after a short stint wielding all the Miraculous himself as Monarch, he switches back to wielding the Butterfly Miraculous alone, but retains the primary design elements of his first Monarch outfit in a simplified form.
• Slasher Smile: During his transformation sequence, he sports an impressive one as soon as his mask is on.
• Smug Snake: He's very confident in himself but repeatedly fails in his attempts to steal the heroes' artifacts, never bothers to change strategy and always ends up crying in frustration and his moments of cleverness are few and far between.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Only in the French version, where he's called "le Papillon" or "the Butterfly".
• Start of Darkness: He learns Emilie is dying as consequence of her using the Peacock Miraculous and refuses to accept her impending death, causing him to shut down emotionally.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: While Gabriel is a stoic and aloof man, he does beam with pride when he talks about Adrien to Ladybug. He can also be fairly reasonable.
• Super-Empowering: His Miraculous grants the power to empower others. He infuses a butterfly with his power, creating an akuma which then infects someone experiencing strong negative emotion. The victim is granted Personality Powers, centered on an object involved in the incident. Though Hawk Moth uses this power for evil, its original intent is to create heroic champions. It's not clear how this works in comparison to his use of it.
  • It's shown in the special episode Miraculous World: Paris, The Adventures of Shadybug and Claw Noir, where he's basically the Big Good of La Résistance against an unidentified tyrant in a Crapsack World Parallel Universe. Gabriel consequently has another super alias. However, he still has the Butterfly Miraculous and it works practically the same way. Noticeably, the transformation sequence keeps the same purple pattern, beginning with the butterflies, and engulfment into a purple bubble/cloud effect. The butterflies are not named "akumas" though, nor the transformation is "akumatization". Interestingly, and perhaps logically (?), this version of Gabriel has more versatility into the powers he grants, being able to give some at will to practically anyone and anywhen he sees fit, though he always does so for a short amount of time. He's not restricted to people under the influence of powerful emotions (bad or good), nor to emotions/context-based powers. It's unclear if it's because Hawk Moth uses the Butterfly Miraculous for evil, thus triggering some inherent logical limitation, or simply because Hawk Moth is unable to think outside the sandbox.
• Surrounded by Idiots: His minions often get distracted by their own interests, forget about getting the Miraculous and at worst even ignore his warnings when Ladybug is conning them.
• Survivor's Guilt: Whatever it was that motivated Emilie to die using a broken Miraculous, Gabriel survived. He's thought of nothing else since.
• Sword Cane: In "Robostus", his cane is revealed to hide a blade, which he uses to defend himself when Robostus turns on him.
• Tantrum Throwing: Wrecks his own study in apparent rage over Adrien misplacing his antique book during the Season 2 premiere.
• Tareme Eyes: Inverted. His eyes as Gabriel are dropping, but in contrast with his son, it's more akin to Dull Eyes of Unhappiness. As Hawk Moth, he has pointy Tsurime Eyes that makes him more intimidating.
• Telepathy: How he communicates with his victims.
• Terrorists Without a Cause: His actual motive for trying to steal the Miraculous isn't explained for some time. It's eventually indicated he wants to use their combined power to rewrite reality, allowing him to heal his wife or prevent whatever happened to her in the first place.
• This Cannot Be!: It never occurred to him that an Akumatized victim would be able to break free of his power if given the proper motivation. He also expresses total incredulity when Ladybug's Magical Charms prevent him from akumatizing Chloe in "Queen Banana" and when Mr. Damocles' Magical Charm purifies his Megakuma.
• Token Adult: From season 4 onwards, he's the only adult to be a Miraculous Holder after Nathalie stops using the Peacock Miraculous.
• Tragic Keepsake: Has a picture of Adrien's mother in a locket.
• Transformation Trinket: His brooch is the Butterfly Miraculous.
• Trophy Child: Adrien. In "Re-creation", Marinette/Bug Noire bluntly tells him that Adrien is nothing more than this to him; not even caring about his son as a person anymore and now just uses him as an excuse to justify his madness.
• Undying Loyalty: Surprising both himself and the audience, he throws away a decent chance at victory to save Nathalie, as he feels for both her and Emilie.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Subverted with Nino and Simon's akumatizations; they are initially presented as his aloof personality accidentally setting them off, but the revelation that he's actually Hawk Moth indicates that he was probably intentionally trying to cause that.
  • Played straight in "Cat Blanc". Akumatizing Cat Noir results in the annihilation of Paris and all of its inhabitants, Hawk Moth included, by his supervillain alter-ego.
• Villain Ball: Gabriel barely ever takes steps to make sure that the people working under him are focused on taking the Miraculous. He made subversions in "The Collector", Akumatizing himself in a planned-out scheme to free himself from suspicion and then "Gabriel Argeste" by deeping his villian form's voice in a failed attempt to fool Félix. But it was played straight in that Lila Rossi learned his secret and that Félix collaborated with Kagami to covertly expose his uncle's identity to Marinette.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind:
  • A Justified example in the first three seasons. Even as the heroes gain both potions to use different forms depending on the situation, and the ability to use Unification with other Miraculous, Hawk Moth still sticks to his usual "Akumatize someone, control them from a distance, hope for the best" strategy. This is because the nature of his powers and limited resources mean he can't use the same methods as they do to enhance their powers, as those benefits don't extend to his minions and he only has one other Miraculous to fuse with, the Peacock Miraculous, which is too dangerous to use in its damaged state.
  • He begins averting this by Season 4, fixing the Peacock Miraculous and using it to unify with the Butterfly Miraculous and become Shadow Moth, who can both akumatize people and send out Sentimonsters at the same time.
  • Firmly averted in Season 5, where he now has every Miraculous except the Ladybug, Black Cat, and Peacock. He also had them melted down and reforged into rings that let him not only have up to five powers himself without suffering Phlebotinum Overdose, but also transfer their powers to his akumatized minions through their Alliance rings, making them much more of a threat. He can't create sentimonsters anymore, but that hardly matters compared to what he's gained in return.
• Villain No Longer Idle: There are a few occasions where he'll personally act instead of merely trusting a minion.
  • In the "Heroes Day" two-parter, he steps out of his lair for the first time after granting himself the power (through Catalyst) to create as many akumas as he wants. Even after losing his powerup, he still battles Ladybug and Cat Noir head-on, nearly winning before Ladybug's allies join the fight. He has to be bailed out with a timely assist from Mayura.
  • In the season 3 finale, he and Mayura covertly track Ladybug to Master Fu and then ambush him, briefly gaining control of the Miracle Box and all the Miraculous therein. This ends up being foiled when Chloé, who he gives the box to, ultimately loses it.
  • After gaining control of all but three of the Miraculous in season 5, he uses all of them by himself. After two failed plans that nearly get him captured, he reverts back to his usual plans, but with the added ability to transmit Miraculous powers to his akumas. Even after this point, however, he is willing to engage in schemes directly if he feels he has an advantage. Most notably, when he discovers the identities of Scarabella and Kitty Noire in "Deflagration", he goes after them himself and comes very close to winning, only failing because he failed to anticipate Plagg destroying his own Miraculous to deny Monarch victory.
• Villain Override: Though he usually favors the carrot in getting those he transforms to do his bidding, he's threatened to remove their powers if they don't play along, and can cause them pain if they resist his demands.
• Villain-Possessed Bystander: He can sense strong emotions and create "akumas", dark butterflies that seek out those consumed by negativity and transform them into supervillains with vast new powers and zero moral or emotional restraint. He promises his victims the chance to fulfil their desires, most often for revenge against whoever or whatever upset them, in return for retrieving the Miraculouses of Ladybug and Cat Noir. He is actually the holder of the Butterfly Miraculous, whose true purpose is to create heroes from ordinary people, but he twisted its power towards his evil ends.
• Villain Song: Hawk Moth has his own theme song titled "Snapping My Fingers" that covers his motives. A clip-show style music video is posed on the the franchise' official YouTube channel. He even played the song in "Deflagration" to have something to dance to after learning the identities of Ladybug and Cat Noir's replacements.
  • Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie has "Chaos Will Reign Today", which details his motives of accepting his role as a villain and unleash chaos on Paris if it means bringing back his beloved.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Downplayed. His activities as Hawk Moth are not revealed to the public after his death.
• Villainous Breakdown: Gabriel had some over the course of the fifth season. Most notably after being defeated by Bug Noir and forced to watch Emilie's video, causing him to break down in tears.
• Walking Spoiler: It's nearly impossible to talk about Hawk Moth's motivations or Gabriel's characterization from Season 2 onwards without revealing they're one and the same.
• Weak Boss, Strong Underlings: From an aesthetic point of view, the Big Bad Hawk Moth's character design looks very unthreatening compared to that of the colorful, wacky akumatized villains he creates. He wears a dark purple two-piece suit and a gray Luchador mask while his underlings range from giant robots to dark knights and everything in between. In terms of the logic of the plot, that Hawk Moth needs to create them in the first place drives the point home. The Butterfly Miraculous, which he uses, is a support type and not truly suited for direct combat. The only reason why he is able to overpower Ladybug and Cat Noir is that he is an adult and far more ruthless than them. Several of his own minions could take him in a fight; a few of them can even overwhelm the aforementioned heroes, prompting them to rely more on cunning and less on raw power.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Gabriel is utterly consumed by the grief of losing his wife and wishes to bring her back to make Adrien happy, so they can live as a family again. But his methods of achieving said goal are extremely destructive and heinous. This becomes subverted by "Evolution", where he has a golden opportunity to use the Rabbit Miraculous to prevent Emilie from falling into her coma without resorting to using Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous but willingly throws it away when Ladybug baits him, demonstrating that his power lust and revenge has eclipsed his original good intentions.
• What You Are in the Dark: In "Evolution", Nathalie gives him an USB-flash-drive exposing the disastrous effects using the damaged Peacock Miraculous will have on Emilie. The Plan was to give it to his past self thanks to the Rabbit Miraculous, thus bypassing the need for the Ladybug and Chat Noir's Miraculouses. But just when he's about to leave the flash-drive, after some short internal conflict and hesitation, he willingly throws it away as Ladybug baits him in order for her to get back the Rabbit Miraculous, saying he will be back soon. Of course he never gets the opportunity to do so, has he loses the Rabbit Miraculous moments later. This demonstrates that his power lust, pride and thirst for revenge have eclipsed his original good intentions. Nathalie is NOT pleased with this and his lame attempt of putting the blame on Ladybug, ''harshly'' scolding him, recalling him that he could have saved not only Emilie, but also herself. This is the first crack into her Undying Loyalty towards him.
  • Also à texbook example of Villain Ball as he could simply have made both, i.e. leaving the USB-key then going after Ladybug and her allies.
• When He Smiles: Gabriel always frowns as a civilian, and regularly sports a smug and sinister smile when he is Hawk Moth. However, he does show a genuine warm smile in the series, like on his previous family portrait, when he expresses concern over Nathalie and Adrien or when he appreciates someone like Marinette's talent on fashion designing.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: One of the biggest problems with his relationship with his son is that Gabriel is always busy with work (or supervillainy). This is on top of keeping Adrien locked into a busy schedule of modeling work and lessons. At the end of "Simon Says", Adrien passive-aggressively rips into his dad for his distance.
• White Hair, Black Heart: By Season 5, where his character is at its absolute worst, his hair has gone from ash blonde to pure white.
• Wicked Pretentious: Gabriel is a high-society fashion designer who lives in a mansion, but he's actually a destructive, hammy asshole who gives his akumatized minions gaudy outfits and nicknames.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • A significant number of his akuma victims are small children, and while the infant August's first akumatization was an accident, he goes along with it without the slightest hint of remorse.
  • In "Mayura", he shows no objection to attacking Ladybug and Cat Noir personally, and his dialogue hints that he knows (or at least suspects) that they're young teenagers, which is later outright confirmed in "Timetagger".
• Xanatos Gambit: Akumatizing himself in "The Collector." The Collector gets Ladybug's and Cat Noir's Miraculouses? Obviously good. He fails? Because they're the same person, he still makes the good guys stop suspecting Gabriel as Hawk Moth.
• Yandere: If becoming an Omnicidal Maniac Supervillain didn't give you a clue, perhaps the whole "talking to his halfway dead wife" hobby could clue you in.
• Your Days Are Numbered: In season 5, he makes Cat Noir hit him with Cataclysm to escape a trap set by Ladybug. Though being transformed protects him from immediate death, he takes Ladybug's Lucky Charm in his haste to escape, so she can't heal him. Starting from his wrist, the wound slowly creeps up his arm and will eventually kill him unless he can make a wish with the Ladybug and Cat Miraclouses to reverse the damage.

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