Ladybug! My five-thousand year-old nemesis!
"Pharaoh, I am Hawk Moth. I have endowed you with the magical power of the ancient gods. You must do me a favor in return for this gift."
—Hawk Moth
While doing hero work as Ladybug, Marinette drops her history textbook, which Alya finds and videotapes. Tikki encourages Marinette to take Alya to the Egyptian museum to find Ladybug in the hieroglyphics. While there, they meet Jalil, an archaeology student who becomes corrupted by akuma and reincarnated as a Pharaoh, and decides to sacrifice Alya to bring his beloved Nefertiti to life.
Tropes:
- Accidental Truth: Alya teases Marinette about being Ladybug when she recalls that Marinette "left her book at home." Marinette is unnerved for a bit until Alya laughs it off.
- Are We Getting This?: Alya Césaire is the living embodiment of this trope. Since she's running an amateur news blog, Alya is reporter and camerawoman at the same time, so she doesn't spell the trope out but has a knee-jerk reaction of go recording Akuma attacks. It's often at the cost of personal safety, even if she learns to be less reckless with time. In this episode, she approaches the Monster of the Week to interview him for her viewer's sake. She's also very willing to continue her livestream and excitedly comments on the facts even as she's being kidnapped by the Akuma to be sacrificed.
- Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Alya takes being replaced as sacrifice rather personally.
- Artistic License – History: Tutankhamun's wife actually died after him. Made worse in English dub that changed her name (from Ankhesenamun to Nefertiti) probably because it was hard to pronounce. Also present in the French dub, that changes Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun to Akhenaten and Nefertiti, who survived her husband by four years.
- When going by the French dub, Akhenaten calling upon the various Egyptian Gods and wanting to perform a sacrifice before Ra is Artistic License as well, since Akhenaten is known for being the "rebel Pharaoh" who did away with the worship of all of Egypt's traditional gods with the exception of Aten, the divine Sun Disk.
- As You Know: As Jalil's father points out, he already knows the legend about the mystic scroll and doesn't need his son reminding him.
- Batman Gambit: Ladybug's Lucky Charm generates a Ladybug costume with fake Miraculous earrings. Since she knows Pharaoh will want her Miraculous, she offers herself as a sacrifice and he demands the Miraculous. She offers the fakes up, then at the last second tosses them and grabs his necklace while he's distracted, allowing her to break it and end the ritual.
- Casual Danger Dialogue: Alya continues her livestream and interview with the Pharaoh while being sacrificed.
- Compliment Backfire:
- After learning that Ladybug is at least "5000 years old," Cat Noir jokes that Ladybug doesn't look a day over three thousand. She responds that it must be why she's the wiser of the two.
- Ladybug also asks Cat Noir to take care of the mummy Mooks while she handles the Pharaoh because Cat is braver than she is. Cat isn't that amused.
- Continuity Nod: The bus used to stop mummies has an ad for a weather girl competition.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Marinette laments that if she weren't so clumsy she wouldn't have dropped her textbook in her Ladybug guise.
- Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: Jalil's father tells him not to touch the scepter to prove his point because it's a delicate artifact, which is Truth in Television.
- Evil Is Petty: Annoyed that his sacrificial offering is videotaping her distress and interviewing him, the Pharaoh throws away Alya's phone. Ladybug catches it in time.
- Fakin' MacGuffin: Thanks to Lucky Charm creating replica of Ladybug's costume.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Discussed. Marinette brings up the possibility that an old Ladybug would need to read a high school textbook to keep up with the times.
- History Repeats: Pharaoh claims that Ladybug had thwarted the resurrection ceremony of his wife 5,000 years ago.
- Human Sacrifice: Pharaoh's plan is to sacrifice Alya to bring back his wife to life.
- I Surrender, Suckers: Ladybug offers herself and her Miraculous to the Pharaoh to save Alya, only to give him a pair of fakes while she steals the akuma in turn.
- Jaw Drop: Adrien does this when he sees Alya getting kidnapped by the Pharaoh on her livestream.
- Knight of Cerebus: The Pharaoh is this, given that neither Ladybug nor Cat Noir are able to lay a single blow on him and have to resort to trickery. He also fought Ladybug from the past.
- Legacy Hero: Ladybug is revealed to be this. Pharaoh is a villainous version of this trope, even claiming to be the original one.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Resurrection scroll probably only worked thanks to akuma, but its never stated.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Adrien when he sees the Pharaoh kidnapping Alya during her livestream.
- Ladybug when a swarm of mummies come after her.
- Alya when the Pharaoh using magic lifts her to the sky towards a "circle of darkness".
- Older Than They Look:
- Played straight with Tikki, who is actually older than ancient Egypt and has served many Ladybugs.
- Subverted with Marinette, who is an actual teenager. She uses the possibility, however, to conceal her true identity. Cat doesn't bat an eye at the possibility that he could possibly enter a Mayfly–December Romance with Ladybug, though he did register that she was carrying around a high school textbook and looks to be around his age.
- Only the Pure of Heart: According to Pharaoh, offering to god Ra must be a pure soul. Alya dismisses it saying that it's "hard to come by", but her resemblance to Nefertiti makes him think fate send her to him.
- Pillar of Light: One shoots off from the tip of the Louvres Pyramid once the Pharaoh begins his ritual to resurrect his queen.
- The Reveal: This is the first episode to reveal that Ladybug is, in fact, a Legacy Hero who has existed for at least five thousand years.
- Rewatch Bonus: The Pharaoh's plan is to revive his wife, which requires someone else to be sacrificed in return. In the next season, we learn that Hawk Moth's reason for wanting the Miraculous is so he can use them to revive his own wife, which would require someone else to be sacrificed.
- Shockwave Clap: The Pharaoh causes a shockwave by clapping his hands after channeling the strength of the goddess Sekhmet.
- Shout-Out: An ancient Egyptian pharaoh gets reincarnated in the teenage descendant of an Egyptologist. Where does that sound familiar?
- Skewed Priorities: Alya cares more about carrying on her livestream than about the fact that she's in mortal danger.
- Squee: Alya completely geeks out when she meets her hero. She even reacts to Ladybug waving at her similarly to Marinette when Adrien did so.
- Standard Female Grab Area: This is how Pharaoh drags around Alya, and justified by the weight difference. He's gentler with Ladybug when she offers herself as a sacrifice instead.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Ladybug is definitely "older than a high school student," as she tells Alya at the end.
- Take Me Instead: Ladybug asks the Pharaoh to sacrifice her instead of Alya. Alya is insulted that she's not "worthy enough."
- Unknown Rival: Even Marinette didn't know that the Pharaoh was an ancient Ladybug rival.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Neither Akhenaten or Tutankhamun's reigns would have been five thousand years ago when the episode aired. That ancient Ladybug's nemesis would have been a monarch of the first dynasty rather than the eighteenth.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Tikki tells Marinette this at the end while discussing how Ladybug is a Legacy Hero.
