Recap / Miraculous Ladybug S03E19 "Timetagger"

"I can only approve of my future decision. And I won't wait for Ladybug and Cat Noir to become adults! I'm counting on you to change the future, Timetagger!"

"I'm Timetagger from the future, man!
I criss-cross time with a spray-paint can!
Looks like your time's up at last
cause I'm gonna send you way back to the past!"

— Timetagger

The heroes face off against Timetagger, a villain from the future targeting their less-experienced younger selves. To help, their future selves send Bunnyx, the future holder of the Rabbit Miraculous.

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Tropes:

• Alice Allusion: Bunnyx, whose outfit and kwami are themed after a white rabbit, and whose Miraculous is a pocket watch, turns out to be the phonetically-similar Alix. Fluff's nonlinear time related dialogue is also very much in line with Wonderland's themes of experimental thought, along with an obsession with time.
• Ambiguous Situation: Bunnyx is deliberately vague when describing the future relationship of Cat Noir and Ladybug. Also, Gabriel will stop being Hawk Moth in the future, but it's unknown if it's because his Miraculous will be taken from him or if he won't need it anymore.
• Atrocious Alias: Cat Noir clearly thinks the name "Monsieur Rat" is the stupidest supervillain name he's ever heard.
• Battle Discretion Shot: The entire fight between Cat Noir and Ladybug against Mr. Pigeon at the beginning of the episode consists of them summoning their special powers and then one long shot of bystanders recording the fight while feathers fly.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Marinette comes up with a lame excuse to Alya about taste-testing her father's new recipe when she has to leave to fight Mr. Pigeon. Tikki warns her that her stories are getting worse.
  • Lila becomes the new sitter for Chris Lahiffe and Alya's twin sisters Ella and Etta. She awes Chris by telling him she invented the game Freestyle Clash 2.
• Brick Joke: Chris's desire to play with the rapping app, which Marinette and Alya forbid because it's not for little kids, is called back when he is revealed to be Timetagger.
• Character Development: Future Alix has shirked off some of her recklessness, realizing that some things cannot be achieved without teamwork.
• A Day in the Limelight: Ladybug and Cat Noir don't exactly fall to the wayside, but the featured hero, Bunnyx, does most of this episode's fighting.
• Doomed by Canon: Nooroo will remain under the ownership of an evil master in the future, seeing that Hawk Moth still exists there but is not Gabriel.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Bunnyx expresses clearly (three times) that it was Cat Noir's fault that her Miraculous was damaged. When Bunnyx leaves, Cat Noir complains that no one ever compliments him. Ladybug counters that he already knows how great he is. Which isn't exactly a compliment.
• Exact Words: After arriving, Timetagger tells Hawk Moth that he was sent by the Hawk Moth of the future to get the Miraculous, and the present Hawk Moth gladly teams up with him. But when it seems that their victory is imminent, Timetagger smugly informs the present Hawk Moth that he never said future Hawk Moth was the same person.
• The Faceless: Adult Ladybug and Cat Noir are only shown from the neck down.
• The Fog of Ages: Bunnyx has a hard time remembering how the fight with Timetagger went, aside from one clear memory of waving goodbye to herself while holding a pen. Being stuck in a stone obelisk for years contributed somewhat to that.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Whenever someone is hit by Timetagger's blast, a year is briefly shown before they are sent into the portal.
  • The one time the portal's destination is not mentioned, the year is 79 and Bunnyx comes back a little crispy. It can therefore be assumed she was sent to Mount Vesuvius when it famously erupted and destroyed Pompeii.
• Future Badass: The adult Alix is revealed to be a Miraculous-wielding superhero who fights alongside Ladybug and Cat Noir. As for Ladybug, she's already pretty badass, but she's absolutely legendary in the future. As for poor Cat, Bunnyx doesn't tell him anything about himself, as she's still mad about a future incident in which he accidentally Cataclysmed her Miraculous.
• Godzilla Threshold: When Bunnyx explains her power is the power of time-travel, Cat Noir asks why they don't use it more often. Bunnyx says that messing with time is serious business and she's only ever called in when it's absolutely necessary. She even refers to herself as "the hero of the last chance".
• Hates Being Nicknamed: Timetagger really annoys Bunnyx by calling her "Fluffy Tail". Ironically, she's quite The Nicknamer herself.
• Hero of Another Story: Nearly every person Timetagger sends back in time impacts the timeline hard enough for them to be depicted in works of art. The most notable example is recurring Joke Character Xavier Ramier, who goes on to start his own order of knights and has a statue erected in dedication to him that is still standing in modern-day Paris.
• Ineffectual Loner: Bunnyx orders Ladybug and Cat Noir to not to interfere as she fights Timetagger alone, but they end up Teleport Spamming around each other until Bunnyx finds herself at a disadvantage. Ladybug has to come up with a plan to beat Timetagger that requires the help of present and future heroes.
• In Spite of a Nail: In spite of all the people sent back in time, the present remains very stable, with images of the people in art the only apparent change.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Step one of beating Timetagger: Ladybug claims to give up in order to move Timetagger into position. Step two: Ladybug writes a letter to her future self so she can attack Timetagger from the future and separate him from his akumatized object.
• Legacy Character: It turns out that Gabriel is no longer Hawk Moth in Timetagger's time.
• Mirror Boss: Bunnyx and Timetagger both have the same general ability (teleportation through time and space), so they spend most of their fight teleport spamming each other, trying and failing to have any meaningful leg-up.
• My Future Self and Me: Alix has a very positive response to her future self. "Wow! I can't believe how cool I'm gonna be when I'm older!"
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Future Cat Noir accidentally damaging Bunnyx's Miraculous is what trapped her in ancient Egypt.
  • Present Cat Noir may have accidentally created a future new villain by suggesting Mr. Ramier, a.k.a. Mr. Pigeon, change his affections to another animal. He quickly becomes enamored with a rat, and Bunnyx mentioned one of the future villains is called Monsieur Rat.
  • Alya and Nino's refusal to accept what Marinette has to say about Lila might also count, as at the very least, we know that she lets Chris play the rapping game.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Retroactively makes Hawk Moth's actions in Timebreaker this. If he hadn't akumatised Alix, then the Bunny Miraculous would have remained permanently broken and Timetagger would have won. Not that that would actually have helped the present-day Hawk Moth...
• Nigh-Invulnerable: The Miraculous. It's pretty impressive that Bunnyx's is only cracked after taking a Cataclysm, which (as shown in several episodes, including this one) is capable of turning some very large and hardy objects into dust. It's enough to keep it from working, though.
  • This makes one wonder how exactly the Peacock Miraculous was damaged. Was either Plagg or a previous Cat Noir responsible for that?
• Noodle Incident: Apparently, this is the 24th time Mr. Ramier has been akumatized. The 25th time later occurs as well, with more to come if the Monsieur Rat Brick Joke is any indication...
• Note to Self: There are two: one from Future Alix to her past self, recorded in the watch, and the other from Ladybug to her future self, telling her where to strike at Timetagger.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Several of the people Timetagger sends back in time:
  • Mr. Ramier (aka Mr. Pigeon) is the first to be sent back and immediately a statue of him appears honoring the brave knight "Lord Ramier Featherbottom". Notably among all these examples is that this statue didn't exist before Ramier was sent back in time, meaning it appeared from nothing rather than being an existing thing that was altered, creating his own Order of the Great Pigeon.
  • A dark-skinned woman gets sent back and a nearby historical poster gets a Race Lift.
  • Jagged Stone is sent back and his face is now on a poster for a historical music festival.
  • Jagged Stone, Nadja Chamack, André Glacier and André Bourgeois all end up on different pieces of art. Notably, Ms. Bustier becomes the model for the Mona Lisa.
• Outside-Context Problem: While Timetagger is not the first time-based villain Ladybug and Cat Noir have ever faced, he is definitely a much bigger threat. If either of them get hit by him, they will be sent centuries into the past with no foreseeable means of getting back, with his impact being so powerful that nearly every person he sends back winds up impacting the timeline hard enough to be recorded in art. It takes them working together with a time-traveling hero with way more experience than them and help from their future-selves to stop him.
• Prophetic Fallacy: Upon hearing from Timetagger that the Future Hawk Moth is a different person, Gabriel assumes that this means his future self has been defeated for good, and has failed his mission. However, Nathalie points out that it could also mean he succeeded and has given up his Miraculous due to not needing it anymore.
  Nathalie: The future is not set in stone, Gabriel.
• Retroactive Precognition: Bunnyx realizes it's not yet time to leave when she remembers she (as Alix) was holding a pen as she waved goodbye.
• The Reveal: As many fans theorized, Alix's watch is a Miraculous, the Rabbit Miraculous. It was simply camouflaged.
• Rip Van Tinkle: The first thing Bunnyx needs to do after thousands of years stuck in a stone monument is to use the bathroom.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Timetagger has practiced with his rapping game until he is an expert at speaking with rhyming verses.
• Seen It All: Ladybug and Cat Noir's 24th fight against Mr. Pigeon is like this. They activate their powers in a half-hearted, somewhat bored tone, beat the bad guy in less than 10 seconds, and then say "Pound it" in the same way.
• Shout-Out:
  • Fittingly for a time travel episode, the aliens from the "Seventh Interstellar War" sound a lot like Daleks.
  • When Bunnyx returns from the Cretaceous with a T. rex's head popping out of the portal trying to bite her, in the English dub she says "Down, Denver, down!"
• The Slow Path: Bunnyx waits thousands of years in suspended animation inside a block of stone to reach the time where she will be freed and get an unbroken Miraculous.
• Stable Time Loop: Alix becomes Bunnyx in the future because she meets her own future self, who in turn entrusts her Miraculous to Alix's family knowing it would eventually be delivered back to her.
• Stronger with Age: What the episode is implying. Future Bunnyx even refers to the current Miraculous wielders "Minibug" and "Kitty Noir".
• Stupid Evil: You'd think that Mr. Pigeon repeatedly getting bodied in record time would make Hawk Moth decide to just...ignore Mr. Ramier when he gets angry and wait for someone better to akumatize. Or perhaps give him a new set of powers to try once in a while. But no, 25th time's the charm, right?
• Teleport Spam: Timetagger and Bunnyx can both teleport, and both incorporate that into their fighting style.
• Terminator Twosome: Timetagger shows up from the future to steal our heroes' Miraculouses before they've become the Future Badass heroes of his time. Bunnyx, originally from this same future, gets let out of the can to stop him.
• Time-Traveling Jerkass: Timetagger is out to pull a Terminator on Ladybug and Cat Noir for unknown reasons (beyond his covenant with Hawk Moth), but considering his powers are graffiti-related it's very possible that he just got angry about people not liking him tagging walls.
• Villainous BSoD: Hawk Moth gets one when Timetagger reveals that he isn't the one who akumatized him, but someone else from the future did, making him realize his inevitable defeat, at least until Nathalie points out the obvious alternative.
• Wham Line:
  Timetagger: I said I was sent by the Hawk Moth of the future, but I never said the Hawk Moth of the future was you.
• Wham Shot: When Cat disintegrates the stone, it's revealed that there was a person inside it - specifically, the adult Alix Kubdel as Bunnyx.
• Write Back to the Future:
  • Bunnyx leaves a message in her Miraculous, given to Alix's family, which is programmed to direct Alix to find Cat Noir and Ladybug so they can free her from the obelisk she's sealed herself in.
  • How Timetagger is beaten. Ladybug gives Bunnyx a message to give the Ladybug and Cat Noir of the future on where Timetagger will be standing, and they send their weapons through one of Bunnyx's portals to catch him off-guard. What's incredibly bold about this is that she admits she was doing this to Timetagger. She just phrases it as an apology letter, and even then winds up pretending to discard it.

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