"Sole Crusher. I am Shadow Moth. Your sister challenges you to measure up to her? I give you the power to crush her soul instead! From now on, every person you crush will make you stronger!"
— Shadow Moth
A new student, Zoé, arrives at Françoise Dupont, and Chloé is none too happy. Her actions result in Zoé becoming Sole Crusher, a villainess intent on stepping on those deemed beneath her in order to get to the top of the food chain — Chloé included!
Tropes:
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Sole Crusher continuously grows through the episode, eventually becoming bigger than the Le Grand Paris hotel.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When Chloé goes around introducing Zoé at school, the girls assume Zoé was faking being a Nice Girl to Marinette. Fortunately, Marinette figures that there's more going on than they can see.
- Breaking Old Trends: Shadow Moth is able to akumatize Zoé through her old shoes even though the girl isn't holding onto them and never picks them up. Previously, his prior victims had to be holding/wearing the object to be transformed (Zombizou, for example, had to pick up her dropped lipstick first) or, in the case of group transformations, at least one of them had to (as with the Gang of Secrets).
- Broken Heel: Ladybug and Cat Noir break Sole Crusher's heels under the assumption that her akuma has to be in one of them. It only succeeds in tripping her up briefly, but Chloé ends up revealing the actual object when berating Sole Crusher for allowing her shoes to be damaged.
- Bruce Wayne Held Hostage: Marinette can't transform to stop Sole Crusher right away because the villain grabs her after growing big enough. Luckily, she isn't absorbed because of Zoé's fondness for her, and is able to escape when Cat Noir trips Sole Crusher.
- Character Development: Audrey of all characters actually shows some here. It's subtle but compare her reaction to André refusing to just banish Zoé (with a justification why he can't even though he clearly made that up) to the last time he couldn't immediately cave to his wife and daughter's whims in "Malediktator". Rather than blow up and threaten to leave or anything dramatic Audrey accepts his point and says nothing further. It seems they were serious about their vow to improve their marriage at the end of the last season, at least to some extent.
- Combat Stilettos: Sole Crusher wears a pair and uses them as her main weapons.
- Continuity Nod: This episode confirms that Mayor Bourgeois was the one who directed Solitude, the movie starring Emilie Agreste that is featured in "Gorizilla". Before, the movie was only credited to "A. Bourgeois", which could have referred to either him or his wife.
- Crash-Into Hello: Marinette and Zoé meet when Marinette walks into the bakery, trips on an apple, and then stumbles into Zoé while trying to regain her balance.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Zoé had to change her personality to fit in at school in New York, but when she slipped up, everyone turned against her and started bullying her, namely putting cockroaches in her locker.
- Dirty Coward: Chloé shoves several civilians, Sabine, Tom, and later Marinette into Sole Crusher's way. Only Marinette is spared because Sole Crusher remembers her kindness.
- Exact Words: Ladybug apologizes to Cat Noir for being late to the battle with the excuse that she "got held up." This is literally what happened to her in her civilian identity.
- Extreme Doormat: Mayor Bourgeois easily caving in to the demands of Chloé and Audrey stems back from his youth when he wanted to be a filmmaker but lacked his family's approval, so he became a politician instead to please them. When he tells Zoé this and that it would be best for her to become what Chloé and Audrey want, she takes it badly and gets akumatized. At the end of the episode, he wiggles his way out of Chloé wanting him to kick out Zoé and tells Zoé that she can be whatever she wants, even if her sister and mother don't approve.
- Foreshadowing: The episode's end card features Chloé in the corner angrily looking back on Marinette and Zoé. Her face has a dark mask like the akumatized victims, and a neon, purple butterfly drawn next to her in the picture. This sets up the conflict that happens in "Queen Banana", and her fifth (onscreen) akumatization to boot.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: A close look at contents of the box containing the movie script shows Emilie Agreste as the author of the script. There is a picture of another woman who resembles Kagami on the cover of one of the books.
- Friendless Background: Zoé, after her Alpha Bitch façade slipped at her old school.
- Giant Foot of Stomping: Sole Crusher can grow in size by touching people with her soles and absorbing them. Once she grows big enough, she starts absorbing people by stepping on them.
- Godzilla Threshold: When Sole Crusher captures Marinette, Tikki orders Kaalki to use Voyage to get Cat Noir right away despite the risks, because time is of the essence — if Sole Crusher absorbs Marinette, she'll be unstoppable.
- Gold-Colored Superiority: Sole Crusher is colored almost entirely gold, with diamond accents.
- Good Stepmother: Gender-inverted with Mayor Bourgeois. While Zoé isn't his biological daughter, he still treats her as if she were blood related to him.
- Hidden Supplies: Mayor Bourgeois reveals to Zoé that he has a secret stash where he keeps all the memorabilia from the time he aspired to be a director, which he zealously hides from his wife and daughter. He lets Zoé use it to hide her colorful sneakers.
- High-Heel Power: Sole Crusher can absorb people by touching them with the soles of her high-heels.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: When she gets kidnapped, Marinette tries to reason with Zoé/Sole Crusher and is almost successful at it, but Shadow Moth manages to regain Sole Crusher's attention before it leads to something.
- Ironic Echo: Inverted. When Shadow Moth akumatizes Zoé, he says "Welcome to Paris.". At the end of the episode, Marinette also welcomes her to Paris, but her greeting is sincere, not sarcastic.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: While telling Zoé about her "old patsy" — i.e. Marinette — Chloé refers to her as "it" instead of "she" to dehumanize her.
- Kick Chick: Sole Crusher first absorbs people by kicking them, before growing big enough that she can simply step on them.
- Kick the Dog: Chloé keeps Sabrina locked up in a closet while the latter does Chloé's homework (without even the benefit of a lamp), forces her to run beside her car while she is carrying her stuff, owns a notebook where she scribbles down ideas about how to ruin Marinette's life and callously pushes innocent people towards an akumatized villain just to save her own hide. This is all around as terrible as the stunts she pulled in Season 1, if not moreso.
- Logical Weakness: Sole Crusher's heels seriously affect her balance, especially after she gets big, making it easy to upset or trip her.
- Make My Monster Grow: Sole Crusher gets bigger with each person she absorbs.
- Meet Cute: While this is probably not a romantic example, the way Marinette and Zoé meet is nothing short of the start of a Rom Com.
- "Adoration" reveals it was this at least in Zoe's case.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: André renders Zoé vulnerable to akumatization by suggesting she abandon her own interests to fit in with Chloé.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: André tries to help Zoé by encouraging her to cast aside her interests to fit in with Chloé and Audrey. While he just wanted to help his stepdaughter, it leaves her vulnerable to Akumatization and wreaking havoc as Sole Crusher. He later makes up for it by helping the heroes find the Akuma and protecting Zoé from Chloé's wrath at the end.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Used for a good cause. When Chloé demands that André ship Zoé back to New York, André says that of course he'll make sure that Chloé never sees her half-sister again but, alas, the paperwork to remove Zoé from Collège Françoise Dupont and enlist her to an American school will take months to go through. Until then, Zoé will have to stay with them.
- Parental Favoritism: Audrey doesn't protest when Chloé demands that Zoé (Audrey's other biological daughter) be shipped back to New York, and seems overall disinterested in her.
- Pet the Dog: In her own twisted way, Chloé does actually try to welcome Zoé into her family as a sister and takes some time to show her the ropes - although this means trying to turn her into an Alpha Bitch like herself. As soon as Zoé shows her true, kindhearted nature, Chloé becomes as callous toward her as toward anybody else.
- Power Incontinence: Yet another Kwami uses their power without a holder, this time Kaalki opening a Voyage portal to find Plagg. While it does work in getting her there, she shoots out the portal at greatly increased speed, then the portal turns into a miniature vortex for a few moments, sucking up loose objects and warping them to random locations. Plagg's cheese is transported into space and Adrien's game table ends up in the Paris Zoo gorilla enclosure. Thankfully, Ladybug's World-Healing Wave puts them back.
- Pushover Parents: Chloé demonstrates to her sister that her dad can be used to resolve any problem no matter how small or petty it may be. The end of the episode implies that she also has some control over Audrey.
- Roll Out the Red Carpet: Sabrina does this when Chloé introduces her new sister to the rest of the school.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Discussed. While Chloé is fussing over Zoé, she claims that Zoé can make a suitable sister physically because she has blonde hair and blue eyes like Chloé and their mother.
- Tragic Dream: André's true passion was filmmaking, but he gave it up to become a politician in order to gain his family's approval. He encourages Zoé to do the same thing with her own interests. Ultimately, she decides to go against her sister's demands and be her own person. In private, she encourages him to not give up on his own dream, and André promises he won't.
- Trauma Button: Zoé is able to emulate Chloé's bitchiness until the latter mentions putting cockroaches in Marinette's locker in order to humiliate her. As Zoé admits to the gang on the Liberty, her former classmates played that very same mean prank on her back in New York.
