"Jagged Stone! So, you fire me, and now you want to replace me with — what, a schoolkid?"
—Desperada
Jagged Stone's guitarist Vivica gets akumatized into Desperada. Armed with her evil guitar, she wants to punish Jagged Stone for firing her. But to defeat her, Ladybug needs help from a new ally.
Tropes:
- Amnesiac Resonance: Subverted. Adrien as Aspik jokes that he wishes Ladybug's Lucky Charm was a lucky horseshoe rather than a saddle, which she laughs and swoons at, complimenting his sense of humour. Later, when Luka joins the team as Viperion, Adrien as Cat Noir tells the same joke, hoping to get the same reaction. Sadly, for him, she's not impressed this time.
- Anywhere but Their Lips: This marks the second time that Marinette/Ladybug kisses Adrien on the cheek. The first time was in "Mayura".
- Bad "Bad Acting": Adrien and Kagami “accidentally” went to the band practice instead of fencing.
- Bag of Holding: Desperada's guitar case leads to a pocket dimension that allows her to pull out instrument weapons.
- Chekhov's Skill: Luka helps Ladybug and Cat Noir escape from Desperada by distracting her by playing his guitar. She is defeated when he distracts her again by playing his harp as Viperion.
- Clingy Jealous Girl:
- Downplayed. Though she behaves civilly, Kagami shows displeasure when Marinette tries to greet Adrien and even clings tighter to his arm, though the displeasure might stem from her assumption of Marinette and Luka already being together. Kagami does advise her by the end to hurry up and choose, calling back to her previous advice in "Frozer" to not hesitate.
- Desperada herself could be seen as one, as she goes around shooting any musicians that could rival her place as Jagged Stone's guitarist, male or female.
- Cold Sniper: Desperada camps out on the Eiffel Tower, waiting to snipe Ladybug when she comes out of the sewers.
- A Day in the Limelight: Though this is the episode that introduces Luka as Viperion, it's Adrien who gets the lion's share of the focus.
- Determinator:
- Deconstructed with Adrien spending months trying to protect Ladybug from Desperada until he finally does the right thing and admits he's not the right person to wield the Snake Miraculous.
- Likewise, this is the main threat of Desperada herself, as her persistence and accuracy are what contribute to her status as an Implacable Man.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Jagged Stone fired Vivica because she ate his cereal and drank Fang's milk.
- Distracted by the Sexy:
- At least part of the reason why Aspik didn't work as a hero was because Marinette got distracted by knowing it was Adrien under the costume.
- Similarly, Adrien picks up on the fact that Ladybug is more receptive to his advances when he's not Cat Noir and uses the opportunity to flirt with her. One of their (many) defeats was because he stopped to give her a rose.
- Everyone Can See It: The girls talk about how Marinette seems to really like Luka, and how she seems to be a better fit with him since she can actually talk to him normally.
- Face Palm: This is Alya's reaction to Marinette continually trying to press Adrien into being Jagged Stone's guitarist rather than recognizing Luka's obvious talent.
- Failure Is the Only Option: Adrien's career as Aspik is necessarily short-lived (from an outside point of view). It's partly because he's already Cat Noir, but also because Adrien and Ladybug are too distracted by working with their crush to focus on defeating Desperada.
- Failure Montage:
- Adrien's time as Aspik is punctuated by a long string of scenes where Ladybug is zapped by Desperada.
- There's a shorter one for Viperion, as he works out how to defeat Desperada.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Vivica was fired because she ate Jagged Stone's cereal and drank Fang's milk. Even Jagged felt that was extreme of him to do so, which resulted in him looking for a new guitarist and Vivica's akumatization.
- Foreshadowing: Marinette trying to get Adrien to be Jagged Stone's guitarist, despite Luka clearly being the better choice, foreshadows both how Marinette's judgement is clouded by her crush on Adrien and how Luka, not Adrien, is a better fit to wield the Snake Miraculous.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: Adrien is caught in a loop when he keeps resetting his Second Chance to save Ladybug. He can exit at any time by giving up, and he finally does after months of trying. (Assuming each loop was near the max 5 minutes, his total loops added up to roughly 89 days, which is close to 3 months.)
- Guns Akimbo: At one point, Desperada wields two small horn-styled guns.
- Implacable Man: Desperada's skillset allows her to be ever-present in tracking and following the heroes.
- Instrument of Murder: Two examples.
- The Snake Miraculous gives its bearer a harp, though Luka only uses it to get Desperada's attention and then as an improvised handcuff by tying her arm in the strings. His time travel ability is his most valuable asset.
- Desperada is able to pull out musical-themed weapons out of her guitar case. Most prominently, she uses a trombone-like instrument as a sniper rifle, two smaller horns as pistols, and her guitar like an axe.
- Ironic Echo: When Alya points out that Kagami might be onto something with her comment that Luka being Marinette's boyfriend, Marinette replies that Luka is just a friend.
- Leeroy Jenkins: In her attempt to protect Adrien, Kagami charges in towards Desperada, armed with a stage microphone. Props for her bravery against a supervillain, but nonetheless, Kagami becomes one of Desperada's first victims.
- Love Makes You Dumb:
- Marinette says that Adrien would make the perfect guitarist for Jagged Stone, even though Adrien is a pianist and Luka, who has been playing guitar all his life, is right there. Then as Ladybug, knowing that she's working with Adrien prevents her from focusing properly during the battle with Desperada.
- Adrien, meanwhile, gladly accepts his role as Aspik to impress Ladybug, even as Plagg pleads that he should refuse so he can be Cat Noir and tries for tens of thousands of times to keep Ladybug safe before finally giving up and telling Ladybug to give the Miraculous to Luka instead.
- Ludicrous Precision: When Adrien finally gives up on him using the Snake Miraculous to stop Desperada, he claims that they've tried 25,913 times, which he's somehow managed to keep a count of while he's also pre-occupied with exhausting all of possible options while fighting a supervillain and trying to flirt with Ladybug.
- Meaningful Echo: When Ladybug uses her Lucky Charm, she gets a saddle. Adrien makes the same joke both times, but Ladybug only laughs at the first one, when she knows it's from him and not Cat Noir.
- New Old Flame: Jagged Stone and Anarka Couffaine have a past together as performers and possibly more. They are Amicable Exes for the most part.
- One-Hit Kill: Desperada's weapons turn anyone they hit into a sticker on her guitar case. With her Improbable Aiming Skills and a sniper vantage point, she is almost as unbeatable as Party Crasher. It takes literally being able to rewind time to beat her, simply because the slightest mistake is an instant loss.
- Plot Parallel: Marinette's insistent pushing of Adrien as Jagged Stone's new guitarist, when not only is Adrien very much a pianist with little guitar training, but known guitar prodigy Luka is right there, mirrors her later decision as Ladybug to lend him the Snake Miraculous for no more reason than her crush on him — and indeed, it turns out Adrien is no more suited for the wrong Miraculous than he was for the wrong instrument, and in the end he passes both on to Luka.
- Punny Name: An aspic is a savory gelatin usually with cooked meat in it (like say a goose). That Adrien picked this as a name and Marinette liked it shows just how off the match is.
- Save Scumming: The "Second Chance" power.
- Shout-Out: Desperada pulls "guns" (actually music instruments she uses as guns) from her guitar case, much like another gun-toting guitarist.
- Swapped Roles: Plagg for once plays the voice of reason, telling Adrien that his plan to impress Ladybug as Aspik is wrong because he already has a Miraculous that he's supposed to be using. It takes three months of constant failure, but Adrien admits Plagg is in the right.
- Taking the Bullet: Rose steps in front of Juleka to protect her from Desperada. Sadly, Desperada just fires twice and gets Juleka with the next shot.
- Tragic Time Traveler: Adrien is briefly gifted the Snake Miraculous by Ladybug in order to become the time-rewinding hero Aspik. However, no matter what he does, Ladybug falls and he's forced to reset the timeline, a process that goes on for so long that by the time he decides to quit, Sass, the Kwami of the Snake Miraculous, suffers from a brief bout of Time Loop Fatigue.
- Un-Confession: When Adrien as Aspik is resetting the fight against Desperada tens of thousands of times, we see an iteration where he tells Ladybug he's actually Cat Noir and that he's been in love with her since they met, knowing it won't stick.
- Visual Pun: Desperada's guitar is literally an axe.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: The Snake Miraculous's ability, Second Chance, allows the wearer to rewind time back to the point of activation, so long as it's within a 5-minute window. This ability can be used as many times as necessary, so long as that time limit doesn't expire. Adrien says he'd been trying for months to succeed, 25,913 times, but could never manage. It's unclear how often Viperion rewound, but it was likely not as many.
- You Bastard!: In the Italian dub, as soon as Anarka finds out that Desperada was the guitarist that Jagged Stone fired, she says “Aha! Bastardo! (Aha! You bastard!)”
