Nino starts a resistance movement in order to try to learn about how Monarch's powers work. And his plan is to deliberately get someone akumatized to observe what happens. But perhaps this plan risks backfiring... especially when he chooses the wrong akumatization target?
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear if Lila knows Gabriel is Monarch. She is quick to tell him of the Resistance's plot to get someone akumatized, supposedly just because he's the target of it. However, she does make sure to mention that the goal of the plan is to find out how Monarch grants and removes Miraculous powers, which is rather useless information to someone who is just the target and not also Monarch himself. She even emphasizes the word "Monarch" as if to imply that she knows. At the very least, Gabriel asking "What does this have to do with me?" before being told he's the target seems to indicate that if she does know, he didn't tell her and she figured it out herself somehow.
- Armor-Piercing Question: See Innocently Insensitive below.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Gabriel says that he'll be pulling Adrien from school because his new friends are a bad influence on him, the teachers are ineffective, and the school cafeteria food is lacking in nutrients.
- Bad "Bad Acting":
- After both Marinette and Adrien pretend to accidentally stain Gabriel's clothes, Alya doesn't even try to put effort when it's her turn to do it again. And this is after Marinette and Adrien essentially push their food plates onto Gabriel "accidentally".
- Gabriel's fake akumatization is a more subdued example but he still chews the scenery heavily and unnaturally reiterates everything Monarch supposedly tells him. Naturally, the latter is done on purpose to trick the Resistance - and it works.
- Berserk Button: Even with Gabriel acting nicer than usual, he still cannot stand any stains on his white clothing and appears to have stopped short from tossing a frying pan with a pancake in it after cooking oil gets on his apron. Relying on this is how the Resistance attempts to get him Akumatized.
- Blatant Lies: When Nino defends telling Adrien that he was Carapace, he asks if Marinette and Alya share secrets, and they angrily respond "No, we don't." when Marinette mentioned her fears about a risk of losing her Miraculous to Alya about a minute and a half ago.
- Combo Platter Powers: In addition to his illusory Collector, Monarch uses multiple Miraculous (Mouse, Bee, Horse, and Rooster) in an attempt to trap the heroes. Thanks to the technologically upgraded Miraculouses, he can now give himself up to five additional powers with no ill effects.
- Continuity Nod:
- Monarch takes great delight in using Mirage against Ladybug bringing up how many times it was used to beat him.
- Mr. Damocles mentions Ladybug deakumatizing in the previous episode.
- Conveniently Timed Distraction: Nino and his friends take Adrien's fanbase breaking into the school cafeteria as an opportunity to sneak into Nino's secret base.
- Cultural Translation: In the English dub, Gabriel is making French toast instead of pancakes (although later episodes get it right). Interestingly this isn't a case of dub injecting their own cultural references but rather reinforcing that the show takes place in France.
- Didn't Think This Through: Nino has the idea of getting his friends to toss food onto Gabriel to get him angry enough to be akumatized so that Nino can record the akumatized Gabriel and help Ladybug figure out how Monarch is granting his villains Miraculous powers but keeping the Miraculouses themselves away from recapturing...the tossing of which gets Gabriel angry enough to storm out of the parent-teacher conference while declaring that he's pulling Adrien, Nino's best friend, out of the school, showing the risk of the possibility that Gabriel has not actually changed his parenting attitude but also not getting akumatized in anger. Fortunately for Adrien and his friends, Gabriel pretended to get akumatized and was not legitimately angry enough to take Adrien out of school.
- Double-Meaning Title: Monarch uses the Illusion power to create a duplicate of himself, furthering the illusion that he and Gabriel Agreste are not the same person. And as a bonus, he manages to give the heroes the illusion that he's using magic lightning, rather than the Alliance rings, to transfer powers.
- Dramatic Irony: The audience is well aware that Lila has leaked Nino's plan to Gabriel, and that he's subverting it to his own ends. The heroes, on the other hand, don't know a thing, and go along with it every step of the way.
- Failed a Spot Check: Gabriel's gambit relies on the heroes missing several clues that would reveal his illusions:
- When Adrien films his father being apparently akumatized, Gabriel immediately agrees to the deal. While Adrien doesn't know what being akumatized feels like, his friends (or at least Marinette) should recall that the Butterfly user needs to make a deal, and Gabriel's instant reaction would imply he was either waiting for it to happen or that there was no one on the other side to make a deal with.
- Ladybug doesn't find it strange that the Akuma purifies itself after the Collector breaks free from Akumatization. Usually when this happens, Ladybug still has to purify the Akuma, but doing so in this case would have revealed it is an illusion. It's possible that she thought Monarch recalled it, but there is still the question of why he would do that.
- Aquabug finds and retrieves Gabriel from the sewers after seeing his illusion fall into the water. As we saw Monarch merely used Voyage and detransformed. Unless he dunked himself into the sewage and came back out, she should've been able to notice aside from the food on his jacket, he's dry and his hair seems fine.
- The "damage" is fixed once Gabriel detransforms as it undoes the illusions. Ladybug has not used her Miraculous Ladybug power yet, but none of them notice the gate and other things from the Agreste garden are back when it previously required Ladybug to fix it.
- False Dichotomy: When Adrien reveals how uncomfortable he is with the Alliance rings looking like himself, Gabriel manipulates him into accepting it by implying that the only alternative is for things to go back to the way they were before. It doesn't occur to Adrien (and Gabriel certainly isn't going to suggest it) that the rings could instead use someone else entirely.
- Heroic Willpower: Faked. In order to prevent Ladybug from touching any part of the illusion, the fake Collector appears to resist the Akumatization on his own.
- Innocently Insensitive: When Adrien protests Nino's plan to akumatize Gabriel, saying that his father is making an effort to be nicer, Nino asks him whether Gabriel is really trying to change or if it's just a publicity stunt to promote the new Alliance Rings. It's a valid question, given Gabriel's track record as a parent (to say nothing of him secretly being the Big Bad), but Nino realizes he done goofed up when he notices Adrien's hurt expression, and apologizes for his thoughtless words.
- Internal Reveal: Nino "reveals" to Marinette that he is Carapace and Alya is Rena Rouge. Of course, Marinette already knew, but he didn't know that. He also reveals that he already told Adrien that he is Carapace to Marinette and Alya, but he doesn't mention that he also told him that Alya is Rena Rouge.
- Invisibility Cloak: Monarch uses Sublimination to give himself the power of invisibility, so the heroes don't see his eight tiny copies coming.
- Jerkass Has a Point: It's probably a bit much for Gabriel to declare that Adrien is being pulled from school again...but it's pretty understandable for someone to be quite outraged that your son and his friends are squishing plates of food onto your chest for some reason.
- La Résistance: Nino forms his own "Resistance" to aid Ladybug and Cat Noir against Monarch even without their superpowers.
- Lightning Can Do Anything: Monarch convinces heroes that he uses a magic lightning bolt to send and retrieve Miraculous from his villains, making it a justified example.
- Meaningful Name: Lila's Sweet and Sour codename is a pretty obvious one for the writers to give a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing like herself.
- The Mole: Nino unwittingly allows Gabriel and Lila into his Resistance network.
- Pet the Dog: Gabriel makes breakfast for his son and is making an effort to spend more quality time with him. He also allows him to eat at the cafeteria and go to school for Parent-Teacher conference. After his display of being furious to facilitate his illusion of being akumatized, Gabriel reaffirms his new parenting leaf by saying he's abandoning his declaration to pull Adrien out of school again, privately apologizing to Adrien and telling Adrien to call him dad.
- Pie in the Face: Or On The Suit, in this case. Nino's plan to enrage Gabriel enough so he'd be akumatized is to stain his pristine white suit by throwing food at it (a pizza, spaghetti with tomato sauce, and a piece of chocolate cake, to be precise). It fails to work only because Lila had warned Gabriel about it in advance.
- Planning with Props: Downplayed as Nino doesn't so much plans as only visualizes the problem using food in the cafeteria. When talking about Monarch giving his villains Miraculous powers he depicts this by adding honey to yogurt. Ladybug and Cat Noir are represented respectively by strawberry jam and blackcurrant jam.
- Red Herring: Since Gabriel was warned in advance by Lila about the Resistance, and since he's creating an illusion anyway, he makes it appear as though The Collector got his powers through a lightning bolt, drawing attention away from the Alliance rings. Nino falls for it, and passes this false information on to Ladybug and Cat Noir.
- Rule of Three: Gabriel gets pelted with food three times. The first is by Marinette, who exaggerates her clumsiness; the second is from Adrien, who's embarrassed and reluctantly goes along with the plan; and the third is from Alya, who looks like she's done with all of this nonsense. Miss Bustier even seems to have figured out this is what's happening at Alya's point, asking "Alya? You're not going to...?" while pointing at Gabriel before he gets his third sullying.
- See the Invisible: Ladybug notices the invisible multiplied Monarchs by their footsteps in a puddle. They become even more clear when she pours shredded cheese on them.
- Self-Duplication: Monarch uses the power the Mouse Miraculous to divide himself into eight copies. Interestingly, while in the past it could not multiply Miraculouses, now all the copies are able to use Venom and Sublimation. This is probably due to the Miraculouses being upgraded with technology.
- Spin to Deflect Stuff: Ladybug's usual yoyo-spinning ends up doing this for her unintentionally, with Monarch trying to approach and touch her with the Venom power while using Multitude to divide himself into eight, leaving his divided forms too small to touch her while she happened to have spun around her yoyo at a length that nearly hit the ground as she surveyed around.
- The Stinger: Gabriel assures Tomoe Tsurugi that the heroes won’t be tracing his Super-Empowering back to Alliance.
- Stock Animal Diet: Ladybug attracts mice to the invisible miniature Monarchs with shredded cheese.
- Take That!: XY assumes that Monarch is still going by Hawk Moth, bearing a remarkable similarity to many fanfic writers who still act like the season 2/3 status quo is in effect.
- Themed Aliases: The members of the Resistance go by code names named after condiments; these include:
- Nino: Comrade Ketchup
- Adrien: Comrade Mayo
- Alya: Comrade Beurre Maitre d'Hotel
- Marinette: Comrade Bechamel
- Gabriel: Comrade Tartar Sauce
- Max: Comrade Bearnaise
- Kim: Comrade Burgundy
- Rose: Comrade Cocktail
- Juleka: Comrade Grand Veneur
- Ivan: Comrade Aioli
- Mylène: Comrade Gribiche
- Lila: Comrade Sweet and Sour
- Took a Level in Kindness: Without explaining why, Gabriel is suddenly acting more like a father, and is even seen cooking for his son. Adrien is confused but rolls with it. Though it should be noted that Gabriel's tone of voice suggests that he's forcing himself to act nicer for some reason.
- Unreliable Narrator: When asked if he's feeling okay, Gabriel notes that he and Adrien were a lot closer before Emilie disappeared. Of course, given how forced and uneasy his tone of voice is, this should be taken with a grain of salt.
- The Unreveal: The audience never finds out why Gabriel suddenly Took a Level in Kindness.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Discussed at the end of the episode when Ladybug questions Nino's methods to learn how Monarch is using his new powers. Gabriel justifies his actions as Necessarily Evil and while he is doing this to appear benevolent, it's likely he's thinking about his own actions.Gabriel: Don't be too hard, Ladybug. They were only trying to do good. And sometimes, in order to do good, anything goes.
- Wham Shot: The Resistance gains a few more members toward the end of the episode: Max, Kim, Mylène, Ivan, Rose, Juleka... and, to Marinette's horror, Lila.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Alya and Marinette give Nino some flak for planning to intentionally provoke an akumatization. He defuses tensions by pointing out that the victims never remember the event and Ladybug will fix everything at the end.
- Alya in turn calls out Marinette for being willing to go along with it, though not as vocally as she could because Nino does have a point about figuring out how Monarch is transferring Miraculous powers.
- Xanatos Gambit: Gabriel pulls this off. If he wins, he gets the Miraculous. However if he loses he still fooled the Resistance into not considering the Alliance rings are a factor in transferring the powers of the Miraculouses.
