YMMV / Miraculous Ladybug S04E22 "Ephemeral"

• Alternate Character Interpretation: While it's easy to see that Luka's encouraging words mean that he helped Marinette to accept Adrien after revealing himself as Cat Noir, some fans also believe that Luka also refers to himself after he learns her secret identity as Ladybug and implies that he still loves Marinette.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: While not common, a few videos existed where Ladybug unified three Miraculous at the same time, a feat only really done in canon through a Loophole Abuse. Come this episode, and it's revealed this is possible when Shadow Moth unifies the Butterfly, Peacock, and Cat Miraculous to become Shadow Noir.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Or rather, Fridge Humor. A few have noted that Shadow Noir bears a striking resemblance to Marvel's Black Panther. Since the Miraculous user's costume is a reflection of their tastes and desires, (assuming this still applies to Unifications) does Shadow Noir's costume mean that Gabriel's a Black Panther fan?
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A main complaint by fans is that the plot is similar to "Cat Blanc", but lacks the same impact; Marinette and Adrien discover the truth of each other's secret identities one at a time and Hawk Moth learns the truth as a result of this, leading to near apocalyptic results that have to be reset with the help of an ally with a time-travel miraculous. However, it could be argued that the creators specifically did this to show us no matter which way the situation started, it would always end the same way: that Marinette and Adrien can never truly be together until Gabriel is taken out of the picture entirely.
• Tainted by the Preview: Trailers showed that this is a “what-if” episode, so everything will get reverted in the end and all the major reveals won't stick. This made some fans reluctant to watch it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Shadow Noir (Shadow Moth's form after obtaining the Cat Miraculous) only gets barely a minute of screentime to show off his appearance, but not his powers.
  • Likewise, Adrien's akumatized form, Ephemeral, despite being the title villain of the episode, is only seen for a few seconds, just when he displays the interesting ability to drain a Miraculous wielder of their powers within seconds.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Ladybug and Cat Noir finally learn each other's secret identities, a long-awaited occurence, only for the Reset Button to be hit at the end. Again.
• Unexpected Character: Ladybug has a very short confrontation with her very confused predecessor, Jeanne d'Arc herself. She also mentions "Bertrand" and "Gilles", possibly referring to Bertrand de Poulengy and Gilles de Rais.

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