Red and Blue make Purple

Adrien’s Character Growth!!

queenmogar117

FINALLY!!! FINALLY my precious son gets some fucking character growth!!! For the first time we see Adrien question Ladybug, scold her, and call her out on her flaws. Is he still infatuated with her?

Duh! But that doesn’t mean he isn’t horrified by her behavior. For the first time, Adrien sees Ladybug as less than perfect. And what does he do? Does he brush it off? Does he ignore it? NO! HE FUCKING CALLS HER OUT ON HER BULLSHIT!

He yells at her! “AREN’T YOU ASHAMED!?” We very rarely see Adrien raise his voice and I don’t think we’ve ever seen him raise his voice in anger. He’s used to taking a lot of shit and just bottling it up. For him to call her out on it reminds us there is a strong moral character that defines why Adrien was picked as Chat Noir.

Of course, he’s still shy, reserved, well-behaved Adrien and he immediately tries to be more polite.

In all honesty, he looks almost frightened of her. Which makes me wonder what happened to break his backbone. Did his father break it?

But even thought he is obviously scared of her, he doesn’t let the issue go. He might have phrased it as a question, but he is still telling her off: “you went to far.” Yes, Ladybug was morally right to call her out on her lying but how she did it was wrong. Very wrong. And it lead to Ladybug causing a young girl to get akumatized (interesting that both times the superheroes had caused someone to get akumatized it was because of jealousy and at least Chat Noir had the decency to do it privately so there was no public ridicule.)

But back to Adrien! Again and again in the episode, we see him question Ladybug (FOR THE FIRST TIME!).

Again!

And again. Yes, he curls in on himself a little bit, afraid of backlash. But he pushes back. For the first time, I really felt like he was her partner and not her sidekick, blindly nodding.

When Volpina comes to Adrien’s room, Adrien takes charge and tries to help Lila. And I really think it would have worked if Ladybug hadn’t gone in and, honestly, made things worse with her jealousy!

Here he is again horrified by Ladybug’s behavior like best “WTF?” face I’ve seen from him all season.

And here he is begging for no violence.

At the end, since the first episode, we see Ladybug having to ask Chat Noir to trust her. And he does, of course. But he hesitates just for a moment. And it’s obviously because she’s been off this whole episode, selfish and stubborn in a way we haven’t see since the Antibug episode with Chloe and Sabrina’s akuma (clearly Marinette has serious issues with liars).

And in the end, we see Chat Noir genuinely frustrated.

I mean does the boy still have it bad? Yeah. But I really think for the first time that Chat Noir and Ladybug could have a healthy relationship. He doesn’t put her on a pedestal and kiss her feet. When she fucks up, he calls her out. When she behaves poorly, he questions her judgement. That’s some major progress!

Like let’s be real. Ladybug is arrogant, stubborn, and evaluates people from a very strict moral high-ground. There is no gray with her. Akuma victims are victims. Chloe and Hawkmoth are embodiments of evil. She and Chat Noir are the good guys, untouchable.

She never stops to think that Chloe might have a reason for behaving the way she does. She never once realized that Lila was lying because her parents were diplomats and, when you move around a lot, the only way to make friends was to be popular. So obviously, Lila lied so she could fit in. Lila is probably a terribly insecure, lonely little girl whose learnt that fox-like slyness was the best way to get respect fast. I didn’t need to watch a lot (literally the minute Alya told Marinette that Lila said she knew Ladybug) to figure that out.

And Marinette clearly has no idea that Adrien might be suffocating. She sees him as perfect: intelligent, hardworking, beautiful, and most importantly kind and selfless. To her, he is like all her moral standards embodied in one untouchable boy. She never once stops to think maybe Adrien wants to misbehave once in awhile and make mistakes.

And Chat Noir is obviously guilt of seeing Ladybug as this perfect being, untouchable like the sun. Its one of the main reasons I wondered if they should ever actually get together. But Chat Noir is trying to get to know Ladybug in a way Marinette isn’t trying to get to know Adrien (probably because of her shyness but if the girl can invest so much time to make a chart of his schedule–still creepy– one could think she might practice her conversation skills). And this show exemplifies that. He saw something he didn’t like and instead of disregarding it, he added it to his mental image of the girl underneath the mask. What wonderful progress!!