Wherefore art thou, Hawkmoth

Spoilers ahead for the first episode of Miraculous Ladybug season 2 which I watched because I was bored and YouTube threw it at me. I watched a couple of episodes a while back after stumbling across some fan fiction that really sold the characters to me and found it... pitched a little young for me which isn't a surprise since I'm thirty-three and this is a kids' show.

Still, I have some thoughts which are spoilery and happen under the photo of a Privet Hawk-Moth which is the closest “Hawkmoth” I could find to the colours the character in the show has...

Okay, so Hawkmoth is revealed to be Gabriel Agreste as 99.99% of the fandom thought he was. As fond as I was of the idea that Gabriel might simply be the jaded and retired holder of the peacock miraculous he is literally the only remaining character Hawkmoth could be.

And you know what? Good on the creators for not dragging this out any longer. At a certain point mysteries become annoying and even if the whole episode was constructed to keep Marinette and Adrien in the dark, at least the viewers know.

That having been said... Gabriel Agreste is an absolute bellend. The reason I liked the Peacock!Gabriel headcanon was because it gave the man some redeeming qualities, it was the hope that hidden somewhere beneath the layers of grief and privilege was a decent father who was just really, really bad at expressing his emotions.

No, he's just a dick who would happily hunt down his own son in order to entrap Ladybug and Chat Noir. He's a dick who would destroy the life his son has built out of spite over the loss of the Guardian's spellbook (or whatever it is actually called).

Speaking of the Guardian, it was interesting to hear that Master Fu lost the butterfly and peacock miraculous a long time ago. From the dialogue in the Origins two-parter I assume Hawkmoth was someone Fu had gifted the butterfly to in error but it seems not that Gabriel found them and the book some time after they left Fu's possession. Also, Tikki and Wayzz playing on the gramophone was adorable. Now I think about it, I wonder if Gabriel “renouncing” his miraculous is a necessary step. After all, the akuma have always been insistent that Marinette and Adrien give up their miraculous rather than just snatching them (though obviously I'd imagine part of that is censors would have a problem with someone tearing a girl's earrings out, understandably). Of course, it could just be Hawkmoth being super extra on an almost Anakin Skywalker scale.

It was interesting to see that Nathalie was in on it all. Again, I had given that character a lot of credit as Adrien's surrogate mother figure. Of course, as with any minion she might not be 100% willing but it lends a really sinister overtone to her position as Adrien's tutor/keeper.

I think I might actually try to keep up to date with this series. Its rather fun.