I am now...the Collector! My book of inspiration has been taken from me, so I shall build a new one! And perhaps pick up a Miraculous or two while I'm at it!
"I must become someone else to lead them astray. Nooroo, I renounce you... temporarily. Come to me, my little akuma, and evilize me!"
—Gabriel Agreste
Marinette gives the Miraculous book to Master Fu, while Adrien is grounded for losing it. Meanwhile, while Marinette begins trying to decipher the identity of Hawk Moth, who is revealed to be Adrien's dad, he akumatizes himself into the Collector to protect his identity.
Tropes:
- Art Shift: Master Fu's story is told through still images stylized like chinese paintings.
- Audience Surrogate: Marinette when she suspects that Gabriel is Hawk Moth, similar to the fanbase's theory, except using what she knows so far in the show. She also gets thrown offtrack when Gabriel sets up a False Flag Operation, similar to how many fans were thrown off when sneak peaks showed Gabriel being an akuma.
- The Bad Guy Wins: While Collector doesn't defeat Ladybug and Cat Noir, he accomplishes his primary objective of convincing them that Gabriel Agreste is not Hawk Moth. He also recovers his book by the end of episode.
- Bait-and-Switch: As Gabriel throws a tantrum in his office, he briefly pauses when he sees a drawing that a young Adrien had made of them with Mrs. Agreste. And then he throws that too.
- Boomerang Comeback: Averted several times, but it's a close call. Considering a single hit from the Collector's Precision Guided Book is an instant loss, both Ladybug and Cat Noir are very wary of not getting caught from behind by the book on its return path.
- Call-Back: Marinette realizes that Master Fu healed Tikki before, and he also reminds her that they had met on her first day of school.
- Continuity Nod: Adrien's video-game collection includes the first two installments of the Ultimate Mecha Strike franchise.
- Deadly Euphemism: The Collector's collecting, which causes items and people to be captured and frozen in time as images in his book.
- Dub-Induced Plot Hole: In the English dub, on the day when Marinette discovers Adrien has been grounded for life, Plagg says he has preserved his stinky cheese for 999 days, but Marinette and Adrien have only been Ladybug and Cat Noir for a few months by now. Given its nature as a gag, he was probably really off on his counting skills, or this inadvertently reveals how long ago Plagg was last used before being Adrien's kwami.
- Exact Words: Hawk Moth says he feels the wrath of a father betrayed by his son. He's not using his powers to detect Gabriel's emotions from afar, he is Gabriel, and those are his emotions.
- False Flag Operation: In order to stray Ladybug and Cat Noir's suspicions away from Gabriel being Hawk Moth, he akumatizes himself. It even fools Master Fu, because the holder of the Butterfly Miraculous shouldn't be able to do that, but Gabriel pulled some clever Loophole Abuse to get away with it.
- Foreshadowing:
- As Ladybug points out, butterflies are hidden in Gabriel's logo, and Cat Noir realizes they are also hidden everywhere in his house. Also, all that foreshadowing from "Simon Says"? Not a Red Herring.
- In a lesser example, after Marinette throws a chair at the Collector, we see him briefly pause to clear that page, the first hint that his book has a finite number of pages.
- Identity Impersonator: Inverted. It's not another who impersonates Hawk Moth, but Hawk Moth himself who impersonates his own victim.
- Immediate Sequel: The episode begins right where "Volpina" ended.
- It Was a Gift: Reason why Gabriel cares so much about his lost book, at least from what he tells Adrien. According to him, it was the last gift he got from his wife before she vanished. While he has other secret reasons, it's very possible that he's not completely lying.
- Last-Second Word Swap: When Cat Noir runs to check on the recently de-evillized Gabriel, he almost calls him "father" before he remembers that he's still in costume. He awkwardly switches to "sir":Cat Noir: Are you OK, Fa... Sir?
- Loophole Abuse: Hawk Moth cannot akumatize himself. Even if he de-transforms, he's still the Butterfly Miraculous holder and thus immune. However, if he renounces himself as the holder, he can be akumatized by an akuma he prepared ahead of time.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Cat Noir is shocked to hear from Ladybug that Gabriel may be Hawk Moth, then calls her out for not providing evidence before she tells him her reasons to suspect of Gabriel, which, coupled with Cat's own realizations, at the very least provide a reasonable doubt. By the end of the episode, though, they are convinced that Gabriel is innocent.
- Monumental Damage: At one point, the Collector captures the Eiffel Tower.
- Most Definitely Not a Villain: The Collector is quite fond of loudly proclaiming that he works for Hawk Moth, which is technically true. He just neglected to mention that he's also self-employed.
- Never Trust a Trailer: Downplayed. The trailer of the episode makes it look like Hawk Moth akumatized Gabriel. This is technically accurate, but it leaves out the important context that Gabriel is Hawk Moth and he akumatized himself to fool the heroes.
- No Ontological Inertia: Averted. Gabriel's plan specifically relies on the fact that an akuma he created will persist after he renounces his power so that he can be vulnerable to it.
- One Degree of Separation: At the end of the episode, Marinette still doesn't know that Master Fu gave Adrien the Cat Miraculous, and in all likelihood, he probably didn't suspect Adrien as being Hawk Moth after she told him the truth anyway.
- Poor Communication Kills: Fearing that Adrien is Hawk Moth, Marinette tells Master Fu that she found the spellbook lying around in the park instead of having stolen it from Adrien when he wasn't looking. Ultimately doesn't matter even by the time she spills, though, since they scratch Adrien and Gabriel off the list due to Gabriel/Hawk Moth setting up a False Flag Operation.
- Precision-Guided Boomerang: The Collector's book, holding his akuma, can be thrown to absorb whatever it touches and turn it into a drawing on its pages, before returning to the villain's hand.
- Properly Paranoid: Gabriel Agreste on many levels. After his book of spells is lost, he immediately assumes that Ladybug and Cat Noir will find about it and figure out his secret. He's 100% right and only manages to get away due to akumatizing himself. Furthermore, he has already scanned the whole book beforehand.
- The Reveal:
- Gabriel Agreste is revealed as Hawk Moth, and Nathalie is aware of this and helps him.
- Hawk Moth's lair and the Agreste mansion are connected via a secret passage unlocked by pressing a combination of secret buttons on the painting of Mrs. Agreste.
- Master Fu is the last of the Guardians of the Miraculouses, an ancient group based in Tibet that trained children to become Miraculous users, but an attack on their temple by an unidentified force led to the loss of the spellbook as well as the Peacock and Butterfly Miraculouses.
- Gabriel tells Marinette that he obtained the book on an overseas trip with his wife. In tandem with Master Fu's reveal, this suggests he had some hand in the temple's destruction and theft of the book and Miraculous (though given Fu is Really 700 Years Old, and we don't know how long ago the temple's destruction was, nothing is set in stone yet).
- Second Super-Identity: Shortly after revealing to the audience that Gabriel is Hawk Moth, he then akumatizes himself into the Collector so that he could throw off suspicion of his true identity.
- Shout-Out:
- The images on the advertising column behind Marinette were originally that of Twilight/The Phantom of the Opera, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
- Cat Noir remembering the butterfly motif in his own home and that it could be evidence that his own father is Hawk Moth is reminiscent of Tangled, when Rapunzel realizes she's been subconsciously drawing the sun motif of her true family's kingdom her entire life and that her supposed mother is actually her kidnapper.
- Sigil Spam: Ladybug points out to Cat Noir that the logo for Gabriel's fashion line is a butterfly as evidence that he is Hawk Moth. Cat then has a terrible realization that there are very subtle butterfly motifs everywhere in the Agreste mansion.
- Spam Attack: How Collector is ultimately defeated. Ladybug launches into him enough projectiles to fill out his whole book.
- Take a Third Option: Marinette is caught between giving the book back to help Adrien, or keeping the one-of-a-kind book for its valuable knowledge. Master Fu simply takes pictures of the pages of the book with his smartphone before they give it back.
- Tantrum Throwing: Invoked Trope by Gabriel Agreste. He does trash his office, throwing down paintings and sculptures around, but if he is furious toward Adrien for stealing his spellbook, the real reason is to make it look more believable to Ladybug and Cat Noir that he was overrun by negative emotions and thus akumatized.
- Tranquil Fury: Gabriel is completely stoic even when he's demolishing his office.
- The Unishment: Plagg tries to convince Adrien to see the latter's punishment of not being allowed to go to school as this.
- Wham Episode: Hawk Moth is unambiguously revealed to be Gabriel Agreste and Nathalie is his Dragon, completely altering their character dynamics.
- Wham Shot: Hawk Moth gives his typical Once per Episode speech when he detects a new akuma victim, this time Gabriel Agreste, and creates an akuma to send after him. However, this time he tells it to stop before it leaves the window, and then de-transforms into Gabriel Agreste.
- Would Hurt a Child: Gabriel as the Collector shows intent to "collect" Adrien after he collects Nathalie and the Gorilla. After he gets de-akumatized, however, he panics about Adrien's whereabouts and says that he's the most important thing to him, implying that even though he's Hawk Moth, Gabriel wasn't an exception to being blinded by rage as an akuma.
- Xanatos Gambit: If The Collector defeats the heroes, then Hawk Moth wins. If The Collector is defeated, then Gabriel is no longer suspected of being Hawk Moth, and thus he still wins.
