“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
"Backwarder. I am Hawk Moth. I'm granting you the power to make up for lost time by stealing it from others. All I ask for in return is Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous!"
— Hawk Moth
Master Fu asks Marinette to give a love letter to his old friend and love, Marianne. Things go awry when Marinette gives Marianne the wrong letter and she is akumatized into Backwarder, a time-stealing villain.
Tropes:
- Apologetic Attacker: Ladybug apologizes to Cat Noir before deliberately throwing him into the path of Backwarder's attack, since she needs him to act out the actions she made him perform to make her Lucky Charm stop the villain.
- Art Shift: Marinette imagining Adrien reading her letter is in a hand-drawn animesque style.
- Bag of Holding: Ladybug's yo-yo can be used as a magical pouch to hold things. It's somehow linked to Marinette's satchel.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: When discussing plans to stop Adrien from falling in love with Kagami during their trip to London, the girls suggest making the train staff go on strike, Marinette posing as a British celebrity, and kidnapping Kagami.
- Brick Joke: Marinette starts off with three notes. She gives the pharmacy note to Adrien, her note to Lenoir, and Fu's note to the pharmacist. At the end of the episode, Adrien shows up with the prescription she forgot to get.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Zigzagged. Master Fu tries to confess his feelings to Lenoir, but gets interrupted by her both times. She already seems to know what he's going to say, as well.
- Comically Missing the Point: Upon learning that Adrien brought back constipation medicine for Marinette, Rose sincerely states what an act of pure love it is. She's got a point; not everyone would've done that!
- Continuity Nod: When Master Fu infiltrated the Agreste Mansion as a Chinese language teacher, he went by the name "Mr. Chan". This episode confirms that "Chan" is his cover name while in Paris.
- Crazy-Prepared: Hawk Moth's got an emergency Akuma stored in his cane. Also, Master Fu's gone by an assumed name for quite some time, even before Hawk Moth appeared, just in case something like today's events happened someday.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The opening scene, set during World War II, is mostly in black and white. The only Splash of Color are the red searchlights of the Nazi soldiers pursuing Fu and Marianne.
- Emergency Stash: Hawk Moth keeps a single butterfly inside a hidden compartment of his cane, just in case his akuma victim sense starts tingling during a time he can't go to his lair.
- File Mixup: Marinette/Ladybug has three folded pages in her satchel/yo-yo to give to three different people. She ends up giving the prescription to Adrien, her confession to Lenoir, and Master Fu's letter to the pharmacist. The former ends up as a Brick Joke, and the middle one instigates the Villain of the Week.
- Foreshadowing: Fu telling Marinette to take care of the miraculous box if anything happens to him.
- Ghostapo: The Nazis were aware of the Miraculouses and attempted to steal them from Master Fu.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Backwarder's face is lined with several cracks. Whenever she steals time from something or someone, one of the cracks is repaired.
- Hypochondria: Master Fu acts like he's dying, but the doctor brushes off his complaining as overreacting and just tells him to eat more fiber.
- I Kiss Your Hand: Cat Noir kisses Ladybug's hand while making his exit after the battle.
- I Was Quite a Looker: The first few minutes show both Fu and Lenoir as young adults.
- Like Father, Like Son: Both Gabriel and Adrien pretend that they need to use the bathroom to transform.
- Mistaken for Gay: Ladybug by the pharmacist, after accidentally giving her Master Fu's confession.
- Mood Whiplash: Hawk Moth gets one step closer to finding the guardian of the Miracle Box, perhaps his biggest yet. This happens while he's in a public restroom. The scene literally cuts from Hawk Moth's evil monologue to the train conductor reassuring a passenger suffering from Potty Emergency during his Evil Laugh.
- Mundane Utility: Marinette transforms into Ladybug so she can get around the city fast enough to run all her errands before Adrien leaves town for the weekend.
- Never Mess with Granny: As a young adult during World War 2, Lenoir is surely in her nineties. As Backwarder, she's as strong and acrobatic as anyone the heroes have ever faced.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed:
- Adrien and Kagami are going to a royal wedding in London, but no-one is named as specifically getting married.
- Rose mentions a British mega-star named “Adeline”.
- Noodle Incident: Wayzz comes to get Marinette saying it's an emergency. Tikki is worried but Marinette just reminds her of the time that Master Fu locked himself out of his house.
- Oh, Crap!: Ladybug when Backwarder reveals to Hawk Moth that she knows who has the Miracle Box and that Ladybug will lead her to him once she uses her power to make Ladybug rewind.
- Oh Wait, This Is My Grocery List: Ladybug hands over the medical prescription to Adrien; her own letter for Adrien to Lenoir; and Master Fu's letter for Lenoir to the pharmacist.
- Older Than They Look: In the flashback Fu looks like a young man during WW2, but assuming this was the occupation of Paris by the Nazi's in 1940 and he's 186 in the present that means Fu would be about 110 years old at this point.
- Passing the Torch: Fearing that he's dying, Master Fu entrusts the Miraculous Box's care to Marinette in case something happens to him.
- Potty Emergency: Both Hawk Moth and Cat Noir pretend that they need to use the bathroom to change into their alter-egos. And the bathrooms being occupied for so long causes a random passenger to have an actual one.
- Properly Paranoid: Master Fu goes by a fake name just in case his real one is learned by Hawk Moth. Sure enough, Hawk Moth does learn it in this episode, but because Fu goes by a fake name, the information is useless to him since he can't track Fu using it. Note that for no one under his real name to be known in Paris, he has to have been using a fake name since long before Hawk Moth appeared.
- Though it isn't mentioned, this episode lets us know that Marinette and Adrien not knowing each other's Secret Identity (as well as the other heroes not knowing either of theirs) might be a good idea after all - if someone in the know gets akumatized, it wouldn't be hard for the beans to get spilled to Hawk Moth. Lenoir gave away everything she knew about Master Fu without even being asked. Though, to be fair, her heartbreak regarding him was why she got akumatized and hunting him down was her primary motivation as a villain. Hawk Moth had no clue she knew anything relevant to his plans until she mentioned this.
- Sdrawkcab Speech: A natural consequence of people being forced to act in reverse. Ladybug invokes it by having Cat Noir say "Cataclysm" in reverse so he'll say it properly once he's affected by Backwarder's power.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The Nazi soldiers have no role outside the flashback at the beginning of the episode but they started the whole mess by being the reason Master Fu and Marianne parted ways.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Master Fu and Marianne Lenoir have been in love with each other for decades, but circumstances have forced them to stay apart. They were separated during what seems to be the Nazi occupation of Paris and haven't seen each other since. When they finally reunite, she has to leave again so Hawk Moth can't use her to find the Guardian's whereabouts.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Alya suggests telling Adrien how Marinette feels. Juleka states an equally simple solution of kidnapping Kagami so that she can't spend any time with Adrien. No points for guessing which plan Marinette would prefer to go with.
