It seems like Marinette and Adrien's double lives as superheroes will always prevent them from being together. Tikki and Plagg decide to help them by reassigning their Miraculouses, hopefully allowing them to finally love each other in peace.
Tropes:
- Absurdly Sharp Claws: Zoé's Black Cat suit comes with some. She uses them to cut the strings of the parachute Lucky Charm after filling it with paint.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: When Adrien visits Marinette at the beginning, she is very distant with him and frequently falls into Heroic Self-Deprecation. Not being able to stand seeing her that way, Adrien passionately says that he loves her.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Zoé dispassionately says that she's so afraid of Kikou before running away with the Lucky Charm. He completely believes this.
- Bait the Dog: Gabriel senses Adrien's negative emotions, but realizes that he's targeting Adrien and stops himself, instead choosing to console him. However, his actual goal is to get Adrien to wear his Alliance Ring under the pretense of maintaining contact, so Gabriel can grant him Miraculous powers on top of his akumatization.
- Battle Couple: Defied. When Tikki chooses Alya, Plagg considers choosing Nino, but thinks that they would run into the same problem as Adrien and Marinette despite the pair already being a couple. Plagg instead chooses Zoé when she demonstrates a rationality the others lack at the moment.
- Big Brother Is Watching: As previously shown in "Jubilation", Alliance Rings can detect when their users exceed human capabilities, and report this information to Gabriel. Since Alya and Zoé both wear Alliance Rings, Gabriel is alerted of their secret identities after their first battle.
- Blatant Lies: When Nathalie tells Gabriel not to take advantage of Adrien's grief, Gabriel lies to her face and says that he just wants to console his son, only to use it as an excuse to get him to wear his Alliance Ring prior to akumatizing him. One wonders how he intended to explain that to Nathalie after the fact.
- Breaking the Fellowship: Tikki and Plagg decide to separate themselves from Marinette and Adrien so they can no longer be burdened by their hero responsibilities and can pursue a loving relationship with each other.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Marinette still can't say she loves Adrien. Even when Adrien tries a yes/no response game, Marinette instinctively raises her hand for "no" when directly asked if she loves him, though she makes it clear she meant "yes".
- Can't See a Damn Thing: Kikou's Shell-ter protects the akuma in his boxing helmet, so Scarabella and Zoé trick him into willingly ending it by dropping a large amount of paint onto him, blinding him. He ends the Shell-ter in a panic and Scarabella quickly uses her yo-yo to grasp and snap his helmet.
- Combo Platter Powers: In addition to his immense size and strength from his Akumatization, Kikou also receives five Miraculous powers from Monarch, one for each of his Alliance Rings. Clout, making his punches even more destructive; Voyage, allowing him to portal himself and others around; Shell-ter, creating a shield around his head to protect his akumatized headguard; Resistance, preventing the shield from simply being Cataclysmed; and Multitude, allowing him to split himself into three slightly smaller duplicates.
- Despair Event Horizon: Both Marinette and Adrien reach this point at the start, enough to get Monarch's attention.
- Double-Meaning Title: Thanks to Kikou wearing five Alliance Rings, Monarch can use the power of Transmission to directly give him five powers in addition to akumatizing him. And Tikki and Plagg transmit their Miraculouses from the normal heroes to Alya and Zoé.
- Even Evil Has Standards: While Gabriel isn't above akumatizing Adrien when he's at his lowest, Nathalie is, immediately presuming (correctly) that he would do it and advising against it.Nathalie: Don't take advantage of his distress.
- Foreshadowing: Zoé leaves a message for Marinette telling her she knows how complicated love can be.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Marinette has a bad case of this at the beginning, where she keeps calling herself a failure as both a hero and civilian.
- Idiot Ball: Tikki and Marinette previously learned in "Jubilation" that the Alliance Rings constantly track their user's movements in the form of a walking app, which convinced Marinette to swear off using the ring for fear that such data could be used to uncover her secret identity. While it's never shown if she warned Cat Noir about the feature, Tikki and Plagg don't warn their new holders, so Alya and Zoé don't think to remove theirs prior to heroing.
- Ironic Juxtaposition: As the friend group happily says how great it is that Marinette and Adrien are finally together, it cuts to them both lying on their beds, completely miserable. Later, their friends start to realize that the plan has failed and try to plan a new intervention, just as the two really do get closer.
- It's Not You, It's My Enemies: When Adrien confesses his love to Marinette, she painfully looks at her earring before rejecting him. Once Tikki takes the Miraculous back, she's much more open to a relationship.
- Kick the Morality Pet: In previous episodes (see "Glaciator 2" for the best example), Gabriel would refuse to akumatize Adrien and generally cared that something was bothering Adrien enough to make him vulnerable. Only in two Bad Future episodes was Gabriel willing to do so, and in both cases he had just learned his son was Cat Noir. In this episode, even despite Nathalie telling him not to, he drops that rule and tries to akumatize Adrien simply for the sake of another Villain of the Week. Fortunately, his insistence on getting Adrien to wear an Alliance Ring so he'll be a more powerful villain provides enough time for Adrien's mood to shift.
- Love Is a Weakness: Marinette initially holds a disdain for love as it's brought her nothing but misery while also costing her the Miraculouses to her mortal enemy.
- Near-Villain Victory: Monarch was so close to akumatizing Adrien. If he had gone through with akumatizing him the first time around instead of "checking up on him" to see if he had his alliance ring, he would have been able to akumatize Adrien at his lowest while he still had his miraculous. Since he waited, Plagg leaves with the ring and Adrien manages to break himself free of his funk within seconds of the megakuma reaching him.
- Moment Killer: Subverted - Marinette's parents poke their heads out of her room's door right to call her as Adrien asks Marinette "Did you ever love me?". They quietly head back downstairs instead after hearing that.
- No Name Given: Zoé doesn't yet provide a name for her Black Cat superhero form. The next episode has her dubbing herself Kitty Noire.
- No-Sell: Thanks to a combination of Shell-ter and Resistance, Kikou's head is protected by a shield that resists both physical attacks and Cataclysm. He has to be tricked into deactivating it himself.
- Non-Answer: After Marinette asks Tikki if they'll ever see each other again, the little Kwami somberly remarks that she'll never forget Marinette.
- Nonchalant Dodge: As Scarabella takes on Kikou alone, she easily dodges all his attacks and smiles the entire time.
- Only Sane Man: The friend group immediately throws a party assuming that Marinette and Adrien got together, then starts planning a Zany Scheme when they learn that they didn't. Zoé is the only one that wants to just talk to them before doing anything else. This is apparently enough for Plagg to choose her as his new holder.
- Opening Shout-Out: Marinette references the first lines of her opening intro when arguing with Tikki.Marinette: I'm just Marinette, a normal girl with a normal life. But there's something about me that no one knows yet... I'm pathetic!
- Pet the Dog: Subverted. While Monarch salivates at the thought of unleashing a villain based on heartbreak and young love, he stops just short of creating a megakuma when he realizes that it's Adrien and turns in for the day. He talks to Adrien and seemingly intends to comfort him, until it's revealed he just wants Adrien to wear an Alliance Ring to ensure that could grant Adrien a Miraculous power on top of akumatizing him.
- The Power of Love: Tikki says that Marinette and Adrien's love for each other makes them stronger, but Plagg says that their mission keeps getting between them, making them miserable.
- Rule of Symbolism: While depressed over her lackluster love life, Marinette's room is shrouded in darkness. But after Tikki gives her the chance to be a normal girl again, her room is bright and full of colors.
- Second Super-Identity: Plagg gives the Black Cat Miraculous to Zoé, and she becomes a Cat Girl heroine, distinct from her previous super-identity as Vesperia.
- Security Cling: Marinette does this to Adrien during the supervillain attack. They both notice that she's doing it, but both clearly enjoy it.
- Simple, yet Awesome: Since Marinette is famously awful at communicating verbally, Adrien (after the two of them give up their miraculous and manage to process their grief) is able to get Marinette to admit her feelings through simple "yes/no" hand gestures.
- Sudden Downer Ending: The new Ladybug/Cat duo successfully stop one of the strongest villains yet, and Adrien and Marinette can finally be themselves around each other. Then The Stinger comes, revealing that Gabriel knows who the new heroes are thanks to their Alliance Rings.
- Third-Person Person: Kikou always refers to himself in the third-person, and uses very simple language.
- Two Scenes, One Dialogue: The Kwamis of Creation and Destruction give their speeches of resignation to their holders at the same time, using similar (though more self-deprecating for Plagg) dialog.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Scarabella tells Zoé her plan after creating her Lucky Charm, but the view cuts back over to Kikou so the viewers don't hear it.
- We Need a Distraction: Scarabella lets Kikou spend his time trying to crush her while Zoé goes to have the Lucky Charm parachute filled up with paint.
