Chloé and Lila hatch a plan to sabotage everyone's futures with false school forms and blame Marinette for it. But their scheme not only gets Juleka re-akumatized, it results in some unexpected developments.
Tropes:
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Lila’s form claims she wants to end all political conflict, save the environment, and hand out free candy to children. She would’ve added “Be Marinette’s best friend”, but all of those were Blatant Lies anyway.
- Behind Every Great Man: Deconstructed. Mayor Andre refuses to allow Damocles expel his daughter and Lila or allow him to fix the damage they caused while threatening to have him fired. The scene then switches to his office, showing that Audrey is forcing him to make those threats.
- "Be Quiet!" Nudge: Lila does this to Chloé twice, first kicking her with her heel when the latter overplays her hand in hastily accusing Marinette, and then stomping on her foot when she nearly blurts out their plan to the class after Sabrina tries to expose their actions.
- Bittersweet Ending: One all around in this episode. Mr. Damocles stands up to Mayor Bourgeois and manages to save his students' futures (and unlock a new ability of the Magical Charms in the process), but loses his job as a result. Chloé and Lila suffer major consequences as a result of their scheme being exposed, but still manage to stay active threats. Lila, in particular, is finally exposed as the manipulative liar that she is and gets expelled from school, thus forcing to ditch her current identity for one of her others and go underground to continue her schemes. Chloé, meanwhile, manages to avoid expulsion due to her calling on her father once again, but is now even more unpopular with the student body than before and now totally friendless with Sabrina no longer willing to help her. And most of all, Ms. Bustier makes it clear that she intends to give her wayward student her full attention in their remaining time together.
- Breaking the Fellowship: Nathaniel comments that he can't go to the same high school as everyone since it doesn't offer his ideal art programs, meaning he'll have to go to another school.
- Call-Back: In "Adoration", Sabrina was reluctant to sabotage the whole school dance purely to get back at Marinette, and had to be akumatized to go along with it. Here, Chloé and Lila deciding to frame Marinette for ruining everyone's career choices is the kick in the pants she needs to stand up for herself and break things off with the duo.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Chloé. After Lila reveals her plan to ruin all their classmates' lives and pin the blame on Marinette, Chloé is overjoyed and praises Lila for being "utterly villainous".
- Chekhov's Armory: The Magical Charms given to Nino, Kim, Sabrina and Juleka over the past two seasons pool their energies to supercharge that of Mr. Damocles.
- Chekhov's Gun: The bathroom that is out of order for no obvious reason early in the episode.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Rose's dream job is to be a hairstylist for unicorns. When Marinette points out that they don't exist, she decides to be a hairstylist for dragons.
- Comically Missing the Point: As mentioned above, Rose tells Marinette her dream job is to be a hairstylist for unicorns. After Marinette points out that unicorns don't exist, Rose decides to be a hairstylist for dragons, apparently unaware that dragons don’t exist, either. Not to mention that in most depictions, dragons don't even have hair.
- Dark Reprise: The shot of Reflekta preparing to use Clout is an evil mirror of Juleka doing so as Purple Tigress.
- Deadly Dodging: Ladybug and Cat Noir lure two Reflektas into what looks to be a blocked-off alley, but is in fact just a thin, brick-patterned sheet. When the Reflektas attack, they jump out of the way and the two punch each other unconscious.
- Didn't Think This Through: The Resistance gets the idea to protest against having to fill out their career forms at an early age. Juleka points out that everyone but Adrien has already turned them in.
- Double-Meaning Title: The theme of confrontation is shown throughout the episode: from Lila being confronted over her true nature as a manipulative witch to Principal Damocles confronting the mayor over his refusal to follow through with his corrupt agenda.
- Engineered Public Confession: Marinette replaces the mirror in the temporary bathroom with a one-way mirror and has Sabrina trick Lila and Chloé into revealing the whole plan, while the class and entire faculty watches in secret. This also has the bonus of exposing Lila's previous acts of truancy, extortion, forgery, abuse of power and conspiracy against Marinette to everyone who didn't believe the latter beforehand.Lila: What's your so-called proof, Sabrina? A microphone? A video? It doesn't matter. I'll come up with a new lie and people will believe me. I had everyone believing that Marinette pushed me down the stairs. I had everyone believing that I was halfway around the world so I wouldn't have to go to school. And if I wanted to, I could even convince your own father to put you in jail, and that's what's gonna happen if you don't hand over that proof!
- Foreshadowing:
- Ms. Mendeleiev bitterly comments that she would run things differently if she was principal.
- Marinette gets a call early on that she doesn't bother to explain, and has a noticeable grimace when she returns to the Resistance's meeting. Later when Lila tries pinning the blame for the forms on her, Marinette is uncharacteristically calm about the situation, compared to her usual reaction to Lila's lies. This hints that she had foreknowledge of the plan, and it's soon revealed that Sabrina gave her a warning about what Lila and Chloé were planning.
- Lila in her Cerise identity wears a purple shirt under her jacket, the same color as Monarch, whose Miraculous she plans to steal.
- Lila tells Marinette that she would have added "Be Marinette's best friend" to her career form, but it was a lie, just like the rest. Surely enough, her identity appears to be "the rest"...
- Frame-Up: Lila has Sabrina make fake copies of every single student's school forms except Marinette's. She claims that this is how she received the forms from the baker girl when she became the class rep, and that Marinette's being the only one not tampered with only proves that she maliciously had them changed out of alleged revenge for being replaced as class rep by her classmates. Marinette points out that she can't imitate people's handwriting well enough to pull such a thing off, but Sabrina can, which Lila quickly tries to spin by having Sabrina claim Marinette asked her to do so. Sabrina instead turns on Lila and Chloé, much to their surprise.
- Grew a Spine: After Lila and Chloé force her to replace their classmates' school forms with bad career choices as part of their latest attempt to ruin Marinette's reputation, Sabrina finally decides that enough is enough! Not only does she tell Marinette about the plan ahead of time, but she also works with her in a plan to expose the two mean girls once and for all. And best of all, once all's said and done, she, like Adrien, ends her "friendship" with Chloé... for good this time!Sabrina: I don't think I can do it! Helping Chloé doesn't hurt anyone, but this...forging documents and lying...It's different! It's going to hurt people.
- Heartfelt Apology: Ms. Bustier apologizes to Marinette for not believing her sooner about Lila's true character. The rest of the class, led by Alya follows suit in a deleted scene.
- Here We Go Again!: After being exposed and expelled, Lila makes her way to her other class, where she is known as Cerise, just in time for their student-teacher meeting to discuss their academic futures.
- Hive Mind: This time around, all the copies of Reflekta share a single will.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Ladybug and Cat Noir set up a fake wall and trick two copies of Reflekta into hitting it with a Clout-enhanced punch from both sides, knocking them out and allowing Ladybug to break her fan.
- Idle Rich: Chloé brags to Marinette that she doesn't need to think about her future because her parents are rich, so she'll never have to work.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Once again, Juleka mumbles what she wants to say. When telling her projects for the future to Marinette, the end of her sentence is tuned out. Marinette understands it completely anyways and encourages her into it.
- Internal Reveal:
- Mr. Damocles learns about the resistance meeting in the boiler room, but keeps their secret because he's proud of them.
- Marinette and Adrien's classmates and teachers finally learn what a talented liar Lila is.
- It Has Only Just Begun: The girl formerly known as Lila tells her fellow mean girl to prepare for the upcoming war.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Downplayed. Lila's luck finally runs out thanks to Sabrina and Marinette revealing her crimes, resulting in her expulsion from school and forcing her to give up on being Lila now that her true nature has been revealed. However, she simply discards that identity and falls back on another, calling Chloé to assure her this is only a setback. Chloé, meanwhile, escapes punishment as usual thanks to her father, though her friendship with Sabrina is now in ruins, and Miss Bustier promises to keep a closer eye on her from now on.
- Kick the Dog: While Chloé and Lila deliberately ruining everyone's futures just to destroy Marinette is already beyond the pale, some of their acts in that stand out as particularly cruel:
- They force Juleka to repeat the year just because she already has once before, which gets her akumatized.
- When Lila sees Adrien's form says that he loves Marinette, Lila orders Sabrina to make whatever she had forged for Adrien's form prior even worse.
- Lila even tells Sabrina that she could come up with a lie that could get her arrested by her father, who happens to be a police officer, if she doesn't turn over the proof she claimed to have of their misdeeds.
- When Mr. Damocles is on the brink of being akumatized due to his shame over failing to help his students and discipline Chloé and Lila, and throwing away his principles to save himself from getting fired, all the kids give Damocles a pep talk to try to life his spirits, except Chloé, who laughs mockingly and says that Damocles has always been a coward. But she and Lila are forced out once Marinette realizes the charms respond to positive emotion.
- Liar Revealed: Lila has finally been exposed to everyone in the school for the no-good manipulative liar that she is....only to reveal that she has other identities and other victims in other schools at the end, meaning that she remains an active threat (only in secret that is).
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: When Mr. Damocles rejects his negative thoughts and grasps his Magical Charm, it enlarges into a shield that blocks and purifies the akuma.
- Madness Mantra: The Reflektas all say "Together forever!" when transforming someone.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": The entire class is appalled to learn that Juleka will be forced to repeat a grade again.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Overlaps with Backstabbing the Alpha Bitch. Being asked to hurt the entire class just to get one over on Marinette is a bridge too far for Sabrina, so she hatches a plan with Marinette to expose both Chloé and Lila to the rest of the school.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Juleka goes full Suddenly Shouting mode when it seems that Mr. Damocles will be akumatised for her sake and needs encouragement.
- Oh, Crap!: Lila is visibly rattled when every last bit of her two-faced personality is revealed to everyone around her.
- Out-Gambitted: Lila's plan to frame Marinette meets Marinette's plan to expose Lila, and the latter finally wins, with help from Sabrina.
- Power Glows: The Magical Charms glow in unison as everyone encourages Mr. Damocles to resist the akuma.
- The Reveal: Lila's name isn't even Lila, and she has been wearing a wig this whole time.
- Saying Too Much: Chloé's impatience with the latest revenge plot pushes her to quickly blame Marinette and later to call Sabrina a traitor on the spot. Each time, Lila has to firmly remind her to shut up.Chloé: Aha! That totally proves she's the villain!
Lila: Oh Marinette. You didn't need to do this. (steps on Chloé's foot while glaring at her) - Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Mr. Damocles refuses to allow Chloé and Lila to ruin everyone's futures, allowing them to resubmit their forms against Mayor Bourgeois's wishes, even though it costs him his job in the end.
- Shout-Out: Nino suggests to keep the Résistance by having everyone pick Jacques de Trémeuse high school. Jacques de Trémeuse, just like Françoise Dupont, is the civilian name of a fictional French superhero, "Judex
". - So Proud of You: Mr Damocles' reaction to discovering his students have been hiding in the boiler room to prepare a way to protect their school from danger. It's enough for him to lie to Mrs. Mendeleiev about their presence there in an effort to keep their activities a secret.
- The Stinger: Bustier calls in Chloé after her parents unsurprisingly get her expulsion reversed, expressing her disappointment in her student's refusal to change along with the intention to be tougher on her as her teacher in the time they have left together. Later, the disgraced queen bee gets a call from Cerise, the girl formerly known as Lila whom she assumed abandoned her, to prepare for the upcoming war. It then shows Cerise reuniting with another class.
- Strictly Formula: As usual, there is an akumatized villain for the heroes to fight, but she is far from the primary threat. Reflekta is defeated about two minutes after she shows up, with the bulk of the episode focused on Lila's plot to take down Marinette, Marinette finally exposing Lila as a Manipulative Bastard, and the subsequent failed akumatization of Mr. Damocles.
- Throwing Off the Disability: Juleka manages to overcome her speech impediment to encourage Mr. Damocles, which proves to be the final straw necessary to get him out of his funk.
- Too Dumb to Live: Chloé. When Mr. Damocles is about to be akumatized, Chloé mocks him and tries to break his spirit, even though doing so would lead him to immediately get akumatized into a supervillain and no doubt try to get revenge on her.
- Took a Level in Badass: This version of Reflekta can not only turn people into copies of herself, but control them as well.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Lila makes her exit while everyone is busy helping Mr. Damocles overcome the Megakuma, ditching her hair (revealed to be a wig) and greeting some friends as "Cerise".
- Villain Respect: Chloé compliments Lila for her evil plan to ruin the lives of all their classmates, especially Marinette.
- Villainous Breakdown: Gabriel acts like a baby after his Megakuma is purified by Mr. Damocles.
- Wham Episode:
- Lila's duplicity is revealed to the school and she has to abandon that identity, the Magical Charms are revealed to purify Megakumas with sufficient motivation/positive reinforcement, Sabrina finally stands up against Chloé and ends their friendship for good, and Mr. Damocles has to resign as principal after defying Mayor Bourgeois to save his students' futures, expelling Lila and temporarily expelling Chloé.
- While Lila's expulsion appears to be revoked, she is revealed to be attending another school under her assumed true identity, and has no intent on coming back now that she's been exposed.
- Wham Line: "You can do this, Mr. Damocles!" Notable because it's spoken aloud by Juleka, who has never spoken above a low mutter outside of being Akumatized. It ends up being the last push Mr. Damocles needs to do the right thing and defy Mayor Bourgeois.
- Wrongful Accusation Insurance: In a sense. Marinette tricks Mr. Damocles into putting up a temporary bathroom by making it seem as if the school bathrooms are out of order, then modifies said bathroom with a one-way mirror to expose Lila. She does apologize and promises to repair the damage, but by all indications she's let off the hook for proving Lila's duplicity.
