Episode 7
- Mr. Pigeon - Tales of Xavier the Bird Man
Collège Françoise Dupont becomes host of a design contest judged by Gabriel Agreste, Adrien's father: the participants will have ten hours to design a new bowler hat, and the winning design will be worn by Adrien in a publicity campaign. While Nino boos at Gabriel Agreste's image, Marinette gets into a contest of wills with Chloé, who intends to participate as well.
Marinette begins to plan out what to make, as she's never made a bowler hat, only to drive herself into a depressive state by falling into a catastrophizing spiral. Alya takes it upon herself to cheer her up, and when Adrien sees some of Marinette's designs, he states he thinks that she has a good chance of winning, bringing Marinette around and boosting her own confidence in the process—much to the painful complaints of Alya, whom Marinette clambered over in her excitement.
Watching this, Chloé declares that Adrien was only being nice and that she will win with her own design... only to immediately order Sabrina to steal Marinette's sketchbook, clearly intending to use Marinette's work as her own.
Marinette goes to the Trocadéro in order to find inspiration for her work, but she finds herself in a creative block due to the time constraints. Her musings get interrupted when she sees M. Ramier, a man with a great love for pigeons, cooing and acting out like a pigeon himself, stunning Marinette. Officer Raincomprix shows up and berates M. Ramier: it's not the first time the officer's caught him feeding birds in a public park, something that's completely forbidden—especially for him! Roger takes Ramier's bag of bird feed and tells him to leave the park.
Marinette feels pity for the man, but when she looks around and sees a pigeon amidst her discarded designs, she finds inspiration in the animal, quickly drawing out a design that using the bird's plumage. Chloé, who is spying from afar, attempts to have Sabrina take the sketchbook, but when Sabrina attempts to point out how it'd be easier to just use one of the discarded designs, Chloé ignores her, storms off, and takes a photo of the design when Marinette lifts her sketchbook to check it out from a different angle. Marinette continues working on her idea, musing on possible options, while behind her, a pigeon flock attacks and kidnaps Officer Raincomprix.
Chloé gives the photos to a professional tailor and demands that they make the hat in time for the contest. Tikki berates her for not only stealing the design but not even putting in the work to actually make the hat. Chloé clearly doesn't care, but it all gets interrupted when she sees her terrace is full of pigeons.
Marinette's way home is interrupted when thousands of pigeons begin to crowd the streets. Watching a public TV screen, she learns that a new akuma, M. Pigeon, has sent the pigeons to invade the city.
Tikki attempts to convince Chloé to suit up, but Chloé's too scared and/or disgusted of the pigeons to pay any attention to her. Seeing Chat Noir pass by—and sneezing as he does so—Tikki manages to appeal to Chloé's love of attention to convince her to transform, pointing out Chat Noir will be doing the after interview if she doesn't.
Marinette meets Chat Noir on her the way home, discovering in the process that he's allergic to feathers. Scarlet Lady interrupts their conversation, but they proceed to ignore her as Marinette mentions the akuma's real identity and her suspicions about his akumatized object being his bird whistle. When Marinette suggests using some "live" bait for M. Pigeon to go after, Scarlet Lady "thanks" her for volunteering to be said bait.
The plan is simple: having noticed that the birds are going after police officers and park keepers, Marinette puts on a fake police cap while singing about the pigeon feathers she's finding. Chat Noir suggests that she "act natural," but his suggestions only make Marinette laugh at his dorkiness, much to Scarlet Lady's disgust. M. Pigeon sends the pigeons to capture Marinette.
The pigeon flock grabs Marinette, allowing Chat Noir—sneezing from all the feathers in the air—and Scarlet Lady to follow them to the Grand Palais, where they find Marinette and all the police officers locked up in a cage. Chat Noir comes up with a plan to ambush M. Pigeon from above, but an unfortunate sneeze shocks Scarlet Lady off the platform they are using, ruining the plan.
Scarlet Lady summons her Lucky Charm, a coin, and Marinette immediately comes up with an idea that Chat Noir quickly acts on: using the coin to buy a bag of popcorn from a nearby vending machine, he smashes it with his staff to cover M. Pigeon with the snacks, attracting all the pigeons towards the akuma and distracting him while Scarlet Lady pulls him up using her yo-yo and a beam as a pulley. M. Pigeon drops his bird call whistle, and Scarlet Lady steps on it, crushing it along with M. Pigeon's hand.
Chloé gets back to school just as the contest begins, with her copied hat ready, while Marinette arrives immediately after, only to be informed by Alya that Chloé's hat is identical to hers. When Gabriel—watching through a tablet held by Nathalie—sees the identical entries, Chloé attempts to claim Marinette copied her design, but Marinette proves otherwise by showing Chloé is the one who copied everything—including Marinette's signature embroidered around the outside of the hat.
Chloé tries to blame Sabrina for the plagiarism, claiming she came up with the idea, but the principal, Nathalie, and Gabriel make it clear they aren't going to fall for it: not only do they disqualify Chloé from the contest, Nathalie also bans her from any future contests related to the Gabriel brand. Marinette wins, and Adrien congratulates her while sneezing from the feathers on her hat, surprising her by revealing that he's also allergic to feathers.
Xavier Ramier is depressed from not being able to feed his pigeons, but then an old lady approaches him and brings him to a roof that is also a nesting place for birds. The lady, presenting herself as Marianne Lenoir, gives him permission to come and feed the birds to his heart's content whenever he wants, much to the man's joy, while Marianne (an old friend of Fu's) thinks that maybe M. Ramier could become a Miraculous wielder in the future.
This episode contains examples of:
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Marianne Lenoir appears here, in Season 1, instead of her canon debut in Season 3's "Backwarder."
- Didn't Think This Through: Chloé thinks she can easily win by copying Marinette's design and then accusing her of being the plagiarist. Marinette not only points out that her signature, subtly included in the embroidery, is on both her own entry and Chloé's but that she also has the original sketches.
- Disaster Dominoes: Marinette's catastrophe spiral involves her thinking this will happen.
- Do Wrong, Right:
- When Tikki calls out Chloé for copying Marinette's design, she also calls her out for not even bothering to put in the work, since Chloé's offloading everything to a professional tailor.
- Nathalie and Gabriel Agreste are clearly unimpressed that Chloé not only copied Marinette's design, but that she didn't even bother to check it for anything that would identify it as Marinette's—such as her signature being embroidered somewhere.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: M. Ramier, after going through his akumatization, meets someone who shows him a place where he can feed birds without causing problems for himself.
- Endearingly Dorky: Chat Noir's demonstrating to Marinette how to "act natural" makes her laugh at how dorky he looks.
- Especially Zoidberg: When M. Ramier attempts to get out of trouble by suggesting that feeding birds is not forbidden for him, Officer Raincomprix immediately replies, "Especially for you!"
- Fantastically Indifferent: Marinette's reaction to M. Pigeon covering the streets with pigeons... is to grumble that she now has to walk home.
- Flaw Exploitation: Tikki manages to get Chloé to transform by appealing to her love for attention, pointing out that if she doesn't act, then Chat Noir will be doing the post-fight interview.
- Frame-Up: Chloé attempts to do this twice during the contest.
- First, she attempts to claim Marinette copied her bowler hat design. Marinette quickly shoots that down by showing that her signature is on said design and pointing out that she also has the original sketches.
- When she realizes she's been caught, Chloé tries to blame Sabrina, but neither M. Damocles, Gabriel, nor Nathalie fall for it, pointing that the hat was entered into the contest under Chloé's name.
- Got Volunteered: Scarlet Lady, when she hears Marinette's suggestion of using live bait to find M. Pigeon, immediately pressures Marinette to be said bait.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Chloé wanted her hat to be a perfect copy of Marinette's so she could get the benefits of winning and frame Marinette as a plagiarist. The copy is so perfect that it also has Marinette's name embroidered around the outside, revealing Chloé as the plagiarist.
- Hypocritical Humor: Chloé declares she'll win the contest with her own original designs and that Adrien was only complimenting Marinette's work because he was being nice. She promptly orders Sabrina to steal Marinette's sketchbook (clearly intending to use them herself and knowing they are good enough to win with) and eventually photographs one of her designs.
- I Kiss Your Hand: Chat Noir does this to Marinette when she suggests how to distract the akuma with the Lucky Charm coin.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While he could have done it in a less stringent way, Officer Raincomprix is right in that feeding birds in a park is a potential hazard for public health and safety. Plus, it's made clear that this is not the first time he's caught M. Ramier doing it and that Officer Raincomprix is simply angry that he keeps doing it despite having been warned multiple times.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Chloé's blatant attempt to steal Marinette's bowler hat design not only ends in her public humiliation but also gets her banned from all future contests organized by the Gabriel brand.
- Mood Whiplash: Marinette goes from being morose over her catastrophe spiral to widely smiling and sparkling after Adrien sincerely compliments her work.
- Pet the Dog: While she's doing it partly to potentially sound the man out as a possible Miraculous wielder, Marianne is still helping M. Ramier do what he likes in a way that keeps him out of trouble with law enforcement.
- Right Behind Me: Marinette is so concentrated on sketching her idea for a bowler hat that she completely misses Officer Raincomprix getting kidnapped by a pigeon flock.
- Stating the Simple Solution: As Chloé photographs Marinette's pigeon bowler hat design, Sabrina (unsuccessfully) attempts to point out that Chloé could have easily picked up and used one of the many designs Marinette has balled up and discarded.
- Tears of Joy: Ramier's reaction when Marianne shows him the bird refuge.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Marinette as she watches M. Ramier cooing and waving his arms like a pigeon.
- When She Smiles: Marinette's sparkling smile when Adrien compliments her work prompts him to decide he needs to do it more often.
