The Untold Truth Of Miraculous: Tales Of Ladybug And Cat Noir's Marinette
When fans hear her say, "Tikki, spots on," they know Marinette is about to make the transformation into Ladybug. The fiercely brave and kind superhero is part of the duo in the animated show "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir." When she teams up with Cat Noir, Ladybug is unstoppable in the city of Paris. They take down every villain that their main nemesis, Hawk Moth, throws in their way, and Cat Noir flirts with her at every turn. But when she's finished saving Paris, Ladybug goes back to being Marinette Dupain-Cheng, a teenage schoolgirl who is clumsy, smart, and incredibly in love with her classmate, Adrien.
Though the show is about both Ladybug and Cat Noir, Marinette is the real star. She's the brains behind their operation, and in the face of her constant moral dilemmas, she remains steadfast in her positive side triumphing over her negative thoughts. Both "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir" and Ladybug herself have developed a huge following that spans several generations. It seems like every episode the audience finds out more and more about our beloved superhero, but there are certainly some aspects even the most devoted fans may not know about her. Read on to find out the untold truth of Marinette.
Ladybug on land is not her only form
Fans will remember the surprise Marinette experienced when she met Master Fu and discovered there were more powers to her miraculous than she could ever imagine. Until that point, Ladybug's powers only held up on dry land. But when Ladybug and Cat Noir were faced with villains who took to the water, ice, and even space, they needed to learn how to adapt their powers to defend Paris. Master Fu told Marinette of the special recipes that exist to enhance and adapt miraculous powers to different environments, and both Ladybug and Cat Noir have been a lot stronger ever since.
First, there's the aqua form. This helps Ladybug adapt to the water and gives her the ability to breathe underwater. She also gains fins on her feet and her swimming capabilities and mobility under water are significantly enhanced. Second, there's the ice form. Ladybug can use the ice form when dealing with freezing temperatures so she can focus on her fighting. Additionally, she isn't clumsy on the ice because of her ice skates, which help her navigate icy terrain. The last form is the space form. Ladybug uses this to breathe in space, and she gains a jet pack that helps her mobility in zero gravity.
She's wielded more than her own miraculous
After Marinette learned about enhancing her own powers, she also learned what would happen if she wielded another miraculous — or multiple miraculouses at once. Ladybug's own miraculous mixed with her kwami, Tikki, gives her the ability to fight as Ladybug, but every miraculous comes with different powers and different kwamis. Marinette wields many different miraculouses throughout the show, and combines certain miraculouses with her own or with each other to create the powers necessary to take down the enemy.
First, Marinette wields Cat Noir's miraculous and becomes Lady Noir. She has the same abilities as Cat Noir when she does this. In another transformation, Marinette uses the mouse miraculous to transform into Multimouse, giving her a jump rope and other unique abilities like shrinking down or creating smaller clones of herself. In the same episode, Marinette unifies the mouse miraculous and the fox miraculous to become Multifox through one of her clones. She does this same unification of miraculouses with the cat miraculous to become Multinoir, and with the ladybug miraculous to become Multibug.
Later in the show, Marinette unites the dragon miraculous with her ladybug miraculous to become Dragon Bug. She also combines her miraculous with the bee miraculous to become Lady Bee, and the horse miraculous to become Pegabug. Finally, she combines Pegabug with the rabbit miraculous to become Pennybug. Each of her transformations are calculated, done not for more power, but to give her a better chance of saving Paris.
Alya is her Ladybug successor
Every superhero needs a best friend. Spider-Man has Ned Leeds, Daredevil has Foggy Nelson, and Ladybug has Alya Césaire. Marinette and Alya start the show as best friends, and Alya is not clued in to the fact that Marinette is the true identity of Ladybug. Alya is obsessed with Ladybug, even creating the "LadyBlog" where she posts updates about Ladybug and does a few exclusive interviews with her. However, as the show progresses and Alya becomes part of the superhero group as Rena Rouge, wielding the fox miraculous, Marinette decides to share her identity with Alya, who is the only person to know Marinette's true identity other than Master Fu.
Marinette always handled the miraculouses herself, lending them out only when necessary and recollecting them without fail at the end of every mission. However, in Season 4's "Optigami," Marinette makes the decision to give Alya the fox miraculous officially, trusting that she'll keep it safe and always be a trusted ally to both Ladybug and Marinette. In this same conversation, Marinette tells Alya that if anything ever happened to her, she wants Alya to be in line to replace her as Ladybug.
Why did she do this? Marinette knows Alya is a good person to the core and will always do what's right for the people of Paris. This conversation not only makes Alya officially the keeper of the fox miraculous and the Rena Rouge identity, but also the clear successor to Marinette in wielding the Ladybug miraculous.
Marinette won't date until Hawk Moth is defeated
Marinette is clearly destined to be with classmate Adrien, who (unbeknownst to her) is Cat Noir. From the beginning, it's clear they're going to end up together at some point. However, that time has not yet come, and the two are still unaware of their secret identities and true feelings for one another. Marinette does have another love interest in the show that takes her attention away from Adrien for a few moments: Luka. Brother of her classmate Juleka, Luka meets Marinette when preparing to perform with his band. She's instantly attracted to him, but she knows that Adrien is her true love. However, Luka loves Marinette right away.
Much to the surprise of fans, Marinette and Luka go on a date in Season 4. They almost kiss, but Marinette has to leave the date early to attend to her responsibilities as Ladybug. This causes a rift in their relationship, and they end up breaking up at the end of the episode because Marinette realizes being in a relationship and having to hide her superhero identity would be too hard. Because of this, Marinette decides not to date until she's defeated Hawk Moth. It's a sad moment for those shipping Marinette and Adrien, but it's typical of the lead character — keeping Paris safe is what matters most to her.
Her yo-yo does more than you know
Every wielder of a miraculous gets a special tool that helps them in battle. For Cat Noir, it's his staff. For Ladybug, it's her yo-yo. Her yo-yo is the most important tool of all of them because, as the audience knows (and as we see in pretty much every episode), it's what de-evilizes the akuma butterflies that Hawk Moth sends to his victims. It also helps her to swing through the city at quick speeds, and it accesses her special Ladybug power called her "lucky charm." However, her yo-yo also has plenty of practical functions that are often overlooked.
Marinette can use her yo-yo as a method of restraining villains until she can free their akuma. She can use it as a shield when items are thrown at her or evil beings attack her. She can also use it to slice through items when Cat Noir doesn't have his special cataclysm power handy. It also doubles as a phone when she needs to quickly call someone, but she mostly uses it for calling Cat Noir. She can even access the internet with it, giving her access to maps and all the info she needs to fight crime. Her yo-yo is not only the most important tool of all the miraculouses, but it's also arguably the most multifunctional of all the tools seen on the show.
She almost gives Cat Noir a romantic chance
One of the most compelling parts of the show and what draws in the romantic audience is the will they/won't they romance of Ladybug/Marinette and Cat Noir/Adrien. The plot of the show revolves around Ladybug and Cat Noir's partnership in being superheroes, but it also centers around the romantic love they both feel for one another. Cat Noir is in love with Ladybug, and Marinette is in love with Adrien. However, because they both don't know each other's secret identities, they don't realize that they reciprocate one another's feelings — just in different clothing. This becomes a painstakingly difficult part of the show for audiences to watch, because the two are clearly meant for each other.
This lack of knowledge becomes even more frustrating after one of the webisodes of "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir" was released and confirmed that Ladybug might see Cat Noir differently if Adrien wasn't her true love. The webisode, called "Cat Noir as seen by Marinette," shows Marinette writing in her diary about her partnership with Cat Noir. She mentions that she might even see Cat Noir in a more romantic light than a platonic light if she wasn't so in love with Adrien. However, even just the thought of life without Adrien makes her shudder. Unfortunately, Marinette doesn't yet know that Adrien and Cat Noir are the same person, leaving their romance to be a hope for the future.
She created a new power
Ladybug is the essential miraculous power, because she makes it so the akumas can't do any more evil by de-evilizing them. She uses her yo-yo to trap the evil butterflies and turn them good. The audience sees what happens when akumas aren't de-evilized: They come back with a mighty vengeance and expel their evil tenfold. Though her power takes away that particular akuma's ability in turning someone evil, it does not, however, take away the person's ability to be re-akumatized. There is no method of saving someone from succumbing to negative emotions and letting Hawk Moth take advantage of that.
That is, until the Season 4 episode "Mr. Pigeon 72." This episode follows Mr. Ramier, who has been akumatized 71 times and undergoes his 72nd transformation in this episode. Marinette feels awful about his continuous re-akumatization, so she works with Alya to come up with a plan to stop people from becoming re-akumatized. In this episode, she develops that power, discovering that she can create magic charms for people that, if kept on their person at all times, can ensure their safety from akumatization.
What's great about this is that Marinette becomes the first miraculous holder to create a new power that wasn't already laid out in Master Fu's grimoire. It just further confirms how powerful Ladybug truly is and that there's a lot more for the miraculous holders to learn about their powers.
Fashion is her passion
Though it's clear from the show that Marinette is passionate about keeping her loved ones and the city of Paris safe from harm, that passion is solely expressed through her Ladybug persona. Outside of her superhero duties, Marinette has many of her own passions that she likes to explore. She loves baking with her parents and listening to music, particularly the English rock star Jagged Stone, father of Luka and Juleka Couffaine. However, more than anything, Marinette loves fashion and dreams of one day being a fashion designer.
Throughout the show, there are many instances where Marinette is tasked with designing things for other people. She makes Adrien a hat to model; she designs Jagged Stone's album art; she creates a special hat for a mime; she crafts a cute purse for Tikki to hide in; and she knits a special scarf for Adrien's birthday. Because of her skill, Marinette is even offered the chance to go to New York City with Chloe's mother (who is famous in the fashion world), but turns it down in favor of staying in Paris with her family and friends. She decides to make a website to show off her designs, which makes sense from a marketing perspective, but there's another reason for this: Showing off her designs in public makes her incredibly nervous, especially if Adrien is around.
Her name was originally supposed to be Marietta
To the huge fans of Miraculous Ladybug, it's no secret that creator Thomas Astruc originally designed the story of Ladybug and Cat Noir as a comic format. There are several examples of comic book concept art for the covers of the issues, including both Ladybug and Cat Noir, who in French, is "Chat Noir," meaning Black Cat. The initial concept art revealed a lot about the inspiration and the tone initially conceptualized for the show, and though it's normal to have changes from concept to creation, there's one change in particular that is pretty big.
For the first issue of the concept art Astruc designed, the text on the side of the drawing of Marinette says, "Introducing Marietta." That's right: The clumsy, lovable girl we know named Marinette was originally supposed to be named Marietta. There's no clear reason why Astruc changed the name, but he did say in a tweet that Marinette was initially inspired by what he imagined the child of him and his girlfriend at the time would be like. "My girlfriend was a French/Chinese girl called Sabine," he wrote. "So it was as if Marinette was our virtual child."
She abuses her powers when Adrien is involved
From the first episode, it's clear Marinette puts her Ladybug duties first in every situation — except when Adrien is involved. Marinette doesn't value anything nearly as much as she does her feelings for Adrien. Her logic goes out the window when Adrien is involved. Ladybug has even used her powers to stop other girls from getting in the way of her feelings for Adrien. She uses her lucky charm to stop Adrien from slow dancing with Chloe. She uses her powers to steal Adrien's phone and erase an embarrassing message that she left as Marinette. She even uses her Ladybug identity to humiliate Lila, a girl trying to impress Adrien by flaunting her friendship with Ladybug — a friendship that doesn't actually exist.
Ladybug is the most powerful of the miraculous superheroes. In almost every scenario, Ladybug and Marinette both choose goodness and logic over everything else. That's why she always prevails against evil. Her only weakness, out of everything in the world, comes from her intense feelings for Adrien. As she matures, she learns how to better control her feelings and not let them get in the way of responsibly using her powers. However, she is still a teenager after all, so it's only natural that she would slip up and let her emotions get the better of her every now and again.
Marinette and Ladybug are polar opposites
One key trait about Marinette is that she's somewhat shy and very clumsy. When she's in her civilian form, Marinette doesn't possess all of the enhanced qualities of Ladybug physically, but more prominently, Marinette doesn't possess the personality of Ladybug. Sure, at the roots they're the same person. However, Marinette isn't typically confident in herself. She's timid around Adrien, nervous to make a spectacle of herself in public, and always worries her designs aren't good enough. Ladybug isn't nervous or shy in the slightest. She takes charge and she always knows the right thing to do.
Marinette gains confidence through being Ladybug. This develops throughout the show, bleeding into her civilian personality more and more. It eventually gets to the point where Marinette's only confidence eraser is Adrien. She's strong around her friends and in the face of danger, but Adrien still makes her stumble, stutter, and misstep whenever he's around. As viewers, we all want her two personalities to merge into one, but it's certainly relatable for the audience to watch Marinette struggle with her confidence and use her superhero persona to learn how to improve it.
Some voice actors have quit the show in a row over wages
There are three main markets for "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir:" America, Japan, and France, where the show originates. This means there are three main language dubs for the show, so that people watching it in each of those markets can understand the dialogue. Every version has a different voice cast for all the characters. For Marinette, the English dub is voiced by Cristina Vee; the Japanese dub is voiced by Karin Nanami; and the original French dub is voiced by Anouck Hautbois. It looks like Hautbois, Nanami, and Vee will continue to play Marinette in their respective versions of the show going forward, though English viewers can expect some changes to other characters in future seasons.
As reported by ComicBook.com, a number of actors have left their roles due to a row over wages. "I'm not happy to be leaving but I need to be paid fairly," Reba Buhr, who voiced Juleka, said. Anne Yatco, who voiced Marinette's mother Sabine, is also on the way out. She tweeted: "I'm bummed, but I'm so grateful for my short time on the show and for the warm welcome and support from the Miraculous fans!" Joe Ochman, who voiced Mayor Bourgeois — father of Marinette's rival, the spoiled Chloé Bourgeois — is also exiting the series.