Episode 7 - Farmer Fear

When I want a song to represent fear, there’s little better than Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden. Although I adored this band growing up, there’s a bit of a bittersweet feeling for me these days.

Farmer Fear

I want to say something straight away. I know she’s basically Scarecrow. What’s less believable, but honestly true, is that I didn’t notice that until I’d finished the first draft and sent it to my first proof-readers. After that, I figured I’d just roll with it. There are a lot of references in Miraculous to other superheroes (I’ve even heard that Miraculous: Le Film was pitched as “Spider-Man meets Frozen”) so I decided to openly admit it. An Akuma in Season 2 (Rubber Robber) is based on Ms. Marvel’s powers (/Mr. Fantastic/Plastic Man)

The fact that Collette gives near the beginning of the episode, about Jack-O’-Lanterns originally being made with turnips is true, and they look completely horrifying. In the original draft, before I’d properly worked out the timeframe, she used a pumpkin. I think this works better. Her face underneath is pure nightmare fuel for me though.

Marinette with her hair down

I make no apology for the fact that I lifted the “Marinette loses her bunches” moment directly from Heart Hunter. I loved that moment when you saw the expression on Adrien and Kagami’s faces, they both looked so charmed by Marinette.

Having both Adrien and Kagami realise that they are attracted to Marinette was an important part of the development of the plot. I began the season with both Marinette and Adrien putting aside their unrequited loves, for selfless reasons. My ultimate plan is for Marinette and Adrien to end up together, but I want to explore a different way to approach that.

In the show Kagami can’t be with Adrien because he can’t tell her the truth about being Chat Noir. This has changed in Miraculous: Contingency, partially because Adrien waited longer after giving up on Ladybug, partially because everyone is a year older than they were in the show, and partially because Kagami now has a suspicion of what Adrien is hiding, so understands it more.

Lila

I’ll talk about her more in the commentary to the next episode, but I quite like her introduction to Miraculous: Contingency here. I’ve always intended Lila to become a more significant villain than she was for the first four seasons of the show – I wanted to have sections where Lila would be the main villain. I didn’t quite succeed with that goal, but she’s going to develop a little differently to the show. There are always going to be similarities though.