gabriel did not sacrifice anything. and here's why. | Miraculous Ladybug Video Essay

Is Adrien just going to ignore the fact that his father abused him emotionally for an entire year by threatening to pull him out of school, preventing him from seeing certain friends, forcing him to do modelling, and even locking him inside a padded cell? He was a very mean and distant father who was quite cruel to Adrien, yet Adrien is somehow supposed to forget all that and remember his father as this perfect guy?

I dont understand how people feel bad for Gabriel. He claims hes doing this for his son, yet continues to abuse and manipulate him, while also hurting innocent people, some of which were Adriens friends. I cant even feel empathetic towards him because we barely know anything about Emily, the person he was trying to save. How is the audience supposed to care when we dont even have a flashback of her? Just because he had this one moment, suddenly people miss him, I know hes been the shows villain for a long time, but come on, he isnt even a good villain.

i think when he made the wish, the wish wasnt to bring emilie back BUT to reverse the consequences of the broken peacock miraculous so that both natalie and emilie will be brought back to life in just 1 wish edit: gosh i started a whole game of "orr what if?" in the reply section and never noticed

Man, I wanted to see Gabriel and Tsurugi-san to go to jail SO BAD. If would have been SO beautiful to see them jailed, not because of anything relating to the miraculous, but for child abuse.

PEOPLE FEEL BAD FOR HIM???!!! He mind comtrolled half the city, threatened to start a war between paris and new york, yeeted children in alternate timelines, and was abusive towards his son

3:38 he still doesn't lose anything, he just wins more with what wish, HE WAS A STATUE OF HIMSELF AND WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR PROBABLY YEARS NOT ONLY CUZ HE WAS A [ I forgot the name of his job] BUT A HERO FOR SOME RESON. edit: FAMOUS DESINER! I remembered it

The fact that after all the stuff that gabriel did whrn he got the chance to save emily should already prove he was not doing it for her. Heck the fact that in the vid before emily went into the coma she was warning agaisnt Gabe's madness shows she already knew he was going down a dark path. If he really wanted to atone he wouldnt have asked marianette to keep his secret as hawkmoth. he would have asked her to pass on a message of apology and asking for forgiveness for both his wife and son. the man is just gross

Wow, I wrote a thesis... I agree with you. When I found out how the finale ended, I was furious. Five seasons to end like that was honestly lazy, considering that they were trying 'add depth' to characters. I swear they give the villains more plot armor in the show than the heroes sometimes (side-eying Lila). -Also, it's obvious that Gabrial did not have Adrien's best interests at heart. He basically kept him caged up until Natalie and Adrien basically forced his hand to let Adrien go to school. -When Adrien had friends who legitimately cared for him, he'd rather Adrien hang out with obviously toxic people who were (there is no way he missed this) only out to make his son a trophy husband. -He gaslighted Adrien all the time and abused his parental authority and Adrien's love to force Adrien to do things he wasn't comfortable with, including modeling, acting, and using his face for the alliance ring. -He had chances to fix things several times or stop what he was doing but didn't, including but not restricted to, the time when he had the bunny miraculous. -It's understandable to an extent that if his identity as Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth/Monarch (Pick one dude-uh sir), it would ruin Adrien's life (on an international level) forever. However, being remembered as a hero is way too much. Let's not forget Kagami's mom (Am I the only one who found her translation as an overly strict Japanese samurai woman a little basic?) also getting glory for LITERAL CRIMES AND THE EQUIVALENT OF STARTING A WORLD WAR! -Also, Gabrial tortured and abused all the kwamis in his care. Period. -Anyone also remembers his getting angry at Adrien when Adrien thought Gabriel and Natalie were a thing? Kudos that they didn't have the 'kid sees parent fall in love again and get upset' trope, but the poor boy just wanted a family again! He got more understanding and love from his mute driver! -And what was with the vague wish and price they gave us? I think they chose that cause they had no idea where to go because, let's be honest, the writing of this show is really bad overall. I loved watching this back in 2019 when I discovered it around the season three release, but the plot holes, inconsistencies, and horrific logic. (Picking fourteen-year-olds as holders of Creation and Destruction for no reason, but they helped an old man was super careless, and they didn't even bother adding an easy-to-add detail like 'when you've carried a miraculous form a young age, you grow much stronger' or something.) -If you read this far, let me say what I found interesting about this... If the wish was to reverse the damage done by the peacock, does this now damage the butterfly? Is this why Lila was surprised? Please don't tell me she had no idea what it was.

Gabriel is a horrible person and Paris is better of without him

I completely agree with you! What Gabriel did was not heroic or noble in the slightest! It irks me that the writer’s had to force a bs happy ending to the Gabriel arc when he really didn’t deserve one. Gabriel had the chance to give up on his selfish desires when he was shown pity by the one person who owed him nothing, Marinette. In fact, it’s because of him that Marinette’s life got turned upside down overnight when she was given the responsibility to be Ladybug. This isn’t to say that her life was ruined and in fact, a lot of what happened to her would’ve have happened if she wasn’t Ladybug, but at the same time, he put Marinette through so much. It was because of him that she had such a hard time pursuing love, it was because of him that she was forced into being the guardian at such a young age, it was because of him that she was even put in the position to lose all of the miraculouses in the first place. He even tried everything in his power to sabotage her relationship with his son because he’s stuck in his delusion that it was okay for him to control every aspect of his son’s life and make every living decision for him like he’s some sort of puppet. Up until the end, Gabriel even talks all the nonsense about how nobody but him and his family matter as if he’s better and deserves more than everybody else, even though he’s just flesh and blood like everybody else. Pretty ironic how a simple tailor who had no money could grow into such a delusional person. Despite all of this, Marinette still finds it in her heart to pity this man and offer him the opportunity to set things right, but he doesn’t. Instead of listening to Marinette and accepting that what he’s done is all his own fault, he decides to steal the miraculouses anyway and make a wish, knowing very well that he could destroy the entire world as we know it in the process, and he has the audacity after all that to ask Marinette to never let Adrien find out about the villain he became?! How absolutely and utterly selfish of him!! It breaks my heart even more knowing that Marinette goes along with this and lies to Adrien who deserves to know more than anybody what type of person his father really was. I hope he finds out the truth in season 6 and uses his cataclysm to destroy that statue because I don’t think I could ever be happy with the writer’s decision to pretend like Gabriel was this huge hero worthy of praise and adoration when it’s really the opposite. If he’s gonna take the cowardly way out, he could at least accept that the world and his son should hate him for what he became and understand that he brought this on himself. It’s frustrating to see the writer’s taking this approach to end an arc that lasted 5 whole seasons and was over 8 years in the making (not even including the time that it must’ve taken to develop the idea in the first place before it first aired in 2015). Gabriel has never and will never be a hero (at least in this story’s reality).

Gabriel's "sacrifice" reminds me of both prison sentences that Cozy Glow served in MLP. Tiny 12 year old foal doesn't like that her world is ruled by four magic gods, and decides to get rid of magic twice. The first time they imprison her in Tartarus for her crimes. Fandom is generally okay with it, but there are some who say she should have been reformed, despite her literally being at a school that specializes in it, and they couldn't help her. She escapes, does the same damn thing again (with help) and gets encased in stone for eternity. Same arguments

This is how I feel about the finale 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮💀💀💀💀💀💀💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩👎👎🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻

The finale is honestly just so weird. Gabriel has caused so much hurt to the entire world in the past five seasons and he just gets a free pass. He was an abusive father who was also hungry for power and blinded by ambition to the point where he didn’t care what harm might befall someone else as long as he got his own perfect version of the world. Marinette shouldn’t have stopped fighting him after finding out he was Monarch, even if it was for Adrien. At this point, there was obviously no getting through to him and his actions actually changing these characters lives in a negative way would have done so much more for the story. He was selfish and opportunistic through the entirety of the series and seeing that gold statue of him was just maddening. I also don’t think that he should have been able to choose what to give in exchange for his wish- perhaps not because it didn’t work out in this case but because it completely invalidates the reason that the heroes can’t just make a wish of their own. In the end I’m just so confused about the world that he ended up creating. I can’t tell what his wish was, what exactly has changed, or what memories the rest of the cast has retained. Lastly, I find it very sick that Marinette seems to be going along with hiding the truth of what really happened from Adrien and not telling him the his father was Monarch. It’s okay to want him to be able to remember his father fondly but Gabriel didn’t earn that and Adrien can’t keep living a lie and not knowing forever. It’s not good or fair of Marinette to keep such important information from him, even if it might be upsetting. He will find out eventually through the message that Ladybug left for Chat Noir and unless Marinette talks to him first or hides her secret identity from him forever I see a betrayal arc coming along. Either way, the kid deserves healthier relationships and more truth than what he’s gotten.

A lot of fans also forgets that Gabriel manipulate his son mind with a ring, abusing even worse of the power he had over his son. Like that it is one of the most horrible things I see a dad do to his son, Adrien don't have any passion or identity besides loving Marinette (something that it is not cute if his only passion depends of someone else emotions).

im still shocked the fandom thinks gabriel was a noble/good person. like do yall think that the one thing he did right erases the pain and torment he caused to the entirety of paris?? like did yall forget that he literally almost got people killed throughout the entire series????

I agree with you as well, he didn't sacrifice anything and I also believe that is tied to the mysterious entity that scares Lila in the finale. From what I've understood Gabriel wished for a world that would make Adrien happy which is why everything is so perfect in the end. However by doing this he didn't really pay a price and as a result not only supplied Lila with the butterfly but also manifested a dark entity to bring horror and chaos into the world to balance it out. I got the idea from how the death entity is portrayed in various works, whenever death felt cheated he went out of his way to get even. I feel its something like that, I also feel that this means the end of the Heros always winning and with them taking one loss after another.

This is a hot take but I honestly think that the show did Gabriel more dirty than Adrien. Gabriel is full of complexities with a diverse range of mental health issues, codependency issues and a developing God complex along with some abandonment issues. He had so much potential. But I feel like the writers didn’t know exactly what to do with him and were torn between making him sympathetic be making him the goofy cartoon villain. Honestly Movie Gabriel > show Gabriel. I feel like Astruc originally wanted show Gabriel to have the same nuance that movie Gabriel had but just failed so epically. Honestly for the Paris Special of Shadybug and Claw Noir I’m honestly more excited for Hesperia which is hero Gabriel. Given he’s a hero I hope they don’t fuck up his character.

I have nothing but applause for your video. I completely agree that his sacrifice was not "noble" but self-centered. I dunno if you or anyone in your fanbase watch Steven Universe, but it reminds me so much of Rose Quartz giving herself up to birth Steven. While it was a beautiful trade on the surface, she was responsible for so many atrocities that she never took responsibility for and then just vanished, and the show does an incredible job of showing the consequences and how that lack of resolution and accountability severely impact the characters. Part of me hopes that they either reverse the wish somehow (which I wouldn't put it past them to create some loophole to do so) and that Gabriel actually faces the consequences of his horrible actions; or that the truth comes out and the realistic difficulty of finding closure when the one person that is supposed to take responsibility isn't there to do so.

I see that as well. I think you nailed it. HE won, and yes, we have Nathalie back and Adrien is surrounded by love. Nice video!

I think that we all think that it WASN'T a noble sacrifice, yet we still wish HawkDaddy well because he was a great character. The show won't be the same without him.