[Review/Recap] Miraculous Ladybug Season 2 Episode 7: "Dark Owl" (SPOILERS) · 7:35am Apr 29th, 2018
Director Damocles moonlights as bumbling wannabe superhero The Owl. After being humiliated unintentionally by Ladybug and Chat Noir, he becomes Dark Owl--who proves to be one of Hawk Moth's most dangerous minions.
At the end of the school day, Director Damocles is in an awful big hurry to shoo all the students off the campus. Marinette and Adrien are excitedly talking about afterschool plans with Alya and Nino, respectively, but then sadly remember prior obligations and take rainchecks.
Once the school is empty, Damocles returns to his office, where he attempts to give his computer assistant a verbal password, only for the voice command to fail because it's poorly programmed. (A nod back to 'Robostus', of course.) It turns out Damocles has made something of a poor man's secret lair for himself in his office, full of comic book collectibles, a crappy superhero costume, and toy superhero tools. He's been a fan of superheroes his entire life and has always wanted to be one, so lately he's been masquerading as "The Owl" and trying to be a hero about town. The only thing is, he's absolutely incompetent at it, and generally only ends up needing to be rescued himself...which is why Marinette and Adrien have to keep ducking out on their friends, because saving The Owl from himself has become almost a full-time job for them.
In a desperate attempt to give Damocles a "win" so he'll stop putting himself in danger, Ladybug and Chat Noir conscript Alya to masquerade as the "supervillain" Cardboard Girl, with Marinette designing a cardboard box suit and salt dough Miraculous for the act. However, when The Owl shows up to save Ladybug and Chat Noir from Cardboard Girl, he manages to take himself out with his own toy superhero gadgets, embarrassing himself in front of a rolling camera crew. To make matters worse, when Ladybug checks up on him out of concern, she calls him by his real name, revealing his identity to all of Paris and humiliating him.
Over the next few days, M. Damocles becomes the joke of the city, with every TV news host roasting him for his humiliating display. His deep, burning humiliation attracts the attention of Hawk Moth, who Akumatizes him into the villain Dark Owl.
Dark Owl announces to the city that he's suspended a bus full of rare animals from the Eiffel Tower, mined the tower with instafreeze mines that will collapse it, and placed a helpless kitten underneath the bus. If Ladybug and Chat Noir don't surrender their Miraculous to him, he'll drop the whole mess, causing untold critter carnage. Ladybug and Chat Noir rush to the arena to confront Dark Owl, trying to get the drop on him with their teamwork tactics, but he's somehow outmanuevered their every strategy, and has traps waiting for them--including a cargo container trap which he manages to lure them into. For added humiliation, his entire animal ultimatum was a holographic hoax!
Dark Owl's trap is ingenious: the sealed, escape-proof cargo container slowly begins to fill with whipped cream. It's the perfect way to fill a suffocation death trap: they can't float on it, they can't breathe in it, and if they don't surrender, they'll drown. Chat Noir is already about to time out from using his Cataclysm, which is why he's trapped in the cargo container in the first place, and Ladybug's Lucky Charm gave her a fountain pen with no immediate apparent use before they got trapped. Now with their Miraculous timing out and a camera broadcasting what's happening inside the container back to Dark Owl, Hawk Moth, and possibly all of Paris, the heroes are well and truly stuck.
Then Ladybug comes up with the most brilliant way out of this mess.
For whatever reason, she just happens to still have the fake Miraculous on her--as Marinette. She uses the fountain pen to black out the camera so Dark Owl can't see them anymore, then tells Chat Noir to close his eyes and keep them closed, even as she does the same herself.
"Spots off."
"Claws in."
Inches from each other, facing each other with their eyes closed, Ladybug and Chat Noir become Marinette and Adrien. Their Kwamis now know the identity of the other hero! Plagg is visibly shocked, but Tikki frantically shushes him. Marinette reports to Dark Owl that he wins, and places the Miraculous in the tray for delivery.
The fake Miraculous.
Hawk Moth gloats at his moment of ultimate victory as the Miraculous are delivered, but his triumph is short-lived as he realizes he's been tricked. This takes just long enough for Plagg and Tikki to eat and recover their energy, after which Marinette and Adrien--having kept their eyes tightly closed the entire time--transform once again and break out of the container trap.
Unfortunately, Dark Owl isn't out of tricks yet, and finding his Akuma is turning out to be trickier than anticipated. The battle heads back across Paris to Collège Françoise Dupont, where Damocles' computer is the possessed object. Once the fight enters close quarters, Dark Owl nearly wins for real, as he's able to get one of Ladybug's earrings off, and her transformation starts to break while she's still fighting him. Ladybug just barely manages to eke out a win and break the Akumatized computer, quickly recovering her earring and stabilizing her transformation before her identity is revealed.
In the epilogue, Marinette and Adrien cheerfully make plans with Alya and Nino, no longer having any need to nanny The Owl, who has given up trying to perform heroic feats of derring-do. While Damocles is still going out in public as The Owl during his spare time, he's taken to a different kind of heroism, such as helping with neighborhood projects and handing out blankets to the homeless. The new, improved everyday hero Owl is no longer a figure of scorn and mockery, but a respected and revered public figure, inspiring neighbors to help neighbors.
Hooooooooooooooooooooolycrap this episode.
Even without the HUGE thing that happened in the middle of the episode, this episode is hilarious and tons of fun on its own merits, but let's talk about THAT SCENE.
Ladybug and Chat Noir actually detransformed right in front of each other. Touched, without the suits. The Kwamis know everything now. It's like, holy CRAP, this episode has such HUGE ramifications.
Also, the creepypasta face on Dark Owl's computer freaks me the fuck out.
10/10.
What I see happening is that Marinette and Adrien think it's a coincidence that Chat Noir and Ladybug look and sound like people they know because they've watched a lot of anime. It would never occur to them to think "Hey......this person looks like a classmate of mine in a costume....maybe because this person IS said classmate!!"
Yeah this episode was shocking to me too. Now that Tikki and Plagg know the truth imagine how awkward it'll be for them if their respective humans talk about the one they love
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Well it just so happens that the way Chat Noir acts, especially when talking with Ladybug, is entirely different than how Adrien usually acts, which is what drew Marinette to love him in the first place.
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IF? You mean WHEN. And consider that the very next episode after this was GLACIATOR.
And the fandom exploded! I thought they were really going to reveal too
This changes a lot of things, but the kwami's lips are sealed. Dark Owl was a fine adversary indeed.
This episode was absolutely fantastic. A combination of funny and suspenseful, I was truly on the edge of my seat a majority of the time, something I haven't really experienced in Miraculous Ladybug before. Dark Owl was a fantastic foe for Ladybug and Chat Noir, and even as Damocles we got a few good laughs. All-in-all, good episode, probably one of the best.