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I was rooting for Gabriel having a redemption arch, but even I know that what we got in the show was anything BUT.

How would you handle it? If you were to succesfully redeem Gabriel? How would you do it?

I'm not opposed to a Gabriel redemption arc, but it would be very hard to do without some serious and careful character development or serious edits to canon. My preference is option two because option one risks something that is a hard no for me: glorifying the cycle of abuse. We'll still talk about both paths because it's worth discussion and we'll start with the easy one, which is rewriting canon to remove the abuse.

Rewriting Gabriel

The easiest way to give Gabriel a redemption is to make him a good father. Someone who clearly loves Adrien in a healthy, non-possessive way. Someone who is at least trying to have Adrien's best interests at heart. Someone who is willing to let Adrien do things that make Adrien happy.

To make Gabriel into this kind of character, we would need to remove all - or at least most - of the manipulation. Things like when Adrien asked to no longer be a model and Gabriel used that as an excuse to make an AI Adrien and then told Adrien that his options were to either tolerate the AI or go back to being a model:

Adrien: Dad, I'm not really comfortable with having my face on all these rings. That's actually why I didn't want to be a model anymore, to avoid that. Do you understand? Gabriel: Of course, I understand, my son. But that's the point; it's just an image, it's not you! And since this image frees you from your obligations, we, the Agrestes, are able to spend more time together. But if you'd rather everything went back to the way it was before, just say the word.

We'd also need to get rid of every moment when Adrien seemed to fear his father like this scene from Illusion where Adrien spilled spaghetti on Gabriel and then immediately started freaking out like he was afraid of being hit or otherwise punished:

Adrien: Yes, I forgot my school bag. (spills the spaghetti on Gabriel’s clothes, but Gabriel remains calm) Oops! Oh, sorry, Dad! You must be so angry! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!

These moments are easy to write because they allow Gabriel to come across as evil and scary without the audience knowing anything about him. In other words, they work wonderfully with the whole "every episode must stand fully alone" rule. But if we ignore that rule and say that Gabriel is allowed to be nuanced, then we can replace this straightforward writing with more complex writing that requires you to watch multiple episodes in order to understand what's going on in the broader story.

In this new version of canon, we wouldn't have to change much story wise. We could keep the same general story beats. The only big change is that we'd see Gabriel struggle between his grief, his love for his son, and his desperation to restore his wife. This would mean little moments of nuance like Gabriel changing his mind about the day's akuma because his planned akuma would knowingly putting Adrien at risk and Gabriel won't do that, so he has to swap plans on the fly, leading to some of his more wacky akumas. This setup allows for a Gabriel who is still a super villain, but he's now a super villain with principles who refuses to let those he loves be harmed in his quest.

A more minor change is that Adrien's fear of his father would be replaced with a more complex setup. Instead of fear, Adrien is now held back grief because he's a teenage boy who is grieving and who knows that his parent is also grieving, but who doesn't know what to do about any of that. In this setup, the father-son conflict is not abuser and victim but two grief-stricken individuals who no longer know how to connect because a vital element of their relationship has forever changed. You know, the kind of setup you'd expect for a family where the relatively young mother died less than a year ago.

I've talked about this kind of setup leading to a corruption arc, but you could also use it for a redemption arc. If Gabriel never goes against his principles and always puts Adrien first even if it means losing Emilie, then you maintain Gabriel as a complex and nuanced character who would believably stop his quest as soon as he learned Chat Noir's identity or was otherwise put in a position to once and for all choose between his son and his wife. (Which could be how we get our next villain if the story doesn't end with Gabriel's lose.)

While I thought that the movie adaptation was too rushed to make it's ending really work, it does show the template for this path. A path I would have personally loved, but it's not the path we got in the show so let's talk about option two.

Redeeming Canon Gabriel

Whether or not he understands what he's doing, canon Gabriel is an abuser. He controls and manipulates his son without any concern for what Adrien wants because Gabriel seems to view Adrien as a perfect doll and not a real human being with his own wants and needs.

Quick senti rant: This is yet another reason that I hate the sentistuff. Because sentimonsters are so poorly defined, that the sentiplot does kind of validate Gabriel's POV and that's not a good thing. This is extra true since Gabriel's part in that plot ended with Gabriel essentially giving Marinette ownership of Adrien by passing on the rings. I talked about it at length here, but I think the only way to make the sentiplot work in the context of canon is for it to end with Gabriel realizing that he needs to view Adrien as more than a doll and I think the only way to really do that is to have Gabriel use the wish to free his son.

Back to the main discussion in which Adrien is a real boy and we ignore the senti complication!

In order for canon Gabriel to be redeemed, he must acknowledge his abuse and make recompense for what he's done. Adrien must also acknowledge his father's abuse and be allowed to decide what that means for their relationship as Adrien is the victim and, when it comes to reconciliation, the victim should be the one calling the shots, not the abuser. This is a complex and nuanced process that would take an intense amount of screen time to make work. I do think you could do it, but once again, it would require Miraculous to get rid of that whole, "every episode must stand fully alone" rule.

Off the top of my head, if I had to take this route, I'd have season five end with Gabriel losing. I also wouldn't let him die or do his grand plan. Instead, I'd have him lose without a big public reveal by having Felix or Nathalie reveal Gabriel's identity to Ladybug and Chat Noir. This would lead to Gabriel being stopped in an epic battle between our two heroes.

Once Gabriel has been subdued and the full story has been revealed (because it would be so much more satisfying coming from Gabriel and not freaking Felix), Ladybug would contact the guardians to see if Emilie could be saved. This is a path Gabriel never had the chance to take because the Guardians weren't around until quite recently. (I'd probably make it so that Gabriel didn't even know that the Guardians were back.) The Guardian's answer would, of course, be yes, but it would require some special lost item or other BS that the heroes need to get/do first.

At the same time, we'd learn that there is a new bigger, badder villain. I'm thinking Tomoe, but Lila, Felix, and/or Nathalie are also options. No matter which one we pick, Gabriel would have knowledge about the new villain that no one else does. Knowledge that is not easily given. In order to save his wife, Gabriel agrees to help the heroes with the new villain and they agree to help save Emilie (they would have done that anyway, but Gabriel doesn't need to know that).

Over the course of this plot line, Gabriel would become less of a recluse and, as a result, he'd get out of his own head and start to regret his actions as he comes to view the heroes as people, not obstacles. This plot line would really lean into the idea that Gabriel never viewed his actions as real because he'd always planned to reset everything with the wish, so what did it matter if he hurt people? It was all just a bad dream that they'd forget once he'd won and set everything right.

Now that his hope of resetting everything is gone and his actions have actual weight in his mind, he'd be incredibly remorseful about the way he treated Adrien, so he'd pull away from his son. At the same time, he'd be bonding with Chat Noir, whose identity was never revealed. This would eventually lead to a reveal whose time and place was fully chosen by Adrien. A reveal that would only take place once Adrien felt that his father had truly changed and come to regret what he'd done.

Bonus element to this idea: the Gabriel-Adrien reveal would be our new identity shenanigan hook, meaning that the love square could reveal themselves without removing that element of the story. It would just have a new main flavor.

The Cycle of Abuse

I mentioned at the top that you have to be incredibly careful about redeeming abusers because it can glorify the cycle of abuse. I wanted to end by talking about what I meant by that as I think that far too many pieces of media accidentally glorify this cycle because they don't put the necessary effort into their redemption arcs. When it's media aimed at teens and adults, I just kind of sigh and stop consuming it. When it's media aimed at kids, I get legitimately upset because the cycle of abuse is already hard enough to escape without media helping you internalize it at a young age where you don't have the skills to understand fiction vs reality.

There are a lot of in-depth articles and books about the cycle of abuse, so I won't go too deep here. I'll just link one article and go over the basics which is that abuse is often not constant. In many cases, it follows a clear pattern in which there's an incident of abuse, followed by some form of reconciliation, followed by a period of true calm and happiness, but that calm and happiness never lasts. There will eventually be another incident of abuse and the cycle will start all over again. It's an existence of the highest highs and lowest lows where the victim has true hope that things will get better only for that hope to be cruelly dashed to pieces again and again.

This cycle is one of the many things that can make it hard for victims to leave or even identify the abuse depending on what form the abuse takes. After all, no one is perfect and we want to support our loved ones. If a person does something mean and then apologizes, we want to believe that apology. This very normal series of events can be paired with the cycle of abuse to keep a victim trapped because they think that they're a bad person if they give up on their abuser who is, "trying to get better," or some other excuse. But that's not what's actually happening. While the abuser is saying what the victim wants to hear and may even mean it in the moment, if they're not actually doing any work to change, then it's just another reconciliation round in the cycle of abuse.

This is why it's so important to have media that tells you that it's okay to give up on people. That their happiness is not your responsibility. It's also a big reason why I like the idea of redeeming character A while not redeeming character B. That setup lets you have that positive message of redemption while also presenting the idea that redemption is never a sure path. You can only redeem those who want to change (even if it's for a selfish reason) and who are willing to put in the work. A thing that you can really highlight and drive home when you do the A vs B setup.

Before we move on, I will note that there are abusive relationships that don't look like the cycle. The cycle is simply a very common pattern. The thing that makes it "special" when it comes to writing is that it's the type of abuse that's easiest to glorify and/or romanticize if you're not careful in your writing, which brings us back to Miraculous.

Miraculous actually demonstrated the cycle of abuse horrifically well in season five. In this season, we see things like Gabriel giving Adrien apologies and permission to call him "dad." Acts of reconciliation that were followed by blissful happiness for Adrien who desperately wants his father's love. But of course, that happiness never lasted. In the end, Gabriel always destroyed it with a new act of abuse because he is an abuser. An abuser who loves his son, but an abuser none the less because love doesn't stop abuse.

Because of this, if you want to write a realistic redemption, then you cannot give Gabriel a simple redemption where he apologizes and everything is suddenly okay. You have to differentiate his "true" apology from the others. You have to make it clear that this isn't just another round in the cycle of abuse both to tell a good story and so that little kids can hopefully internalize the difference between when you need to run away and when it's safe to stick around.

Another important element in getting this message right is allowing the victim character to be the one who is in charge of the reconciliation. Generally speaking, the victim should be super wary about reconciling because - for this to work - they need to be fully aware that there has been past abuse so that they can make a fully informed choice about what that means for them and their relationship with their abuser. It's not a true reconciliation if the victim is totally oblivious to the fact that they've been wronged.

Because of this, the true reconciliation will usually be a drawn out process wherein the abuser and the victim don't reconcile until the abuser has unequivocally proven themself as changed to really highlight the difference between an actual reconciliation and the kind of temporary reconciliation we see in the cycle. This why my hypothetical solution has a love square reveal and Gabriel avoiding Adrien out of shame.

That route allows Adrien to have full control over the situation as Ladybug can accommodate his needs, allowing Chat Noir to have 0 required interactions with his father. All required interactions are handled by Ladybug or other teammates so that all of the interactions that happen between Gabriel and Chat Noir feel like Chat Noir's freely made choice. This setup also allows Adrien and Gabriel to be on more equal footing in terms of power, an extremely important element of reconciliation. A lot of damaged parent-child relationships don't fully heal until the child is an adult and the parent loses their power.

All of the above is why I'm wary of giving abusers redemption arcs into happy close relationships with their victims (I'm much more liberal with redemption arcs into happiness with people they never hurt and/or where they're redeemed, but not super close with their victims). I'm extra wary in the context of children's media as it can be harder for kids to understand nuance and this is an incredibly important topic to get right.

That doesn't mean it can't be done. It can! It just requires a lot of effort to do it right. Most of the time, stories with this type of redemption feel lackluster and honestly make me a little sick to my stomach because it's so common to go the lazy route where a single apology is all that's required. It's why I'm super wary of the whole "enemies to lovers" thing. I like the concept it in theory, but more often than not, it ends up being abuser-and-victim to lovers, which is a hard pass for me. I don't judge people who enjoy that stuff in fiction or role-play settings, it's just not my cup of tea. Be it fiction or reality, I want couples that feel healthy and families/teams that I'd love to be a part of.

Since this was a serious one, let's end on a topical, but humorous short from ProDZ where he very accurately sums up your standard bad-guy redemption and why I don't like it. I love the redeeming power of love, but like all tropes, part of doing it well is knowing what story setups are suited to it and which ones are not.

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#ml writing critical #ml writing salt #ml season 5 salt #adrien deserves better #Gabriel deserves better #believe it or not this was me being brief about this topic because it's one in pretty passionate about #There are so many ways to make Gabriel interesting!#It's why I get so many fanfic ideas #Most of which will never see the light of day outside of vague summaries spawned by asks like this #While I writing this I was kind of tempted to write out the plot line I came up with because I think it could be interesting #But I doubt that I ever will #I'm pretty tolerant of low effort redemptions for characters that we're just straight evil bad-guys #It's when the abuser-victim dynamic shows up that I get real judgemental real fast

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