✎ Ri ✎

Is anyone else getting the feeling that Mayura is being completely ignored in favour of redeeming Nathalie? Don’t get me wrong I’m ALL for Nathalie redemption, she is my favourite character after all. But it confuses me why nobody ever addresses the issue of Mayura, especially when she played such a fundamental role to the story.

To be honest, this problem has been there since her introduction. In Mayura Heroes Day part 2, Ladybug figures out that Hawkmoth has help from the wearer of the peacock miraculous. Yet, nobody conducts any sort of investigation into who this could be (but granted they also don’t investigate who Hawkmoth is apart from in The Collector).

But the problem properly begins in the later seasons.

For a quick summary of the things that Mayura has done and the heroes KNOW she’s done: be an accomplice for a criminal, become a criminal when she attacks civilians with Reflektdoll and the lollipop monster, revives an ancient sentimonster which leads to the revival of a temple that was destroyed hundreds of years ago (and is important narrative wise), steals a miraculous (and loses it), is the only villain to NOT have Ladybug and Chat noir turn up to stop her in the New York special (and interestingly, she recalls the amok rather than letting her senti cause more destruction), kills the Ladybug senti and steals the grimoire translation from Master Fu (again, a massively significant thing)

My girl has the most Ws on the villain team, and two of them actually have positive consequences. Yet how many of her actions are addressed in the show? NONE. It’s all “Hakwmoth/Shadowmoth/Monarch bad” but never “Mayura bad”. And yes, the public DO know about her. In the episode “Ladybug” she addresses a public broadcast as Mayura (“I am Mayura, and I am going to annihilate Ladybug”). I get that she hardly ever directly terrorised people and wasn’t really present to the public, but certainly to the heroes, she was present ENOUGH for concern.

When Gabriel started being “Shadowmoth”, why did nobody question what happened to Mayura? That’s a pretty valid question you know. Did they stop working together? If so, that means there’s a woman out there who could betray his identity. Did something happen to her? If so, what? We never get to see anyone question about Mayura, even though season 4 continues to acknowledge her as existing. In “Gabriel Agreste” we see Felix watching a video on the Ladyblog, which features a selfie of the two villains. When was this taken? When Mayura was still ill? Or did she and Hawkmoth have an offscreen public appearance after he became Shadowmoth? There’s no way the picture was taken in Miracle Queen, seeing as Alya was under Chloe’s influence, and Shadowmoth existed as soon as the peacock miraculous was fixed in Truth. So.. when was this? And the video actually mentions Shadowmoth rather than Hawkmoth and Mayura. (Although I do think the selfie was for funsies rather than of any plot significance, and Im glad we have it cause I love the Hawkyura selfie)

However, the Shadowmoth transition certainly isn’t the worst case of Mayura’s existence being outright ignored. I give them credit for Nathalie’s dying confession, and for the fact that she is willing to turn herself in. But, can we just acknowledge the fact that the only person who addresses the issue of Mayura is Mayura herself? I bet if Nathalie had never confessed to being Mayura, nobody would know. Why did nobody question what happened to Monarch’s accomplice after he died? Everyone knew he had an accomplice. It’s ok for the public not to question I guess, but the other heroes? They ABSOLUTELY should be questioning, ESPECIALLY Chat noir and Rena rouge. In fact, the ex Mayura should be the prime suspect for being the current holder of the butterfly miraculous. This should give them MORE motivation to track down Monarch’s ex partner.

And this would give us a fantastic character arc for Nathalie, and develop her in a really unique way. Shes trying to move on from villainy, and she’s trying her best to support her now son Adrien, but she keeps getting haunted by the idea that someone could find out that she was Mayura. Everyone is suspecting Mayura, and because she no longer has the peacock miraculous, she has no way of clearing her name. This would lead her to internally crash just like Marinette, and would create a pretty neat parallel of how the lie is affecting them (I HATE the lie plot, but I do think this would fit nicely with it). It’d also make sense why Nathalie reacts the way she does in Mister Agreste. Because if she’s currently being bombarded with articles theorising the old Mayura is responsible for these new akumas, and people maybe even theorising she has some involvement with Gabriel Agreste, she had every right to genuinely freak out at the idea of her identity being known and I wanna see that. I do like her redemption, and that she’s finally able to be mother Nathalie, BUT, I feel like her redemption will never truly be complete until Mayura is addressed in some way other than making Nathalie sick. Granted we get that tiny snippet in the London special, but it isn’t enough. We never explore her guilt about the whole thing and we never see her struggle with others suspicions that they SHOULD DEFINITELY HAVE.

But no.

She’s a good guy now so we can’t address the bad stuff she’s done.