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I never tire of watching and listening to the Miraculous video analyses by "So You Think You Know," but what I particularly like about the last two videos covering the episode "Secret Protocol" is that—unlike what I’ve seen circulating on social media, where many fans believe Lila got the answer she was looking for—"So You Think You Know"'s conclusion aligns with mine : that Lila’s plan in this episode actually failed

In addition of highlighting Alya’s MVP role in the episode—as well as Cat Noir’s, whose determination to rescue Marinette from the akuma’s clutches prevented Chrysalis from touching Rena Bug’s Ladybug illusion—"So You Think You Know" clearly demonstrates that, once again, Marinette has outsmarted.

After all, while the events of the London special had already prompted Marinette to take the necessary precautions against this new Butterfly holder—who is far more cunning and intelligent than the last one—the events of "Vampigami" further convinced her to step up her game.

The episode also shows that Marinette is not particularly surprised by the new Monarch suspecting her of being Ladybug, indicating that she drew the right conclusions from the "Vampigami" episode.

Chrysalis thus underestimated just how prepared Marinette would be for any possible situation following those events.

As long as we lack dubs other than the English version, it is difficult to tell whether Marinette deduced that her own uncle was the new Hawk Moth, or if she concluded that the new Hawk Moth had granted themselves an Akuma power similar to Chameleon’s—allowing them to assume her uncle’s appearance, infiltrate her family, and convince her to part from her earrings by putting on the news ancient ones he just gifted her. However, for the sake of my own analysis, I am proceeding on the assumption that Marinette recognizes the new Hawk Moth as an impostor rather than the real Wang. She therefore intelligently deduced that her enemy would use the same Akuma to adopt the appearance and powers of Kung Food, in order to attack her directly and seize what he believes to be the Ladybug Miraculous.

Lila’s plan was simple : convince Marinette as Uncle Wang to take off her earrings and then seize them later—while akumatized as Kung food— to verify if they were truly Ladybug’s miraculous. The gift intended for Sabine was merely a pretext to get "Uncle Wang" akumatized and have him target Marinette directly, allowing Chrysalis to steal her earrings.

And I also bet the akuma Lila-Wang needed to transform into Kung Food was surely hidden inside that gift box. After all, Lila-Wang had made a point of emphasizing the "sentimental value" of the gift's contents.

However, the appearance of "Ladybug" forces Lila to revise her plans on the fly. She must now determine whether the Ladybug facing her is an illusion or not, all while keeping Marinette hostage so as not to lose sight of her. For what Lila seeks above all is confirmation that Marinette and Ladybug are one and the same, and she must do so quickly—before the real Wang calls Sabine.

As "So You Think You Know" pointed out, the mere fact that Wang Cheng could assume his great-niece had stolen a gift meant for her mother—rather than concluding he had simply forgotten where he’d hidden it—is suspicious in itself. This explains why Chryalis doesn’t immediately drop the act even after she captured Marinette, she even answer her just as his akumatized uncle would when Marinette suggests they look for Sabine’s birthday gift together, replying in a manner less hostile than when he had first attacked her. And when Polymousse appears with the supposedly "stolen" gift—which was never actually stolen but just "misplaced" —Lila has no choice but to admit defeat and end the fight, since the real Wang would indeed reject the akuma in that kind of situation the moment he would realize he had been heavily mistaken.

And since I doubt Lila foresaw Marinette swapping her earrings for fakes—with the real ones ending up in the hands of a "Rena Bug" who would then being capable of summoning the Lucky Charm and show the use of the magical ladybugs in plain sight—Lila still hasn't obtained the confirmation she was seeking, even though doubts linger. From the moment her plan fails, her goal is to retreat before the heroes realize they are facing the new Monarch.

Thus, when Kung Food "rejects" the akuma, and Marinette sees a "Uncle Wang" full of regret underneath standing before her rather than the new butterfly holder, suspicions regarding the imposture are dispelled; and this gives Lila the opening she needs to slip away in time later and rethink her strategy. After all, according to the logic held by both Alya and Marinette, Chrysalis would have needed the power of an akuma to assume Uncle Wang’s appearance, and then that same akuma to take on the form and powers of Kung Food.

Neither Alya nor Marinette has any way of anticipating that the new Hawk Moth might possess additional powers allowing him to assume another person's appearance—and then become akumatized while maintaining that disguise throughout the transformation.

Even we, at this stage, do not know how Lila managed it, although we have already speculated that the Supreme might have given her a power boost, or that Rooster Bolt could be a double agent being blackmailed by Chrysalis—thus using his Miraculous's power to help her take on Uncle Wang's appearance without resorting to the power of the butterfly's.

As I had deduced in my previous theory, Marinette’s suspicions regarding her uncle being an impostor are temporarily dispelled after Kung Food is de-akumatized—only to be confirmed once the real Wang Cheng and Fei call their family from Shanghai.

If having one’s paranoia confirmed is one of the worst things for a paranoid person, I believe that part of the shock and dread Marinette displays in the post-credits scene—contrasting sharply with the confidence she showed when she believed she was dealing with an impostor—also stems from a new realization regarding the extent of this new Butterfly’s resources and the level of danger they poses, and how good they were at impersonating someone from Marinette's one family.

This explains why Marinette can no longer afford to remain on the defensive and why she will devise a strategy in Nemesis to lure Chrysalis into a trap. By this point, Marinette has surely realized that the new butterfly is fixated on her—an advantage she will be perfectly positioned to exploit if a frustrated Chrysalis, smarting from her latest failure, cannot resist the temptation to akumatize Marinette again.

So when civilian Marinette is endangered by an akuma, she gets her boyfriend fiercely fighting for her and keeping her save, being all soft and putting her first over and over again

But when Adrien's life was at risk in Werepapas (an insanely low-stakes akuma that threatened no one's life, but Adrien's), Marinette went:

Without trying anything else first because risking to be the one to kill Adrien for good with her own hands was canonically a more bearable outcome for her than having an uncomfortable conversation with any of the people her 5 lucky charms told her to get, but she ignored all of them until she finally got one that told her what she wanted to hear (which is not how the Ladybug powers are supposed to be used...)

Dude, this is so disgustingly one-sided in her favour. I cannot enjoy this. Can this show, for even just a millisecond, not have Maribug do every possible awful thing to Adrichat and then have her be pampered, worshipped, and coddled in return?

Fascinating.

Absolutely abysmal behavior. They can fucking delete an entire fucking character because some young cunts wanted to send literal shit, harass workers and other players QUICKLY mind you, they didnt even fucking hesitate to do so.

The humble Secret Evil Council:

First we have aged up designs for Ichiban and Anon

Then I also made an animation with Myx

No she isnt wearing fake earrings because of "trauma". She isnt traumatised, she's barely even stressed. This is exactly what season 1 marinette would've done, before she went through any of these supposed "traumatising" events. No she isnt being manipulated by a ghost that explicitly told her to do the opposite of what she's currently doing.

All the Miraculous holders are responsible for maintaining their secret identities, such that most of them don’t even know who each other is under the mask. But Ladybug is under even more pressure, which explains why she feels justified in setting forth these onerous protocols. Listen closely, and you can hear multiple brains snapping like twigs as they scroll through the doc. Even Kagami thinks these rules are excessive. Kagami. But at least, as we see later, Marinette isn’t asking anyone to do something she doesn’t do herself.

Marinette’s brilliant and a whiz at engineering secret compartments, but the fingerprint-activated snowglobe seems a bit much. I suspect Ladybug had Pegasus commission that device since it involves sophisticated electronics. Speaking of Max, his accommodations for Kaalki may have inspired the nook Marinette created for Tikki.

Note the strategic placement of objects in Marinette’s room, including what appears to be a fake journal to distract intruders from the real ones she's got stashed. Good security involves a combination of high-tech and low-tech procedures. In another life, Marinette might have become a top DGSE operative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directorate_General_for_External_Security

That fraisier cake Marinette is attempting for Sabine’s birthday surprise is no joke. It uses every trick in the cookbook and then some. Then again, for someone who can pull 2782 safety protocols for the Miraculous out of her derriere and has an experienced baker on hand to provide technical support, perhaps it’s not so much of a much.

The special breakfast and the picnic featuring the gourmet cake? (shakes head) She goes too hard and does too much… then again, if you remember “Qilin”, you’ll observe Marinette takes after the birthday girl. BTW, the mention of the Champ de Mars unlocks a new location within the city of Paris, if only by phone.

Bonus points to you if Uncle Wang’s sudden appearance reminded you of Lila’s visit to Shanghai as shown in “Queen of the Dreadzone”. We knew Lila was collecting intel on Marinette, but it wasn’t certain what for and few people could have guessed how she’d use it. In retrospect, the golden ladybug earrings were an obvious Trojan horse… but Lila may have been counting on Marinette to suspect a trap, throwing her just enough off her game to make a mistake.

I confess that when Marinette suggested her beloved Uncle Wang might be the Butterfly, I wanted to reach through the screen and slap her. It’s a particularly unhinged conclusion that momentarily distracts her from more probable scenarios. That includes the akumatization theory; recall that Chloe’s transformation into Queen Mayor was marked solely by a new coat and her mayoral sash.

ICYMI: when Uncle Wang turned into Kung Food, the akuma was in his hat. That makes it the most likely vessel for a hidden akuma. Whapping up a new hat and giving it to Uncle Wang as a present encourages him to remove the possessed object, undoing the theoretical akuma’s influence. Not removing the hat would have been an immediate tell. Marinette didn’t count on Uncle Wang catching a butterfly the old-fashioned way.

Basically, “Secret Protocol” is shorthand for “give Tikki the earrings and let Scarabella do the heavy lifting”. The particulars of what to do next are Alya’s choice since she’s temporarily assumed the position of Guardian. Depending on the scenario, Alya might summon entirely different Miraculers as backup. However, given Chat Noir’s position as second-in-command and Carapace’s role as Rena Rouge’s most frequent partner besides Ladybug, these two are more likely to receive call-ups than others.

New power unlocked: Rena Rouge’s flute doubles as a telescope, which proves helpful since her power usually requires her to operate from a remote location.

Marinette’s been in the soup before, but it’s never made Chat Noir crash out this way. Then again, all those times happened back when Marinette was just a “really good friend”.

As Marinette learned from her dearly departed grandfather, sometimes a mouse infestation at your bakery is not necessarily a bad thing. Meanwhile, Minotaurox’s potential as a human, or rather bovine shield, was long overdue for deployment.

So it’s all just been a big misunderstanding complicated by a few irritating coincidences, and we can all take confidence that the Secret Protocol will succeed if it’s ever needed. Sigh. We all knew it wasn’t going to be that easy, if only because it’s the next-to-last episode of the season.

Marinette is wearing the hell out of that qipao (also called a cheongsam, depending on where you are in China). Too bad it ends up used for high drama rather than high fashion. Fei is calling from Shanghai, but the call is really coming from inside the house.

That nagging feeling that even though there's nothing there... something is here.

To pull off this prank, Lila needed to know every last one of Uncle Wang’s personality quirks and even some of the family history. This probably required getting so close to Uncle Wang and Fei that they practically consider her family. Marinette has finally met someone just as prepped, put-together, and paranoid as she is. But what was the endgame? Surely Lila’s not going this far simply to rattle Marinette’s cage. It can only be the first step in a plot to destroy her utterly, likely to be unveiled (if not unraveled) in “Nemesis”.

I hope this isn't incoherent, also tldr: Our hatred of s6 Marinette is a hatred of everything she represents for abused children. Their defense of Marinette is a defense for all of TA's horrible messaging even when they claim they just like her character. These irreconcilable differences.

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Exactly, Astruc wants to have made a super successful, super popular show but doesn’t want it to have a fandom that asks “too stupid” questions, which, at this point, just means ANY questions. Maybe that’s the reason he’s so bitter about movies, they’re often super popular for a short while and more rarely have people asking questions even as the plots make no sense.

Like, if he just stopped being so present online, stopped constantly answering people, most people would get bored of asking questions that never get answered. But he can't stop himself, he has to even insert himself into conversation that weren't inviting his input at all. He's just starting to come across as the type of person who, like, does things he hates and then he's bitter about it and takes it out on the fans.