Plagg: okay, got it.

Here’s a sketch I cleaned up a bit

Obligatory spoiler buffer gif for those on mobile and those who mis-clicked. Final warning.

Anyway, I am still shocked at how horribly the writers dropped the ball for the last couple of seasons with Chloe, Lila, and several others these last two seasons.

I am not a "Chloe stan" and I firmly believe she is a brat who never deserved a Miraculous. Ladybug in the Season 3 finale was 100% right to take the Bee Miraculous away from her. While I was expecting an eventual redemption, I would have no problem if Chloe had naturally descended into being a full-fledged antagonist.

That said, the writers instead fundamentally changed Chloe's character in order to make her to be a straw antagonist instead of working from a natural character evolution. They glued an idiot ball into her hands, flattened her to the point where she considered herself evil and nasty, then gave her a last-minute alliance with Lila to make up for lost time.

If the end goals were to get Chloe out of town, Chloe and Lila exposed, and put Lila in a position where she held all the cards, there was a better way of doing it then the way the writers chose.

Let's go back to the end of Season 3, where Chloe is stripped of the Bee Miraculous, her parents have recommitted themselves to each other, and she can't even escape from Paris to hide from what she did. If Chloe feels no remorse for allying with Hawk Moth, there's no reason from an in-character standpoint why Chloe doesn't expose the other superheroes. Blasting their identities is the only thing she can do and since she can no longer be Queen Bee, she would be naturally vindictive enough to ruin being a superhero for everyone else, even if it meant exposing herself as a willing minion of Hawk Moth. In her mind, she would have nothing to lose.

The obvious reason why Chloe doesn't reveal everyone's identities is purely because Rena Rouge and the other heroes need to be active so they can be called upon in the future. Between merchandising and plot, Chloe isn't allowed to pull the plug on superheroes' careers. So, why not prevent her from doing so? Have her try to expose the heroes...only to be stopped by Lila at the beginning of the Season 4.

Having the Lila/Chloe alliance begin earlier does a few important things for the plot. It provides a reason for Chloe to not only get worse (as well as widen the rift between her and Sabrina), but also get worse in a more relevant direction. It would also further establish Lila being Gabriel's ears and could amp up the tension. With Lila in possession of the other superhero identities, this makes her a completely hidden threat, one neither Ladybug nor even Shadow Moth/Monarch could fully account for. Lila could clearly be playing a long game and influencing Chloe to do the same. Chloe inevitably would progress to more evil acts as the series goes on, but it would be result of convergent character evolution with Lila, not her being passively stupid and getting a personality reset. This would also spread out Lila's influence over two seasons instead of making her nearly-invisible for Season 4.

As a result, if Chloe is separated from Lila and no longer in Paris as in her final fate, this brings a slight bit of hope for her to change off-screen. She might still be cruelly obsessed as she is now, but the idea of being away from the influence of a bad friend (Lila) might make her re-evaluate her actions.

But, speaking of Chloe's exit, the other characters surrounding it are also in awful places. Andre Bourgeois abandons Chloe to her mother (who also goes away) and takes in Zoe. This messy conclusion is because Zoe can't be in Paris without some parental supervision, although this is a problem of making Zoe a half-sister and not a cousin (which would mean she'd have an off-screen aunt and uncle who she could stay with, as well as new characters who could take over the hotel in the case Andre left town). However, again, this is completely at odds with the end of Season 3, where Andre and Audrey had reconnected. It was heavily implied they would be co-parenting with a lot more unity, but Season 4 had Audrey regress into walking over her husband again to re-establish her as a "bad parent." How much more drama could have been milked if both Andre and Audrey genuinely tried to turn over a new leaf in terms of setting limits and being better role models for Chloe...only for her to slip away because their efforts came too late.

Again, since Zoe has been made into a half-sister and she has to stay in Paris due to being Vesperia, why not instead give her a reason to stay in town independently of her family -- especially since she never felt like she would fit in with them anyway? As Zoe is an aspiring actress and Lila is a model and the face of the Gabriel brand, the two could have crossed paths and even had a one-episode rivalry over a role. Thus, there might be a path to sponsorship for Zoe to stay in Paris...but even with a bona fide reason as her career takes off, she'd still be a minor so she can't "live" by herself. Since they wrote out Luka anyway, have Anarka take her in if Zoe just needs a place to stay (Zoe's at that houseboat half the time and this saves resources.). This way, Andre and Audrey, in the spirit of being parents would both leave with Chloe at the end of Season 5, and while Zoe would want to go with her family, too, she'd have an excuse to be part of the Paris crew. Yes, it would still be contrived, but it would be done in a way to give some hope and closure for Chloe instead of "punishing" her, while allowing Zoe to craft her own identity.