Is it too early for this? I don’t think so…

If you use this and post it please tag me! I want to see these predictions.

I also made some copies of this with more specific titles.

Broke: Marc and Nathaniel will get their miraculous in the same episode

Woke: One of them will become a hero to save the other in the Obligatory Ship Episode while the other will get his miraculous another time

Bespoke: Both of their hero episodes will focus on other relationships they have, leaving The Ship Episode for… double akuma >:)

Is this a theory post or is it just What I Would’ve Done? Who knows. Anyways, have an essay.

Marc has gotten little to no screen time since his first appearance. There are even a ton of background characters who have him beat in the screen time department, which is pretty sad considering that he’s supposed to become a member of the major supporting cast. It makes me wonder how they’ll pull off making him a superhero when we know so little about him.

That’s why I like the theory that he’s related to Marinette. I think it would make sense if they have some sort of background that we, the audience, haven’t seen, so she knows him better than the viewers do. He’s the only “new” (Polaroid in the intro) character who she knew before his first appearance, and they were already friends, but they’re not so close that they hang out together or know about each other’s personal lives. I feel like their close-yet-distant dynamic is reminiscent of the typical relationship between cousins, as is Mari’s mentorship of “mini her”. Marc is a clear parallel to Marinette both in appearance and personality, and he looks up to Marinette even though she’s actually also kind of a mess.

They’re setting up this whole “you were a superhero even before you put on the mask” theme, and I just don’t know how they’d rationalize that with only one more token Marc appearance unless he suddenly becomes super plot relevant and supportive in the first half of the episode, so Ladybug recruits him in the second half.

I feel like if they had that background beyond just going to the same school it’d at least make sense why she’d trust him to be a hero, or why she’d see the potential in him. Otherwise it’s just like “I’m gonna help this guy I kinda vaguely know talk to his crush” then randomly, months later, “here, have a miraculous”.

Ok this next part sounds a little salty, so fair warning, but I don’t mean it to be that way. Just observations.

With the “you were already a superhero without the miraculous” thing, I feel a similar way about Nathaniel, not because he only got ten seconds of screentime, but because he got like twenty and spent at least a quarter of it being the bad guy. I’m not saying he’s evil for what he did in Reverser, but they haven’t explicitly followed up on that or shown him any development. Whenever there’s a conflict in the story, he runs away or ignores it, and he doesn’t go out of his way for other people unless everyone else is doing it too. Even in s4 alone, he ran away during Mega Leech, and he didn’t do anything overreactive to “help” Rose in Guiltrip. You could easily say he’s doing the right thing here by arguing that he’s making it easier for Ladybug by not becoming an obstacle or suggesting that he’s aware that Rose doesn’t want the attention she was getting, but since he never says anything, it feels like he’s just apathetic. At this point, I don’t know why Ladybug would choose him to be a superhero personality wise. Maybe the situation will call for it and he’ll be the only choice.

I don’t want this to sound like bashing because I do like him, but… in Reverser when Alix said she’d never leave him behind, I really stopped and wondered if he’d do something like that for her. It feels like everyone else has been steadily growing out of their bad traits across the seasons, yet he’s been exactly the same. I hope his hero episode is a Timebreaker 2.0 scenario so we can see him actively being the supportive friend for once instead of “Alix is his therapist”.

That promotional image with the Magic Charms seems like it’s composed of actual charms from the show now that we’ve seen Rocketear, the blue one. Some people speculate that the last one is for Timebreaker. It looks like it could be, but it’s also not a perfect match. The magenta bead isn’t the right shade, and the lines on the charm don’t really match anything on her costume. Either way I hope she comes back.

You know how every relationship problem the side characters have ends up being a parallel to a problem Adrienette/Ladynoir have? Well there’s something I noticed in the s4 intro that felt familiar.

While all the other Polaroid photos (Kagami, Zoe, and Luka) are nicely arranged between other photos, Marc’s is placed directly on top of Alix. It feels a little too… aggressive? to be meaningless, and maybe I’m reading to much into it, but seeing this felt like foreshadowing to me.

Alix being covered up reminded me of Chat Noir being inadvertently pushed to the side by Ladybug, who is spending more time with Rena Rouge and other allies to the point where Chat is starting to feel like he’s being left out on purpose. If Alix were to get reakumatized, I think the lesson of the day would parallel this problem.

What would happen: as time goes on, Nathaniel starts spending more time with Marc, and doesn’t make enough time for Alix. Nathaniel and Marc don’t even notice when this starts to bother her because they figure she’s friends with everyone so she’ll always have someone to hang out with. This may be true, but Alix misses hanging out one on one with Nath specifically. She doesn’t say anything, though, because she thinks her jealousy is immature and that her hurt feelings are no one’s fault but her own, so there’s no use bringing it up. She quietly puts up with being sidelined as long as she can, but eventually she can’t take it anymore and gets akumatized. If it’s Timebreaker, then maybe she wants to travel back to before the events of Reverser when it was just the two of them.

As I said above, I think a scenario like this would make for a good intro episode for Nath as a superhero. It would force him to be the one to resolve his own problems and help Alix at the same time. New hero episodes show the hero protecting something they care about, so it would make sense for his to be his best friend. He’d learn to consider other people’s feelings more, but the real lesson would be that Alix shouldn’t have been ashamed to talk about being left out. The big problem with Ladynoir is that Chat isn’t telling Ladybug what’s going on, and she doesn’t realize herself, so the problem only gets worse.

Before I move on to completely unrelated stuff, I said in the beginning of this post that I’d prefer if neither Marc nor Nath’s hero episodes were fighting each other. This is because of the Magical Charms. If one fights the other, then then akuma gets a charm and they can’t get akumatized together, which I find way more compelling then them fighting.

An episode like this could call back to their comic where their akuma forms become good. Maybe they could turn on Hawkmoth at the end of the fight as a parallel to the story, or maybe they could be antiheroes the whole time who think they’re like their hero self-inserts, but they’re actually still pretty villainous. I think them working together as akumas would be just the type of higher-level fight that Hawkmoth would create.

Now onto completely unrelated stuff that I want to mention in this post just because

Back to the Magic Charm teaser image, I included a pic of Robustus because that first charm pretty obviously will belong to him. That makes me excited because I love him, but he also reminded me of a possible parallel to major plot points. Most fans agree that there will be some sort of plot twist related to sentimonsters and the peacock miraculous. Ever since its first use on-screen, the show has shown us an incredible amount of detail regarding the peacock miraculous, as well as tons of examples of what sentimonsters are capable of. This is certainly foreshadowing something, because why else establish all these rules?

I’m thinking that Robustus 2.0 will delve into the question of what it means to be human. When Markov was first akumatized, his greatest wish was to be a real boy, but he realized that since he has a humanoid mind and real feelings, it doesn’t matter if he’s not physically human. If it’s revealed that someone we thought was human was secretly a sentimonster, then a repeat of these sentiments could reinforce the idea that they’re still human where it matters.

Last thing, and this is completely baseless, just a shot in the dark for no reason: what if the middle charm on the promo will belong to AJT, the mad scientist we saw in Rocketear? Since the show introduced a new, interesting minor character who isn’t related to any existing characters, she probably got akumatized at some point this season. I say that charm might be hers because the colors remind me of the yellow and green shades of her t-rexes.

Coq Courage theory

Earlier, I made a similar post about Minotaurox after having a revelation about him, but I want to make a miniseries of theories in the same vein. https://ct-multifandom.tumblr.com/post/656811441319526400/minotaurox-theory

I’ve seen a few people mention this connection and I believe it’s correct: Coq Courage is based around the symbol of the rooster in Japanese mythology. It’s believed that a rooster awoke the sun goddess, Amaterasu, and pulled her from her cave. Because of this, roosters symbolize courage.

For that reason, I’ve theorized in the past that the power of the rooster is illumination since roosters “bring” the sun, so the ability might be controlling light in some way, which connects to his akuma, but it’s possible that it’s something to do with courage because of his name. What synonyms for courage end in “ion”? Uh… let me use Thesaurus.com here… “determination” or “resolution”? I wouldn’t call these exact synonyms but they could be candidates too.

(The screenshot of the intro is taken from Alfrely on YouTube’s s4 opening analysis video where they stitched the frames together since you can’t see much of him at once)

When I first saw him I was confused about his pose. It looked he was whip nae-naeing or something. After an embarrassingly long time I figured out he’s probably striking a kung fu style pose. (I flipped the second image for the sake of matching more closely). Shaolin monk robes, which are often orange, could be an inspiration for his costume, although his “pants” rise higher, going all the way above the knee. Either way, this design represents chicken legs so they might’ve taken some liberties to convey that.

I think the most popular theory for his tool is some variation of archery equipment, which would be sick, so I kinda hope that’s right, but it’s not really in line with what we’ve seen from the rest of the heroes so far. Support I’ve heard for that theory is that the miraculous is a thumb ring and thumb rings can be used in archery, and while we’ve never seen the ring in its true form, we’ve seen Marinette and Chloe’s disguised forms, and it’s not that type of ring. It’s just ornamental. That being said, the shape to the left of his torso that you’d think is his arm looks very inorganic/straight-edged and it dips in at the top, so it might actually be a quiver. Or it could be a different tool. Or he might have some sort of armor on his arm(s). Once again, there’s no predicting tools for sure. Sometimes they’re straightforward, but most of the time they’re supremely random. I do like the idea of long-distance though, because most of the current heroes are close-quarters, and as an akuma he uses a lot of projectiles while standing in one place.

Back to the illumination thing. Here’s some random bs I can connect back to that which may be foreshadowing or it may be me making stuff up. In Horrificator, Nathaniel is holding up a light reflector on set. It’s super minor but I thought it was interesting since he usually hangs in the back doing his own thing when the whole group does something together. The logo on his shirt is a reference to a real band called Magma, and this is kind of a stretch, but he gets explosively angry something something bright scarlet hair something somethingfiresomething light. Also look at angey Orikko hehe cute.

The biggest source of evidence would be his akuma. As Evillustrator, his biggest weakness was darkness because he needed a light source to use his powers. All the other classmate akumas/heroes so far have displayed their respective hero themes as akumas in some way, even if it was by subverting or twisting it, so I think this is a fair connection to make.

This concludes my analysis. Let me know who I should do next!

Edit: stuff worth mentioning that I only thought of afterwards. 1) I remembered @zivazivc ‘s theory for the tool being badminton equipment. I like that one because it would fit with the theme of toys, it’s random but there’s a connection, and it’s long-distance like I said above. 2) I think it’s very interesting that his silhouette is cut off the way it is. Everyone else except Ryuko, who is totally covered, has their head showing in their section. Even Traquemoiselle, who is almost completely covered, has an ear and some hair. But with Coq Courage they only show his torso/leg. Maybe they weren’t finished modeling him before the intro deadline, or maybe they’re deliberately hiding something.

Edit 2: okay it’s been months since I posted this but I saw someone suggest that his tool could be a kite and I actually really like that. It’s unique, fits under “toys”, and it feels appropriate. I recall Astruc saying that none of the miraculous grant the power of true flight, which only power ups can give, but a kite could represent the gliding type of “flight” chickens are capable of the way the Spider-Man-like yo-yo and top represent the way ladybugs and bees can fly. It’d also tie back to Reverser when Nath built a kite strong enough to support Chat in the air out of a bunch of random crap on a brief elevator ride. Seriously, why does no one ever talk about that?

Also, completely unrelated, but I always see people drawing the rooster miraculous looking similar to Marinette’s disguise mode since we’ve only ever seen her and Chloe’s, but I’d like to remind everyone that Mari’s camo tends to be very minimalistic. Hers has one chain between two simple rings with little hearts on them, but Chloe’s has two chains in a triangle, and the rings have one small honeycomb (top) and one big one (bottom). I think the real deal probably looks more similar to Chloe’s, especially since it needs to have five sections that flash when the holder has to de-transform, which I predict would be on the panel(s).

Minotaurox theory

So I’m sitting here, thinking about the heroes we haven’t seen yet in light of Gloob’s constant teasing, and the possible themes and inspirations for them. A lot of the heroes we’ve already seen have themes connected to or entirely based off various mythology, and I’ll make a post about as many of those references as I can think of after s4 is over. So I’m using this train of logic to try and figure out something about the rest of them. And I feel something familiar at the edge of my brain about Stompp…

I have a straight up brain blast. All the way back to good ol’ American public elementary school where they drilled this into us for some reason. The United States folktale of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. (The art below is by Angus McBride)

Paul Bunyan is a legendary lumberjack, superhuman in size and strength. His best friend is a blue ox named Babe that he rescued from a snowbank and raised on his own, growing from a sickly “babe” into a strong giant as well.

I always thought it was interesting that they chose to make Stompp blue, at first thinking that they and Roaar were just changed to unnatural bright colors to avoid having half the cast be boring shades of brown-ish and orange-ish since Kaalki, Xuppu, Orikko, and Barkk take up umber brown, yellow, orange, and sienna brown. I bet this is a part of it too, but the choice of blue specifically for the ox paired with Ivan and Stoneheart makes me think there’s more to it.

Stompp is easily one of THE cutest kwamis imo,,, Anyways, Stoneheart’s power is growing in size when he gets hit. I’ve seen people theorize that Minotaurox’s power will also have to do with growing in size. It would parallel the akuma as well as Polymouse’s power that allows her to shrink down and Horrificator’s power of growing and shrinking in response to others’ fear. Before, I stayed away from theories like this because I thought it was too similar to the akuma. Most of the hero powers are tangentially related to their respective akumas powers, but usually not in a way you could predict. But, when you take the parallels and the myth into account, it admittedly does make a lot of sense. If this is true, then I hope there’s more to it than just super size and strength, like how Polymouse can clone, not just shrink.

I made a half-joke in one of my previous theory-type posts that I hope one of the heroes has a giant axe. If anyone would have one, it would be Ivan since Paul Bunyan is a lumberjack. That being said, the good guys so far all have tools you can’t really do serious damage with, like toys, musical instruments, and defensive weapons. Also sometimes they’re really random. It’s near impossible to predict these correctly.

One last thing. The shapes around Minotaurox’s torso and arms in the silhouette remind me a bit of his Kitty Section stage costume. This isn’t anything serious, but I think it’d be neat if he took inspiration from Marinette’s design for his hero costume.

I can’t wait to see him appear in the show, and let me know which other new heroes you’d like to see a separate theory post about!

Edit: I just realized that I never mentioned my theory for his theme. My favorite one I’ve seen is fortification.

Predictions that are kind of just shots in the dark, idk, don’t get too excited:

• Episode 15 will be Sandboy 2.0. Feri said that she liked this one and that she thinks a lot of other people will too. Since most episodes this season come in pairs, and we saw nightmare Chat Blanc in Sentibubbler, this could be the continuation of that idea. Also, the English voice director posted a story with Sandboy’s VA which is what started this whole Sandboy 2.0 craze in the first place. If this does happen, I don’t think Chat Noir will encounter “nightmare brought to life” Chat Blanc. Ladybug will hide him and become even more paranoid about identities coming out, which we see in Rocketear. I also think we’ll get a little bit of context for the actual akuma himself this time.
• Episode 16 will introduce Anne-Jeanne Théoxanne du Bocquale, the prodigy mad scientist who brought dinosaurs back to life. She will get akumatized over something like her project not being taken seriously. When we see her in the beginning scene of Rocketear, she seems like a member of the recurring minor cast because of her strong personality and interesting design, more like Bob Roth level vs August’s mom level, and it feels like we’re supposed to know who she is. It would make sense if this scene is a callback to the previous episode.
• A lot of people predict episode 22 to be Chat Blanc 2.0. I think this is a good theory, and we know it’ll be something huge for sure. Probably the culmination of all the problems building up so far. I won’t talk about it in detail because a ton of people have already written entire essays making predictions about this ep.
• That one leak in May called episode 24 Penalty, and I’m willing to believe this because of all the other stuff they said that already came true. Since 22 will be a massive deal, the two episodes between it and the finale will probably be important continuations related to the main plot line. Maybe this episode will have to do with the consequences of the rules Ladybug established as guardian and the penalty for breaking them. Or maybe they’ll kill the entire mood and this episode will just be like,,, an akumatized goalie who forced the heroes to play super-soccer/football. Idk there’s nothing to go off, but the name sounds ominously serious.
• If we assume that 22 onwards will all be main plot, and that 18, Wishmaker, won’t have a new hero because it’s implied to have main plot relevance and those types of episodes usually aren’t hero episodes, then we’re left with 15, 16, 19, 20, and 21. We also have five heroes left. Convenient. That doesn’t mean that someone can’t get brought in near the end since I’m making assumptions, but like, these and 23 are the episodes we know literally nothing about yet. All the people left rn have gotten significantly less screen time this season than Bob Roth so I hope we see them soon. (Unrelated but Bob has been so prominent lately? What? Akuma potential.)