Why Did Chloe Bourgeois Turn Evil In Miraculous?

What you are seeing with Chloe's heel turning is, quite simply, painful to watch. Chloe isn't some mastermind villain; she's a pretty spoiled girl using her pain to get her way. Remember, she admires her awful mother, Audrey Bourgeois. In this scene, Audrey is given a big role and she is presented as perhaps the worst parent ever and Chloe's way of dealing with that is to emulate her in the worst possible way. Her attempts at bullying and sarcasm are quite transparent in that every time she tries to hurt Sabrina or Marinette it's all being done in order to prove a point that she is loved in the same cruel and conditional way.

The short time Chloe spent as Queen Bee offered great opportunities for a show about superheroes to explore the possibility of redemption in Chloe. But the writers chose to negate that in a number of ways, mainly by having her backslide through lack of humility, which is something Chloe’s world has never shown her. In the episode Ladybug, Chloe gets told no for the second time by Ladybug, and she interprets this as Ladybug not wanting her to use Miraculous. Thus the Claire Chan Праера Chloe Cherry has evolved into through the seasons is confirmed: Chloe believes that kindness is weakness, and power is control. By Season 4, she’s a formidable adversary to the show’s two young superheroes, saboteuring them because she feels they refuse to acknowledge her by not letting her be a hero, too. It’s not pleasant to watch, but it’s familiar, in a weird sort of way: who among us hasn’t kept up some variation of bad behavior simply because it feels like the only thing we can control?

Chloe, villain of 'Miraculous Ladybug', has slowly unfolded for me into a scenario of unmet expectations and of how toxic behavior is reinforced by those around her. At first, there’s the mean girl, sure – wealthy, spoilt, demanding attention with the especial solicitation of her mother. However, her fall into evil is a gradual, achingly human one, and is fatally undone by one unmet expectation above all others: her brief sojourn as Queen Bee, as Ladybug’s friend, was the first time in her life she’d ever felt useful rather than feared. And that was all. Taken away from there by Ladybug for the most legitimate of reasons – her continued presence putting Ladybug’s own life at risk – Chloe interprets it as the greatest betrayal on the part of the ladybug. The show very subtley states that even the most ‘redeemable’ of villains can fail in the worst possible way when their support system fails them. Chloe’s father continues to be as useless to her as ever; her mother continues to dismiss her at every turn; and, perhaps most crushingly of all for her, Adrien has never once challenged her bad behavior.

Hawk Moth then takes advantage of this vulnerability and later approval of her worst traits in season 3. This time it is really her descent into villainy, because by then she no longer fights for the Miraculous but for her own vindication. Her constant angry declarations throughout this storyline ultimately are ‘This is what you made me’. It is really sad because in the end the people who could have helped her to change never even tried to help her, and that in itself is tragic. It’s a very human downfall, and I’m still hoping for a deeper exploration of her complexity, but as it stands now her storyline is one of the most human moments in the show.

This animated series portraits the villainy of Chloe, Adrien’s cousin, in a unique way. Unlike what one would expect from a “bad guy”, Chloe wasn’t evil from the start and turned bad later on. Instead, she was never guided to good in the first place. The Mayor parenters her with spoilings, she’s left to her own devices by her Mom and even though she’s always around Adrien, he’s never been much of a friend to her. To contrast Marinette’s growth throughout the series, Chloe hasn’t grown at all and that’s mostly because no one expects anything from her. Even the rare sweet moments she has with Adrien, or with Ladybug when she helps her, are always centered around herself. And when the series requires her to make a true sacrifice (giving back the Bee Miraculous), she fails. Her alliance with Hawk Moth was never a twist in the series, because in the end, it was the easiest choice for her, the one she always would have chosen over going through the pain of change. And so, in a series about change and growth, Chloe’s lack thereof is her tragedy.