How Severance and Miraculous Ladybug Both Use the Love Square

In season two of Severance, Mark Scout (Adam Scott) and Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) lock eyes across a Chinese restaurant. Boy meets girl. Girl jokes about taking boy home to meet her father. A meet-cute, of sorts. Only in this sci-fi world, boy and girl’s consciousnesses have been split between their work (“innie”) and personal (“outie”) lives. And Helena has been tracking Mark, whose innie is romantically involved with her own––Helly, whom Helena impersonated earlier this season. Helena, of course, is the daughter of Lumon Industries’ CEO, heir to the very company their innies work for—the same company keeping Mark’s wife (Dichen Lachman) locked away in its basement.
Still with me? Perhaps a visual aid is in order.
This intricate web of relationships forms the “love square,” where multiple, often contradictory dynamics exist between the same two people. The square emerges from identity slippage: two versions of a person––Innie and Outie Mark, Helly and Helena––each with their own desires and motivations, operating under different rules.
In this way, Severance has entered Miraculous Ladybug territory. The animated series, which airs on Disney Channel, follows French teenagers who moonlight as superheroes to protect Paris from the villainous Hawk Moth. Goofy and over-the-top, Miraculous is also a tender study of parental neglect and the pressures of a double life. But what powers the show, and has kept fans devoted for a decade, is its infamous love square: Marinette Dupain-Cheng, an ordinary girl, is in love with her classmate, Adrien Agreste, who, unbeknownst to her, is smitten with Ladybug—Marinette’s secret alter ego. Adrian is also Cat Noir, the superhero whom Ladybug sees only as her loyal sidekick. By some cosmic rule, Ladybug and Cat Noir must conceal their identities, or risk the end of the world.