I’ve been thinking about Max Caulfield a lot lately. As much as Chloe is the character I personally identify with the most, I feel like Max deserves a lot more appreciation than she actually gets.
Max starts in a place that’s familiar to a lot of people. She’s shy, soft-spoken, and a little self-absorbed. But through her powers, she starts to realize the effects her actions have on those around her, and begins to grow and mature as the events of the game go on. She becomes more confident, more willing to take risks, and more understanding of how part of growing up means learning to live with your mistakes.
Like all of us, Max isn’t perfect. She ghosted her best friend for five years, immediately starts using her powers to improve her social standing, and generally acts like a teenager navigating her way through a confusing time in her life. The fact that she abandoned Chloe is a sticking point for a lot of people, but it informs her motivation for almost every decision she makes: whatever it costs her personally, Max refuses to ever let Chloe down again.
And boy does that get tested. Max goes through a cosmically unfair amount of trauma as she struggles to come to grips with Chloe’s situation, what happened to Rachel Amber, and powers that she not only never asked for, but which seem to actively make her life worse the more she uses them. She’s forced to make impossible choices by an uncaring universe, and discovers that sometimes there is no objective, morally correct answer. She tries her best, but no matter which ending you pick, her best just isn’t good enough to save everybody.
And through it all, she remains steadfastly devoted to Chloe Price, her best friend that she may have abandoned once, but never wants to give up again. She becomes a better, more confident version of herself, even as reality crumbles around her. She grows up.
That, I think, is what gets overlooked when people claim that Max is either a horrible person who doesn’t deserve a second chance, or that she’s ultimately inconsequential in Chloe’s story. Her character arc is integral and imperative to the themes of Life Is Strange, and she deserves better than being constantly overlooked or shit on by fandom.
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