WMG / Life Is Strange

• Life Is Strange: Before the Storm
• Life Is Strange 2
• Life Is Strange: True Colors

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Beware of spoilers! Not everything is spoiler tagged.

Confirmed

The beginning and end are about the Butterfly Effect.

The first thing Max encounters related to her powers is the blue butterfly- and then a change. The end of the week, seen in the first vision, is a hurricane. The Butterfly Effect states that the beating of a butterfly's wings can eventually cause a hurricane. Perhaps with Max's small change, she sets of a chain of events into motion that leads to a "hurricane"- either the real one seen, or a metaphorical catastrophe.

• If the beating of a butterfly's wings can cause a hurricane, and Chloe's symbolism is butterflies then Chloe's the 'butterfly' and beating her wings means Chloe continues to live, which means changing the past so she can live and not letting her die is causing the hurricane. It's further hinted at as the more we change the past to help the more natural catastrophes happen. The dying birds and whales. Max used a big chunk of her mojo to go back and save Chloe's dad and make her happy and that impacted the world a LOT so I'm assuming in the end to save everyone you have to kill Chloe or let her die. Maybe you're meeting in the lighthouse and that's why you're heading there in the vision of the future.
  • We might also use the selfie you take first thing in the game to go back to that first day. I also think the 5th episode will incorporate going back to let Chloe die.
  • Confirmed as one of the final choices of episode 5, and in turn, the entire game.

The storm isn't natural.

The first thing seen in the game is the storm, and not much later Max's rewind power manifests. It could be written off as a dream, but she flashes forward to it again at the end of the episode. Her power could be connected to the storm.

• Additionally, if the above is true, Rachel's disappearance is the result of a similar event triggering her own rewind, her disappearance may have been her final attempt to prevent some horrible event or storm from happening.
• First part confirmed: Max's powers (and saving Chloe) triggered the storm. Nothing to do with Rachel, though.

David is investigating Nathan

David probably knows about Chloe's date rape and is investigating Nathan by watching other girls that he believes are involved with him, like Kate. That's why he is so suspicious of Max after seeing her out of the bathroom after Nathan.

• I don't think he knows about the rapes but I think David's investigating Nathan (and the vortex club) too. I can't remember what it was but I think I had seen some proof either in his house and stuff or the principal's office. I just can't remember now. But that's why he was interrogating Kate in episode 1.
• Confirmed: David was shifting his investigations towards Nathan, though he didn't really suspect Jefferson

Chloe is the irregularity, not Max

Going off of the theory above, this theory is similar to Haruhi in a sense in that it's Chloe who is the irregularity that the universe is trying to extinguish at every opportunity. Picture this; Rachel saves Chloe's life somehow when she was supposed to die, meaning that she is no longer bounded to regular rules of conduct. Rachel gets powers similar to Max because of Chloe, rewinding time, and constantly saves Chloe and becomes popular by her ability to always have a solution again similar to Max, but over extends her powers in trying to save Chloe that she falls unconscious. She gets kidnapped by people who didn't like her, then when Chloe is attacked once again by the universe through Nathan, Max is bestowed guardian angel status to save her, and so we start our story. The tornado at the end of the five days is the butterfly effect (note the blue butterfly to match Chloe's hair) is actually a long time brewing culmination of Chloe's survival. Chloe is the protagonist of the story, while Max is simply a implement to further it.

• Confirmed at the end of Episode 5

The only way to get rid of the storm is to kill Chloe.

Seeing as Chloe could have died at the beginning of Episode 1, and the teaser for Episode 2 shows her in way of an incoming train, it seems that the universe has lost control due to Chloe being alive. Thus, killing Chloe or letting her die will put the universe back on line.

• Alternatively, it'll seem to be the case, only to be subverted and give the game a more optimistic ending. Max CAN travel through time, after all... albeit only a short ways. That she might find a way to prevent the storm that doesn't involve killing her best friend doesn't seem too far out there.
• Actually, someone else on this page mentioned that Max started getting visions of the tornado before she saved Chloe. So because of that, I don't think that makes sense, I guess?
• It's possible that the universe is trying to kill Chloe like in Final Destination, which would mean that Max isn't rewinding time, just getting visions of possible outcomes of what could happen, again like in Final Destination movies. Which would mean that by stopping Chloe's deaths time and time again she is bringing down death and destruction. Which would mean that she didn't get the vision of the tornado in order to stop it, which again coincides with that movie series - every time someone gets a vision, saving the people only causes worse things to happen.
• Confirmed. Near the end of episode 5 Chloe comes to the realization that no matter what choices Max makes, if she is still alive in the timeline and was never killed by Nathan, the storm happens. Max can either go back in time with the butterfly photo and let Nathan kill Chloe to save Arcadia Bay or tear the photo and decide to go on the road with Chloe and leave a destructed Arcadia Bay behind.

The relationship between Max and Chloe will take a darker turn in next episode or so.

Some players perceived their relationship as unhealthy and enabling Chloe to commit various troublemaking crimes at the expense of Max getting into unwanted trouble, such as taking the heat for the pot and attempting to shoot a man. Perhaps in the next episode or so Chloe will finally do something that will cross the line and prompt Max to call her out on her selfish actions and break up their relationship.

• Confirmed in Episode 3! Max and Chloe have a fight which ends with Chloe angrilly dropping off Max at her school. As she sits along in her room and gazes at this picture of Chloe from the day her father died she gets taken back to that day and has a chance of saving her father's life. Which she does. This has horrible consequences for everyone.

Max will be forced to jump back to the timeline where Chloe is miserable.

It's possible in this new timeline that Chloe never knew Rachel, who is possibly still missing, removing Max's only source for information on Rachel. Bringing William back into the equation complicates matters as it has apparently altered everything in Arcadia Bay.

• Confirmed, Chloe never knew Rachel in the new timeline, and she is still missing. Max ultimately returns to the old timeline but not just for the sake of the investigation - mainly because it was necessary to keep Chloe alive.

Max's powers are definitely involved in/causing the weird goings on in Arcadia Bay

How else do you explain multiple beached whales, right after she's majorly altered the timeline?

• The weird things just seem to be escalating everyday at this point. It could be the hurricane but it wouldn't explain the eclipse.
• While saving William may or may not have caused the beached whales, saving Chloe in Episode 1 definitely caused the later chaos and destruction.

You will use the butterfly photo.

You will get it back from Chloe and go into the photo to stop yourself from pulling the fire alarm, thus killing Chloe. But wait! If we're supposed to let Chloe die, then why that exact moment and no other? It's because Max's rewind power hurt a lot of animals. You can stop those animals from dying by going to a time before they died and fixing the problem from there.

Nathan will have a Heel Realization.

When Chloe mentions his family, he angrily tells her to "keep them out of this", implying that he may care about them. Perhaps one of them will be harmed by his actions, causing him to realize what a monster he is.

• Confirmed in Episode 5, when his impending death prompts him to leave Max an apologetic voicemail warning her about Jefferson

Mr Jefferson is behind the whole Rachel/Kate Blackwell conspiracy.

Nathan's too obvious to be the main culprit. Mr Jefferson is rumoured to have slept with Rachel, Kate was his assistant, and then there was that drawing of Nathan's in Episode 3... What if he wasn't using "dark room," as a description, but a noun? A darkroom, like where you develop photographs. Now, who would have one of those?

• Continuing the "Mr Jefferson is creepy," theme, I think he's targeting Max. The reason he's encouraging her to enter the competition is so he can choose her as the winner and seduce her - or worse - in SF. Again, there are rumours that he's slept with his female students, most of his photos are of young women in sexualizing situations. If he is a sleaze, it makes sense that his attentiveness towards Max isn't just because he's a good teacher.
• It would make sense to target Max too! She's mostly quiet and friendless. He figured she might not talk and if she did, who would listen? Rachel Amber was popular but 'a force of nature'. A bit transient and unstable and dreamed of running away. Not only that but think about it. She lets people photograph and draw her right? Even Samuel has photos of her. So she wanted to get her face around right? Be a model. Who is a highly esteemed photographer who has the means to make that happen? He has money and he's a renowned photographer, and he can actually get out of that town she desperately want to leave, without anything holding him down. Plus look at his hair. He's a teacher, he doesn't need to impress anyone, so why does he do his hair like that huh? Unless he was trying to attract young girls that is. He's peacocking.
• Why else would his license plate be referencing Top of the Lake, which is centered around the disappearance of a young (and pregnant) girl? Could his and Rachel's rumored one-night stand be much more than that? Or they could be just trying to throw us off...
• I think this is true too. Because in the beta version of Out of Time at the end there was a person that looked like Mr. Jefferson in a room with red folders. You couldn't see their face, but by the body shape it definitely could've been him.
• Seemingly confirmed with the ending of Episode 4.

Max will use her selfie jump time travel to save Chloe

Obviously... especially after Mr Jefferson shot Chloe then injected Max with a drug

Max will go into a photo again in episode 5.

To warn Chloe that Mr. Jefferson is going to kill her and drug Max. Max is going to warn everyone of Mr. Jefferson and get him arrested as soon as she finds an opening and the right picture. Maybe she'll even go into pictures that Mr. Jefferson took. Like, the ones in the photo albums.

• Confirmed. She does it numerous times throughout the episode, and can do it one final time at the players final choice

Mr Jefferson killed Nathan

How did he have Nathan's phone and why was Nathan not at the party.

• Big hole in this theory. It was revealed that Sean Prescott payed for everything in the bunker and knows what goes on in it. Why would Jefferson risk Sean Prescott's ire by killing his son? Jefferson doesn't seem like he's that foolish. Unless you're saying Sean Prescott gave Jefferson the ok..
• Also, when you search Nathan's laptop, you realize how much he actually wanted to go to the party.
• Confirmed

David is gonna save Max from Mr Jefferson

He follows everyone around and probably suspects Mr. Jefferson.

• And how he treats Max afterwards will have to do with how sympathetic you've been with him up to this point. Plus, it might be kinda cool to see his status as a veteran used for something other than an excuse for him to be paranoid.
• David does end up saving Max, though he is always sympathetic to her plight.

Chloe will be alive

in episode 5.As Max watches the tornado up at the lighthouse Chloe will put her hand on Max's shoulder, just like she did in the end of episode 1. It couldn't have been her spirit or something because how could you feel a spirit?

• In a BlinkAndYoullMissIt moment you can see that Chloe is wearing her black jacket in the vision as she does in the episode 4, and she does not in the episode 1 at the lighthouse.
• The "saving William" incident proves that Max can jump back in time years to correct unfortunate occurances. Even if Jefferson keeps her out of commission for several days, whose to say that she can't jump back in time to some point where she will be able to prevent Chloe's murder?

By the end of the game, we will have absolutely no clue about why Max was ever bestowed with time-travel powers

4/5 Episodes are gone and we haven't even had so much as a hint about what their origin might be.

• Confirmed.

Chloe will be alive by the end of the series, and it will be thanks to Warren.

Right before you enter the Vortex Club party in Episode 4, a slightly drunk Warren approaches Max and Chloe. The latter has no time for Warren's antics, but Max lets him take a selfie of the two of them with her camera. We saw in Episode 3 that Max can travel in time using photographs, and given the fact that she spends a lot of time in the game looking at photos, her power only seems to affect ones she's photographed in. Unlike most of the photos in the game, you can't decline to take this one, and it doesn't give an achievement of any form, meaning that this little event is story-crucial.

Chloe died at the end of Episode 4, but assuming Jefferson didn't do anything to the photo Warren took of Max and him, Max will use the photograph to go back in time to a point where she can warn Chloe about the events that will occur once they leave the party. However, this will lead to complications once Max tells Chloe about this aspect of her power, and she will ask why she didn't travel back in time to save her father...

Rachel and Frank were lovers

This one is just my speculation.

The protagonist of Life is Strange 3 will be a mind reader

It'll require direct contact so that whatever mystery won't get solved immediately.

• Confirmed, or close enough. Alex Chen of Life Is Strange: True Colors (which might as well be Life Is Strange 3) is an empath/telepath who can experience other peoples' thoughts and memories, but only at moments of extreme emotion for them.

Jossed

Life is Strange takes place in the X-Men Universe

... and Max is a mutant.

Mr Jefferson can stop time

The reason he's such a successful photographer? Because he stops time to take the 'perfect' shots. He stopped time while Kate was on the roof, perhaps hoping to push her to erase the evidence of his crimes, but when Max's time-powers rendered his useless he started paying special attention to her. This also explains how he was able to get to the junkyard so quickly.

• It also would have helped him get the perfect headshot on Chloe at the end of Episode 4.
• Jossed. Thank god...

Max and Chloe are lesbians

Warren and Max are just friends, and Chloe is BFF with Max and Rachel.

• Partially Jossed in that Max is canonically bisexual. But so far, Chloe is Ambiguously Bi, so as for Chloe, that's still up to us to decide on that.

Rachel could also rewind time.

As you go through the first episode, it's clear everyone liked Rachel because she related to all of them. Then think about Max. Every time you flub a conversation, you just rewind and try again until you get it right.

• Might explain why Jefferson made sure to sedate Max first before dealing with Chloe.

Rachel has been blasted back in time a thousand years

Her story as told by T-Rex.

• Jossed, she's dead and her body still has that smell.

Max is the "special person who changed my life" to Rachel.

I believe Max will meet Rachel in one of her "visions", which makes me think she's the special person who changed Rachel's life and made her disappear. It's so surreal if it's that.

• Within the context given by the 3rd episode it looks like that's Frank. But considering the rumour that she slept with Mr. Jefferson and the fact that he definitely has the means (famous, probably wealthy...well, wealthier than Frank and Chloe) to take her away...Besides I doubt they'd meet in a vision because I don't think they ever met and the odds of Rachel being alive or returning to town are slim. And the visions are usually of the future and of places Max has been.
• Jossed: Rachel is dead and she was referring to Frank.

Rachel and Max are the same person.

Max has already proven that her time-bending powers aren't limited to rewinding a few minutes. Maybe Rachel is a future Max who goes back in time to help ease the pain Chloe's feeling over not seeing Max in a while. This goes hand-in-hand with some of the above theories about Rachel also being a time-bender. Furthermore, there's nothing to suggest Rachel was kidnapped or anything like that, so it's entirely possible that her disappearance was a conscious choice to avoid creating a paradox by running into her younger self. And since having Chloe leave town by coming with her would heavily alter the timestream (enough that she might not even learn of her powers in the first place if it occurs), telling Chloe where she went wouldn't be much of an option.

• If this is the case then Max must gain access to Magic Plastic Surgery at some point because we see a photo of Rachel and she looks nothing like Max.
• There's about a year between the two girls, and when you look at their differences (hair length/style, wardrobe, et cetera), you can see it's not anything that couldn't be accounted for in that time (hair grows and can be styled, clothes could have changed, and so on). It's not like Max/Rachel would want to look exactly like her younger self, anyway... that'd probably raise a few alarm bells.
  • Except Chloe's implied to have known Rachel since a little after Max moved away 5 years prior - when Max was 13 and Chloe and Rachel would've been 14. Chloe probably would have recognised her by now. And again, Rachel and Max have entirely different faces.
  • And future Max would've been 19 years old, not 14. Not matter how tiny she is, even she probably couldn't pass off as a 14 year old. And even if she did people grow between the ages of 14 and 18, it would've looked shifty if she didn't.
    • What if because of the alternate timeline Max can continually go down into different timelines, changing little by little each time. Then, in the end, she'll finally become Rachel Amber after fixing everything she does/did wrong. It'll just take a year or so and she'll be like, 13 or 14 again, somehow. As for the appearance, maybe Max changed her parents or whatever so that they never meet. Maybe she sacrificed that, and maybe some other things, to do the right thing in the end.
  • Then she wouldn't be Max or Rachel or anybody. If her parents never mated she wouldn't have been born, period. Someone else might've but she wouldn't have.
  • Of course, this is all kinda Jossed by Rachel's death... and the fact that Max knows she's dead. Either that, or it's set up for her to make a Heroic Sacrifice in the last episode.

It Will End With Max Having To Choose Between Letting Chloe Die Or Suffering A Fatal Stroke

Ep 2. shows us that using her powers seems to cause Max increasing degrees of brain damage. Not to mention that Max saving Chloe's life is a recurring theme. We can see where this is going.

• Then again, perhaps instead of dying, Max might simply sustain a degree of brain damage that leaves her blind, for all intents and purposes. For a girl who's heart is fixed on a career in photography, this would be the ultimate sacrifice.
• I think that Max having to save Chloe's life is simply because she doesn't always make the right choices. Episode 1 has her talking to Nathan. I don't think yelling at him would be the best idea. Episode 2 has two times (as far as I can remember). Once has the time where they're shooting bottles, where if she shoots the bumper of a car, it'll ricochet and it'll hit herself. Playing with guns is a great idea! Then, a scene that's not determinant, she's stuck on the railroad tracks. Whose idea was it to go around playing with guns, and then sit on railroad tracks? Okay, Max went with some of these poor decisions, but at least she isn't as bad as her. I don't really hate Chloe, but her dying a bunch is sort of just because of her not making all the right choices. Not that I say she completely deserves it though.
  • Possibly Jossed since Chloe is dead. Killed Off for Real.
  • Jossed: it's actually a choice between letting Chloe die and letting Arcadia Bay face utter destruction.

To save Chloe and the town from the tornado, Max will have to let herself be killed instead

It is heavily speculated that the reason the tornado is about to hit the town because Max saved Chloe in the bathroom. In order to save Chloe and the town, she will have to go all the way back in time to when she first used her powers, interrupt Nathan and let herself get shot instead of Chloe. This act will also not save Chloe but also undo all the major events that happen in upcoming episodes, such as keeping Kate from killing herself, as Nathan will most likely be arrested for murder and she will receive her justice.

• Jossed

Rachel is hiding in the lighthouse

Samuel the janitor helped her go into hiding after an incident with the Vortex Club (note the flyer in Chloe's hangout, dated around Rachel's disappearance). Thanks to him, Rachel has been keeping tabs on Arcadia Bay from the shadows, maybe learning about what Max has been doing for their schoolmates. Somehow this will tie into the upcoming tornado and a chance for both Max and Rachel to stop it.

• Jossed

Chloe's got powers, too.

But of a very different nature. Take another look at that snowfall scene... the snow doesn't start falling until after Max's vision, which would be the absolute soonest Chloe would know that she was completely fine, and the absolute soonest Chloe would be able to express any relief over the fact. Also, bear in mind that Max's second vision of the tornado comes immediately after Chloe states out loud that she would like to see Arcadia Bay wiped out... almost like it's a kind of reminder. Granted, this is purely circumstantial evidence, but it does still associate these events... This also ties in with some of the above theories: you can't stop the storm without killing Chloe, because she's causing it!

• Jossed, it's not any power that Chloe has that's causing the storm, it's the fact that she survived the confrontation in the bathroom.

If and or when Max gets proof and Victoria learns about what Nathan did to Kate and [[spoiler:Chloe

she will pull a Heel–Face Turn and help Max and Chloe take Nathan down once and for all ]

• I'm not too sure. Yeah, Nathan definitely is a pretty not-nice guy, but I don't think that Victoria would do that. Maybe she would help a little, but be more apathetic than an outright bully to them. Maybe just to them. Maybe, knowing what he can do, she wouldn't like him as much, but wouldn't want to stop it?
• Jossed: If Max makes it absolutely clear to Victoria what Nathan did to Kate, she goes to Jefferson for help. He kidnaps and murders her.

Max and Chloe will try to steal school equipment

There is a lot of emphasis in the first classroom scene on the photography equipment and how expensive it all is. It comes across as a Chekhov's Gun. Why make a point of showing all this, if it wasn't going to come up later ? It makes sense. After all, there's few other reasons they'd have to sneak in. Narratively, it brings in a conflict of interest for Max. She has to betray her teacher's trust and degrade her own education in order to settle Chloe's debts and save her from Frank.

• Possible, but they're probably not trying to steal photography equipment. In the preview, details reveal that they are inside the swimming pool building at Blackwell. (See this locker detail and this information board (close up))
• Jossed—Max uses some classroom equipment to create a pipe bomb, but the only things they steal are student files and money they can pay Frank off with.

The Vortex Club (or whoever's in charge of it) knows about the tornado

That's why they're throwing an "End of the World" party. Only the rich and the beautiful will be spared. Arcadia Bay will be rebuilt as Prescott Bay and any evidence of past crimes will literally be washed away.

That water is drugged, this is why watering the plant will have consequences.

Nathan has drugged the water bottle in Maxine's room. At the final day her remaining friends will assemble in her room for a last planning session that ends with a toast. Since Max can't stand alcohol (if her "yuck" towards Chloe's beer bottle is anything to go by) she will grab the nearest other drinkable liquid, which will be the water bottle. If she watered the plant every day the bottle will be empty and she'll get a fresh one, if you didn't she ends up knocked out of commission for several hours which will make saving the town from the tornado much harder.

• Also supporting this theory is that the plant looks to be in worse condition in the second episode, even if you watered it in the first one. Might be a subtle hint that there's something in the water that shouldn't be there?
• Jossed: watering the plant twice drowns it

Rachel will appear at the end of episode 5.

That hand you saw on Max's shoulder at the end of episode 1? The one with the blue nail polish? We know Chloe probably wouldn't like to use makeup, and there was something makeup in Chloe's hideout place (I think it was in the junkyard), so maybe Rachel was the one using the makeup and is going to put her hand on Max's shoulder to do something with her own powers or something.

• Possibly jossed, at least in regards as to whom grabbed Max's shoulder, Chloe is using blue nail polish (it's on her character model and can be seen in the picture of her and Rachel).
• Unless they're both using it! Or maybe not even them, but a third person! Or maybe it's Max who uses it in the alternate timeline!
• Jossed

If Max gets back to the original timeline and tells Chloe about it

Chloe will be resentful and amp up the It's All About Me and demand Max go back and save William again, 'screw the timeline' and forget the consequences, assured that her alternate self would agree - this could lead to Max having to relay a conversation between both versions of Chloe, one who has no concept of consequences due to her brash impulsiveness and issues, and another who is firmly aware of how important the consequences are.

• Alternatively the consequences of changing the timeline so severely could cause Max to not want to change them again. But I think if she went back and explained what happened Chloe would be more understanding than that. She might break down but I don't think she'd try to make Max save her dad again. I think Max might try to go back and save Chloe from the accident that causes her to become quadriplegic though.

• Jossed: when Max tells Chloe in Episode 5, Chloe doesn't blame Max at all

Max is nicknamed Mad Max because she has been talking about her rewind powers for a while.

• She must've accidentally told someone, who told another, and it basically escalated from there. Or, her rewind powers have been noticed by someone somehow. Or maybe Max has been acting really paranoid because of her rewind powers.
• If Max caused a tornado in a week, she definitely didn't have the powers beforehand.
• Max is presumably nicknamed Mad Max after Mad Max.

Chloe will be the main antagonist.

It's because her dad is supposed to die. Because you saved him everything is worse in the alternate timeline, but she doesn't want you to kill him because she's a bit selfish. She will do anything to stop you from erasing her new happy memories.

• Doubt it. It's not like she can do anything to stop you for starters. Apart from kill you. And it's not like she can do anything period what with being a quadriplegic
• Jossed, she does not try to stop you or try to convince you to change things.

Rachel will be a foil to Max.

Max is just an ordinary girl who just happened to have powers. Rachel is the ever popular beautiful woman who is loved by all. Max is the person who tries to make Chloe's life better after leaving her for so long. Rachel is the person who gave up on Chloe and went for someone else after being with her for so long.

• Jossed, since Rachel is dead and Frank says she cared a lot for Chloe.

The final choice in Episode 4: Dark Room....

• Will be choosing to accept the "Chloe in a wheelchair" timeline, or the "punk Chloe" timeline.
  • Alternately this will be the big final choice in Episode 5 even as well.
  • I don't think that will be a choice we get to make. It'd be too big a difference and they'd have to make two completely different Episode 5's if you have to make that decision in episode 4 because the two universes are too different.
  • Jossed - no matter what happens, Chloe is killed and Max is drugged by Jefferson.

Samuel is somehow forcing Nathan to kidnap female Blackwell students

When Kate tells Max what happened to her at the party, she mentions that she remembers being in a white room, hearing a man with a soft voice, and being stabbed in the neck. Her description sounds like a Chekhov's Gun. My theory is that Nathan drugged Kate so he could kidnap her and bring her to this white room. This was probably also why he attempted to drug Chloe.

Samuel has a soft voice, so he fits the description of the man Kate heard. In Episode Two, Max can find some photos of Rachel in his storage closet. If she confronts him about it, he gets uncharacteristically annoyed at her. In Episode Three, Max can find a girl's scarf inside Samuel's storage closet, although she has yet to get the chance to confront him over this.

Also, Samuel is really creepy and it's implied that he knows what's going on with the spirit doe and the strange weather.

When Chloe confronts Nathan in the bathroom at the start of Episode One, he yells that he's sick of people trying to control him before shooting her. Nathan's expunged discipline record notes that he threatened the school custodian (presumably Samuel) at some point. I think that Samuel is somehow blackmailing Nathan (an impressive feat, given that the Prescotts control the entire city) into kidnapping girls and this is making Nathan's already volatile temper even worse. If Nathan was involved with Rachel's disappearance, then perhaps the "RACHEL IN THE DARKROOM RACHEL IN THE DARKROOM" drawing is some sort of coping mechanism.

• Good points but I don't really see Samuel as the mastermind of things. Unless they pull a Doofy from Scary Movie. It's shifty that he has the scarf and pictures. He is creepy and knows more than he's letting on and I think Nathan's kidnapping girls for someone too but I really doubt it's Samuel. The white room and the needle sounds a bit like a hospital room so it's possible Nathan knows someone in a hospital who does things to girls and in exchange hooks him up with drugs. Or it's his dad, judging by the sheer ammount of power he has and the fact his son seems to hate him and even he's afraid of him it seems. I'm guessing whatever it is though that happened to Rachel, Nathan knows something about it. Especially from that drawing. The dark room. Might be the lighthouse. Or an actual dark room. As in the ones where you develop photographs. Like something a photography teacher would have or would have access to.
  • Jossed Mr Jefferson did it
    • Though this is thoroughly jossed, Mark Jefferson and Samuel Taylor share the same voice actor.

The homeless woman is an older Max who's stuck in time.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. When Max talks to the homeless woman in episode 2, the homeless woman says that she's lived in Arcadia Bay for "a thousand years." Could be just an expression....or it could be literally what feels like a thousand years worth of time spent in a 5-day Groundhog Day loop. The homeless woman is a version of Max who got stuck in a time loop and got older or possibly because she kept trying to rewind time that it somehow backfired on her. Max mentions twice in Episode 3 that she fears getting stuck in time, so what if it actually happened?

• An interview with Eurogamer seems to imply she is just an old homeless lady. Michel Koch, a co-director of this game, at least gave the impression she was just an old homeless lady, anyway.

The relationship between David and Nathan

David is strongly implied to suffer from PTSD and Nathan is implied to have mental health issues of his own. When Max talks to Nathan in Episode Three, he refers to David by first name and doesn't insult him.

David recognizes Nathan's mental health issues and considers him to be something of kindred spirit. David is trying to help Nathan out. Unfortunately, this means that David has become willfully blind to all of the horrible things that Nathan is doing.

The biggest flaw with this theory is that David can back Max up if she blames Nathan for what happened to Kate.

• Nathan's creepy writings of "RACHEL IN THE DARK ROOM" might be a manifestation of him dealing with being complicit in Jefferson's photographs, since there's a photograph of Rachel resting her head on his stomach in her binder.

Joyce is dead in the alternate timeline and died in the same incident that paralysed Chloe.

There's nothing much to this other than there being no sign of Joyce in the ending scene, which otherwise had brief appearances from most of the important cast. Plus it would give this version of Chloe an entirely different set of parental issues - instead of harboring irrational resentment over William leaving and never coming back (by the unfortunate inconvenience of being dead), she'll be dealing with an extreme amount of guilt over (accidentally) killing her own mother.

• And at one point, there will be the option to choose between killing Joyce and killing William. Then, we'll create a new timeline which involves no powers, but somehow kills both of them. That'd be fun and also incredibly sad.

• I doubt it. If Chloe had lived and Joyce died in a car accident don't you think Chloe and William would've been a bit affected? Instead they both looked happy to see Max and the house looked good and better taken care of than in the other timeline. If Joyce was dead they probably wouldn't give two shits about how the house looked.
• Jossed: You can actually go up to Joyce's room and talk to her in the alt timeline

Mr Jefferson and Sean Prescott are in a cult and Sean forced Nathan into it.

That would explain why Nathan drugged Chloe, some kind of initiation

• Jossed: Sean doesn't seem to know the details of Jefferson and Nathan's kidnap/murder scheme

Max will have to kill herself for the town to end up ok.

with all of the mystical events hapening in Arcadia Bay such as the massive deaths of animals, the snowing, and the dual moons it would be the natural world's way of trying to destroy the timeline that Max has messed up with her time travel shenanigans. Similar to the Donnie Darko, the only way for the world to continue on would be if Max never used or discovered her powers by taking the bullet for Chloe in the initial bathroom scene.

• Jossed, all endings have Max alive

The Prescotts can rewind time and are the source of Max's power

The ability to rewind time is the source of the Prescott's success and power for more than a century, and is part of the 'destiny' about which that Sean Prescott texted Nathan.

Nathan is a problem for the Prescotts due to his mental instability. When he shot Chloe, he was so stressed that his powers jumped to Max, possibly leaving him entirely. Both the natural disasters and the universe's continual attempts on Chloe's life that eventually succeed are either the Prescotts' attempts to take back their power, or a side effect of the power being owned by the wrong person.

Mr. Jefferson either has the rewind power or knows about it, which is why he knew to sedate Max so that her internal chemistry, which remains the same when she rewinds, would retain the sedative.

This may not be the first time Nathan lost his power- Rachel Amber may have taken it, as per the above WMG that she had the rewind power, and Nathan had to kill her to reclaim it. If the latter part is true, he will also try to kill Max. The Final Boss will be a confrontation with someone else who can rewind.

• Makes a lot of sense. After all, wouldn't you expect a family of time travellers to use their unique ability to gather foreknowledge for financial gain? (ala Biff Tannen). And the Prescotts are rich...

In a future episode, Chloe will pull of a feat of badass driving.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty hopeful that all her parking tickets are a Chekhov's Gun and not a brick joke.

• Almost certainly jossed now. Also, more than a little Harsher in Hindsight.
• I wouldn't joss this yet... there is still episode 5
• Chloe isn't seen driving in Episode 5, so this is officially jossed.

Rachel is actually Max's Evil Counterpart

Similar to the "Rachel is Max's foil" WMG posted above.Assuming she has the same time control powers as Max (see her popularity at Blackwell, her perfect grades, her idealized relationship with Chloe), Rachel doesn't appear to be as pure as Max. She's gotten involved with Frank behind Chloe's back, not only romantically, but for drugs and something to do with a "blood oath." In addition, Samuel suggested that Rachel was both "positive and negative," meaning she could be one way in public and another way in private. Whether or not she actually died (like the other girls in the red binder collection) is up for debate.

Rachel is also noted for being an excellent model, compared to Max, an excellent photographer. Maybe she posed for so many photos to give herself more control through time, possibly resulting in the tornado that threatens Arcadia Bay.

• What would her agenda be? Certainly not ruin her good name, most people loved Rachel and are neutral towards Max mostly.

Nathan might genuinely have no idea of what Mr. Jefferson have been doing to the kidnapped girls.

Considering that Episode 4 spent a bit of time giving Nathan Prescott some subtle hints that he might not be as evil as most player presumes due to looking into his unstable relationship with his father, and how his mental disability is deteriorating and making him fragile in both mind and body, there's a chance that Nathan might not have been a willing participant with the kidnapped girls plan.

Perhaps he's simply told by Mr. Jefferson to send 'willing' girls that wants to pose for him in the 'Dark Room' with a spiked drink every time, completely unaware that he's drugging the girls and sending them into the 'Dark Room' to fulfil Mr. Jefferson's sick fantasies. A picture of him lying along with a drugged Rachel Amber may also hint that he too may have been drugged by Mr. Jefferson as well.

Considering that Nathan is not mentally well and may not be taking his medication often, Nathan likely played along with Mr. Jefferson's plan while completely left out in the dark, and Mr. Jefferson fully takes advantage of Nathan's mental state for the full purpose of turning him into a scapegoat in order to divert attention away from himself.

• Then again, he did go out of his way to drug Chloe and snap a photo of her lying prone on the floor in a poor replication of Jefferson's work.
• Jossed: Nathan is the one who killed Rachel Amber with an overdose, trying to impress Jefferson. Jefferson is taking advantage of him, but Nathan is at least somewhat aware of what they are doing.

Max will go into a picture with Chloe in it and there will be a steamy romantic scene while in the picture.

This way, "Go fuck your selfie" suddenly becomes foreshadowing.

Max's powers are not causing the eco-disasters, rather it's the other way around

Maybe Max has been "chosen" somehow as the protector of Arcadia and she has the powers to prevent the tornado.

• Jossed. More like "the power to not use her powers in order to prevent the tornado".

The Prescotts are behind the tornado

They have an underground bunker, so it seems reasonable that they at least know about it.

• Jossed, they seem to be completely in the dark

Victoria dosed Rachel at the Vortex party

It's been set up since the first episode that Victoria really hated Rachel and that hasn't really paid off yet in the story also there has to be a reason why Rachel died when there is no indication that the other victims did. Perhaps Victoria dosed Rachel's drink at the party to make her act crazy in front of the other cool kids and then when either Nathan or Jefferson drugged her again it caused an overdose.

• Jossed, the OD seems to be Nathan's fault

That plant's going to be important later on

Especially if Max needs the help of a Nature Lover later in the story.

The person at the end of Episode 4 ISN'T Mr. Jefferson...

...But rather it's actually Mr. Jefferson's enstranged identical twin who is a sociopath.

Hey, this is called Wild Mass Guessing, after all.

• Jossed in Episode 5 but it's to be expected, after all.

Max will have to choose between herself or Chloe in the end.

It's a very heavily discussed character flaw of Max's that she is reluctant to be involved in situations she deems as threatening (for example, when she can choose to take a picture instead of help Kate out in Episode 1), and many of the events of the past 4 episodes have forced her to overcome this flaw - she has become more proactive. This is even shown in the bathroom scene in Episode 1; trying to run out from behind the stall has Max stop, say she can't do that, and turn around. Now the actual theory:

What if Max's rewind is causing the storm, and the initial rewind when Chloe died was the first act (the metaphorical beating of the butterfly's wings) that triggers the storm? What if, in order to prevent the storm, Max must solve that scenario one of two ways - no rewinds, no second chances - INTERVENE (and potentially be shot by the surprised Nathan) or TAKE A PHOTO (resulting in Chloe's death, as her pushing Nathan leads him to fire by accident, but Max has solid evidence that Nathan is a killer). Then, based on what you choose, you see a photo-montage of our previous choices, and how they're affected by this new timeline. Max's character development over the last 4 episodes has allowed her to make that choice - to enter into a dangerous situation to help a friend.

• Jossed, taking a photo when going back to the original confrontation is not an option and stepping in is similarly not an option.

Alyssa is a Chekhov's Gunman

The pre-Episode Three patch added her voice actress to the credits, but the rest of the minor students are not specifically credited.

• Given that Alyssa and Kate share a voice actress, it's possible that DONTNOD wanted to credit the VA in an episode where her primary character has no voiced dialogue.

Principal Wells knows about the Dark Room

While investigating the Dark Room, you can find a bottle of whiskey that looks just like the one you find hidden in Wells' office. That would imply that he's been in the Dark Room. We also don't know what he was arguing with Jefferson about at the end of Episode 2.

Warren wasn't drunk or drugged, and he knows about max's powers

That's why he took the "drunk" selfie with max, because he knows that he would be able to give her the selfie later so she can time travel to just before they search for Nathan and tell Chloe that Mr. Jefferson is involved with it, and that Nathan isn't at the party. Jossed. Warren is unaware of Max's powers and had to be told by her that she could rewind time in Episode 5.

Someone from max's photography class is going to save max from Mr Jefferson

Mr Jefferson:"I can trap any one of you in a dark corner and capture you in a moment of desperation and anyone of you can do that to me." the first part of that was a foreshadow maybe the rest of that sentence was a foreshadow.

Warren will be the main antagonist.

I'm sorry, this troper identifies with Warren, and I really hope I'm wrong about him, but I've seen way too many thriller/detective/mystery shows to let this go. I think Warren is the main antagonist. So far he's the only major character without a secret and he was standing outside the building trying to look into our window shortly before we got an anonymous message threatening us and telling us that "s/he knows were we sleep." I hope I'm wrong and Warren is just an awkward guy with a crush, but I seriously doubt it.

• I hope it's not him too. For starters Max already knows him and his number so he'd need another mobile to text her from. Seconds It's highly likely to be Nathan and his family because they technically own the school, they'd have the means to find out which room exactly. Plus he's popular. It could also come from David, but I doubt it and lastly Frank. He has clients in the school he could pump for information.
• The threatening messages are very clearly from Nathan (who evidently knows where she sleeps because he breaks into her room). Warren does carry the vibe of either being an awkward dude with a crush or a time bomb ticking down to an indignant "friendzoned!" though.
• I'm thinking that "time bomb" might be a little more literal. He harasses Max with texts/pressures her to come to the drive in if she refused his invite, and he seems to pretty readily know how to build a pipe bomb. If he gets rejected by Max, I get the feeling he might blow something up.
• Nah, he's cool. Best case scenario he cries on Brooke's shoulder and they get together. The way I see it she's more likely to 'blow' something up, from her icy reception of Max.

Rachel Amber is Max from the timeline where William never died, during the time period when Max didn't live in Arcadia.

It's possible that Rachel will turn out to have the same time rewind power, being Max's alternate self, although that's not necessary for the theory, since Max didn't have the power until the start of the game, so there's no reason to think Rachel had it at a different time, if she ever had it at all.

Some of the basis for this theory comes from Greg Egan's Dust Theory, which is apparently a real quantum physics thing called Event Symmetry. A drastically-simplified explanation (of the Dust Theory, at least) is that just as general relativity caused us to throw out absolute space and time (because gravity demonstrably warps them both, as seen around black holes), so too might absolute cause and effect be just as malleable; Egan illustrates it by showing an artificial intelligence, with subjective experience, having its experience calculated out of order by computers all over the planet. And yet because all the calculations were performed, the AI experiences the subjective passage of time as if nothing were out of the ordinary. So the theory is that any permutation of energy and matter which could, when arranged just so, be subjectively experienced as a coherent progression of cause and effect, will be experienced that way. In other words, we're experiencing our universe in a certain way, but all the dust in the universe could just as easily be arranged in a totally different way, and is being experienced by something or someone in just that way, as well as every other way it could be arranged.

The practical upshot is that any possible permutation of the universe that makes sense is, not hypothetically, but literally a whole and complete universe existing alongside ours. And given the size of the universe and the possibilities, that's a shitload of universes.

So the theory is that when Max left Arcadia, as soon as she and her family were far enough away that their subjective experience was no longer directly affecting the existence of Arcadia, Rachel showed up. It wouldn't have been instantaneous, but it would have been around the same time—within a couple of weeks, a month or two at the longest, sounds plausible. And Rachel disappeared very shortly before Max returned—around the time the observations and actions of Max and her family would have started to have a direct effect on Arcadia. Max and Rachel could never meet, because it wouldn't have made sense for the two versions of the same person to exist within each other's observable universe, but as long as their simultaneous existence is never directly observed, there's no contradiction, and the situation is stable.

Max has been restarting every time she experiences the tornado, trying over and over to avoid the disaster.

She's been reliving the events of the games over and over. For some reason, she has forgotten this, and thinks she's experiencing everything for the first time; possibly the extensive use of the power, which we've already seen can make her dazed and give her nosebleeds, has damaged her long-term memory, or has some other kind of effect that negated her otherwise-Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory.

Similar to Puella Magi Madoka Magica, where it turns out that Homura has relived the events of the series potentially thousands of times, trying desperately to find a permutation of events where Madoka doesn't die/turn into a Witch. And, similarly, every successive repeat just seems to make things worse.

The biggest clue to this is the fact that Max's only power is to rewind time, and yet she's having visions of the future. If this theory is correct, the entire game is her reliving the past, and that the real "present" is during or after the tornado.

Every time Max uses her power to do good, it upsets some kind of cosmic balance, which is why she keeps encountering bizarre phenomena, much of which involves death.

Not really many "clues" as such to this one, but some kind of Equivalent Exchange being at work here makes sense—Max saves numerous lives over the course of the game, starting with Chloe and moving on from there, and even her lesser acts of altruism (preventing the one girl from getting hit with a football, etc.) might be detrimental to some greater structure in the continuity of space and time. Maybe preventing someone from having a bad day is significant enough to kill a fish, and saving a human life might kill a hundred. You have the fish dying in the bay to the point where there aren't any left, birds dying all over the place (starting with the one that crashes into the window, which you can save, but in the third episode if you keep your eyes out, there are dead birds fucking everywhere), the whales all over the beach after going all the way back and saving William, and that's not even considering the potential deaths you can prevent, like Kate and Frank's dog. Even Chloe being in a wheelchair after rebooting the universe might be a direct attempt to balance out the act of saving her dad in the past.

At the end of the series, Max will realize that she is causing all of the ever-increasing tragedy, and will have to go back one last time to stop herself from changing anything at all, potentially even erasing herself from time.

This follows from the last three WMGs—"Max is Rachel from the alternate timeline", "Max has been reliving the events of the entire game over and over", and "Everything Max changes causes more tragedy". At the end of the series, Max will remember everything, and realize that her attempts to fix things and help people and do good are exactly what caused the tornado, which will kill hundreds, maybe thousands, in an attempt to redress the balance that she has been tearing apart with her attempts to help people. And she'll go back in time, once more, to remove herself from the equation and prevent any of it from happening—and when she's been erased from the timeline, Rachel Amber, who Max displaced when she went to the alternative timeline and returned, will show up, because Max is no longer there to negate her existence. And no one will remember Max ever existing, or at least it will be as if she never returned at the beginning of the game—just left without saying goodbye, as Chloe had always thought. And Rachel will never have gone missing.

Warren isn't drunk, he was drugged

Warren is almost falling over himself and slurring his words after just 'half a beer'? Where have we heard about something like that before? From Kate, who just had a 'sip of red wine?' before feeling dizzy and out of it. There's also the question of how he got the alcohol, the only alcohol available was from the VIP area, and Warren definitely wouldn't have been allowed back there.

• Stella could have given him the drugged drink. She was working at the party under Mr Jefferson, and she's on Frank's list of clients. Mr Jefferson could have asked her to drug Warren to make sure that he wouldn't tag along with Max. Maybe there was a plan to give Chloe a drink too, but she was too worked up about Rachel to go for it.
  • Jossed, especially the Stella part. Nothing seems off with Warren later in the game, and Stella turns out to just be an impoverished girl from an abusive family trying to deal with academic stress.

The game will end with Max merging the two timelines.

Max will do a time-whammy on her entire wall of Polaroids, merging the two timelines into one in which both William and Chloe are alive and Rachel never went missing. This will stabilize the universe — no more dead whales — and break her time powers for good.

• Jossed

Mr. Jefferson is Sean Prescott

Just throwing it out there. Would kind of explain why Sean Prescott's letters are constantly telling Nathan to not call him in public.

• Except there's an old picture of Sean Prescott in Nathan's room and he looks nothing like Jefferson. Not to mention that people would notice if the man who practically owns Arcadia Bay is moonlighting as a famous photographer and high school teacher. That being said, a lot of the letters and messages to Nathan that Max assumes are from Mr. Prescott are probably really from Jefferson.
• Perhaps the man everybody believes to be Sean Prescott is actually an imposter hired by Jefferson (the real Sean Prescott & father of Nathan) to play the tiresome role of the millionaire businessman, so that he can live out his dream life of hanging around and exploiting young jailbait girls all day long. Alternatively, perhaps the "fake Sean" is meant to serve as the Count Dookoo to Jefferson's Darth Sideous; "fake Sean" exists only to be an Arcadia Bay villain, simply so Jefferson can defy him and become everybody's hero.
• Jossed, since Jefferson needed Nathan to have access to any of the Prescott's money

Mr. Jefferson is a secret Prescott

He isn't Sean Prescott, as guessed above, but maybe he's Sean Prescott's brother or son? If so, that could explain why Sean Prescott holds Nathan to such high standards, having already been deeply disappointed in one of his family members. Or maybe he is a time traveller and is one of or all of the older Prescotts mentioned in the letters. He could also be Harry Aaron Prescott, owner of the barn. Regardless of the relationship, him being a Prescott would explain how he has access to the Dark Room.

• Jossed, since Jefferson needed Nathan to have access to any of the Prescott's money

The Prescotts know about or are even the source of the coming storm, and could well be time travelers too.

In Sean Prescott's emails and letters to Nathan, he kept blathering on about the Prescott "destiny," which seems like an odd word to use for the whole "take freaky photos of drugged-up teenagers," thing, and if was just about being a rich and powerful family, why would the game be so vague about it? In the email, he strongly implies that something terrible is going to happen to Arcadia Bay. Then in the launch trailer for Episode 4, Nathan outright yelled that a storm was coming.

It's possible Mr Jefferson is in on it, too.

• Jossed, neither the Prescotts nor Jefferson seem to have any idea about the storm.

Kate is lying about or hiding something related to the video.

I don't hate Kate. In fact, feel really bad for her because I know how she feels. I've been through what she's going through twice. I'm only saying this because characters in the game are hinting that she's hiding something. As a writer, I know how hard it is to get some hints across and I think that the writers are hinting at something here. We just don't realize it because the hints weren't executed well.

• Jossed, Kate wasn't hiding anything

Nathan wants to make people leave Arcadia Bay because he knows that the storm is coming

That's why he's such a douchebag. He knows the storm is coming so he wants to save as many people as possible, by being as evil as possible.

Following the "Mr. Jefferson drugged Nathan" theory, Mr. Jefferson is the one who killed Rachel.

Because Nathan also seemed to have been drugged in the picture with Rachel also in episode 3 Nathan looked at Max and thought she was Rachel

• Jossed. Nathan gave Rachel an overdose.

The body isn't Rachel's.

The body Max and Chloe Found, isn't Rachel's body, it could be any one of Nathan and/or Mr. Jefferson's victims.

• No offense, but this seems like wishful thinking. Chloe probably would have noticed if it wasn't Rachel.
  • While I'm not inclined to think that what we see isn't Rachel's body, all we really see is possibly some hair.
• Jossed, it's Rachel, the developers didn't show her body to avoid a higher age rating.

Mr. Jefferson knows about Max's powers.

He's drugging her with special medicine that makes her time powers unable to work. He'll keep doing this for the rest of episode 5 so that she can't rewind to trick him in any sort of way, shape, or form.

• Jossed, he suspects that something has changed with Max but he doesn't actually know that she has powers.

Mr. Jefferson has the rewind power too.

That's how he knows about Max's rewind power. He saw her use it in class. He also knows more about it than she does because maybe he has had it longer. Maybe Rachel had it too and Mr. Jefferson first started to notice it from there. Mr. Jefferson also knows a bit about medicine and drugs Max so that her rewind powers don't work. Like, he knows which drugs to use so that her rewind powers don't work.

• Jossed, he just used his regular drugs.

Max's powers will get another upgrade

Max will go into a photo Warren took to reverse Episode 4's ending, only to find that she is no longer confined to the area where the photo was taken.

The second moon was Rachel.

Because why not.

Nathan killed himself.

Well, his life is pretty terrible.

Brooke followed Max and Chloe with her drone.

Because she likes Warren and Warren likes Max and it's possible

Chlorine Gas will factor into the plot at some point.

Chlorine keeps coming up. Helping Warren with his science work by telling him to use chlorine, making a pipe bomb from Sodium Chlorate, needing to change clothes because of the chlorine smell from the pool...

Rachel is trapped in a photo

Going off the above theories about Rachel also having powers and Nathan's "Rachel in the dark room" mantra referring to an actual darkroom. She entered a photo while experimenting with her powers - maybe a selfie she took while alone for those purposes, on the day she disappeared - but can't get out for some reason. Possibly:

• The photo was damaged and needs to be repaired. Nathan might be behind this, or it could have been caused accidentally, in which case that's probably where he saw her using her powers before.
• But they don't go 'in' the photo. They just use it to remember the context of the situation and the day or whatever, they're not IN the photo. It's like a port key, not a level.
  • The photo based time travel seems to be less 'travelling into a photo' and more using the moment captured by the photo as a focus to travel back to a specific place and time in one's own personal time stream for a brief period of time.
• If the photo was of a moment in the past that Rachel wished to change, she might have overexerted herself and stopped time like Max did in Episode 2; either these two abilities conflicted somehow, preventing her from leaving, or she passed out from the strain and has essentially been in suspended animation.
• But when Max rewinds and stuff she stays in one spot. If she rewound too far back and got stuck there, wouldn't she just have to re-live all that time until she came back to the present? Or a certain amount of time until the memory was over and she could return to the present?

The homeless woman behind the diner is Rachel

Just a thought?

• Then that theory about Rachel going back in time and getting stuck in a memory or something would make sense. She went too far and couldn't return, got stuck there, had to live from there, then when she came back to the present time she was old and couldn't tell anyone what happened or they'd think she was crazy and basically wound up homeless.

The number of rewinds you use will affect things in the final episode

There are a certain number of plot/gameplay required rewinds: Episode 1 has the original rewind with Chloe's death, the camera, answering the question correctly, talking to Mr. Jefferson correctly, at least one rewind for saving Chloe, at least one rewind for getting past Victoria, and then I believe three in the final lighthouse dream approach thing for a total of at least 9. Episode 2 has one for spilling the soda on Kate's book, at least two for impressing Chloe at the diner, two for getting the bottles at the junkyard, at least two while shooting the bottles, at least one (possibly two, though I think it's possible to get it in one if you are quick) for saving Chloe from the train tracks, two rewinds and the timestop while attempting to save Kate for a total of 11(ish). Episode 3 has at least one for sneaking past the principal, one for getting into the office after the bomb, at least one to get Frank's keys, the BIG rewind, and then at least one to save William for a total of 5 and a grand total of 25(ish). My theory is that using more than that number will affect things, either by making Max's powers stronger because she's had more practice, or else making the world more messed up because there are so many conflicting timelines.

• Jossed, even if rewinds were minimized as much as possible or used as much as possible the only things that change are as a result of specific choices. Nightmare!Max will still call Max out for wasting her power on high school drama.

You disappear once you go into a photo

That's why Rachel disappeared. She has powers too and she focused on a photo too. When she did, she went into the photo, changed the past, and went into a new timeline and never came back out. Now that's the same deal for Max.

• That would imply Rachel never diverging from any single choice she made in the original timeline. With all her foreknowledge, that seems highly unlikely, to say the least.

Nathan Prescott will attempt to pull off a school shooting.

We know that Nathan is unstable, and Episode 1 shows that he is not above killing other students. The circumstances surrounding Kate also seem to indicate that he is manipulative and sadistic. He also has access to firearms. Is he going to snap and try to kill some of the other students?

• Maybe this is the payoff to the running gag about saving Alyssa from misfortune...
• Jossed: Nathan died prior to having any chance to pull something like this off.

Chloe has time control powers too, and she's been testing Max all along

She's been abandoned again and again and doesn't trust Max or anyone anymore so she gave Max her powers and put her through a couple of tests to see if she's for real or if she'll pack up and bail again. Keep in mind that it was Max's abandonment that started it all basically. Or she's making stuff up to get Max to spend more time with her. Like, she's cool and all but isolated and without Rachel she really feels she has no one so when Max comes along she's really eager to have her back in her life and the perks of having a time traveler friend are pretty good, such as not dying for example. And I'll just stop now.

Max will not reset the alternate timeline she created in Episode 3.

It works out better for (almost) everyone involved. David seems happy as the bus driver and it gives him a "safe" occupation to ease back into ordinary life with. Warren isn't doomed to a one-sided relationship. Max is a member of the Vortex Club thus likely saved Kate. That she's friendly (or at least on neutral terms) with Nathan makes it easier to investigate Rachel's disappearance (as this is likely independent of her friendship with Chloe), even if you antagonised him across Episodes 1 and 2. Chloe is far worse off physically but is much happier. Of course this would torment Max and give her a reason to fix her mistake, at least after she's learned what she can about Rachel.

• I've been writing my own stuff before and I think that the Life is Strange writers were going for a bad alternate timeline since Max says that it's so fucked up when it's really not. The writers wanted it to seem bad when it really isn't. So she'll probably reset it anyways. Also, she never wanted to be in the Vortex club so it's not that great for her. Plus, maybe she's interested in Warren but never knew until it was too late. So yeah.]]
• Jossed, it gets reset in Episode 4

David can see the storm coming too.

David also has the ability to see the storm coming like Max, which explains his paranoia. Why he hasn't left town is simple; he feels that with his ability he can do something about it and the soldier in him won't allow him to surrender to the seemingly inevitable. His harassment and his attitude at home shows the toll this is taking on his mind.

• I figured the reason he was paranoid was because Chloe was so close to Rachel Amber and because he has chronic hero syndrome and he blames himself for not finding out what happened to her and he's scared of the same thing happening to Chloe so he's trying desperately to solve the mystery of Rachel Amber before anything else happens again. Plus he knows something is up with the Vortex club.

Nathan has visions too

Just watch the recently released trailer for episode 4, you'll see this is the case.

• This ended up being cut, so it's What Could Have Been rather than actually canon.

Rachel will come back as a ghost in episode 5

Because she's dead and why not.

• Her only appearance in the entire series ends up being via text in Max's nightmare, so this is jossed.

Nathan can perceive when reality is changed.

Maybe not fully, but he shouts that a storm is coming. This is something Max saw in a vision, how would be aware of that? If this is true, it might be tied to Nathan's mental illnesses as well (where his psychiatrist says that he is getting more disconnected from reality).

David Madsen's personal investigations would've lead to him becoming an informant of the FBI.

Okay so hear me out over here. This theory's a bit of a long one, so you're all in for a bit of a ride here. Anyways...

Here's the thing, what if Jefferson's been investigating the Prescotts for a bit longer than we've previously thought and, a couple of days before the events of Episode 1: Chrysalis, all of his private investigations have somehow gotten the attention of something like say, the FBI?

Once again, hear me out over here. David Madsen's been investigating the Prescotts for a while specifically for either their possible involvement with a massive scam involving Pan Estates, or alternatively, either their involvement with a possible human trafficking/illegal pornography ring alongside Mark Jefferson and quite possibly, if the bottles in the Dark Room are an indication, Principal Wells. This somehow eventually grabs the attention of the FBI which, in turn, sends in a few undercover agents to hire Jefferson as a possible informant to the FBI, what with his relations to the Prescotts, and not to mention, all of his experience as a retired soldier.

Throughout the rest of the game, while you (as Max) conducted your own investigations alongside Chloe, David's been working with the FBI on their own investigations. From more minor things such as Nathan being a drug dealer of sorts, to more massive things like the circumstances behind Kate's suicide, Rachel's death, the Dark Room, and everyone else involved with it.

So, I know what you're probably asking right now. How would this affect the events of the entire game, at least, from Max's perspective?! Well, let's move on to the events of Episode 4, and more importantly, the preview for episode 5...

If you managed to side with David throughout the entire game, he could continue his investigations on the Price-Madsen residence and, once Max and Chloe finished their own investigations, David could just curiously enter Chloe's room at one point, discovering the results of their investigation, and informing the FBI about the existance of the Dark Room. Later that night, when Max was trapped in the Dark Room, Jefferson, who at that time was focused on "getting rid of the evidence", would then attempt to kill Max... until, out of nowhere, you'd hear...

"GET THE FUCK DOWN!"

Jefferson then looks behind him, and gets into the door. An explosion could be heard as the blast door is breached, possibly with C4, as the FBI's Hostage Rescue team comes in to either restrain or kill Mr Jefferson, depending on whether or not you ratted him out on Episode 2 or Not.

If you, however, did NOT side with David throughout the entire game, and/or caused him to get kicked out of the Price-Madsen residence by Joyce, he will NOT be aware of the existance of the Dark Room, and instead, will cause the FBI to raid either the Prescott Mansion or Pan Estates, and Max would either rely on either being saved by Nathan, or by saving herself on her own, once again, depending on all of the choices that you've made throughout the entire game, at least before that point.

Now, what would happen after that, the importance of the storm, and the motivations of the Prescotts, Jefferson, and everyone else involved, on the other hand, would be fair game at this point, and would probably deserve other theories/WMGs of their own.

• Jossed. Though David does manage to save Max in Episode 5...

Chloe is going to die in every episode

The preview of episode 2 shows her about to be run over by a train. It's possible she was supposed to die in that bathroom, and the storm is a symptom of reality collapsing as the universe tries to correct her survival.

• But then why does Max start getting visions before saving Chloe?
• Jossed, she survived episode 3
• Might also be Jossed because she died at the end of episode 4. She might not even get to live to die in episode 5.
• Depends on the players choice in Episode 5. One of the options is saving Arcadia Bay by letting Chloe die while the other lets her live at the cost of everyone in the town.

Someone is studying Max's choices from afar

The game presents Max with multiple options for helping or hindering people, usually tagged with the note "This choice will have consequences." Some of these consequences are apparent (like erasing insults to Kate before saving her from an attempted suicide), but maybe others involve proving Max's worth to a yet-unknown entity (perhaps Rachel herself, perhaps some higher power). The choices you make in-game could determine how well the final act goes according to this entity's nature.

A girl will die or almost die in every episode

Chloe is shot by Nathan in episode one, but is saved by Max. It is possible for Kate to die in episode two. Maybe this trend will continue.

• No girls die in Episode 3.

Brooke's drone is a Chekhov's Gun.

Either Brooke has been watching everybody this entire time, or watching Max this entire time, or Max is going to borrow Brooke's drone for a mission.

• She seems to be using it to spy on Warren, if her Suspiciously Specific Denial while discussing Ms. Grant's confiscation of the drone is any clue. The drone itself may or may not be important, but I'm guessing that Brooke's jealous nature and resentment of Max for being close to Warren will play a role in the future.

The new alternate timeline

is sugar and rainbows and the next episodes will be so too.The reason why you see the Vortex party at the end of episode 3? It's because it's foreshadowing that everything will be just happiness and partying for the next two episodes. Fuck. Yeah.

• Parties don't always mean happiness though... remember Carrie?
• Carrie was voted prom Queen. It wasn't all bad.

Max is actually losing her mind.

There is no time travel in the game at all, Max is just slowly becoming more and more insane.

• By Chloe's death. She couldn't handle seeing a girl die in front of her eyes like that, and wished she could do something to stop it, especially after finding out that was Chloe, her childhood friend's dying self she held in her hands or whatever so she fell into a comma or became catatonic and imagined she had the power to change all that. Sounds like this episode of Buffy.

Nathan has a split personality caused by the drugs he takes

Why else does he go after so many women and the fact that he killed Rachel

• That isn't how drugs work. Nathan has many mental problems, but DID does not appear to be one of them.

Max didn't really cause the storm

• That was just the best theory that they had at the time - but even in the alternate timeline where Max changed everything and Chloe could have never been in that bathroom to get shot, the birds and whales dying only started happening that week, when changing that much history should have caused the storm to happen years earlier. Not to mention, Max's power only manifested when Chloe first died, after she'd had her vision of the storm - that the ultimate lesson to be learned is that Chloe should have died the moment those powers even turned up seems entirely unnecessary, given that Max had no idea it was even Chloe at the time. No, something else, probably tied to the Prescott's 'destiny' and whatever it is Nathan's sister was talking about in her email, is to blame for the whole mess.
  • Jossed. Max was the cause of the storm all along

David saved the diner in Max's place in the "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay" ending.

When we see it in the closing cutscene, there's a little scorching on the Two Whales, but it doesn't really look like it suffered the kind of gigantic explosion and fire we saw earlier, which you'd expect to have happened since Max was with Chloe heading for the beach when the fire ignited in this timeline. But in the final timeline, since David and the police nabbed Jefferson in the Dark Room hours earlier, if not the previous night, he wouldn't need to be under the barn investigating when the storm hit. It'd make sense for him to try and find Joyce when the weather turned (since he'd have left Chloe and Max holed up at the house), and with all his army and doomsday-prepper training, he could've noticed the gasoline leak and smothered it before it became a problem.

• Jossed. Life Is Strange 2 confirms that David survived the storm due to snooping around in the Dark Room and Joyce died, presumably in the diner. He did however save Victoria from Jefferson.

Open-Ended/Misc

Jefferson was intending to take Max to the Dark Room from the start of the game.

• Want proof? Just look at the favoritism he gives her from the start of the game. This WMG is based on the end of ep.4, so ep.5 may or may not expand on it. Sweet dreams.
• Heavily implied in Episode 5 when Max hands in her photo for the contest.
• Any reason this is in the "Jossed" section? It's pretty clear that this is in fact confirmed (despite the fact that there was no "Max" binder, which we can pretty safely assume was just to avoid giving too much away). He's been obsessed with Max and her "innocence" for quite some time.

Max is a Time Lady and Lisa the plant is, in fact, the Tardis coral that she's growing

Extra points if Rachel Amber is a future/past regeneration.

• Chloe is Max's companion.

Life is Strange takes place in the BioShock multiverse.

Lighthouse, city, antagonistic males, it fits the formula pretty well.

• Arcadia Bay barely compares to the grandeur of Rapture or Columbia, though. And if "there's always a man," why is Max the protagonist this time? Unless Jefferson is a Villain Protagonist...

Nathan Prescott and Kate Marsh have something to do with Rachel's disappearance.

Early in the game, Chloe accuses Nathan of having drug connections and there is mention of Kate making a porn video. Nathan gave Kate some sort of roofie, and sexually assaulted her, getting it on camera. Rachel, who thought Nathan was the person who could 'change her life', found out and tried to confront him, same as Chloe. Given Nathan's erratic behavior and his tendency to carry a gun, it's safe to assume there could have been an "accident".

• Well, it's kind of related. They both were drugged and had photos taken of them in the Dark Room.

Max is Chloe's guardian angel

Rachel was Chloe's angel, but when she was gone, who actually saves her life (and probably will do it again and again)?

Rachel is the latest in a long line of missing girls

Those folders seen at the end of the episode can't not be significant. And if the theory that Rachel had the same powers as Max is true, perhaps all those others did too, and the person keeping the folders could possibly be aware of that.

• Possible but according to police files, Rachel's the only person (of either sex) to go missing in a long while in that town.
• Partly Jossed: the other girls likely didn't go missing—Jefferson simply photographed them and sent them off, using drugs to ensure that most would not remember the experience. Rachel went missing because she died.

Max's "dream" of the storm is actually the first manifestation of her powers.

She would have gotten crushed by the lighthouse, but she used her time powers to go back to the beginning of the week.

• But when she goes back in time she retains her memories and objects. If that were true she'd start the game with all the pictures, and knowledge of the entire week.
• Possibly jossed by the ending.

Max's powers are real in-universe, but she's STILL losing her mind.

• Causing her to slowly become the Life Is Strange Universe's equivalent of Scarlet Witch, but with time powers instead of probability manipulation and reality-warping.

In an alternate universe, Warren will become a sun-powered cyborg and Max and Warren will still be in love with each other, causing Warren to become the Vision to Max's Scarlet Witch.

Max's apparent Power Incontinence in Episode 2 wasn't due to her slowly losing her powers

But she's simply over-extending them, using them too much, too quickly. They're like a muscle, stretch them too far and they snap, but the more they're used, the stronger they get. We can see this when Max desperately outright stops time in her effort to save Kate.

• I like this theory because that makes Max's power more like a sort of phenomenon that happens, like how babies can exhibit immense ammounts of strength when in peril and not something to be feared like something that could cause karmatic badness to rain down on everyone.

The Doe

It seems to only appear to Max, leads her to safety in the vision at the end of Episode 1 and doesn't appear on the camera in the junkyard. The only person Max tells is Samuel, who calls it her spirit animal. A few theories -

• It is a personification of Max, who having exerted greater control over her powers, has travelled back further than usual to warn her past self, but to avoid a paradox appears as a ghostly doe. For what reason, who knows (Max wore a "Jane Doe" t-shirt in Episode 1 and a doe t-shirt in Episode 2)
• It is actually Rachel, who also had the time travel powers (fitting with above theories)
  • When the doe is encountered in episode 2, it is sitting on the ground where, it's revealed in episode 4, Rachel is buried. Upon the discovery of her remains, it is seen staring at Max and Chloe as the former comforts the latter. So there may be some credence to this idea.
• It really is a spirit animal, and everyone has one, but only appears to Max because her time travel powers are breaking down the bonds between the real world and whatever it is that keeps them hidden from everyone else.

Principal Wells and Mr. Jefferson are Up To Something

There's clearly something going on with the two of them. Mark Jefferson became incredibly suspicious over the course of Episode 2—he accused Kate of trying to get attention with the video, he tried to convince Max of the same, and he tried to act like he had said something encouraging when he gets to Wells' office. If you rewind, he belittles and degrades Kate with every word. Jefferson is also quick to react when Max mentions Rachel Amber—saying "Rachel was nothing like Kate" on certain story branches. My feeling is that Jefferson is somehow involved with Rachel's disappearance, and may have conspired with Wells in doing so. When the binder with Kate's name is displayed as in progress at the end of Episode 2, there's a glass of whiskey next to it. What character is heavily implied to be an alcoholic and has that exact style of binder throughout his office? Principal Wells. Their silent argument in the end cutscene is also suspicious as hell.

The person who catches Max and Chloe snooping after hours in school is...

This is for the episode 3 "preview" we get when beating the second episode.

• David Madsen.
• The schools prinpical, Mr. Wells
• Nathan Prescott.
• Frank. For all we know, they might've been inside all along because they were trying to hide from him after he finally lost it and came after them.
  • They don't catch Max and Chloe. Also, it's David Madsen, unless Max got him put on leave.

Max will get a What the Hell, Hero? moment from a character for all choices she makes

As far as who would be the one to do it:

• Mr. Wells
• Mr. Jefferson
• Chloe
• An unknown character we haven't met yet.
• The part of nightmare sequence in episode 5 when Max is in the Two Whales Diner filled with time frozen people from Arcadia Bay begging her not to kill them is this, culminating with a face to face with a supposed alternate version of Max calling her out on her motives behind how she uses her power. The entirety of the nightmare sequence could also be viewed as Max calling herself on it subconsciously as well, but depending on how you interpret the sequence's happenings,your mileage may vary.

Philemon is the blue butterfly.

Weird supernatural shit is going down in a small town with teenagers, but Philemon can't give Max the usual Persona powers for some reason, so instead he gave her time travel powers. Or maybe the ghost doe is her Persona, somehow.

When Max gets more of a grasp on her powers

She'll be able to jump back to specific events as and when she needs to in her personal time stream (like her first rewind, when she ended up back in the classroom) - this won't be powerful enough for her to be able to go back and prevent things from happening (like Kate's attempted suicide), but will allow her to go back and dig up information using her future knowledge that she wouldn't have known to look for or ask about the first time around.

• Also on the list, she'll be able to freeze time voluntarily (as opposed to it being a scripted event, such as during crucial decisions or Kate's attempted suicide), thus allowing the player to do time-sensitive things without having to rewind, or allow them to exploit scenarios that don't last for more than a few seconds.

At the end of the game, Max will lose her powers.

I don't have a particular reason for this one, it just seems fitting. Similar to the ending of Matilda.

• It seems like the implication is that Max still has the power, but chooses not to use it anymore either due to not needing it after breaking out of her shell, because using it messes with the laws of nature, or both.

The doe is Rachel's spirit animal.

Somewhat in line with the above "Rachel is in the lighthouse" theory, the doe is Rachel's spirit animal who is trying to communicate with Max. Whenever we see the doe, it seems to be trying to lead Max somewhere. When you take the optional choice to rewind and take a picture of the doe, Max's powers won't work on it. Rachel was mentioned to have been associated with Samuel, who believed in spirit animals. For some reason—possibly because of the person with the red binders—Rachel is in a comatose or otherwise incapacitated and relies on her spirit animal to help her.

• I'm going to toss down a gentle confirmed for this one. Though it does raise the question why Max is wearing doe's in the first few episodes. It seemed like it was set up to be her animal, not Rachel's.
  • People can have the same spirit animal. For example, Sean, Daniel, and the entire Diaz-Reynolds family are all wolves.

At least some of the songs are chosen for their meaning to to the story.

Listening to the last verse of "Crosses" ("Streets outside your window, overflooded/People staring, they know you've been broken/Repeatedly reminded by the looks on their faces/Ignore them tonight and you'll be alright"), it's very reminiscent of Kate's suicide attempt. The torrential rain seen as Kate runs off crying, the people staring up at Kate and judging her, Kate's expression as she looks down at them—all reflected in the lyrics of the song. What's an instrumental track to be featured in a future episode? "Kids Will Be Skeletons." Perhaps the survival of kids at Blackwell is in doubt.

At the Vortex Club party, something will go down.

But what?

• If it's in the new timeline, Nathan will try to drug Max, if it's in the original timeline, Nathan will turn up and try to start shit.
  • I'm pretty sure the fact that Max even ends up going to the party means she's in the original timeline again and she's going to investigate Rachel Amber and what happened to Chloe and Kate. Otherwise why would she bother going at all?
• Nothing bad happens to Max or Chloe at the party. Nathan doesn't turn up since he's dead and Jefferson kidnaps Victoria if she believed Max's warning about Nathan, but the party doesn't result in bodily harm to Chloe or Victoria.

Max's power is memetic in nature.

Every time Max has rewound, it's only been from a few seconds to a few minutes. Even the introductory event of her power (saving Chloe's life) falls into the minute category. Using this basis, it seems that Max is only capable of rewinding to a point she clearly remembers, which could possibly explain the moment she couldn't rewind further in time to warn Chloe about the switching rail, as she had a headache and wasn't aware of what was happening around her. She also gets headaches and the screen gets messed up when she tries rewinding beyond the furthest checkpoint (the inside of the spiral). Combine this with the nosebleeds she gets in Episode 2, and it starts looking like her power is directly related to her brain in some way. Finally in Episode 3, Max get's the power to go back further in time then ever by focusing on a picture from 5 years ago, to an event that left a massive impression on both her and Chloe's lives. Her power being produced by clear memory of events could also explain why she isn't capable going further back then Kate being on the ledge, because in addition to the headaches brought on by overuse of her power, she was also not there to see Kate actually go out onto the roof.

The money for the handicapped fund will come into play in Episode 4.

With Max changing history, guess who is now physically disabled?

• Chloe was only stealing from her future/alternate timeline self when she stole that money.

Frank is in the middle of a Heel–Face Turn

First and foremost, it should be noted that, while not an apparently bad individual herself, the people Rachel's been known to hang out with are... not as good as they can be. She's close friends with Chloe, on fairly good terms with Victoria (and the rest of the Vortex Club, for that matter), and has an apparent Love Interest in Frank. Now, the first two have both been shown to have a better, but not as often seen, side, which it seems likely Rachel brought out in them. So why not Frank?

Also of note, there's not a lot of genuinely bad stuff that Frank does on-screen... the most we actually see him do is threaten Chloe at knifepoint, and even that's not until she gets all up in his face about Rachel. Yes, it's strongly implied that he gave the Vortex Club party-goers drugs, but there's not a lot pointing to how far back that was. Furthermore, he doesn't seem to sell to anybody after the fact, even turning down Max when she asks using the codeword Nathan gave her (granted, that could be due to his own spite toward Max, or because Nathan didn't give her the right phrase), stating that he only sold bottles. Was he really lying, or is he trying to go straight?

Going back to his relationship with Rachel, the letters from her he has stuffed in his vent mention an incident that "scared her" and that he " couldn't blame it on the drugs", carrying the implication that one or both of them blamed drug use for his behavior before. The next logical step would be for him to remove the drugs from the equation, difficult though that may be, keeping only a small stash to help wean himself off (the cache Max finds on searching his RV).

But then why is he so antagonistic towards Max? If he's trying to be a good guy from this point on, why is he behaving so spitefully? Well, let's not forget, the first experience Frank has with Max involves him almost getting shot, which is a wonderful first impression to make with anybody, especially someone used to having lots of enemies. Also, the one piece of company she consistently keeps? Chloe, the girl who owes him money and behaves like a total punk. Is it any wonder he sees Max in a bad light?

To say nothing of everyone else. By now, Frank's occupation as a drug dealer is all but common knowledge, which puts him on a bad footing with everyone he might try to interact with. Couple that with what looks to be a Hair-Trigger Temper, and his efforts would look to be doomed to fail, especially now that the one person who seems to genuinely care for him is off the scene. Unless somebody else helps him out, he could very well relapse and change this into a Heel–Face Door-Slam.

So, to summarize... he's trying to clean up and go straight, thanks to Rachel's involvement, because Love Redeems, but is having trouble due to his past and his lover's disappearance.

• Well, if you consider his actions to not be that bad I'd hate to see what constitutes bad in your books. As for your argument it's possible he saw the error of his ways and decided to change but according to the letter you posted it's more likely that Rachel used him for drugs, that they took together, rather than inspired him to quit. Maybe her letter scared him into cutting down or trying to quit so he wouldn't lose her but I doubt he's the big hero you make her out to be. For one, he's completely antagonistic in every appearance he's made. Second, he threatened both Max and Chloe's lives. Third, it's shifty that he hides that letter better than the drugs in his RV. Unless he felt some guilt or had something to hide. Like for example that 'outburst' mentioned in the letter. Someone might interpret him as dangerous and come to the conclusion that he had another 'outburst' which ended up with Rachel dead and him hiding the body, perhaps feeding it to his dog or something. Really nothing about his character implies that he's trying to better himself. Apart from his irritability which may be likened to someone going through cigarette withdrawal symptoms, but even that is doubtful. If he really was going cold turkey he wouldn't keep the stuff around, least of all selling it.
• Might be worth noting that every major character shown in the game so far has been proven to have a side that's not entirely apparent at first... and Frank's been a major player for a large portion of the game. Honestly, it'll probably be more surprising if Frank's exactly who he appears to be.

Chloe is a closeted lesbian.

We know that Chloe had a special relationship with Rachel, but it's never really expanded upon beyond them being very close. Is it possible that Chloe was in love with Rachel? It may explain why she is so upset and disgusted by the idea of Rachel hooking up with Frank. It could also explain her extended punk-rebellion period as Chloe trying to express her inner turmoil as her trying to come to terms with who she is in the household of a repressive, conservative stepfather. And then there was that time she told Max to kiss her...

• And water is wet. Nah, but there was definitely something there at least. Chloe pretty much admits it in her room in episode 3.
  • Specifically, you can have Max accuse her of sounding like she crushed on Rachel, and Chloe's immediate response is 'You would, too!' and to talk about how great and sexy she was. So unless we get some kind of explicit debunking I think we can take it as canon that she's at least somewhat into girls.
  • Any reason this one's in Jossed? It's more of an 'implied' or 'up to the player's actions' (for both Max and Chloe), considering in the Bay ending, if you did certain things in the previous chapters (particularly the 'dare you to kiss me' moment), Max and Chloe kiss.
  • The "closeted" part. She never directly states "Yes, I, Chloe Price, am a lesbian!" but she's not in any doubt about her sexuality and, despite being rather an asshole, her repressive, conservative stepdad doesn't seem to have any issue with her love life.
• Most of David's issues come from trying to have control over what happens to the people he cares about (and are strongly implied to come from his combat experience). There's no indication that he'd actually have a problem with her being interested in women, though there's a decent chance he'd find fault with anyone (male or female) she'd be in a relationship with just because of those control issues.

Alternatively, Chloe is a closeted lesbian, in that she hides it from her mother and her stepfather.

• It would explain why Chloe's mom and her stepdad do not know about Chloe's obvious interest in women.
• Or, since Chloe is still Ambiguously Bi as far as we know....

Alternatively, Chloe is actually a closeted bisexual, in that she hides this from her mother and stepfather.

• Ditto to the previous WMG before this specific one.
• After all, so far Chloe is Ambiguously Bi, because even though she obviously likes women in the game, it's unknown if any of her attraction to the "boy toys" was ever genuine and there's no in-story moment that proves that she has no interest in men.
• Also, even though one writer interprets Chloe as gay, it is still unknown if anyone else in the development team (including other writers) agrees with that writer's interpretation (remember, in another game that Ashley Burch voice-acted in, Team Fortress 2, where Ashley Burch voiced Miss Pauling, not all of the writers agreed on the assessment of Miss Pauling's sexual orientation, which lead to "depending on the writer" situations.
• There might possibly be what could be effectively a repeat of that Miss Pauling situation, even though this is a different company and a different development team.

Alternatively, Chloe is actually a closeted pansexual.

• Again, taking Ambiguously Bi into account, plus Chloe might even be the pansexual equivalent of that trope.

Alternatively Chloe is a closeted homoromantic asexual.

• Romantic asexuals do exist, after all.

Alternatively, Chloe is actually a closeted biromantic asexual.

• Ditto to the previous WMG right before this one.

Alternatively, Chloe is actually a closeted panromantic asexual.

• Ditto to the first WMG that brings up the possibility that Chloe may be a romantic asexual.

Max is still bisexual in canon, and Chloe will finally be revealed to be bisexual in canon, but Max will lean more on men and Chloe leans more on women.

• So far, Max is still canonically bisexual.
• Also Chloe is still Ambiguously Bi for now.
• I prefer to respect established canon while still taking into account additional possibilities (hence why I mentioned other alternative possibilities about Chloe's sexual orientation and romantic orientation).

Alternatively, Chloe is actually a homoromantic bisexual.

• Again, it's a possibility.

Jefferson is an alternate universe version of Jeff Kohlver.

Both are charming (but creepy) 30-something year old photographers whose subjects are mostly young women in suggestive settings, and both seem to be involved in the disappearance of a plot-important girl. Honestly, it'd be a surprise if Hard Candy wasn't an influence on the game.

Max has gotten headaches throughout the second timeline because of her changing William's fate.

Mad Max indeed.

The homeless lady behind the diner is the Guardian of Arcadia Bay

And Max is next in line, that's why she has timey wimey powers think "The Giver".

Max's powers are their own entity.

The origin of them I cannot explain or why they chose Max to be their conduit though, but they seem to act out of self-preservation for Max and Chloe - examples being that whenever Chloe is killed by the train in Episode 2 or Max is attacked by Frank in Episode 3, the powers realize that this is not good and freeze Max in a sort of limbo to help her call on them quickly. The rewind gains more abilities and is more powerful whenever Max reacts to certain events - in other words, the powers change themselves to suit whatever is taking place at the moment. The reason this isn't a permanent solution is because they know that Max will suffer physically and perhaps even kill her which wouldn't bode well for all parties.

This can explain why at the end of Episode 4, Max is unable to rewind while drugged to save Chloe because the powers have become part of her consciousness and it doesn't activate the self-preservation mode because it's drugged as well.

Mr Jefferson drugged Nathan and took the picture of him and Rachel and him together.

After the big reveal, this is probably it.

• It's also possible that following this incident, he has been blackmailing Nathan to help him.

The old syringes on the ground of the junkyard were Foreshadowing.

It's because that Nathan and Mr. Jefferson were in a hurry when they were drugging and raping a girl out there that they just left the syringes on the ground when they should've dumped them somewhere else. Or maybe Mr. Jefferson has shot and drugged two girls other than Max and Chloe who have tried to find Rachel before.

Nathan doesn't even know that Rachel is dead

He seems like he was drugged out in that picture and also in episode 3 when he saw Max, he thought for a second that she was Rachel

Nathan was just a pawn.

It seems after the ending of episode 4, that Mr Jefferson is the one who was behind all of it

• Not all all of it, drugging Chloe and taking her to his room seems to be all him.

Alyssa is cursed.

Well, obviously.

The second moon is there because there is a second Max in that timeline.

Max used a photo to travel back in time to stop, find, or setup something to change the future; but because she wasn't originally in that photo that timeline has an extra Max and with it an extra moon. After leaving the party you notice the second moon fading away, this is the time she uses Warren's drunken selfie to go back to before the party to warn Chloe about Jefferson.

There will eventually be a special DLC episode featuring Harry Aaron Prescott as the primary antagonist

Well, they have to use that DLC button for something; what's the point of there being a DLC button if you're not going to use it?

• The episodes are the DLC. Besides, we probably have already met Harry Aaron Prescott.

Nathan is gay and his father has been trying to "fix" him.

The two realities Max has now visited are colliding.

The Second Moon in Episode 4 (and more subtly in episode 2) is actually the moon from Quadriplegic!Chloe's reality, and the climate changes and animal deaths are a result of the chaos caused bytwo realities colliding with each other as they try to occupy the same space.

Bonus points if the reason they're colliding is because of something Max has done or will do in the future.

• So kinda like the Incursions from Marvel's Secret Wars book?
• Doesn't seem that likely, considering that the moon's position would've been identical in both realities. regardless of whether William lived or died the moon was always destined to be in a certain position at that specific time - the moon from the alternate timeline would not be several degrees away from where the moon of the proper timeline was, as we see at the end of Episode 4.

The world the game takes place in is not the "real" universe.

The game opens with Max looking at the tornado and "waking up" in Jefferson's class. The universe is already broken when the game starts. Max's first "rewind" is from a universe where she's already in the Dark Room.Trying to leave the class in Episode 1 is the first time Jefferson pressures Max about submitting a photo. He does so constantly; Max is his preferred target. Max might have to die to restore order to the universe.

Samuel is a History Monk

Samuel seems to be unusually interested in Max and it's implied that he knows that she can manipulate time. The Monks must have sent Samuel to make sure that Max won't cause a massive temporal anomaly that will break history. Samuel has obviously studied under Lu-Tze, and thus he has disguised himself as a strange old Sweeper.

Chloe gave Max the time powers.

Remember the butterfly in episode one? Well what if that butterfly is chloe's spirit from the future and, through some kinda magic, gave max the time powers.

Samuel's squirrels actually give him information.

The eclipse at the end of episode 2 is caused by anther double moon

Makes sense to me. I could propably mean that we will rewind to this moment in episode 5.

The doe and the butterfly aren't just spirit animals, they are gods.

And i think the doe caused the storm to happen and the butterfly caused Max to have her time powers, the butterfly was first there when Max got her time powers, and the doe was first there during the storm vision

Max's nightmare wasn't just a nightmare, it was Arcadia Bay communicating with her.

Over the course of Episodes 1-4, it is heavily implied that Arcadia Bay has a consciousness of some sort by several characters. Max's nightmare isn't just a random assortment of unpleasant things—it's all of Max's worst fears, combined with a constant message that the way she messed with time is damaging the world. What if Arcadia Bay's only way of communicating is through dreams and visions, and it gives those to Max so that she knows the cost of her actions? Arcadia Bay is on the verge of destruction and Max shows no signs of being willing to sacrifice Chloe's life before the nightmare. By purposefully upsetting Max and showing her all the people she would have to sacrifice for Chloe, the town is making the weight of sacrificing everything for Chloe fully apparent. As a counterbalance, it also shows Max the time she spent with Chloe that she could never have had if Max chooses to sacrifice Chloe for Arcadia Bay.

Rachel gave Max her powers.

Rachel wanted Chloe to meet Max, and wanted the two of them to find out what happened to her. Essentially, she used some sort of ghost magic to give Max her powers, allowing Max to save Chloe. Eventually, if Max makes the right choice at the end, then Max will live on with those memories of that final week with Chloe, meanwhile in heaven, Chloe and Rachel meet up, and maybe Rachel finds some way to show Chloe the memories of the week.

Nathan didn't kill Rachel, Jefferson did.

In one of the photos of Rachel, Max sees that Rachel was clearly awake, aware, and furious. Rachel saw what was happening to her, and Jefferson decided she had to go because she knew too much. He gave her an OD, and drugged Nathan, which is when he took the picture of them in the junkyard. Because Nathan was out at the time, and isn't exactly on great terms with reality to begin with, he believed Jefferson when he told him that he did it, hence why he drugged Chloe that night a few months later in an attempt to impress Jefferson and prove he wasn't a failure after what supposedly happened with Rachel, and he gave Chloe less GHB than normal out of fear of ODing someone else, which is why she woke up in time to break his lamp and run. Jefferson convinced Nathan he did it in order to keep him from betraying him, since holding murder or manslaughter over someone's head is going to be a bit more effective as a tool to manipulate them than just assault (which drugging someone is classified as) or kidnapping. It's not too hard to believe Jefferson might do this, after all, we know he's perfectly willing to kill his victims with an OD for knowing too much, that he blamed Nathan for killing Chloe to Max's face even though she clearly saw him do it, and that he was planning on framing Nathan should he ever get caught anyway. And if you call him out on killing Rachel and Chloe, he doesn't dispute that, even though he just told you Nathan was the one directly responsible for Rachel's death. I don't think this is actually very likely, but I do think it's possible.

• I think the developers would have had Max be skeptical of Jefferson's statement if this was the case.

Max isn't just reversing time, she's exiting and creating new timelines. It's mutliverse theory.

When Max makes a decision and reverses time to change that decision, she's creating a new timeline, but the old timeline from her previous decisions and actions still exist. Depending on how many times the player screws around with stuff, Max could have made hundreds of crapsack worlds. This gets even more tragic at the end.This is both supported and somewhat-jossed in Episode 5. Max has a wibbly-wobbly timey wimey moment and all the timelines all converge, because all those timelines still exist. If Max chooses to kill Chloe in the alternative future timeline, then she gets a text from Chloe's mom saying she knows, because the timeline where Chloe gets paralyzed and Max kills her still exist, it's just that Max is no longer present in it. The problem arises when Max meets another Max, who say's she's "one of the many Maxes you've left behind". This line seems to indicate that when Max reverses time, she actually leaves a version of herself behind in that universe. Since we never get to see how Max's time travel works on an outside perspective, it's impossible to tell what happens, but it may be that when she creates a new timeline, she creates a new version of herself with all her previous memories, whilst the current version of herself stays in the timeline without the time-travel abilities.

Max was born with her powers, which her parents may or may not be aware of, and witnessing Chloe's death triggered a Traumatic Superpower Awakening.

Max's rewind powers are actually a form of Determination.

Even if there are people who survived the superstorm and the town can be rebuild in sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending they are still screwed or at least the area is still screwed anyway.

• I doubt the distortions that Max caused through her time travel will just go fixing themselves anytime soon which could lead to more potential disasters in the future.

Kate's (G)od blocked Max's powers in Episode 2.

Kate truly believes in the tenets of her religion, right? She believes so strongly that she's willing to commit suicide (a huge sin) and be damned rather than lie to herself about God's decrees (and/or claim, like more self-righteous Christians, that His judgment somehow does not apply to her).
I think that God was- in an indirect way- trying to stop Max from devaluing Kate's belief. If Max had been capable of rewinding during that scene, even a little, she would have saved Kate- would have reversed events in Hell and on Earth. But such an action, however compassionate, would have interfered with God's...jurisdiction? He might prefer that Kate suffer after her (potential) death and believe in Him, believe her punishment was justified, rather than allow Max to go 'Nuh-uh, not happening' and invalidate Kate's freedom to decide where she 'should' go after death. Once Kate jumped off that roof, her soul was no longer subject to the human world- only God, her God. As she believed should happen, even up to the moment of her death.
So God allowed free will to affect events during Kate's life, allowed Max to convince her to live. Freedom in life is a human thing, something everyone has. But when Max is like 'No, I decide what happens to her soul after death, not you and not Kate herself', God steps in to preserve the belief, the choices of His follower. Max can save Kate, just like any human could (try to, at least), but she can't do so supernaturally. She does not have the right to intervene in strictly Christian matters, as Kate's suicide became once/if it succeeded.
Chloe, on the other hand, isn't subject to any god- so Max can save her artificially, by rewinding. The only thing trying to keep Chloe dead is time itself (as personified by Arcadia's various natural disasters).

Bill Cipher had a hand in the events of the story

Between being set in Oregon and the one-eyed triangle graffiti everywhere, Bill either gave Max. her rewind powers or planned to take advantage of them in the future before the ending scuppered that plan. When Max is at her Darkest Hour in Episode 5 Bill took the form of the more condescending Max to Break Her By Talking so she'd be more susceptible to making a deal with him that would help him with his schemes. Also, Victoria wears triangular earrings, so she may be involved with him somehow, or at least an Unwitting Pawn.

Max is a pawn to the opposing forces (perhaps gods) of Order and Chaos

These two forces are always in constant struggle, and Max found herself as one of the tools in one of many petty competitions for these force to prove which is the better. Chaos gave Max the time powers to get her to undo destiny. Why her? Because it's random, as what Chaos is. In response, Order gave her premonitions as a warning to her of the outcome of using her powers. Order is the victor if Chloe is sacrificed to save Arcadia Bay, thus proving nothing Max does prior matters and thus destiny is inevitable. Chaos wins if Max choses to sacrifice Arcadia Bay to save Chloe, thus proving destiny can be defied.

The Prescotts are aware of what happens when someone messes around with time, but can't manipulate time themselves; it's how they made their fortune.

Pan Estates is being planned as part of the renewal of Arcadia Bay after the tornado hits and flattens and/or kills everything. It's the reason why Nathan's father is so dismissive of his son's mental illness: he's not mentally ill, everyone in his family has a sixth sense that can perceive distortions in space-time and catch glimpses of alternate timelines, but Nathan doesn't realize what he's seeing and can't control it. The creepy "Rachel in the Dark Room" note was written long before she was killed. His obsession with violence and morbidity in his artwork comes from the reassurance that, once immobilized or dead, that person is trapped in time and can't exist in, or cause, any new timelines for him to see.

Max's powers were given to her by Rachel to save Chloe. The tornado is the universe trying to stop this from happening.

Max mentions a few times throughout the game that she feels like Rachel is guiding her and Chloe. Rachel gave Max her rewind powers so she could try and save Chloe from Nathan. The Universe then tries to undo this major change by trying to kill Chloe in anyway possible throughout the game, such as shooting herself, getting hit by a train, being shot by Jefferson and finally a huge tornado being sent to Arcadia Bay.

Courtney is the friend that nobody likes and Victoria and Taylor are using her.

Courtney isn't seen as often as Victoria and Taylor are together despite being part of their "trio." She is excluded from Victoria's and Taylor's talks in the bathroom and emails. In episode 1 Max even says that "I think that's Courtney, she is such a slave to Taylor and Victoria." In the beginning of episode 2 Victoria demands that Courtney do her homework and slams the door in her face. She is not seen taking photo with Victoria and Taylor of Kate jumping. That explains why in the alternate timeline in episode 3 where Max is in The Vortex Club Courtney doesn't not want her to join because she thinks Max will replace her and in episode 4 where Courtney is standing in the Vortex Club looking sad and alone.

Mr. Jefferson is not himself - literally. The real Jefferson has actually been killed and replaced by an imposter.

Jefferson is super over-the-top evil and creepy in episode 5. But he's a famous photographer whose work is respected and valuable to collectors as evidenced by the dialogue in the museum scene. He's probably gone to college and might have a lot of photographer friends who would likely disapprove of his Dark Room exploits. And from the looks of things people seem to believe he's a nice guy. Considering his prestigous nature it would make more sense for him to be teaching at a university, not an elite private high school. So what is he even doing there?It's really Mark Jefferson, but someone else who bears a strong resemblance and killed him, then took his place. They would have been motivated to do so by a rampant uncontrollable desire to do... Well, basically everything Jefferson talks about when he explains why he's doing it to Max. All the stuff about expressing his twisted imagination. And why steal Jefferson's life in particular? Because of his social status which would easily allow this doppelganger to act under a cover surrounded by potential victims.The real Jefferson wouldn't have such motives. He'd be more concerned with taking pictures, hanging out at coffee shops, visiting editorial offices - whatever it is famous photographers do. As it is, he doesn't go anywhere, besides Blackwell and the Dark Room, he doesn't do photoshoot jobs elsewhere or anything like that, he's just a teacher by day, psycho kidnapper by night. Either it's not the real Jefferson or he's lost quite a lot of marbles quite suddenly. It just doesn't really add up otherwise.

• Because, as we all know, a famous celebrity would never abuse vulnerable young people, and would never use their power and influence to gain access to them. And if they did, of course they would never, ever justify their continuous contact with their preferred victim pool by saying that they want to help and encourage them.

Alternatively, the original Mark Jefferson was a serial killer.... the Mark Jefferson in the main story is a copycat killer.

• Kinda like the Roy Burns to Jefferson's Jason Voorhees.

If Mark Jefferson does die, depending on which ending the player chooses, Mark will come back as a Jason Voorhees-like revenant zombie.

Taking into account the previous WMG which is placed immediately before this one, Warren takes a level in badass and becomes the Li S Universe's equivalent of Tommy Jarvis.

• Including a scene where he machetes Zombie Mark Jefferson in the eye enough to reach Zombie Mark Jefferson's brain.

Max's powers are themselves a The End Is Nigh phenomenon

Max's powers have no explanation. They just appear one day, like the double moons, the freak snow storm and the super tornado. They would still appear in the sacrifice Chole ending if it had progressed longer. Which would mean Chloe died for nothing.

Everything that we see from after Chloe is killed the first time up to the final decision is a All Just a Dream.

Max recognizes Chloe just as she gets shot, and the shock and guilt send Max into a disassociative state, where she hallucinates herself having the power to save Chloe and spending time with her to help her find Rachel. She is partly aware of her surroundings, and is thus aware of Kate's suicide attempt and Jefferson being revealed as the Big Bad, which only make her disconnection from reality worse. The final choice of whether or not to save Chloe is actually Max making the decision to accept Chloe's death and their missed chance at a reunion, thus escaping and returning to the real world, or to live in denial and exist in a fantasy where Chloe is still alive. Or one way to interpret the game is that it is the story of a young girl who witnesses her best friend’s murder and is powerless to stop it. On the day of the funeral, she sits on the bench by the lighthouse and thinks “what-if,” and you play her “what-if” story. “What if I could rewind time?” You then go through her story, her pain and guilt, in order to come to terms with her death… or not. You think about the life and adventures you could have had, but no matter what, the pain of her death keeps returning to your mind (hence why Chloe won’t stop dying and you have to keep saving her). The harder Max fights it, the bigger the storm (her grief) gets. In the end, grief is the storm you have to face, and you must make the decision once and for all (a binary choice regardless of what you’ve done). You can choose to keep pushing on and hurting everyone around you (storm) and yourself (nosebleeds), or go back to the beginning and accept what happened (Chloe’s death). Read the lyrics to the ending song, Spanish Sahara—Foals.

The driver of the car that hit William and Chloe in the two different timelines was the same person

In the timeline where William never had his accident, the driver in question has nobody to crash into that day, and carries on with their bad driving habits for another two years, at which point they finally get unlucky and crash into Chloe.

It's all one big Acanthus Awakening

Max saw something in one of her photos that shook her out of Sleep and onto the path of the Lunargent Thorn, unconsciously drawing on her natural talent with Time magic enhanced by the Supernal Realms to travel back in time in short bursts. Everything in the game is secretly a tale by the Fae, with the ending being her proving herself by redefining her tale-either by accepting the rampaging, Paradox-spawned gulmoth as the price for saving her beloved and becoming the villain, or by retconning the beginning of the story so that nearly everyone lives. She becomes a Seer of the Throne in the Save Chloe ending after they sell her on protecting what she loves at all costs, a particularly Wise Guardian of the Veil in the Sacrifice ending, dedicating her life to making that pain and loss mean something.

Chloe used her backtalk ability on Max

This is why most of the time she passes off as rude to everyone: she's desperate to get help so she often acts mean because, if there's a slight chance being an ass helps her get her life in order, she'd do it. Several instances like when meeting Frank in Episode 4 and the last choice have her arguing to get what she wants more than we see her in Before The Storm: she's simply using that feature without the player noticing, since we control Max and not Chloe.

• Given that the backtalk mechanic is literally just a gamified way of Chloe trying to talk someone into something and not any sort of supernatural power (take away the UI and it's basically the same as Max trying to talk down Kate at the end of LiS's second episode), this is literally true. If you look at her conversation with Nathan when she's first introduced, it plays out a lot like a failed backtalk attempt (Chloe lays into him to try and pressure him into giving her what she wants, but says the wrong thing, which sets him off).
• Chloe spews pheromones while back talking due to an innate genetic ability. This ability will be isolated and refined into the CASIE Aug.

The Prescott family own Prescott Pharmaceuticals

They’ve been hawking snake oil since about 1903. It was Stephen Colbert who brought them into prominence by advertising their products on his show.

The timeline is still altered no matter what ending you chose

So let's go through this straight. Max jumped into the photo to go back to her selfie in the classroom where she submitted her photo to Jefferson. She then jumped into her contest photo in the gallery so she could rip up the photo and not be in San Francisco while Chloe dies in the storm. Did she wait to go to the bathroom and do this? No. She can't because it would be beyond the bounds of the photo area. She instead ripped up the photo right there in her dorm as soon as it printed. Now here's where things get weird. It is possible and quite likely that this small change caused Jefferson to burn max's diary and hence destroy the picture she jumped into sending her back. This doesn't undo the fact that she still left her ripped photo in her room for "normal timeline" Max to find. The time stream sequence shows that Max put it in her notebook and Jefferson found it ("Too bad you destroyed your beautiful photo") making Jefferson angrier at Max. Max destroying her photo ruined his plan to get her alone (like he did with Victoria if you warned her) and drug her. Knowing it was intentional made him spiteful and thus he burned all of her selfies he saw as inferior. From there on Max continued and later jumped into Warren's photo to return to the party and change everything to save Chloe. Now it gets even trickier. To prevent the storm in the "Save Arcadia Bay" ending She jumps FROM THIS ALTERED timeline INTO an event that happened AFTER she destroyed her photo. This shouldn't have changed the location of WHERE she destroyed it when she jumped into the picture to do so (and possibly changed the circumstances where Chloe bumped into Max again). That one point in time SHOULD still be altered since she traveled from a timeline corrupted already before Chloe's encounter in the Bathroom. Not to mention her big speech to young Chloe about not being around. Max didn't prevent the storm... She only delayed it. It's still coming. WHEW!!!

• I went back to check a video of that ending, and the contest photo is not on the bathroom floor, confirming that it's not the first timeline we see - which may not even actually be the original one, since she had her vision before we see her use her power. Her knowledge of the other timelines alters the ending timeline as well, even if only because she ends up with a boatload of trauma that never happened in that timeline such as her experience in the Dark Room.

The storm was caused by the inhabitants of the Black Lodge

The Black Lodge's inhabitants take notice of Chloe due to the large amount of Garmonbozia she carries (due to William's death, Rachel's disappearance, etc.) and decide to kill her at the peak of her suffering (her altercation with Nathan). The White Lodge takes note of this and gives Max her rewind powers in a misguided attempt to save Chloe. Unfortunately, the Black Lodge takes note of this Black Lodge influences events that would increase her pain and suffering on a multiversal scale. These murder attempts fail due to Max's actions, so they decide to send in the storm. If you choose to save Chloe, the Lodge takes Garmonbonzia from the survivors of Arcadia Bay. If you choose to sacrifice Chloe, the Lodge takes it from Chloe directly. Either way, they win.

Dust is actually a continuation of both endings.

The upcoming comic book Life is Strange: Dust has been promoted as a continuation of the Sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending. However, based on the cover of the first issue, I'll posit that it will actually be an continuation of both endings. We'll start in the SAB timeline, but Max will begin to notice things bleeding in from an alternate timeline, this being the Sacrifice Chloe timeline. This will culminate in Max meeting her other self. It will end with either a) a Belated Happy Ending for the game where both versions of Max fuse their timelines to create one where both Chloe and the town survive or b) a(nother) Bittersweet Ending in which both versions of Max are shaken but ultimately fully accept their choices (this is the option I consider more likely).

• Seems I was mostly right, though I didn't predict the that she would shift to timelines other than those of the two game endings.

The TV series will Take a Third Option with the ending.

Due to both a desire to surprise viewers that played the game and avoid the inevitable fan backlash that would result from them seeming to declare one of the game's endings "canon", the writers of the TV series will invent their own ending to the story. I if I had to propose a specific theory, I would say they will use the common fan suggestion for a third option: Max getting herself killed in the bathroom in the hope that whatever cosmic force is sending the storm will accept her death in place of Chloe's. The surprise will be heightened by the show initially seeming to go with the Sacrifice Chloe ending, until the Not His Sled moment when Max comes out of the stall and gets herself shot by Nathan instead. This allows the series to maintain the bittersweet nature of both of the game endings, without having to pick one of them.

• They could also use the scrapped "Hospital Ending", where Chloe gets shot, but ends up comatose in a hospital instead of dying.

In the sequel, the plot will revolve around a choice to tell your telekinetic pre-teen brother he's a murderer.

What we know of Life Is Strange 2 is that the plot centers on two brothers (teenage Sean and younger Daniel) who are on the run after a fatal incident with the law, and that the results of Sean's choices will affect how he raises Daniel. From what we saw at the end of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, one of the two appears to have some type of telekinetic ability.

My guess is that Daniel is the one with the powers, and that he used his powers to kill the police to protect his older brother after a misunderstanding (no doubt fueled by racial profiling) caused them to draw weapons on him. However, Daniel is too young to understand the repercussions of his actions, and doesn't know that he killed anyone — but Sean does. Throughout the story, Sean's actions will determine how Daniel will take this news when it eventually breaks: whether he resolves to become a superhero (after spending time with Chris) or supervillain, or rejects his powers completely.

• Rejecting his powers will be considered the "mature" choice.
• Continuing off this, in the event Daniel doesn't take the news well, Sean may have to choose whether to kill Daniel to stop him from unleashing a Chronicle-esque cataclysm, as a nod to the final choice of the first game.

Max was given her powers by the Suomenusko Head Deity Ukko.

Max got her powers out of nowhere and her powers affect everything.........except a magical deer.And what is the symbol of the Suomenusko Faith? A Deer.What's more, he might have been testing her for unknown reasons.And finally, his final test was likely the storm. And what is Ukko specifically the God of? Storms, he's the God of Storms.

The storm is still coming, because Max had already messed with time before the game started.

Max started having visions of the tornado before she discovered her ability. It's possible she's had it for years and has somehow forgotten about it by the time the story starts (perhaps having used it in her childhood at some point, or using it in a situation where she didn't realize what she'd done). She didn't see the date on the newspaper in that vision, so that vision may not have been quite as immediately in the future - it could be weeks, months, or years away. The visions can change, as we see with the pile of logs that don't fall in the first one.

Also, since she uses the photo she took in the bathroom to go back, she still used her power twice within the game's seen timeline - the photo she has would have been taken after she went back to the classroom the first time and fixed her camera to test her powers.

Going back to undo her major actions at the time may have been close enough to slow down the environmental changes that messing with time caused (assuming that even was the direct cause; it's just a theory posited by characters), but it's still an altered timeline. Even if the vision was a warning about her coming powers and the uses before she took that photo have minor immediate effects, she's been shown to retain her original memories when she uses her powers. She knows things she shouldn't and it would be almost impossible for her to completely act like she doesn't.

Something will almost certainly be different in this timeline. Her frequent use of the ability may have hastened the storm (or possibly made it worse, in some way, though it doesn't look any smaller in that original vision), but even in the ending where she tries to fix it, it's still coming eventually.

Jefferson's words about Rachel's death are true... to an extent.

Jefferson did not kidnap Rachel for 2 reasons. One, she just doesn't seem like a valid target for Jefferson; he chooses to target "innocents" girls, and Rachel is far from innocent, being in a relationship with a drug dealer (and possibly working as a drug mule for him), rebelling against her parents, and generally being an emotionally unstable, borderline destructive person. Two, she's the most popular girl in Blackwell; her disappearence would instantly cause a scandal that Jefferson would not want to inconvenience himself with.

Meanwhile, Nathan seems much more likely to be responsible for Rachel's kindaping. Over the course of the game, he's proven to be capable of kidnapping and photographing girls on his own volition, like with Chloe, and he possibly had a crush on Rachel.

According to Jefferson, Nathan "lusted" after her, tried to photograph her the same way Jefferson does other victims, but ends up overdosing her. But this troper believes really happened, is that Nathan stalked Rachel for some time, and eventually, in an attempt to "impress" his master, decided to try and replicate his own style unto a victim of his own choosing. But, since Nathan is woefully incompetent as a criminal, he gave Rachel too little of a dose, causing her to wake up mid-shoot. Jefferson walked in on the scene and Rachel recognized both his and Nathan's faces. Jefferson had no choice but to silence her, but he did not want to get his hands dirty (and he also wanted to punish Nathan for his foolishness) so he ordered Nathan to overdose her.

Somehow, in a future installment, the storm Area 51 meme will be referenced....

The next Big Bad for Life Is Strange 3 will be a terrorist organization.

Sequel Escalation, anyone?

Alternatively, the next Big Bad for Life Is Strange 3 will be some dictator from an in-universe Banana Republic.

Again, Sequel Escalation.

Had Rachel Amber survived and left Arcadia Bay with Chloe for LA ...

Their ves would have played out similar to Camilla and Diane in Mulholland Dr., the charismatic social butterfly would’ve struck it big, while Chloe wallowing in self pity would’ve gotten nowhere. Rachel does what she can to help Chloe, giving her bit parts here and there, arranging for Chloe to exhibit whatever art she makes now and then, but finally building a relationship with a hotshot Director, while slowly dumping Chloe.

And after Rachel announces her engagement to said director, Chloe shoots her. And then shoots herself.

Max and Daniel are Stand Users

Teenager with rewinding powers investigating a serial killer in a small town? Brotherly love, purposefully overpowered abilities and struggling to live outside the law? It all makes sense.

• And now we've got an Asian-American girl estranged from her father teaming up with quirky new friends to fight for revenge after the loss of an older male family member. What next? Horse racing?

The chloe in the diner in the nightmare sequence is actually the spirit of the chloe that jefferson shot in episode 4

In before the storm, and more obviously in true colors in the dream sequences the protagonists communicate with the spirits of dead loved ones, and there is nothing to suggest that the spiritual plane doesn't exist as one realm across timelines. And to add to this, that could suggest that the nightmare max is actually a version of max that would've died if she hadn't rewound time.

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