WMG / Maximum Ride

Jeb never helped the Flock escape the School.

At the beginning of the first book, the Flock is living in a very nice house in the mountains, isolated from everyone. They were originally raised in cages and abused, until Jeb ran away with them. He lived in the house with them for some time, helping and teaching them, but eventually vanished and was presumed dead. The Flock continued to live on their own, until the Erasers found them and took Angel back to the School, where she realized that Jeb was alive. The Flock rescued Angel, blew up the house, and went on the run.Except that it was all a test. How did Jeb get this very expensive-looking house? How did the Flock eat, when they clearly have no supplies and no one ever goes to the store? Max makes a joking comment about "food fairies" stocking the fridge. What if she's not kidding? *Keeping the kids in cages was clearly not a good idea. The School came up with a scenario: have a scientist take the kids, earn their trust, and set them up to live on their own. When the children were settled, he would fake his death and return to work. In the meantime, the School would make sure the children had food and shelter, and then watch how they bonded and survived. The whole house was filled with cameras. Years later, they decided to take the experiment up a notch. They sent in the Erasers.

• The Erasers could have easily killed the Flock; that's what Max assumed they'd do. Instead, they picked out the weakest member of the Flock and took her, alive, back to the School, to be experimented on. By taking Angel, the School just wanted to watch how the Flock reacted and fought back. Hence, "The Angel Experiment."
• They weren't expecting the Flock to blow up the house and go on the run; after that, the School is seriously trying to retrieve the Flock. The Erasers are no longer holding back, and in Book 2 they almost kill Fang. When the School does briefly get the kids back, via Anne Walker, they try to set up the old scenario again. Anne takes the Flock to an isolated, wealthy home and acts as a foster parent, slowly gaining their trust... just like Jeb.
• Jeb never helped the Flock escape. All the happy years they spent undisturbed in that nice, safe house hidden in the mountains, they were still prisoners of the School.
• This is explicitly confirmed in the movie.

Fang is Asian

He is described as having olive skin tone, dark hair and brown, almost black eyes, which can all be signs of Asian decent. It is never mentioned otherwise, and even though he is not really Asian looking in the manga, mangas and graphic novels are not always perfectly accurate with the books.

Ari really does love his sister, but the Eraser part of him warps his emotions, tangling them in to a horrible, terrifying mess.

He really did love Max (as a sister, not romantically.) It was just that the pain and PTSD from becoming an Eraser warped all his emotions, and twisted them in to something dark and twisted.What I like to call 'The Real Ari' happens when his real, non-warped emotions and thoughts breakthrough the twisted ones. This is shown a few times during the series, like when Max killed him that first time ("I would never hurt you. Not like that") and helping the Flock escape the school. Ari himself never, ever meant to hurt Max, or any or the Flock. It wasn't him, but an evil, spiteful version of himself. For him, in his own mind, it was like the real Ari, the innocent, cute and sweet little seven year old was locked in a cage in the back of his head, and a huge, menacing, evil monster has taken over his body, and he has no control over it. He constantly fights against it, to control his own body and stop himself from hurting the Flock, but this monster is to strong, resulting in him only having brief, tiny, rare periods of control. He hates himself for this, that he's to weak, that he is constantly trying to hurt or kill the Flock, because he looks up to them, considers them family, and was rooting for them all along.

The "apocalypse" that Maximum Ride is supposed to save the world from is Angel

She can control and read minds, developing new abilities at an alarming rate, and it has already been commented that she is liable to decide that she wants to conquer the world.

• Going along with this, Angel is only faking being good. Remember in the third book how she joined the bad guys for awhile? That was legit. She only made Max think she was spying for them because they decided that Angel would serve a better purpose with the flock. Also, she faked getting stuck in the crevice in the fourth book. You're really telling me that someone with all those powers would get stuck that easily? No dice. She totally faked it knowing that she'd be rescued, making them sitting ducks for the bad guys to capture them.
• Another point that goes along with this idea, which I happen to like a lot: Angel's a Deconstruction of a Mary Sue. She gets all those epic powers and is adorable, but it's been established in book 1 that her moral compass is awry at best. She's a little kid too, and the "baby", but and even Max is disturbed by her. Her judgement isn't always for the best, either, but being able to make decisions ala Chessmaster obviously appeals to her. So what happens when a Mary Sue with her perfection gone to her head and lacking in a conscience tries to team up with the Mad Scientist?
• Well, the world ended with no explanation Diabolus ex Machina bordering on No Ending that created the perfect paradise for Angel, and the implication that Angel actually was the chessmaster behind everything - or at least what Max did. I think this may be the only conclusion that makes even a bit of sense. Perhaps angel wasn't a genetic experiment, but a literal Biblical angel? And not the good kind, either.
  • Jossed as of Nevermore.

The Flock didn't really have bird DNA inserted into theirs.

Ignoring the utter implausibility of LEGO Genetics, if you've had avian genes inserted into your DNA, you've just had avian genes inserted into your DNA, you don't start spontaneously acquiring powers. Really, The School mutated their DNA to resemble that of a bird's, and lately they'd been mutating randomly. The truth is that Maxumum Ride takes place in a Marvel-like universe, where mutation = superpowers.

Tokyo Mew Mew is a result of School scientist Ryou taking the Flock's words to heart and making a Heel–Face Turn.

He perfected genetic engineering through Redemption Promotion and decided to assign Beast Men to save the Earth.

The bad guys throughout the series are actually working for Abstergo.

The flock was actually created in a Templar experiment. Angel is especially important because in addition to being a human/avian hybrid she also has genes from "Those Who Came Before!" On top of this, her continually developing mind reading/control abilities mark her as the result of a Templar attempt to create a living Piece of Eden. Max is important because she has Assassin genes in her, making her immune to Angel's mind control abilities. The other members of the flock are simply offshoots of this research and are considered superfluous by the Templars.

• The story is thus...having been thwarted on multiple occasions in their attempts to establish a mind controlling dictatorship over the rest of humanity (by the Assassins, of course), the Templars have opted to take their plans to the extreme and have instead decided to bring about the apocalypse, wiping out their enemies and most of the useless humans in the process. In the new world created by the Templars, only their chosen superhuman subjects will be allowed to exist, being ruled over by the Templars, who are hoping to evolve themselves into beings like Angel. Max was created as a sort of counter, in case Angel ever went rogue or was used against them.

The explanation behind the Canon Discontinuity of Max's hair color

Max started off the series with dirty blonde hair which she just called "blonde" it probably got a shade or two darker since last mentioned, so she just called it brown.

• It may not be anything special. In reality, blonde hair is usually limited to young children (few adults are actually blonde) because as people age, the blonde hair tends to darken. It may be that the author was attempting to suggest the passage of time/Max getting older.

All the thrown away characters...

...like Anne, Marion, Sam, Lissa, and the like? They're all working for the school(Well, we already knew this for some of them)

• Okay, I got this. Anne Walker claims to be head of the FBI, but is later confirmed to be Jeb's boss and working with the School. There are two options: either she temporarily posed as a member of the FBI, or she is a mole. Since we never hear of an investigation after she takes the birdkids from the hospital, she must be a mole. However, unless she's lying about her position, this indicates that Itex has its claws very deep in the U.S. government.
• While the Flock is living with Anne, she sends them to a fancy prep school. Its history as an insane asylum was covered up, and brochures claim it's a fairly old and prestigious institution. However, the principal doesn't act like anyone who should ever be around children, and at least three teachers carry Tasers with which they attack Max. Max suspects that even the students, such as Sam and Lissa, are in on it. During all this, there's a report on the TV that children have been going missing. This is brought up again later in the book.
• Why would Anne choose to send them to this place? Because it's one of the School's locations, and it's another way for her to tighten the School's hold over them while acting like a normal foster parent. Most of the teachers are School operatives, and many of the kids are experiments. Furthermore, Anne's beautiful farmhouse is actually a School-owned building where experiments are regularly housed. She's just living there while she tries to win the Flock's trust.

All of the gaping plotholes, random events and unrealistic coincidences were actually planned out.

James Patterson is a famous thriller writer, and thrillers are mostly plot and tension. While to the readers it may seem as though he's just making the story up as he goes along, he actually has a master plan in mind, one that will be both complicated and simple at the same time, tying up all the loose threads and causing us readers to scratch our heads and wonder why we didn't think of that.

• Spoilers: Nope.
  • maybe not now that they have announced a ninth book. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/maximum-ride-forever-james-patterson/1119866793?ean=9780316207508

Dylan is...

...a clone of Gazzy. He was created to destroy Angel, who shall someday become an Eldritch Abomination.

It's not real.

The last chapter of the last book will be something mind bendingly awesome only to cut off right before it ends. Max and her friends will be revealed as normal teenagers in a simulation game. Alternatively, she was just telling her little sister a bedtime story and got carried away.

• If it was just Max telling a bedtime story and getting carried away, it would certainly explain why the story feels like it's being made up as it went along.
  • BURN!

Nevermore is a cover-up

James Patterson has actually been documenting the story of Maximum Ride. He put it in the format of a YA novel in order to not be spotted by the big organization Maximum Ride was going up against this time. But something happened — someone figured out the truth of the series or something like that — and James Patterson was abducted. The REAL Nevermore book had to be replaced with a fake to keep us readers in complete ignorance of what REALLY is going on

Nevermore's bad ending? It's all Dexter's fault

I don't mean to be rude to the little genius but... there is an episode in Dexter's Laboratory where Dexter and Mandark had to stop a meteor from hitting the earth. If Dexter and Mandark hadn't argued over what to do rather instead of actually destroy the meteor, the world wouldn't have ended

Everything except the very first book was a hallucination.

In reality, Max and the rest of the Flock were captured at the school. The Scientists then proceeded to perform the tests on the Flock that they claimed to have done in book three. That's why the first book is the only one with any amount of realism and largely devoid of plot holes - it's the only one that actually happened.

Maximum Ride takes place in the same universe as ''Gone

The FAYZ happened in California at the start of the series, and the Flock never mentioned it because they know so little about current events. Meanwhile, Little Pete and the Gaiaphage were channeling his powers outside the FAYZ and to the Flock; that's where the superpowers came from. The School consisted of scientists who had noticed the mutations (the same ones that captured Toto before the start of the series), and the Flock and the Erasers were an attempt to recreate the results of the nuclear powers.

Itex is a Technocracy Front

The LEGO Genetics, the attempts to save Earth (read: wipe every human so more have a chance to live), the sheer fact that most people don't notice what's going on — all that couldn't possibly add up without these guys entering the equation. And of course Technocrats need cash to run all of these fancy projects — what better way than to do it than to disguise themselvess as a mega-super-conglomerate! This little pet theory also gives explanations to two thorns in my side: how Mrs. Jensen could be 108 years old — 19th-century Progenitor project Gone Horribly Right — and as to how Angel's got the most powers — she was lucky or unlucky enough to awaken as a mage early. You may thank me now.

All the books (with the exception of the first) were written by ghostwriters with Patterson's name slapped on.

This is less a "wild guess" and more an educated guess (Patterson's use of ghostwriters is an open secret), but it would explain all of the ridiculous plot holes and inconsistencies.

Max's inconsistent hair color is because she's molting.

Max's hair is never consistent because it's a byproduct of being part bird. When put in a different climate and environment, many migratory birds change feather colors via molting, a process where old feathers are replaced by new ones. Humans technically "molt" as well, but on a much smaller scale; 50-100 hairs are falling off of the average person's head per day. The difference between humans and birds is, of course, that our hair doesn't change color very noticeably with climate or location in order to camouflage. Max meets a middle ground between these two ideas in that her hair changes hue to "adapt" to her surroundings unconsciously, and since her and the flock move around so quickly, her hair changes accordingly. That being said, the books don't mention Max's hair because Max herself doesn't see it as too important, especially since, out of all of the Flock's powers, this is probably the one that, while not debilitating, serves no practical use and hardly counts as an actual ability. Her hair takes up too little space to properly camouflage her, and may just be a symptom of being part bird, especially since we don't see the same consistency with the rest of the flock and Max's wings. You might wonder what the point of this ability would be, but it's arguably less bizarre than the plethora of unexplained powers the rest of the Flock develop.

• This would also explain why Max's hair stays within a similar range of tones (such as blonde, dirty-blonde, brunette, redhead and any combo of the aforementioned). Her hair color changes a lot, but all of the tones are natural tones (No book has Max with blue hair all of a sudden). This could also explain why the rest of the Flock don't ever point it out; the changes in her hair are so slow and subtle that it's almost unnoticeable.