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Maxine "Max" Caulfield is a fictional character from the Life Is Strange video game series published by Square Enix. Created by French developer Dontnod Entertainment, she is the player character in Life Is Strange (2015) and its sequel (2024). She is portrayed by Hannah Telle.
The characters were created using well-known archetypes, initially to establish a player access point and subsequently to subvert them. The supernatural elements were developed as a metaphor for the character's inner turmoil in order to serve the realism.
As a teenager, Max resonates with contemporary youth, allowing the players to connect with her experiences. She grapples with being "stuck in-between time", a metaphorical limbo where past and present intersect. Her old-fashioned camera symbolizes nostalgia and a longing for the past, while her reluctance to make decisions reflects the weight of consequence. Christian Divine, one of the game's writers, crafted Max's dialogue with occasional older expressions. Through Max, players explore the tension between relatability and the enigmatic forces that shape her existence.
Meeting Chloe at the diner where her mother Joyce works, they decide to experiment with Max's power at Chloe's secret scrapyard hideout. However, strain causes Max to have a nosebleed and faint. Chloe takes her back to Blackwell, but class is halted when everyone is called out to the courtyard. Kate commits suicide by jumping off the roof of the girls' dorm. Max manages to rewind and time stops unexpectedly as she reaches Kate, giving Max the opportunity to convince her to come down. Max ultimately resolves to uncover what happened to Kate and Chloe's missing friend Rachel Amber. Max and Chloe break into the principal's office that night to investigate and enter the pool for a swim before evading David Madsen, head of security at Blackwell and Chloe's stepfather, and fleeing back to Chloe's place. The next morning, they sneak into the motorhome of Frank Bowers, drug dealer and friend of Rachel, and learn that Rachel was in a relationship with Frank and lied to Chloe about it, causing Chloe to storm off feeling betrayed. Max returns to her dormitory and examines a childhood photo of her and Chloe, but is suddenly transported to the day the picture was taken. Max prevents Chloe's father William from dying in a traffic collision, which inadvertently creates an Multiverse where William is alive but Chloe has been Paralysis as a result of a collision in her own car.
Max uses the photo to undo her decision and returns to the present day, restoring Chloe's health. Continuing their investigation, Max and Chloe obtain clues leading them to an abandoned barn owned by the influential Prescott family. They discover a hidden bunker containing pictures of Kate and Rachel tied up and intoxicated, with Rachel being buried at Chloe's secret hideout. They hurry back to the scrapyard and find Rachel's grave, much to Chloe's despair. Max follows Chloe at the school party to confront Nathan, believing he will target fellow student Victoria Chase. They receive a text from Nathan threatening to destroy the evidence, returning them to the scrapyard. The two are then ambushed by Jefferson, who Anesthesia Max and kills Chloe. Max is kidnapped and held captive in the "Dark Room", a makeshift photography studio and torture chamber hidden underneath the Prescott barn where Jefferson has been drugging and photographing young girls.
Jefferson also reveals that he took Nathan on as a protégé, but was recently killed after accidentally giving Rachel a fatal overdose while trying to mimic Jefferson's work, and intends to do the same to Max after he has the photos he wants. Max escapes into a photograph and emerges back at the beginning in Jefferson's class. She alerts David, getting Jefferson (and Nathan) arrested.
Max is given the opportunity to go to San Francisco and have her work displayed in an art gallery. She calls Chloe from the event, realizing that after all her effort, the storm has reached Arcadia Bay. Max travels back to the moment in which she took the gallery photo, which eventually leads her to sojourn alternative realities as they devolve into a nightmare. Max and Chloe finally return to the lighthouse and the duo confront the possibility Max brought the storm into fruition by saving Chloe from being shot by Nathan earlier in the week.
After being presented with the option to go back in time once more, Max must make a choice: sacrifice Chloe's life to save Arcadia Bay and undo the previous week's events, or sacrifice Arcadia Bay to the storm to spare Chloe.
If Max sacrifices Chloe, the duo exchange tearful goodbyes (and if you romantically pursued Chloe) and share a kiss. Max then uses the butterfly photo from Episode 1 and silently breaks down as she hears Chloe get shot and drop dead. A montage of the changed events is then shown, Chloe escaping from Nathan is replaced with David apprehending Nathan upon the discovery of Chloe's corpse, Nathan attacking Warren is replaced with the former being interrogated by the police, Chloe dancing in her room while Max takes a shot is replaced with Jefferson being arrested as students (including Max and Kate) watch, Max and Chloe walking on the train tracks in Episode 2 is replaced with Max, David and Joyce grieving for Chloe, Max and Chloe playing in the pool in Episode 3 is replaced with Max holding a teddy bear, Max and Chloe taking a selfie is replaced with Joyce giving Max Chloe's belongings, Max hugging Chloe in Episode 4 is replaced with Max looking at pictures of Chloe, and finally Max and Chloe giving their goodbyes is replaced with Max heading up to the lighthouse, in a black dress. She then wakes up at the lighthouse, in an Arcadia Bay that hasn't been terrorised by the storm, which never came into existence. Max stands as she takes a moment before heading down. It then cuts to Chloe's funeral, with Max, Joyce, David, Warren, Kate, Victoria, Justin, Dana, Principal Wells, and Frank (from a distance). As a saddened Max grieves, a blue butterfly flies and lands on Chloe's coffin. Max then smiles, hopeful for the future.
If Max sacrifices Arcadia Bay, she rips the butterfly photo and lets it fly into the air. Chloe then walks over, declaring that she will be with Max forever. The duo then look on as the storm destroys Arcadia, holding hands. Max, unable to watch the destruction, goes into Chloe's arms and sobs, as Chloe distraughtly watches. It then cuts to the next day, Arcadia Bay left in ruins. Max and Chloe drive through the destruction, and after cheering each other up, drive away, ready to start a new life together.
If Arcadia Bay was sacrificed in the first game, Max is seen in a photograph kept in David's trailer, which shows both her and Chloe sometime after 2013. During David's phone call with Chloe, it hints that she and Chloe either live in or visited New York and had a bad experience with a local, as David reminds Chloe that "New Yorkers are assholes". It is also implied that she and Chloe had visited him sometime ago.
The Life is Strange comic series follows Max and Chloe in the timeline where Max chooses to save Chloe and sacrifice Arcadia Bay. Max and Chloe are living in Seattle and befriend a band for whom Chloe does artwork. Max and Chloe find themselves returning to Arcadia Bay after it becomes apparent that Max can no longer control her time powers. The two return to Arcadia Bay and Max realizes that she is drifting in and out of different realities, a phenomenon that she refers to as “flickers.” After a conversation with Chloe about their romantic feelings towards each other and multiple experiences in different realities, Max decides to fully jump into a different timeline and abandon her original one in order to stop the chaos of the flickers. Doing so puts her in a timeline where Rachel Amber is still alive and in a relationship with Chloe.
Max then lives in that timeline for years and becomes close with Rachel and Chloe, who are unaware of her time traveling capabilities. Eventually, Max meets Tristan, a man who possesses the ability to become Invisibility. This prompts her to begin to make efforts to return to her original timeline with Tristan's help after revealing to Chloe and Rachel the truth about who she is. Tristan is able to jump to Max's original timeline and communicate with Chloe there that Max is attempting to return. Max then accompanies Rachel and the Chloe in her current timeline on a cross country road trip that coincides with a cross country road trip the Chloe in her original timeline is taking. Through Tristan, Max and her original Chloe are able to communicate with each other and Max begins to prepare herself to make the jump back to her original timeline. In Miami, Max is able to go back into her own timeline with the help of Tristan, who also comes into Max's timeline. Max and Chloe then return to a rebuilding Arcadia Bay, where she discovers Chloe has rebuilt the Two Whales. With Max coming to terms with the tragedy and loss caused by the storm, she is able to speak at Victoria's memorial exhibition, honoring the resilience of the town.
Along with Chloe Price, Polygon staff named Max as one of the best video game characters of the 2010s. Though Chloe is often considered the more pivotal character for the story arc, there is interest in seeing more of Max's story.
Some critics have argued that Max's character and development felt generic and inauthentic, perhaps because she is a female character created by male writers. Jean-Maxine Moris, a creative lead in Life is Strange, argued against this criticism by stating that extensive research was done before creating the characters in the game and that it is backed by Square Enix because it was the only publishing partner that did not try and change critical aspects of the game such as the gender of the main characters.
Telle's performance as Max in Double Exposure received praise, and she was nominated for Best Performance at the Game Awards 2024 and the 14th New York Game Awards.
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