Characters / Life is Strange: The Protagonists

Main Character Index | The Protagonists (Max Caulfield | Chloe Price) | The Main Characters | Other Blackwell Students | Blackwell Faculty | Arcadia Bay Residents | Season 2 Characters | Haven Springs Residents | Comic Supporting Characters

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Season 1

Max Caulfield

See her page here.

Chloe Price

See her page here.

Before the Storm

Rachel Amber

Rachel Dawn Amber

"Don't be surprised, Chloe, if one day, I'm just out of here."

^{Click here for her appearance in Before the Storm}

Voiced By: Kylie Brown (English), Airi Ōtsu (Japanese)

A girl who went missing about six months ago without a trace. Rachel and Chloe were very close, and she was well-known (and well-liked) by most of the people in Arcadia Bay.

She is the deuteragonist of Before the Storm, which chronicles her friendship with Chloe.

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• The Ace: By all accounts, she was practically perfect. Almost every person you'll talk to her about will not only remember her fondly, but comment about her being somehow better than them at what they consider their own best trait (she was a better skater than Justin, cooler than the Vortex club, wilder than Chloe, etc...). Her personal file, which you can read in Episode 3, confirms this, mentioning that she had a perfect 4.0 GPA, "excelled at all of her extracurricular activities, which [were] numerous", and would no doubt achieve all her goals, "including becoming a successful lawyer and an international model". Throughout the series, it would eventually turn out that she wasn't quite so perfect as she's been made to look.
• Affair Letters: Max and Chloe find love letters Rachel wrote to Frank in his RV. Chloe does not take it well, to say the least.
• Ambiguous Situation: There's a lot of ambiguity surrounding nearly every aspect of Rachel Amber.
  • Since romancing her in Before the Storm is entirely optional it's still uncertain just what exactly her relationship with Chloe could be defined as by the time of her disappearance. It's clear that there's romantic feelings on Chloe's part, even going so far as admitting to having a crush. However, when she finds out Rachel and Frank were together, she doesn't accuse Rachel of cheating, and seems more angry that Rachel lied about it when asked. There's also the unsent letter regarding her connection to Jefferson in the junkyard. It would be rather odd to give one's girlfriend a letter describing a man who "changed [her] life," thus further implying their relationship in the season 01 timeline(s) was platonic at the time of her disappearance. It is also unclear in season 1 if Rachel reciprocated, if she even knew about Chloe's feelings, if they mutually pined for each other but never acted on it, whether or not they actually did date in the main timeline, and if they did had they ever needed to take a "break" from their relationship over something. Truly the only thing that's clear is that they, at the very least, had a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship and that Chloe had genuine romantic feelings for her. True Colors's Wavelengths DLC resolves this somewhat, confirming that Chloe and Rachel were a couple regardless of the player's choices in Before the Storm, though that still leaves the question of whether they were together when she was involved with Frank and Jefferson.
  • Why she didn't tell Chloe the truth about her involvement with Frank and Jefferson is also left up in the air as a result of the above. Did she lie/avoid giving Chloe the letter because it would count as cheating, or were they Just Friends, and she avoided it because of Chloe's Clingy Jealous Girl tendencies, and not wanting her friend to be upset with her.
  • Similarly, her relationships with both Frank and Jefferson are highly questionable. While she did write a love letter to the former, Max can find another letter implying that she was close to breaking up with him. We also know that Rachel suffered from drug addiction so it's entirely possible that she was just using Frank as easy access to her drugs of choice, which is what Nathan, who was her friend, appears to think was going on. With the latter there's also some ambiguity. Word of God states she fell in love with him but given who he is it's questionable if he didn't manipulate her into having feelings for him; which is entirely possible when one considers her drug addiction and her dream of becoming a model (something he could have easily helped fulfill if he wasn't so disturbed). Not helping the situation is the fact that Jefferson is an Unreliable Narrator. Given the large age gap between herself and the two, it's also possible she was groomed by them, unfortunately.
  • Before The Storm adds another possibility to why she was with Frank. If Chloe fails to reunite Rachel with her mother then it wouldn't be out of the question that she started seeing Frank in hopes of finding Sera, whom he was seen with. Of course, this purely depends on the ending you got.
  • We never learn for sure if she had powers or not, although the implication is certainly there. While the fire in the forest (and the candles she seems to influence) are lit by ordinary means, they seem to flare up unnaturally in response to her emotions — and die down suspiciously quickly if she's incapacitated. Some players have suggested that she actually exerts control over the wind rather than the flames themselves — which would give some tantalizing hints about her possible posthumous part in the storm in the first game, too!
    • The comics tease this even further, but still don't confirm anything. Rachel seems to be able to No-Sell Tristan's invisibility, something that only Max (as another powered person) is shown to be able to do.
  • If the Doe is indeed Rachel acting as a Spirit Advisor, then what exactly she's trying to lead Max to, aside from her body, is left ambiguous. If you interpret the Storm as the result of her (possible) powers acting up as a result of her death, then is the Doe guiding Max to the lighthouse again and again because it's a safe place for Chloe and Max to hide, or is it because she wants to be Together in Death with Chloe, and this is the place where Max is forced to choose Chloe's fate?
    • Likewise, if Rachel is the cause of the storm because of her possible powers, then is it finding her body and revealing the truth or Chloe's death that prevents the storm from happening? In the sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending, it's possible that the storm continues because it's too late to alert the authorities, since the storm is already there. Meanwhile, in the other timeline, the truth is revealed in the first day of the week... but Chloe is also dead, leaving what she needed in order to not cause the storm ambiguous at best. (And, again, this depends on whether or not she's even responsible).
• Ambiguously Bi: Rachel never says she is bisexual, but actions speak louder than words.
  • She has a crush on Chloe Price in Before the Storm and spends the whole game flirting with her, even if the player chose to friendzone Rachel. It is also heavily implied that she had been crushing on her from afar and that's why she knows things about her she's never been told.
  • She was in a relationship with Frank that was apparently quite volatile on both sides, unbeknownst to Chloe. When Chloe finds out, she reacts as if she's been cheated on.
  • She likely had a sexual affair with Mark Jefferson. As indicated in her unsent letter to Chloe, she realizes that Chloe will disapprove of her feelings but doesn't seem to understand that Chloe will interpret it as cheating on her.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Deer, just like Max. The ethereal doe that appears to Max in the junkyard and guides her in her visions is implied to be her ghost; it stands over the spot later revealed to be Rachel's grave, and when Max and Chloe discover her body, it vanishes into thin air. The developers later confirmed that the doe is "a presence of Rachel that guides Max somehow". In her room in Before the Storm, she has a poster of two does looking at each other, which could be Foreshadowing of Max also having a connection to the doe.
  • Dragons. She has a tattoo of one on her right calf, the mask for her Prospera costume in Before the Storm is called a dragon mask, and Samuel describes her as "a dragon made of diamonds" if Chloe asks him about her. Dragons symbolize fame, strength and power, all of which applies to her personality and background. In the Orient, dragons are also associated with wisdom, longevity and regeneration, which matches her academic performance and omnipresence through her missing posters and others' memories of her. In some cultures, dragons also represent greed and impulsivity, both traits Rachel exhibits several times (her Leeroy Jenkins tendencies throughout Before the Storm and the implications that all of her significant relationships were used by her in some way to fulfill her dreams of leaving Arcadia Bay). Dragons are also linked to fire, as is Rachel through the forest fire she causes in "Awake".
• Apocalypse Maiden: One possible interpretation of the Storm is that it's an explosion of power from her as a result of her death. Given she was seemingly able to cause a forest fire and have it last days over some emotional turmoil, the possibility isn't out of the question.
• Ascended Extra: In Life is Strange, she only shows up in photographs and gets mentioned here and there; in Before the Storm, she is the Deuteragonist.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: During the Two Truths and a Lie game on the train, she sees through Chloe's lies with brilliant deduction.
• Badass Adorable: Hinted. She is downright beautiful, but doesn't hesitate to threaten Damon Merrick when he grabs Chloe, and it's hinted that she might have a supernatural power.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: She wanted to be a model. Mark Jefferson granted her wish in the most horrific way possible.
• The Beautiful Elite: She's the daughter of the DA and lives in a very nice house at the time of Before the Storm. She's also beautiful, a perfect student, and admired by just about everyone.
• Big Damn Heroes: Downplayed example. During the Fire Walk concert, she shows up in time to distract the skeevy guys who are threatening Chloe, which give the other girl a chance to either run away or fight back.
• Big Man on Campus: She was loved, or at least respected, by almost everyone. She also has perfect grades and a bright future for herself.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: Rachel was in a love square with Frank Bowers, Chloe Price, and later on Mark Jefferson.
• Blow You Away: It's left ambiguous in Before the Storm if Rachel has a power of her own, but it's heavily implied she has some wind-related abilities, since wind blows in the direction where she screams towards the end of Episode 1.
• Break the Cutie: In Before the Storm Episode 1, she notices her father was cheating with another woman; in the end, she burns her childhood photo, snaps tearfully, and starts screaming in anger.
• Broken Ace: Before the Storm shows that a) she really was every bit as impressive as she's said to be in the first game, and b) beneath the surface she was every bit as unhappy and messed up as everyone else in Arcadia Bay.
• Broken Pedestal: Revelations of Rachel and Frank's relationship in Episode 3 cause Rachel to fall significantly in the eyes of Chloe, who feels betrayed and lied to.
• Bully Hunter: When Damon grabs Chloe by the arm and tries to intimidate her, Rachel shoves him on the ground to protect Chloe.
  Rachel: [angry] Don't. Fucking. Touch her!
• Closet Key: While Chloe is implied to have feelings towards Max even when they where younger, Rachel is the one that Chloe first acknowledged she was attracted to girls with. Even when Chloe first wanted to kiss her she couldn't get up the nerve to actually ask.
• The Cutie: She is a gorgeous and endearing sweetie who is loved by nearly everyone.
• Daddy's Girl: Deconstructed entirely. She and her father James always had a close bond when she was a child, and for all his flaws, James loves Rachel more than anything else. However, their relationship starts to deteriorate once Rachel suspects him of cheating on her mother with another woman. Although it was revealed that woman was actually her birth mother, Rachel still has issues trying to trust her father again considering all the lies he told her. The fate of their relationship depends on the player in the end, as like Sera states, Chloe telling Rachel the truth about James' involvement with Damon in Sera's kidnapping destroys all chances of Rachel ever forgiving her father.
• Dead All Along: The entire search for her is revealed to have been in vain; she died long before Max and Chloe found her.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: Inverted. The sequel comic reveals two alternate universes where she survived. The first is set in a world where Jefferson was apparently fired for stealing supplies and then arrested at another school for sleeping with a student, sparing Rachel her life. In this universe, Rachel is apparently dating Frank while Max and Chloe are dating each other, with some implication of a canon One True Threesome between the girls. In the second universe, she and Chloe successfully made it to Los Angeles, and it's set to be the main setting post-Issue 4.
• A Deadly Affair: Rachel had a secret love affair with Blackwell's photography teacher Mark Jefferson. While it's implied Rachel manipulated him to have a career as a model, she had unfortunately no idea her "lover" was a sociopathic Mad Artist who eventually kidnapped her with Nathan's help and was accidentally overdosed by the latter, leading to her death and the two burying her corpse in the junkyard.
• Death Glare: In Before The Storm she gives one to Damon when he refuses to tell her anything about Sera, which eventually leads to her attacking him and getting stabbed for her trouble. She can also give one to her father during the Truth Ending. In the main game we see a photo of her giving one to Jefferson (and possibly Nathan). Implying that she came to from the drugs enough to realize what was being done to her, which may be why she was killed when Kate wasn't.
• Dramatic Irony: Before The Storm reveals how much she hated Arcadia Bay and how she wanted to leave it all behind. She ends up being killed and buried there, and given where her body was found, in the worst possible way.
• Deuteragonist: Serves as one in the prequel Before the Storm where her and Chloe's relationship takes central focus.
• Establishing Character Moment: While she's The Ghost in the first game (due to being missing), her very first physical appearance in the Before The Storm prequel has her in punk gear at the Firewalk concert, where she steps up to save Chloe from two drunk thugs, showcasing her courage, impulsive nature, and sense of justice. Despite not knowing each other, Rachel and Chloe later spend the rest of the night jamming at the concert, debuting their strong relationship. Her very first spoken line in the franchise is this gem:
  Rachel: [to Sheldon, who is about to hit Chloe, aggressively] HEY! DICKHEAD!!
• Even the Girls Want Her: No kidding, just ask Chloe or Steph. Max constantly comment on her beauty and how she looks like a model when she looks at pictures of her, and then there's Victoria, who despite claiming hating Rachel, can't stop expressing how beautiful she is.
• Expy: Rachel's role in the game makes her one to Laura Palmer of Twin Peaks. Both kick off the main plot with their disappearances, both lived perfect public lives while hiding dark problems in their private lives, and both left a lasting influence in the lives of several people. Before the Storm plays this up further; like Laura, her father is an attorney, and her biological mother is named Sera, an alternate spelling of Sarah (as in Sarah Palmer, Laura's mother). In fact, Rachel was originally named "Jessie Palmer" during development.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Throughout Before the Storm she only wears one her iconic blue feather earings, which is strange considering the photobooth pictures of her and Chloe feature her wearing two despite her character model showing otherwise.^note This was likely a genuine mistake on the developers' part, as many pictures of her in the main game have the other earing obscured/unseeable by her hair and the new team may have simply not realized that the other earing even exists canonically.
• Fille Fatale: At 15-18 years of age, she Really Gets Around with grown men, including Frank and Jefferson.
• Foil: To Max. Whereas Max had to learn to become more assertive and confident, Rachel had her act together from the start (even though she had her own issues). Max can use her powers to become The Ace, but Rachel was the trope without needing any powers.
• Freudian Excuse: The first game goes out of its way to indicate that Rachel developed a drug addiction to something much stronger than weed at some point, which would go a long way to explain some of her less than moral actions we learn about throughout the season. Add her rather intense desire to leave Arcadia Bay and one can't help but understand how she came to making those decisions in the first place.
  • Her secret relationship with Frank makes a lot of sense when one considers that he can very easily supply her with drugs, that he has a well paying (if illegal) job, and his mode of transportation can double as a house. He was more or less her best option to get "the hell out of Arcadia Bay" at the time of their relationship. Furthering this interpretation is Nathan, who was in fact friends with her, saying that Rachel only used him for drugs. It should be noted however that Nathan's word is questionable given his mental issues and the fact that he was one of her kidnappers and may have very well have been the one to overdose her. Frank himself can even say that he thinks she would have ditched him at some point or another.
  • Her implied pursuit of Jefferson likewise would be more understandable when considering the above. By the time she meets him she was likely a burnt out, teen drug addict who wanted nothing more than to escape Arcadia Bay and be a model. Meanwhile, he was a world-renowned photographer who could very easily make her dreams come true. Rachel was likewise someone he could very easily manipulate. Unfortunately for Rachel, Jefferson turned out to be a very, very bad man who wanted nothing more than to hurt her.
  • Before the Storm adds to this by revealing that her biological mother was a drug addict, meaning Rachel herself may very well be genetically predisposed to developing addictions. This would go a long way to explain how her implied downward spiral happened.
• Freudian Slip: In episode 2 of Before the Storm while talking to Chloe she wonders if it's possible to act so much that you lose yourself. Chloe initially thinks Rachel is talking about herself but she corrects the other girl and explains that she meant her father. Her tone of voice and facial expression during this, however, implies she was thinking of herself. Furthered when she immediately after worries that she might become like him.
• Generation Xerox: Not only does she look almost just like her biological mother but she dances like her and seemingly develops a drug addiction just like Sera did. Like both of her mothers, she's shown to have bad judgemental instinct towards men. (Her mothers believed James to be a good man until he had Sera kidnapped. Rachel meanwhile believed Jefferson to be a good man who'd change her life for the better, but he ultimately ended up being one of her killers.) Meanwhile, like her father, Rachel is a good actor and is prone to being socially manipulative.
• The Ghost: As in the first game, she appears in person only in Max's final dream sequence, frozen like everyone else. She appears in reality in in the prequel.
• The Glomp: In the final ending of Before the Storm she'll do this to Chloe when the other girl unveils her new, completely blue hair. She'll also do this to Sera if you manage to convince her to meet Rachel.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Her friendship with Chloe is hinted to have possibly been more than platonic, which has been confirmed by the writers to be deliberate (on Chloe's part, at least). Before the Storm does away with the subtext. The Wavelengths DLC of True Colours puts the final nail in the coffin as Steph mentions that she was incredibly jealous of the relationship between Rachel and Chloe.
• Hypocrite: Before The Storm reveals that she hates liars... which is ironic considering Rachel herself is prone to lying and manipulating others. Likewise, she spends up until the end of episode 2 agonizing over her father apparently cheating on her (step) mother, Rose. Meanwhile, in the main game, it's revealed that she was seeing Frank and later Jefferson behind Chloe's back. It's unclear if she had broken up with Frank before beginning to see Jefferson meaning she may have been cheating on him as well. She at least seems to acknowledge the former and is hinted to be regretful of the latter in the unfinished/unsent letter from her to Chloe (about Jefferson) that Max can find.
• Iconic Item: Her bracelet and blue feather earring(s) are this. She always wears them except in the hospital and unless she's personally gifted the bracelet to someone else.
• Iconic Outfit: For the first game, the outfit of hers that Max borrowed became this.
• It's All About Me: Though Rachel is very complimentary toward Chloe, she's also very self-centered. Virtually all of her interactions with Chloe have them doing what Rachel wants to do or solving her problems. Both her astrological sign and her enneagram state that one of her potential flaws is self-centeredness. Ironically, if Chloe interprets Rachel's sudden detachment in the junkyard as a reaction to something Chloe did, Rachel will spitefully state that not everything is about Chloe.
• Kill the Cutie: Courtesy of Nathan and Mark Jefferson.
• Leeroy Jenkins: One of her bigger flaws is her inability to think ahead in the long-term, and then charging into situations at a moments notice. This includes convincing Chloe to ditch with her without considering the fact that Chloe's already on thin ice with Blackwell, trying to convince the other girl to run away with her mere days after meeting (despite the fact that they have limited funds, likely zero job experience, and a truck that they don't even know if they can get running), and getting into a fight with a drug dealer whom she knows is armed. By the end of Before the Storm she's implied to have moved away from this trope after being stabbed through a possible dialogue option.
• Living MacGuffin: Averted. Originally, she appears to only be used to spur Chloe and Max into action. Along the way, it's revealed that her influence has greatly impacted the cast.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: She's girlier than Chloe, and lets her long hair loose.
• The Lost Lenore: To Chloe, who was deeply in love with her. She breaks down when she discovers Rachel's body in the junkyard, and vows to avenge her by getting back at Nathan Prescott.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Played this role for Chloe, same way Chloe does for Max, only Rachel was a lot more competent and confident.
• Manipulative Bitch: She often uses her acting skills to get what she wants; in the prequel, there are a few points where Chloe will stop and ask her if she's being genuine, because she just can't tell. It's never explicitly confirmed one way or another, but Rachel does quite a few things (especially in the more romantic routes) that seem to put Chloe's needs over her own, implying her feelings are real.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's never confirmed in Before The Storm if she has any Playing with Fire or Blow You Away abilities or if the gust of wind that started the forest fire was just pure coincidence. Notably the fire goes out after she gets stabbed and in season 1 Chloe will attribute the storm that'll wipe out Arcadia Bay as "Rachel's revenge." However, the former could also be entirely coincidental and the latter is narratively pushed as being a side effect of Max's powers over anything else.
• Meaningful Name: Her name is clearly a reference to "Amber alert" - a massage requesting the public to assist in search of abducted children.
• Ms. Fanservice: She is absolutely beautiful and gets a lot of Male Gaze in the prequel.
• Never a Runaway: Everybody in Arcadia Bay except for Chloe believes that Rachel simply ran away. Even Max has a moment's hesitation upon finding concrete evidence that Rachel was planning to run away to Los Angeles. Chloe turns out to have been right all along. Rachel was murdered by Nathan and Mark Jefferson.
• Nice Girl: For the most part, Rachel is very friendly and caring towards her friends. Which could be the reason she is so popular with both the students and faculty. However, she is easily angered and is prone to vindictive, destructive, and even manipulative behavior.
• Playing with Fire: In Before the Storm, she's associated with fire. She and Chloe meet at a Firewalk concert. In a rage against her father, she accidentally starts a forest fire that has supernatural qualities. In Chloe's dream, her father talks about fire in terms that seem to describe Rachel. When she almost dies from being stabbed by Damon Merrick, the fire spontaneously extinguishes itself, and she remains passive for the rest of the game.
• Posthumous Character: By the start of the original game, Rachel is already dead and buried in a shallow grave in the junkyard, having been murdered by Mr. Jefferson and Nathan long before Max came along to help Chloe look for her.
• Pragmatic Pansexuality: A popular interpretation of Rachel's numerous relationships and affairs is that she used everyone to fulfill her dream of leaving Arcadia Bay behind and becoming a model in California.
• Present Absence: Pretty much everyone in the town except Max has or had some important connection to Rachel Amber, but she's been missing for months by the time the story starts.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Rachel is the red to Chloe's blue, just as Chloe is the red to Max's blue. Rachel is cool, confident, poised, and popular, while Chloe is conflicted, awkward, abrasive, and always screwing up. However, the pair are also much more alike than they at first appear. They both live with trauma, take drugs, and show a lot of recklessness. Rachel is overall more feminine than Chloe, though not as much as you'd expect from an aspiring model. She attends the same metal shows as Chloe and has a surprisingly grunge fashion style.
• Secret Relationship: Her and Frank, as revealed in Episode 3. She even lied to Chloe about it.
• Silver Spoon Troublemaker: While she enjoys a great reputation as a "star student" and "it girl" at Blackwell, Rachel has a troubled personal life despite being the daughter of the district attorney. She cheats on her various partners, does drugs, steals for the thrill of it, and skips school to spy on her father (without telling Chloe the reason for their trip). Shortly before her disappearance, she tarnishes her record at Blackwell by smuggling drugs into the school for her boyfriend Frank.
• Small Town Boredom: She suffers badly from this. Her dreams of being a Hollywood model far outstrip anything Arcadia Bay can provide for her, and her home life doesn't help. Her relationships with Frank Bowers and Mark Jefferson could easily have sprung from her viewing either or both of them as her ticket to Los Angeles.
• Spirit Advisor: It's implied that the ethereal doe that appears before Max on occasion is actually Rachel's ghost trying to guide Max to the truth. When Max and Chloe find Rachel's body, the doe vanishes.
• Stalker with a Crush: Whether she and Chloe are friends or something more depends on the playthrough, but several dialogue options can reveal that she's been... watching Chloe from afar for quite some time before they actually began hanging out. It's presented in a much more innocent fashion than Elliot's stalking of Chloe as Rachel seems to be genuinely interested in Chloe as person whereas Elliot views Chloe more or less as an object to be owned. Chloe can openly point this out to her, which manages to get her a little sheepish.
• Stepford Smiler: In Life is Strange, she is extremely popular and is deemed as "perfect" despite hating Arcadia Bay and having lots of other problems.
• Strong Family Resemblance: To her biological mother, Sera. She's basically a younger looking Sera with a darker shade of blonde hair. This is in direct contrast to her father and (understandably) Rose. It acts as foreshadowing to their connection to one another.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Not Rachel herself, but she got an unseen one named Megan Weaver. Specifically, though Rachel exists in the original game's alternate timeline, Chloe never met her and instead befriended Megan, who disappeared sometime after Chloe's accident and never attended school anymore. Then in Episode 4 in the main timeline, a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the Dark Room shows a file labeled "Megan", which is implied to be the same girl that Chloe befriended in the alternate timeline.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: Rachel cheated on Chloe with Frank and Jefferson, but it's ambiguous whether she truly loved them or used them to get her and Chloe out of Arcadia Bay. Then there's her fucked up backstory of being a junkie's child (so was genetically led to take drugs) and the influence her father's action had on her...
• Teacher/Student Romance: She's rumored to have slept with Jefferson. The player can find a letter in the Junkyard from her to Chloe stating she met a wonderful man and they hooked up, Dontnod confirmed in their Charity Live Stream that that person was Jefferson; this did not end well for her.
• The Tease: Towards Chloe, should you romance her. After the first episode, almost every other piece of dialogue she has will be flirty towards Chloe if you really went for it in episode one.
  Rachel: (after seeing Chloe's streak of blue hair) Holy shit, your hair! It's so...
  Chloe: (stroking the side of Rachel's head lovingly) Badass?
  Rachel: (If romanced) I was going to say hot. But yeah, badass too.
• Unrequited Love: Funny enough, despite what Word of St. Paul indicated back during season 1, it's possible to have Rachel develop this for Chloe in Before the Storm by flirting with her throughout episode 1, then picking the "friendship" option over "something more," and then not flirting with her again for the rest of the game.
• Verbal Tic: Chloe's "hella" came from her.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: In Episode 3 of Before the Storm, when Damon Merrick grabs Chloe by the arm and tries to intimidate her into working for his gang, Rachel shoves him to the ground and shouts at him to leave Chloe alone.
• Younger Than They Look: Her design and confident demeanour from the prequel make her seem slightly older than Chloe, however she's revealed to be younger than her — though only by a few months — meaning that Chloe is 16 and Rachel still 15 when the prequel takes place.^note Chloe was born in March 1994, Rachel in July of the same year; BtS takes place in April/May 2010. It's not even enough to put them in different school years, unlike Chloe and Max.

(Comics Alternate Timeline) Rachel Dawn Amber

An alternate universe counterpart of Rachel who wasn't murdered by Jefferson and Nathan in the Dark Room and made it out of Arcadia Bay with her Chloe. All spoilers for this Rachel will be unmarked.

• Ambiguous Situation: Whether or not she and her Chloe ever encountered Jefferson is ambiguous at best. However, it's strongly implied that this Rachel did have a problem with drugs like her main counterpart.
  • Her status with her three parents is left up in the air here as well.
  • She is once again hinted to have powers, but there has yet to be any actual confirmation.
• Ascended Extra: Like her Before The Storm counterpart, she becomes a primary character in the comic rather than just a Living Macguffin.
• Beware the Nice Ones: This Rachel is an absolute sweetheart, but it's still not a good idea to cross her.
• Big Damn Heroes: Alongside Chloe and Tristan at one point.
• Call-Back: In Before the Storm, she can joke about a tall blond man flirting with Chloe and her having to step in and say, "Back off, she's with me." In the comic, one of her troupe mates, who is a tall blond guy, tries to get her to put in a good word with Chloe for him, unaware that they're dating. Rachel does not take kindly to this, especially not when he later makes a pass at her after having already been told of their status.
  • In the Waves arc, she's still having issues with her identity. However, her fake self is primarily regulated to her social media persona.
• The Cutie: She's noticeably sweeter and better adjusted than her game counterpart, due to having matured quite a bit.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Implied through a conversation with Chloe when she witnesses one of her influencer friends ODing at a party, lamenting how easily it could have been her just a few years ago while watching the other woman get taken away in an ambulance.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: As noted above, this Rachel is an inversion.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: A version of Rachel who made it out of Arcadia Bay and is living happily in LA with her Chloe.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Still prone to wearing a single feather earring here, although it's not part of all her outfits.
• The Fashionista: Rachel dresses to impress.
• Heroic BSoD: Although she hides it from Chloe and Max, finding out what happened to her main universe counterpart does a number on her. Thankfully, Tristan and Dex are both there to talk her through some of it.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Still has much longer hair than Chloe or Max's.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: She and her Chloe are mutually minor cases of this towards each other. They also arguably count as platonic ones to Max.
• Ms. Fanservice: Arguably more so than in Before the Storm. If her outfits aren't revealing they're at the very least form-fitting if not both.
• Nice Girl: This version of Rachel is incredibly sweet and kind to those she cares about, even more so than her main timeline self.
• Official Couple: She and her Chloe are shown to be very, very in love.
• Older and Wiser: This is a Rachel who's reached early adulthood, so she's had a chance to address many of her personality problems and is shown to be quite the functional adult.
• Platonic Life-Partners: She and Max are two WLW who have a very loving but entirely platonic relationship with one another.
• Stepford Smiler: Early on in the Waves arc, she's shown to be upset over her fake social media persona as well as her difficulty with landing an acting gig, both of which she deals with rather privately, trying to not let her Chloe know how much it's affecting her. She also attempts to do this upon learning what happened to her main universe counterpart, but Tristan steps in.
• Took a Level in Badass: Shown when she helps save Max.
• Took a Level in Kindness: This Rachel has evidently had time to address her personality flaws that are hinted at in Season 1 and shown in Before the Storm.
• Tritagonist: From the second arc onward, she and Tristan share this role, becoming easily the most significant and focused-on characters other than Max and Chloe themselves.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Downplayed, as she does wear a few of the same outfits twice, but she has a significantly larger wardrobe than Max or her Chloe.
• Walking Spoiler: A version of Rachel who lived. It's hard to speak of her without revealing such.

The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit

Chris Eriksen

Christopher "Chris" Eriksen

"What if I had real superpowers? I could protect the whole town!"

Voiced By: Chandler Mantione (English), Miyuki Sato (Japanese)

The main protagonist of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit and a supporting character in Life Is Strange 2.

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• Adorably Precocious Child: The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit has Chris doing chores in the house while his father is drinking and later sleeping in front of the television. He basically has to take care of his own father at a very young age.
• Ambiguous Situation: His fate if he gets hit by a cop car at the end of "Rules" is left unclear until "Faith". The police officer presses his brakes when he notices Chris, but the car still strikes the kid and the deceleration might not have made a difference given how small Chris is. Since Sean and Daniel don't have a phone or internet access, they can't look up what happened to him, leaving his fate a mystery to the player until Sean gets a letter from him in "Faith", which reveals that he broke some bones but has since made a full recovery.
• Animal Motif: Sean portrays him as a raccoon, given that he wears a domino mask in his superhero identity and he sometimes scavenge things for his imagination.
• Badass Adorable: As Captain Spirit.
• Badass Cape: Wears one as Captain Spirit.
• Big Brother Worship: He's very fond of Sean, which makes sense considering he's an only child.
• Birds of a Feather: Once he meets Daniel, the two hit it off right away due to their mutual love of Power Bear, Hawt Dawg Man and superheroes in general.
• Blue Is Heroic: When not wearing red as Captain Spirit, he wears blue.
• Break the Cutie: Poor Chris has to deal with the death of his mother two years ago, and his alcoholic father who unintentionally neglects him, and abuses him emotionally. Then comes the moment where a drunken Charles blames Chris for sending Emily to her death, which causes Chris to run away from the house in tears.
• Cheerful Child: Manages to be quite happy and enthusiastic while playing on his own. Despite being raised by an increasingly abusive (of both him and alcohol) father, and the recent death of his mom.
• Childhood Friends: He meets Daniel when they're nine years old, and instantly become best friends, despite the fact Daniel has to run away from the law again with Sean. In the Redemption and Parting Ways ending, he's shown to still be friends with Chris, growing up together and remaining close even in their late teenage/early adult years.
• Children Are Innocent: He's a young child who lives in his own creative world where he wants to be a superhero and rescue people. He also doesn't understand an adult joke comic his mother drew and says "I'm too young" to justify his confusion.
• The Cutie: A sweet child with a big imagination who's energetic and playful.
• Demoted to Extra: He's The Protagonist and playable character in The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, but he has a more minor role in the second Life Is Strange installment, where he only is an important character in Rules and is solely mentioned a few times in later episodes.
• Distressed Dude: Daniel saves him from falling from his treehouse, and can save him again from a police car driving right towards him. If Daniel was told by Sean not to use his power, Chris will get hit by the car.
• Domino Mask: Wields a red or blue one as Captain Spirit.
• Et Tu, Brute?: If he didn't tell Chris the truth about his powers and saves his life from the police car, Daniel is sure that Chris is mad at him for lying to him . Though in the Redemption and Parting Ways endings, they are still close friends and it showcases Chris learned to forgive him.
• Fanboy: Of Power Bear, Hawt Dawg Man and anything superhero-related.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: A blonde-haired child with an innocent, kind heart.
• He Is All Grown Up: The Redemption and Parting Ways endings show pictures of Chris growing up with Daniel.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He jumps in front of a police car, giving Sean and Daniel time to escape. Although it's completely accidental, as at this point Chris believes that he has superpowers. Depending on the player's choices he may not try to do this (if Daniel tells him that it's himself who has the superpower, not Chris), or Daniel might save him with his power (if Daniel was encouraged to use his powers instead of to hide it).
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Chris is as innocent and tenderhearted as any nine year old can be, and even on low morality, Daniel will truly care about Chris and his friendship, who basically serves as a Morality Pet to Daniel.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: He's a creative, innocent young boy with blue eyes.
• Irony: A rather cruel one: his mother dies after being hit by a car, and Chris can end up being hit by a car while Daniel and Sean escape.
• Keet: He's as energetic and quirky as any nine year old can be.
• Kid Hero: He's nine years old and the main protagonist of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, and is a fanboy who wants to become a real life superhero.
• Kill the Cutie: Thankfully subverted as the police car that can possibly hit him hit the breaks before doing serious damage, and all Chris gets from the accident is some broken bones, but he thankfully survives and recovers fast.
• Leitmotif: Death With Dignity by Sufjan Stevens.
• Missing Mom: His mother Emily died two years prior to Sean and Daniel's arrival in Beaver Creek, and Chris lives alone with his father.
• Momma's Boy: He was very close of his mother, and her death deeply hurt him.
• Morality Pet: Even on low morality/brotherhood, Daniel will always be a good friend to Chris and showcases care and worry over him.
• Mr. Imagination: The entirety of Captain Spirit imposes his fantasies of being the eponymous character over his actual Saturday morning.
• Nice Guy: He's a really sweet kid, who instantly bonds with Daniel and sees Sean as his own older brother.
• The Protagonist: Of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit.
• Red Is Heroic: Wears a lot of red as his "Captain Spirit" persona.
• Secret-Keeper: Whether he learns the truth from Daniel about his powers or witnesses the latter saving him from a police car, Chris tells no one about it.
• Stepford Smiler: He's still pretty cheerful and happy for a child who lost his mother and has to witness his loving father lose himself to alcoholism.
• Strong Family Resemblance: His father notes that Chris looks a lot like this mother, from his blonde hair to his mannerisms.
• Treehouse of Fun: He has his own treehouse in his backyard that Stephen built for him, which he calls his "Flying Fortress".
• Youthful Freckles: Showcases his innocence and cheerfulness.

Season 2

Sean Diaz

Sean Eduardo Diaz

"It'll be fine, Daniel. There's nothing we can't do... as long as we're together."

^{Click here for his appearance in Rules and Captain Spirit}

^{Click here for his appearance in Wastelands}

^{Click here for his appearance in Faith}

^{Click here for his appearance in Wolves}

Voiced By: Gonzalo Martin (English), Yohei Hamada (Japanese)

One of the protagonists of Life Is Strange 2 and the older brother of Daniel Diaz. He was gearing up for a Halloween party in which he would finally ask out his crush with the aide of his best friend, Lyla Park, until one bad thing lead to another and their father ends up shot and killed. After his brother's power awakens and accidentally kills a cop, Sean takes Daniel in tow and escapes the scene, planning to run away to their father's home of Puerto Lobos, Mexico.

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• Aloof Big Brother: Is this to Daniel before the cop incident, when he's not being a Big Brother Bully. However, he still has his moments of protectiveness towards Daniel and the player's choices can subvert this trope.
• Animal Motifs: Wolves; there is much wolf imagery surrounding Sean and all of his known family members (including his maternal grandparents). In the opening of each episode, Sean and his family are all portrayed as wolves. Also, a wolf can be seen in the desert as Sean drives his way to Nevada after escaping the hospital.
• Artistic License – Art: The loss of depth perception shouldn't affect one's drawing ability so profoundly. Some artists even find depth perception decieving, and wear eyepatches deliberately. This might explain why Sean's subsequent drawings are just as good as before he lost his eye. It is also possible that he suffered some sort of nerve damage or other long term effect as he mentions getting a headache if he focuses for too long.
• Atomic F-Bomb: Twice in Faith, after being humiliated and/or beaten by racists as he drives away in tears.
• Badass Adorable: Not as much as Chloe, but close. He's a cute teenage boy who can be quite dorky, and is a determinate fighter.
• Badass Normal: Is still a badass in his own right even though he has no powers of his own.
• Big Brother Bully: A downplayed version, but while they clearly have a strong and affectionate bond from the start, Sean gets annoyed and fed up by Daniel's childish antics easily, and had unknowingly turned him away when Daniel attempted to come to him for help in the past. Lyla calls out Sean for putting Daniel out of his room when he comes in trying to impress her with his zombie costume. A flashback in "Wastelands" also shows Sean calling Daniel a "little shit", holding him in a Headlock of Dominance and either gives him a noogie or go as far as making Daniel hit himself.
• Beard of Evil: He's grown a goatee after the Time Skip of the Blood Brothers ending, where he and Daniel are heavily implied to be career criminals.
• Beard of Sorrow: He's grown a beard after the Time Skip of the Redemption ending, and he's shown to be clearly traumatized by everything he's gone through.
• Big Brother Instinct: He normally finds Daniel kind of annoying, but he loves his brother a lot and goes berserk if anyone dares to lay a hand on him. Brett and many others learned the hard way not to mess with Daniel in front of Sean.
  • He also develops this towards Chris, as he instantly realizes something is going on between him and his father, and can get Chris to confess his father's alcoholism and confront him about it (either nicely or harshly).
• Big Brother Mentor: Even if has no power of his own and is new with dealing with real life superpowers, Sean helps Daniel control his telekinesis better by training with him as of "Rules".
• Bilingual Dialogue: He's fluent in both English and Spanish. He speaks fluent spanish with an immigrant Mexican couple who got arrested at the border in Wolves.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: Episode 3 sees him in one with Cassidy and Finn. The player can direct Sean to hook up with either or neither of them, but whatever choices you make, the notes in his journal and the gushing way he talks about them in his interior monologues make it clear he's crushing on them both. Incidentally, if you pursue Finn, it'll become apparent that he's a bit of a Closet Key for Sean (who seems to have been vaguely aware of his bisexuality beforehand but never had occasion to act upon it).
• Blood from the Mouth: After he gets shot in the throat while crossing the border and dies bleeding out in the Lone Wolf ending.
• Brains and Brawn: The Brains to Daniel's Brawn. Due to lacking a power, Sean is the logical thinker of the duo, while Daniel is more impulsive and is given a powerful telekinesis ability.
• Bratty Teenage Son: Downplayed. While Sean is your average rebellious teenager who parties a lot as well as being an occasional Big Brother Bully to Daniel, he still loves and respect his father a lot, cares about Daniel, and some choices can have the player downplay this trope or play it more straight depending how they play Sean as.
• Break the Cutie: Sean never catches a break through the game. First it's the death of his father, then he encounters dangerous individual who breaks him physically and emotionally. Worst episode for him was definitely Faith where he deals with the loss of his left eye and Daniel being missing.
• Brutal Honesty: Just like Max, dialogue choices from Sean can be rather straight to the point.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: He refers to his estranged mother by her name Karen because he resents her for leaving her family. He at least tries to make an effort to call her "mom" in front of Daniel.
  Sean: That's where... Karen's parents... our grandparents live...
• Calling the Old Woman Out: When he reunites with his mother Karen in Faith, he lashes at her for abandoning him, his brother and his father eight years ago. Though the degree of bitterness depends on the choices the player chooses if they wish to renew their relationship.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: You can bet that if Sean has an occasion to smoke, whether be weed or the cigarette, he'll take it, considering all the crap he has to put through.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Just like Chloe before him, Sean has quite the colorful language.
• Cool Big Bro: Downplayed in the beginning, as he's easily annoyed by Daniel's antics and constantly mocks him and shoves him out of his room, but over the course of the first episode, Sean makes Daniel think that their escape from home is an exciting adventure, so that Daniel doesn't get scared. The player can play Sean this way, by encouraging Daniel and strengthening their brotherly bond. He also acts like this towards other children characters such as Chris and Sarah Lee.
• Cooldown Hug: He gives one to Daniel after the latter breaks down over learning their father's death and causes his powers to unleash on the motel room.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Is this to both Max and Chloe.
  • Compared to Max:
    • Max is shy and a bit of an introvert, only talking to her classmates by the player's actions. Sean is a bit more outgoing, as the gameplay trailer has him asking a girl he likes if she's going to the party he's attending.
    • Max is an only child, while Sean has a younger brother.
    • Max possesses a supernatural power, while Sean doesn't (instead the main superpower is given to Daniel, the deuteragonist).
    • Max is a photographer who is very passionate about her hobby. Sean is a sketch artist who's unsure if he should dedicate his life to drawing.
    • Max is very ambiguous about her crushes, with both interactions in the game with Chloe and Warren make it hard to determine if she reciprocates their feelings of her. Sean, while he doesn't reveal his bisexuality until Episode 3, is much more open with his crushes, with a dialogue option admitting that he likes boys as well and calling the same-sex couple in episode 5 "real patriots." Even if he doesn't romance either Finn or Cassidy, his journal does show that he's crushing on both of them.
  • Compared to Chloe:
    • Chloe has a highly antagonistic relationship with her family. Sean, however, is very close to both his father and his younger brother.
    • Chloe is Brilliant, but Lazy with school while Sean struggles with classes but is trying his best to get better grades.
    • Chloe wants nothing more than to leave Arcadia Bay but circumstances kept preventing that from happening. Sean is forced to leave everything behind despite being more or less content with where he lived.
    • Both of them can die at the end of their story but while Chloe is willing to do it for a Heroic Sacrifice, Sean may accidentally die due to a decision his brother made that he was unwilling to do.
  • Compared to both...
    • Sean is a bit younger, Hispanic, and male.
    • Max and Chloe's story takes only a few days while Sean's story is long to the point where one episode takes place around Halloween while the next is near Christmas.
    • Both Max and Chloe's story is solely in Arcadia Bay. Sean, however, takes his journey all around the West Coast and the Southwest of the United States.
• Deadpan Snarker: Somewhere between Max and Chloe in snarkiness, Sean's mental notes are full of snark and he isn't afraid to speak his mind about the absurdity or craziness of a situation.
  Daniel: [about the W.C. in the forest] Don't let me get stuck in there!
  Sean: Don't worry, I'll call the forest plumbers if you fall in.
• Declaration of Protection: If Sean doesn't promise Daniel to never lie to him again, he instead vows to protect him no matter the cost.
• Defiant Captive: Despite being tied in Hank's office, beaten by him and threatened to be delivered to the police, it doesn't refrain Sean to insult the old bastard (though it's up to the player's choice).
  Sean: Fuck you, hillbilly!
• Defiant to the End: When Nicholas points a gun at his head, Sean doesn't even flinch and even urges him to shoot him, showing him how dead set he is to get Daniel back:
  Sean: If you wanna kill me... Then do it. I'm not afraid. [...] Go ahead. Shoot me in the face! And live with it...
• Delinquent Hair: Sean can potentially get a haircut by Finn in Episode 3, sporting a Mohawk with shaved sides.
• Determinator: In Episode 4, even if his and Daniel's brotherhood was low, Sean goes through losing an eye, escaping the hospital he was held in to get trialed, beaten and/or humiliated by a racist, walking through the scorching hot desert of Nevada and being threatened and beaten by a lunatic cult member in order to reunite with Daniel, and does not give up on his brother no matter what comes in his way.
  Sean: (to Daniel) I won't stop... no matter what [Lisbeth] does... I'll come right back... again... and again. I love you, Daniel...
• Disabled Badass: Losing his left eye in the end of "Wastelands" doesn't stop him from being a total badass in later episodes.
• Disabled Snarker: Maintains his sharp tongue and snark even after the loss of his left eye.
  Racist redneck: How do you say "I'm a dirty thief with one eye" [in Spanish]?
  Sean: [in Spanish] I'm a thief and go fuck your mother.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He and his brother's first appearance in the series is at the end of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, where they save Chris.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Three of the four endings have a rather optimistic conclusion to Sean's story.
  • Redemption has Sean turn himself in and face 15 years in prison. During his sentence, he keeps in touch with Daniel and even becomes a successful comic book artist. Upon being released, he finally reunites with his family (and possibly Lyla). Despite this, he seems pretty traumatized by his experiences, and now spends his life on the road.
  • Blood Brothers has Sean and Daniel make it into Mexico and open up an auto shop, but the brothers are constantly harassed by thugs and they engage in illegal activity themselves to make a little extra money and defend themselves. The brothers seem happy just to be together, but at the cost of their comfortable lives in the US.
  • Parting Ways has Daniel get Sean into Mexico, but due to being taught to have a strong moral code, Daniel turns himself in. Daniel gets placed into the care of the Reynoldses and reunites with Chris, but now has to wear an ankle monitor and can't see Sean again, only communicating through letters. Based on the photos he sends, Sean seems to be living it up in Mexico, possibly even with his romantic partner Cassidy or Finn.
• Endearingly Dorky: Not as much as Max and sometimes Chloe, but he has his moments, as shown in the first episode where he practices to talk to his crush Jenn in the bathroom mirror.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even if Sean can commit morally questionable actions throughout the game (which have a bad influence on Daniel), in Episode 3 he categorically refuses to give weed to his nine year old brother.
• Expy: Being a Hispanic short-haired, responsible older brother with a noticeable accent, he resembles a pre-apocalypse David Garcia.
• Eyepatch of Power: Gains a black eyepatch from Karen in Episode 4, replacing his medical gauze.
• Eye Scream: Episode 3 ends with Sean badly wounded, with one of his eyes gouged by a glass shard thanks to Daniel's telekinetic outburst. In Episode 4, it's been completely removed, and he wears a medical gauze and later an eyepatch over his missing eye.
• Forced to Watch: He witnessed a cop gunning down his father, and there was nothing he could do to stop him.
• Friend to All Children: He's loved by Chris and Sarah Lee, two young children who are the same age as his younger brother.
• The Generic Guy: Contrary to Max, who had time travelling powers, this time the playable character is an ordinary 16 year old high school student, whose little brother is the one with the powers.
• Glass Eye: He gets one in every ending he survives in.
• Green-Eyed Monster: He gets somewhat jealous of Daniel and Finn's new brotherly bond, with Finn being more "fun" and lenient while Sean tries to be more stern with him.
• Hereditary Hairstyle: His hairstyles in Episodes 2 and 5 are strikingly similar to his mother's in the present-day.
• The Hero: Of the second game.
• The Hero Dies: Choose to surrender with Daniel's morality being low, and Sean is killed by police in the midst of Daniel's escape to Mexico.
• Harmful to Minors: Witnessing his father's murder, encountering racists who kidnap and/or beat him, witnessing his brother's power wreck havoc and even possibly killing people... you name it.
• Heroic Sacrifice: If Sean decides to turn himself into the police during the standoff at the end of Wolves and Daniel's morality is high, Daniel gets to grow up and live his life comfortably again with the Reynoldses.
• He's All Grown Up: All of the endings in which he lives has a time skip in which he is now in his 20s (Blood Brothers, Parting Ways) or 30s (Redemption).
• Hidden Depths: A high-schooler who enjoys skateboarding, drawing, and simply wanting to party happens to be knowledgeable about nature and trail blazing, thanks to Esteban.
  • Sean knows how to hotwire a car because Esteban taught him "just in case."
• His Story Repeats Itself: In the Redemption ending, according to Michel Koch, Sean now spends his life on the road, meeting new people, much like on his original journey, except this time, as a free man.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: As the prologue shows, Sean may be an occasional Big Brother Bully to Daniel, but if anyone tries to hurt him, he'll step right in to his defense (as seen with his confrontation with Brett).
• Hypocritical Humor: Sean telling Daniel to stop swearing is this, considering he's probably the most foul-mouthed character to be introduced in the entire Life is Strange franchise. Daniel even lampshades this:
  Daniel: Like you're always polite!
• In the Hood: Sean wears his Wolf Squad hoodie in every episode so far. Justified, since he and Daniel left home with the clothes on their backs.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sean is a Nice Guy at heart, but there are times he can be very stubborn and quite rude towards people but he has very good intentions such as helping the people around him that are in need.
• Insult of Endearment: He calls Daniel "enano", which means "dwarf" or "midget" in Spanish, but he means it in a playful, brotherly way. Daniel lets him and no one else call him that.
• It's All My Fault: It's possible for him to blame himself for Esteban's death.
• Killing in Self-Defense: His possible murder of Lisbeth if the player chooses so. Though it was mainly to protect Daniel from killing her himself, Sean states it was either her or them.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: While protective of Daniel, some choices can have the player make Sean violently beat up people (or even kill them, as seen with Lisbeth Fischer) who threaten his little brother.
• Like Brother and Sister: Both Lyla and Sean make it pretty clear that they mean a lot to each other. So much that if chosen to say goodbye, Lyla is the first and only person that Sean will risk calling while on the run.
• Little "No": He lets out a series of this when he wakes up from being unconscious and sees his street in ruins, the dead cop lying on the pavement and his father's dead body.
• Maybe Ever After: Depending on if you kept in contact with her, Lyla is the only person besides Daniel and Karen who shows up after Sean gets released from prison if both brothers surrender at the border. The huge hug both give to each other and what appears to be them holding hands afterwards implies that they became a couple between the time skip.
  • He also has this with Cassidy or Finn (if one is romanced) in the Blood Brothers ending. It's possible if not likely that his love interest joined him and Daniel in Mexico as in the Parting Ways ending, but it's not shown on-screen in this case.
• Messy Hair: Sean's hair gets longer and shaggier (his bangs, especially) in each episode, since he and Daniel have no access to any haircuts on the road. In Episode 3, Finn can potentially offer to give him one.
• Miscarriage of Justice: Finds himself victim of this if he surrenders at the end of Wolves. Sean gets trialed for the murder of a cop he didn't commit as well as the multiple illegal events that happened during his journey. He gets incarcerated for 15 YEARS, losing his freedom and his early adult years in the process. The main reason he went along with it, was to protect Daniel's power (and the real reason behind the cop's death) and give him the normal life with his grandparents that he deserved.
• Missing Mom: His mom is nowhere to be seen. He refers to her by her first name, Karen, and has made it very clear in multiple conversations that she left her entire family and did not have a good relationship with Sean.
• Morality Chain: Sean is the one person who can lead Daniel to the right direction. The basic of the game is how children such as Daniel are empathy sponges; if Sean does something good or bad, Daniel will remember it and most repeat it too. In the "Lone Wolf" ending, Sean dies at the border due to being shot in the throat and bleeding to death, and it causes Daniel to grow into an empty, hardened criminal who kills in his free time and has no goals in life.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In the event where he kills Lisbeth Fischer so Daniel doesn't have to be a murderer, Sean falls into his knees and cries into his hands, not believing he actually killed someone.
• Nerves of Steel: By Faith, Sean has been through so much shit that he's defiant when having a gun pointed at his head by Nicholas.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Forcing Daniel out of his room causes him to play in the yard, getting fake blood on Brett's shirt and making the latter put his hands on Daniel, which makes the situation spiral out of control.
• Official Couple: With either Cassidy or Finn, depending on the player's choice.
• Papa Wolf: As Daniel's big brother and Parental Substitute, if you dare to hurt Daniel or threaten his life, you will regret it. Bonus point for his Animal Motif being the wolf.
• Parental Substitute: Following Esteban's death, Sean is forced into being Daniel's primary caregiver and mentor. Much of the stress he endures is trying to know how to raise Daniel, since he's a minor himself. And the addition of Daniel's powers adds even more weight on Sean's shoulders.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Towards Daniel in "Faith", when he tries to snap him out of Lisbeth's control over him.
• The Prankster: The player can have him pull pranks on Daniel.
• Relative Button: The best way to get on Sean's black list is to insult, threaten or hurt his brother.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • He gets a glass eye in every ending of the game should he survive, and they change color depending on which it is.
    • In the Redemption ending, it's white, signifying him leading Daniel down the path of high morality, peacefully turning himself into the police and his new life as a free man.
    • In the Blood Brothers ending, it's black, which compliments his leading of Daniel down a path of low morality, and his new lifestyle partaking in illegal activities underneath his legitimate business as a mechanic in order to survive in the unforgiving Mexico, constantly harassed by thugs.
    • In the Parting Ways ending, his eye is closed which makes the color ambiguous. This could symbolize the more gray, bittersweet nature of the ending, as Daniel has been taught to have high morality and therefore turns himself in against the orders of Sean, who wants to make it into Mexico by force. Sean is now happy in Mexico, but got in through a rather dirty method.
  • You may notice the resemblance Sean has to Brody in the second half of the Redemption ending, with his big jacket, backpack, and beard. This is entirely deliberate according to Michel Koch, who explains that the intention behind Sean's appearance and the ending at large was to have Sean spend his new, free life on the road, much like Brody.
    • It's also worth noting that Sean's new drifter lifestyle mirrors his original journey in the game as a fugitive, except this time, he's a free man. As we see during his breakdown in the forest, Sean is severely mentally scarred by his journey, from the death of his father to his prison time, which leaves the impression that mentally, his journey never ended.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Played for Drama. After waking up and finding Esteban shot to death, Sean grabs his stuff and runs away with an unconscious Daniel, due to a mix of fear, panic and knowing very well that he'll be accused of the cop's murder (only because he's latino) and that he and Daniel will be separated by child services.
• Sex as Rite-of-Passage: If you romance him with Cassidy, he can possibly lose his virginity to her in Wastelands.
• Ship Tease: With his best friend Lyla, Cassidy and Finn.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Lisbeth tells him her cult is Daniel's true family and will never leave him, Sean answers with a well deserved "Go to Hell!"
• Siblings in Crime: In the Blood Brothers ending, Sean and Daniel are seen engaging in criminal activity to help their business going while being the target of local thugs.
• Sibling Team: Daniel and Sean are brothers and the two main protagonists of the second Life is Strange opus.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Part of being a young, rebellious teenager who's later being thrown in dangerous and stressful situations, which entirely justifies his use of bad language. Even before the Seattle incident, he's shown to be even more foul-mouthed than Chloe.
• Stereotype Flip: He's into a lot of geeky stuff such as fantasy novels and comic drawing but in defiance of many geeks in media, is actually not an honor student and struggles with school work.
• The Stoner: Has made various comments about wanting to get high and owns a weed pipe.
• Strong Family Resemblance: He looks a lot like his father, even moreso in the Blood Brothers ending where he has a very light beard much like Esteban did. Interestingly, his mother Karen's present-day hairstyle looks a lot like Sean's in Episodes 2 and 5.
• Supporting Protagonist: We experience the events of the game through Sean's perspective, but Daniel is the driving force behind the action and the game's true hero.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Only in the Lone Wolf ending.
• Tattoo as Character Type: In episode 3, he can get a tattoo of a wolf or a forest. The wolf tattoo is akin to character theme and the forest was just a surprise from Cassidy. It's really up to the player's opinion if they like it or not.
• Too Dumb to Live: While most of the game's endings do not result in his death, with the exception of the one where the player raises Daniel to behave immorally and then chooses to turn them in, which results in the cops shooting Sean when Daniel tries to force an escape, realistically, a lot of grief could have been avoided if Sean had stayed at the scene of the crime and at least attempted to explain the tragic misunderstanding to the cops. Not only was he unconscious after the death of the cop, so they couldn't have blamed him, but he was also too young at the time to be imprisoned for the (perceived) crime he did commit, and would, at worst, be sent to a juvenile correction facility, whereas Daniel would most likely be sent to live with his grandparents after his father died. Fleeing the scene of the crime, committing more crimes on his road trip, and especially not turning himself in when he had many opportunities to, caused him more harm than good and added to the charges he would have received during the inciting incident. Many of characters, such as his grandparents, call him out on his irrational decision making throughout his journey. That said, his decisions can be justified in some ways because he was a teenager at the time and understandably concerned about how the cops would react to and treat him because he was Latino.
• Traumatic Haircut: Sean gets his hair completely shaved off in Faith, after the robbery from the previous episode turned awry and injured him, leading to the loss of his eye and Daniel's disappearance.
• Twofer Token Minority: Bisexual, biracial, and an amputee after losing his left eye.
• Undying Loyalty: Even if their brotherhood is low, Sean will always be loyal to Daniel and their brotherhood.
  Sean: Nothing. Nothing is gonna stop me [from getting you back], Daniel. We're brothers. [...] Dad always said our blood link is the most important thing...
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • He always calls out Daniel when he uses his power despite their rules and his protests. It causes a light strain in their relationship in "Wastelands", where this trope is being used a lot.
  • In the event where his relationship with Daniel is really low, he rightfully flips if Daniel uses his powers to attack Cassidy in pure jealousy.
  • He gets a few of these directed at himself, such as when his grandparents ask why he chose to run instead of explaining things to the police, a decision of which ended up causing far more harm than good.
  • He can possibly snap at Jacob to have brought his brother to Haven Point and literally threw him in the clutches of a corrupt and manipulative priestess.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: He gives this speech to Daniel on two occasions; first when Daniel thinks he's a monster because of his power, and the second where he begs Daniel to realize how monstrous Lisbeth is and how she's using him.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: He's been through so much hardships to get to Daniel in Faith that a determinate Sean reacts at Nicholas pointing a gun at his forehead to urging him to shoot and live with it. Nicholas is too shocked and frozen in place while Lisbeth yells at him to shoot, which finally causes Daniel to intervene by sending Nicholas flying and finally getting out of Lisbeth's control.

Daniel Diaz

Daniel Felipe Diaz

"I'm not a kid anymore..."

^{Click here for his appearance in Rules and Captain Spirit}

^{Click here for his appearance in Wastelands}

^{Click here for his appearance in Faith}

^{Click here for his appearance in Wolves}

Voiced By: Roman Dean George (English), Sara Matsumoto (Japanese)

One of the protagonists of Life Is Strange 2 and the younger brother of Sean Diaz. He is a cheerful little boy who was excited to celebrate Halloween with his homemade zombie costume. Unfortunately, thanks to his brother forcing him out of his room, he messes around in the yard and gets his fake blood on the Jerkass neighbor's shirt, setting him off and causing him to manhandle Daniel. When Sean gets into a fight with the neighbor in defense of his brother, the scene combined with the fake blood makes the situation look significantly worse and causes a cop to get jumpy. When the boys' father comes outside to defend his sons, he gets shot in the confusion, which activates Daniel's power with a huge telekinetic blast. With the cop and what seemed to be the neighbor dead, Daniel is taken by Sean on the run from the authorities to their father's home of Puerto Lobos, Mexico.

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• Abandoned Catchphrase: He has a penchant for exclaiming (or describing something as) "Awesome Possum!" in early episodes. By episode 3, this trait vanishes completely, most likely due to him growing out of his precociousness.
• Accidental Murder: When his father is accidentally killed by a police officer, Daniel uses his power for the first time in a state of panic, which causes the death of the officer.
• Adorably Precocious Child: A dramatic example, as his father's death, being forced to run from the law and having no roof over his head has a drastic change in Daniel's behavior, which forces him to mature too fast despite being only a nine year old kid.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Sean calls him "enano", which is Spanish for "dwarf/midget", but he means it affectionately and Daniel accepts it.
  • Karen calls him "Danny", or "Danny-boy".
• Afraid of Their Own Strength: When he first finds out about his powers, he thinks that he's a monster. By the time Episode 2 starts up, he seems to have mostly gotten over it, although if you let him kill the cougar, he seems to be traumatized by his own actions.
• Alliterative Name: Daniel Diaz.
• The Aloner: What Daniel becomes in the aptly named Lone Wolf ending after Sean's death and being left alone in a foreign country where he knows nobody turned a teenage Daniel into a lonely criminal who trusts no one.
• Animal Motifs: While his relationship with Sean is represented by wolves, as shown with the loading screen, Daniel has an association with bears. There's a bear drawing on his bedroom door, he's drawn to the bear key rings and one of his favorite franchises is called "Power Bear" which is shown in Roads and Rules. Interestingly, if Sean goes to Mexico alone in "Wolves" then "Power Bear" appears on the treehouse banner; if Sean is arrested, then a wolf appears on the treehouse banner instead.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Sean sees him this way, with Daniel bugging him in the beginning, disrespecting his rules and not knowing when to keep his mouth shut around strangers (or him too, for that matter). This doesn't make Sean any less protective of his little brother, however.
• Anti-Hero: If on low morality, Daniel is still on the side of good, even if his actions are ethically questionable.
• The Atoner: Deconstructed. He was upset that he thought he killed Sean and joined a church which turned out to be a cult to make up for what he did and how he acted like a jerk to Sean.
• The Baby of the Bunch: In Wastelands, Daniel is the only child among the Trimmigrants group. They all love him and consider him like an adorable younger sibling.
• Badass Adorable: He's a nine year old child given a telekinesis power, and once he learns how to control it, he can make quite a damage.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Comments on how weird it was seeing Arthur and Stanley kiss in Episode 5. If Sean calls him out on his supposed homophobic comment, Daniel clarifies that he doesn't see that many older couples being as affectionate as them.
• Barrier Warrior: The Blood Brothers ending has him being able to create a bulletproof magnetic field as he fights off the police force at the US/Mexico frontier.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Daniel can be a sweet and polite child, but since he doesn't have full grasp on his telekinetic powers, he's dangerous whenever angry.
• Big "NO!": If Sean stops him from hurting the puma, it will take Mushroom's lifeless body in its mouth and will run away, and Daniel can only scream this helplessly.
  • He screams another of these after witnessing Finn's (possible) death.
• Big "WHY?!": Screams this many times when he learns from the news that their father is dead and that Sean lied to him.
  • He screams another one after Sean dies in the Lone Wolf ending.
• Birds of a Feather: Once he meets Chris, the two hit it off right away due to their mutual love of Power Bear, Hawt Dawg Man and superheroes in general.
• Blatant Lies: Whenever Sean orders Daniel to do something, expect Daniel to do the opposite.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: If Finn gets killed by Merrill, his blood splashes on Daniel's face, which starts his Freak Out as he goes berserk on Merrill, Sean and possibly Cassidy.
• Book Ends: In the Lone Wolf ending, Daniel's story begins and ends with the death of a family member he loved dearly.
• Brains and Brawn: The Brawn to his brother's Brains, as he uses his power to get physical jobs done while Sean is more mature and logical.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Downplayed in general, but Sean making bad choices can have a serious stain on Daniel's character later. It's played straight over the course of "Wastelands", where Daniel's power goes to his head and his frustration over losing his former life and disappointing people get the better of his emotions.
• Break the Cutie: Poor little Daniel goes through so much through the game:
  • Does not take the news of his father's death well, as he breaks down in tears and the stuff in the motel spins round and round and asks why Sean didn't tell him sooner.
  • Mushroom's death by a wild bobcat absolutely shatters Daniel's heart. If Sean intervenes before Daniel can hurt the puma, it will drag her body away as Daniel bursts into tears. In the event where Sean doesn't intervene, poor Daniel immediately regrets killing the cougar and cries in Sean's arms, terrified of his own strength.
  • He can possibly witness Finn, his surrogate big brother, get shot, and have his blood splatter on his face, which causes him to go berserk in grief.
  • His belief that he killed Sean after arguing with him caused him to become vulnerable to being brainwashed by a cult and nearly abandon Sean after learning that he survived with a missing eye. Even after he broke free, he still received reoccurring nightmares from his experience with the cult despite the leader either being dead or too far away and mentally broken to come after him.
  • The worst outcome of this trope happens in the Lone Wolf ending where Sean dies after getting shot during Daniel forcing their way across the border. He bursts into tears, grabbing onto his brother's dead body, urging him to wake up, and screams loudly before turning into an Empty Shell.
• Broken Bird: Sean's death in the Lone Wolf ending really crushed his spirit permanently as shown during the time skip, he became a hardened teenage criminal who casually murders people who has absolutely no aim in life.
• Cheerful Child: How he starts the story as, unfortunately before life keeps crushing him. Though Sean's choices have impact on Daniel keeping this trait by leading him to the right path of morality.
• Childhood Friends: He meets Chris when they're 9, and instantly become best friends, despite the fact Daniel has to run away again with Sean from the law in the end. In the Redemption and Parting Ways ending, he's shown to still be friends with Chris, growing up together and remaining close even in their late teenage years.
• Children Are Innocent: Daniel simply wanted to impress his crush Lyla with his homemade zombie costume, only to be put out by his brother Sean. He then accidentally gets fake blood on Brett's shirt, which instigates a confrontation between the latter and Sean. During the course of the first episode, Daniel doesn't remember what happened to his dad and is confused on why he isn't here, and why suddenly he and Sean have to run away from home, sleep into the woods and find food. He instead sees it as an adventure true of a young kid's imagination thanks to Sean trying to reassure him.
• Comes Great Responsibility: Because of his telekinesis and the damage it brought onto their neighborhood, Sean teaches Daniel whenever it is or isn't necessary to use his power. Daniel, more than once, has trouble grasping this throughout the game.
• Constantly Curious: Daniel is a naturally curious child, which can be both a benefit (finding tools and lost forest paths) and a burden (not regarding rules and poking around not where he's supposed to).
• Creepy Child: If Sean is played on low morality, it will reflect on Daniel's own morality, and won't be scared or ashamed to use his powers to harm or even kill people. He will also become more cold and stoic.
• The Cutie: An adorable 9 year old kid, who's sweet, cheerful, creative and innocent.
• Deuteragonist: To Sean's Protagonist.
• Despair Event Horizon: Sean's death becomes this to him in the Lone Wolf ending.
• The Dog Bites Back: He can make Lisbeth Fischer pay for manipulating him and all the horrible actions she committed, by either throwing her out of his way at best, or killing her if Sean lets him.
• Drunk with Power: Occasionally, he is aware that out of everyone around him and Sean, Daniel is the one having great power. Because of this, he can show blatant disregard to Sean's rules and sometimes uses his powers recklessly.
  Daniel: I am the one with power.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He and his brother show up at the end of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, greeting Chris.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: He gets to live a normal life with his grandparents and Chris in two High Morality endings, and in Blood Brothers lives in Puerto Lobos with Sean.
• Emotional Powers: His telekinesis is tied to his emotions, as anger and fear can make Daniel's powers go completely out of hand and destroying anything nearby.
• Empty Shell: In the "Lone Wolf" ending, which is heartbreaking to witness when you compare him to the Cheerful Child he once was.
• Everyone Has Standards: The one thing he is clearly not throughout the entire season is homophobic. He gets along with Penny and Jacob, mentions how loving Arthur and Stanley are for their age, and while surprised to learn that Sean is bisexual, supports his relationship with Finn if Sean chooses him. He also never uses any gay slurs even when he's encouraged to cuss.
• Expy: Being a irresponsible Hispanic younger brother with an American accent, he resembles a pre-apocalypse Javier Garcia. They even have similar hairstyles.
• Fanboy: He's a fan of Power Bear, Hawt Dawg Man, Minecraft and The Lord of the Rings.
• Freak Out: In the end of Wastelands, in the event where Finn gets killed by Merrill, which causes Daniel to lose it and his powers to explode the house and injure everyone inside. If Finn lives, it can also be caused by being shot by Merrill in the shoulder and the pain causing his powers to go haywire.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • His bratty and selfish behavior from Wastelands is due to his losses and guilt over letting people down, such as his grandparents and Chris (whom he feels guilty for either abandoning him, lie to him about his powers or not intervene when he was hit by a car).
  • In the Lone Wolf ending, it's the death of his father and brother.
• Forced to Watch: If Sean tells Daniel to hide his power during the heist at Merrill's, Merrill will gun down Finn and kill him, under Daniel's horrified, powerless glare.
• Green-Eyed Monster: In Episode 3, he may start resenting Sean for spending more time with his friends than him. If his relationship with Sean is really poor, he'll even go as far as to use his powers to attack Cassidy.
• Harmful to Minors: He witnessed a cop gunning down his father, which caused his powers to emerge. Daniel unfortunately gets exposed to a lot of violence during the course of the game that no children should be ever witness of.
  • He can possibly be Forced to Watch Merrill kill Finn. He's so distraught that he blows a fuse and destroys everything, even attacking his own brother (whom he blames for what happened).
  • The Lone Wolf ending as him indirectly cause Sean to get hit by a stray bullet in the throat and bleed to death.
• Heel–Faith Turn: Downplayed, and in the worst way possible. Daniel is far from a villain, but he definitely Took a Level in Jerkass during Episode 3, becoming increasingly bitter and spiteful towards Sean as he feels neglected. When his powers spiral out of control at the end of the episode, especially if he was angry at Sean leading up to it, Sean gets a glass shard through his left eye, making it look like he was killed in the blast. Consumed by guilt, Daniel ran away to Jacob, and joined Haven Point, the religious community of which the latter was raised in. Unfortunately, the church's staff is disgustingly corrupt, and Reverend Fischer brainwashes him nearly beyond repair in order to exploit him.
• He's All Grown Up: All four endings has a time skip in which Daniel is now about Sean's age, at 16-17 years old, or 25 in the Redemption ending. Overlaps with Kid Hero All Grown-Up if he's kept on the path of high morality.
• Heroes Love Dogs: "Kidnaps" a puppy from the convenience store owners and calls her Mushroom.
• Heroic Sacrifice: If Sean tries to break into Mexico past the police barricade in Wolves but Daniel's morality is high, he reluctantly uses his power to get Sean past the border but jumps out at the last minute to turn himself in, giving Sean a comfortable life in Mexico, and himself the chance to have a normal life with the Reynoldses and Chris, though he now has to wear an ankle monitor.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Because of his age, Daniel has a poor choice in trusting strangers over his own brother, simply because they tell him what he wants:
  • Regardless of the way Sean treated him in Episode 3, Sean agrees with Finn's plan to rob Merill.
  • In Episode 4, after two months of being taken care of a corrupted reverand, Daniel easily sides with her over his own brother.
• Hypocrite: Can accuse Sean in Episode 3 of spending all of his time with Cassidy instead of him, yet he spends more time with Finn than with Sean.
• Hypocritical Humor: In his first scene, he accuses Sean of swearing to his dad. Yet a flashback of three months prior shows Daniel calling Sean a "dickhead" when Esteban is not around to hear him.
• I Am a Monster: Once he is aware of his superpower during his breakdown at the motel, the next scene has Daniel ask Sean if he's a monster. Sean reassures him he's not, simply different.
• Ignoring by Singing: He briefly does this to Sean to annoy him in Episode 3's opening flashback.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: In Wastelands, Daniel grows arrogant over his power, but during the campfire scene, he reveals himself to be insecure over the people he feels he let down and it causes him to be frustrated.
• Innocence Lost: He starts as an innocent, adorable Cheerful Child, yet the more episodes go by, the more the hardships Daniel goes through has a toll on his innocence. The Lone Wolf ending takes it to the extreme, as being indirectly responsible for Sean's death acts as a Despair Horizon for Daniel, who grows up into a violent Empty Shell.
• Intergenerational Friendship: He developed a close friendship with Joan Marcus during his stay at Away, and she was the one person he was the most heartbroken to leave behind (after his mother Karen).
• Keet: Daniel starts as an energetic and playful child who's excited to show his brother and crush Lyla his zombie costume.
• Kick the Dog: The worst action he can commit if his morality and brotherhood with Sean is low is to attack Cassidy simply because he's jealous of her taking Sean's time.
• Kid Hero: He's nine years old and the deuteragonist of the second game. Though he can go from Pragmatic Hero to Unscrupulous Hero at worst depending where his morality stands at.
  • Kid Hero All Grown-Up: In the high morality endings, he continues to do good deeds with his powers, such as saving a school bus about to swerve off a cliff.
• Little Brother Instinct: Even on low brotherhood, if you hurt Sean, you'll suffer the wrath of his little brother who appears to have chaotic telekinesis powers. Nicholas, Lisbeth and police officers who held Sean at gunpoint learned the hard way.
  • In the Blood Brothers ending, robbers holding Sean at gunpoint get their asses kicked by Daniel's powers while Daniel sends them a powerful Death Glare.
  • If Finn dies in "Wastelands" by Merrill's hands, Daniel will lose it, destroying everything with his powers and going as far as to attack his own brother who he blames for Finn's death.
• Little "No": Says this when he witnesses Finn's death.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Sean. He's the one person Sean puts above everything else, and Faith has him going through hell in order to reunite with his little brother.
• Mad Artist: In the Lone Wolf ending, where Daniel is shown to have his brother's penchant for art while being a ruthless teenage criminal.
• Magical Homeless Person: He and his brother become homeless after their father is killed in a Police Brutality incident. Said incident also serves as a Traumatic Superpower Awakening for Daniel, making him this trope.
• Messy Hair: Like Sean, Daniel's hair gets messier and longer in each episode while on the road.
• Missing Mom: His mother Karen left his family when he was a baby. His lack of mother figure is one of Daniel's insecurities that Lisbeth takes advantage of.
• Mind over Matter: He has a telekinesis power that first appears after a police officer murders his father.
• Momma's Boy: Once he reunites with his mother, Wolves showcases that he developed a close bond with her.
• Mouthy Kid: Daniel may be a good kid, but because of his mischievousness, he has trouble knowing when to keep his mouth shut, especially towards Sean.
• Morality Pet: Interestingly, more towards the player than Sean himself, as his interactions with Daniel can have strong impacts on the story's variants.
• Mr. Imagination: In "Roads", due to being too young to understand why he and Sean have to run away from home, he sees the whole situation as an "adventure" in the veins of Minecraft or The Lord of the Rings. He even builds a fort to protect their secret base from "enemies". Sean is relieved Daniel still has the occasion to act like a normal kid.
• Mundane Utility: Towards the end of the story he starts to use his telekinesis in more casual ways, such as for carrying groceries in Wolves and opening a car door in the Redemption ending.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • If Sean doesn't intervene when Daniel angrily uses his power on the cougar who killed Mushroom, Daniel will snap its neck and kill it. Right after it happens, Daniel is shocked by his actions and breaks down crying in Sean's arms.
  • Believing that he killed Sean in Faith, he joined a community to make up for what he did. Unfortunately, the community turned out to be a cult that nearly brainwashed him.
  • He breaks down in the Lone Wolf ending where forcing the car across the border with his powers caused Sean to be hit by a stray bullet and bleed to death.
• My Greatest Failure: Thinking he killed Sean at the farm greatly shocked Daniel to his core, so much he joined a Christian cult in order to redeem himself so much he felt guilty.
• Never My Fault: After getting his brother fired by Merill in Episode 3, Daniel never apologize to Sean for not listening to his earlier orders.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In Episode 2, Daniel makes it as if Chris has super powers while they are playing. If Sean didn't encourage Daniel to tell Chris the truth, Chris will end up getting injured.
  • Several times in Episode 3 Daniel's stubborness get his brother in trouble several times. First, he snuck into Merill's office after being told by Sean not to, leading to Merill to not only fire Sean but also deny paying the others. Later, his actions ended up getting Sean to lose an eye.
• Not Worth Killing: He can spare Lisbeth's life when Sean convinces him she's not worth it. In the Lone Wolf ending, Daniel is shown to still have some intact morality left in him as he spares the thugs threatening him despite being well able to kill them.
• One-Man Army: In the Blood Brothers ending, Daniel annihilates the entire police force at the Mexico-USA border. It's of course thanks to his power, but you see how much body harm it can do.
• Only Friend: He was the first friend Chris made after he moved to Beaver Creek, and was saddened to see him leave (if Daniel told him the truth about his powers).
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Daniel telling Sean to stop calling him "enano" in "Wastelands" shows how much his past experiences are affecting him, considering he always accepted the Affectionate Nickname in the past.
• Person of Mass Destruction:
  • The first time Daniel's powers go off, it results in the entire street being left in ruins. Merrill's house doesn't fare much better.
  • Displays this to the full extent in Episode 5, where if Daniel agrees with Sean's decision to rush the border at the end, Daniel will get out of their car and use his powers to send a whole squad of police cars (and officers) flying to clear a path for Sean, tearing up the road and the gate meanwhile.
• Pet the Dog: He supports Sean coming out if he reveals that he kissed Finn in Wasteland should he do that, if a little surprised at first.
• Ping Pong Naïveté: Justified. How innocent and nice he remains during the story depends on the player and the path of morality they play Sean has; if Sean goes on low morality, Daniel's morality will lower considerably, and will develop a concerning Troubling Unchildlike Behavior.
• Planet of Steves: His name is shared with Daniel DaCosta and Warren's middle name from the first game.
• Power Incontinence: In Roads due to not being yet aware of his power, each time Daniel gets really scared or angry, his power triggers without control, either causing blasts or objects to spiral like a tornado. It gets better in Rules, due to Sean training with Daniel to get better control of his new power.
• Precocious Crush: He has a crush on Sean's friend Lyla.
• Protectorate: To Sean, big time. Low or high brotherhood, Sean would do whatever it takes for his little brother's safety.
• Psychic Children: He's 9 years old (later 10) and is granted with a powerful telekinesis ability after witnessing the death of his father.
• Psychoactive Powers: His powers seem to get stronger when he's upset or suffers extreme trauma such as getting shot, as he can note in Episode 3.
• Raised by Grandparents: In the Redemption and Parting Ways endings, Daniel gets to live his normal life in Beaver Creek, raised by his maternal grandparents while Sean is either incarcerated or a fugitive in Mexico with little ways to contact him.
• Sci-Fi Bob Haircut: Is given a bowl cut by Lisbeth when he joins Haven Point's cult in "Faith", to show the hold she has on him as well as fitting his psychoactive powers.
• Shipper on Deck: For Sean/Finn, calling their relationship "super cool" and wishing Sean had told him earlier.
• Sibling Team: Daniel and Sean are brothers and the two main protagonists of the second Life is Strange opus.
• Siblings in Crime: In the Blood Brothers ending, Sean and Daniel are seen engaging in criminal activity to help their business going while being the target of local thugs.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: If Sean lets Daniel swear at the start of Episode 2, he will do it quite often during the next episodes, especially in Wastelands.
• Smug Super: Grows into this during Wastelands as his power grows to his head. His morality and brotherhood with Sean can vary his level of smug through the episode. Low Morality Daniel in general seems much more self-righteous than on High Morality.
• Spoiled Brat: Daniel tends to pout whenever he didn't get what he wants and it only gets worse when his powers become stronger.
• Strong Family Resemblance: In three out of the four endings, teenage Daniel is shown to look a lot like Sean does in the present day. In the Lone Wolf ending, he still shares some resemblances, but it's harder to see due to Daniel dyeing his hair blonde.
• Superdickery: Due to being a young child that's forced to mature fast and is struggling with a lot of trauma, Daniel mainly uses his power to show off or pull pranks. Luckily, he learns better.
• Tagalong Kid: Serves as this to Sean through the game, especially in Wastelands where he's the only child working at the marijuana farm (which causes problems with the boss, Merrill).
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In each episode, Daniel becomes more irritable and arrogant, whether mad at following Sean's rules or feeling too sheltered. He gets worse in Episode 3 as the sheer stopping force of his own powers go to his head, culminating in potentially attacking Cassidy and even his own brother Sean out of anger when he doesn't get his way.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Fortunately, he learns from his mistakes in "Wolves" and becomes much nicer than he was in the past two episodes.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Choc-O-Crisps.
• Tragic Keepsake:
  • He keeps Mushroom's bandana after her death in Rules and decides to wear it during Wastelands and Wolves.
  • Finn's wristband if Finn gets killed by Merrill becomes this.
  • In the Lone Wolf ending, Daniel wears Sean's wristband and uses his sketchbook to practice his newfound penchant for art.
• Tragic Villain: Only in the Lone Wolf ending, where the deaths of Esteban and Sean and being left alone in a foreign country at only 10 years old turned a teenage Daniel into a sour, broken criminal who gets in trouble with local thugs and uses his powers to commit crimes with body counts.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: His powers first manifested in Seattle after the cop killed Esteban due to the shock. The force of his power was so big on Daniel (due to being manifested for the first time) that it caused him to faint and forget anything that happened after Sean defended him from Brett.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Witnessing a cop kill his father caused Daniel's powers to manifest, destroying the whole neighborhood and killing said cop in the process.
• Troubled, but Cute: His older self in the Lone Wolf ending is this.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: His foul mouth is the least worst thing that can stain his innocence. He can go as far as killing a cougar (for killing Mushroom), and even people (such as Lisbeth) if Sean lets him. In the latter's case, if Daniel's morality is too low due to the player's choices with Sean, he will kill coldly, without mercy or remorse or anything the player can do to stop him.
• Unskilled, but Strong: His telekinetic abilities are unparalleled in strength but he is yet to master his control of it. His emotions also tend to get the better of him.
• Unstoppable Rage: He's basically a walking disaster and making him angry is a very bad idea.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: In the "Lone Wolf" ending, the sweet 9 year old we were introduced to in "Roads" is definitely gone, as the death of his father and Sean turned Daniel into an empty, violent shell who kills for a living. Otherwise, the other endings fortunately avert this.
• Would Hit a Girl: Defied if he has high morality, as he Wouldn't Hit a Girl. On low morality, however, female characters aren't safe from his wrath (as Cassidy or Lisbeth learned the hard way).
• You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: Do NOT piss off Daniel if you know what's good for you. When angry, his powers get amplified to the maximum and he can cause a lot of material and body damage.

True Colors

Alex Chen

Alexandra "Alex" Chen

"For the first time in years, I really let myself believe."

Voiced By: Erika Mori (English), mxmtoon (singing, English), Mayuko Kazama (Japanese)

The main protagonist of Life Is Strange: True Colors. She travels to the Midwestern town of Haven Springs, Colorado after leaving the foster care system to live with her older brother Gabe, and ends up investigating his suspicious death.

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• Animal Motifs:
  • Cats. All of her pre-order unlockable outfits have a cat on them, and her childhood toy is a mouse. In Chapter 5, the U-Block messages she gets from her therapist talk about her being "declawed" and "uselessly pawing against the door".
  • Related to the above, tigers. She has a patch of a tiger's head on her jacket in Chapter 1, one of her outfit options in Chapter 4 features a tiger's head on the shirt, and scrolls with tigers hanged above her bed in her childhood home in Chapter 5.
• Aura Vision: She sees other peoples' emotions as colourful auras around their heads or entire bodies.
• Badass Adorable: She's really cute for a girl who with a history of beating people up when infected by other peoples' anger. She also had the guts to save Ethan from being scared of his fear to cross the tree in the end of Chapter 1.
• The Bard: She plays a bard in the LARP, which fits her very well considering her love of music and emotion-based powers.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: After taking a rather nasty fall between Chapters 4 and 5, she is left with several bleeding wounds on her face, and her clothes are appropriately tarnished. However, her glasses survive the trip apparently unscathed.
• Bespectacled Cutie: She sports a pair of glasses, adding to her adorable, reserved personality.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: She's introverted and soft-spoken most of the time, but has a history of fighting with other kids in foster care when their anger infected her — something we also see happen in-game when she gives Mac a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown after he attacks Gabe — and can really let people have a piece of her mind when needed.
• Big Damn Kiss: She can have one with either Steph or Ryan on the rooftop after the Spring Festival. It results in a joy nova that extends all the way to the surrounding mountains and illuminates the stars above.
• Blessed with Suck: She sure seems to think so, frequently labeling her powers as a curse. Gabe disagrees, and after telling him about it she starts to think of it more positively as well.
• Boyish Short Hair: Her hair is cut rather short, except for her fringe.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: She has two love interests of different genders: Steph (who is openly a lesbian) or her brother's best friend, Ryan.
• Breaking Speech: She gives one to Jed in the climax of Chapter 5, causing him to break down crying and confess his past crimes.
• Break the Cutie:
  • She gets hit with this hard when she witnesses Gabe getting crushed to death in a rockslide ignited by a mining operation. And then there's also her getting shot by one of her trusted friends and falling down a mineshaft nearly to her death. By the time she's able to limp to the Black Lantern, she's covered in dried blood, scratches and bruises.
  • Hell, this happens way before the events of the game. Chapter 5 shows how strenuous home life was after the death of Alex's mother. Alex herself tried to keep things together but it only resulted in her father leaving and then dying in a mine collapse, Gabe getting sent to juvenile detention, and Alex getting ground through the foster system until her early 20s. During this time in foster care, as the player can see in her messages, she tried and failed to develop a network of close friends, and some even spouted racist vitriol at her.
• But Now I Must Go: If she ultimately chooses to leave Haven Springs and pursue a music career.
• Colour-Coded Emotions: Four core main emotions are influenced by Alex's power, each of them represented in auras of different color: fear (purple), anger (red), sadness (blue), and joy (yellow).
• Companion Cube: She has a stuffed mouse named Shu-shu that was her only friend through foster care and the only thing she still has from before her family fell apart completely, and she sometimes talks to it.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Alex is slightly older than the other protagonists in the series so far (in her early twenties as opposed to her mid/late teens) and is appropriately somewhat more mature than her predecessors. She also beings the game well aware of both her bisexuality and her superpower, while earlier games were coming-of-age stories that saw the main characters discovering these things about themselves over the course of the story. She's also the first Asian lead in the series, and the first playable character not to be attending school while her story takes place.
• Cursed with Awesome: She views her empathic abilities as a curse at first, because they've caused her a lot of problems dealing with other people in the past.
• The Cutie: Despite her tragic backstory, she certainly remains as a beautiful sweetheart who has a lovable dorky demeanor that makes her come off absolutely endearing.
• Cute Bruiser: Her "Anger" aura she absorbs when she beats the absolute crap out of Mac from him punching Gabe make her this and oh boy, does it show that this sincere woman is stronger than she looks.
• Dark and Troubled Past: When Alex was ten, her mother died of an unknown illness. This resulted in her brother, Gabe, and their father getting into arguments until her father accidentally elbowed her in the face, which prompts him to leave his children. After she and Gabe were separated by the CPS, Alex was placed in foster care, but none of the families want to take her in, due to her "emotional issues". It is implied by Alex's nightmare that her empathetic powers manifested from these tragic events of her past.
• Date Rape: Her text history strongly implies that she was a victim of this.
• Deadpan Snarker: She displays a dry-yet-playful sense of humor.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: She is this of the shy foster kid stereotype. She does have her moments of snark and warmth, but she's also heavily traumatized by her time in foster care around so many volatile emotions, which has led to her appropriately rejecting her 'curse' rather than see seeing it in a positive light.
• Determinator: After Gabe dies, she becomes determined to find out who was responsible for his death and get justice, and won't let anything stop her, not even legal threats or a trusted friend shooting at her and making her fall down a mine shaft.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Alex's life has been a downward spiral ever since she was a kid and the game even begins with her brother dead the same day they are reunited. Regardless of the player's choice, the game ends on a happy note with Alex overcoming her trauma and starting a new life either with her love interest or by herself.
• Emotion Bomb: She can be affected by particularly strong emotions, experiencing them as if they were her own. This goes away after she learns to tap into the emotions of others, but comes back if she absorbs Charlotte's particularly strong rage at everything around her.
• Emotion Eater: As her powers grow, she discovers that she can absorb strong emotions from other people, with varying results. Doing this to Charlotte's anger seriously messes her up by screwing with her ability to process her grief and infects Alex with that rage at an inopportune moment, while taking Sheriff Pike's fear works out positively for him and doesn't have any repercussions for Alex.
• The Empath: A Greater Empath to be more precise since her power allows her to sense the emotions of others and why they're feeling that way.
• Endearingly Dorky: Her awkward but earnest demeanor when interacting with other characters, fondness of cats, and the choice to have her be more forward with either of her love interests enforces this status of her.
• Foster Kid: She grew up in the foster care system after her mother died and her father abandoned her and Gabe.
• Gamer Chick: In Chapter 4, she considers staying inside her apartment to play video games all night long instead of going to the Spring Festival.
  • She can also play various arcade games and beating the games with the highest score unlocks a special achievement.
• Gender-Blender Name: Her full name is Alexandra, but "Alex" is a fairly gender-neutral name.
• Girls Like Musicians: Alex can romance Steph who played drums in a band and currently works as a DJ for a radio station.
• Good Feels Good: Alex can admit in her Breaking Speech to Jed that all she wants to do is help people... and she's grown to enjoy it because it's something she's good at and it's the right thing to do.
  Alex: I want to help people. Because it's something I'm good at... Knowing I'm good at something feels great.
• Good Is Not Nice: Downplayed, but eight years in the foster care system have left her quite prickly and distant. She's implied to have done some shady things in the past to survive, and she can be pretty sardonic even when talking to people she likes. However, she's also the most uncomplicatedly good protagonist in the series, being the first to overtly decide to use her powers to help people, and (unlike Max, Chloe, or Sean) is never really tempted to behave in ways that are outright selfish when deciding between two courses of action.
• Hartman Hips: She has curvy hips and a round butt, which is noticable when she wears her skirt in Chapter 4.
• Hero Protagonist: Of True Colors. Noteworthy in that previous Life Is Strange games had the Deuteragonist as the actual hero instead of the player character. Unlike Max, Chloe, and Sean, Alex is the consistent driving force behind her own actions as protagonist when she chooses to press on with her investigation into Gabe's death despite the obstacles she encounters; and she ends the game vowing to use her powers to help others, a far more heroic conclusion than any of her predecessors came to.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Downplayed as it's never brought up in-universe, but Alex's character design has received praise from fans for being curvier than the rail-thin protagonists of previous Life Is Strange games. It is a refreshing thing to see; however, other than her wide hips, she's still really quite slender.
• Home Sweet Home: If she ultimately chooses to settle down in Haven Springs for good.
• Last of His Kind: Chapter 5 establishes Alex as the last surviving member of the Chen family.
• Lovable Nerd: She's a Gamer Chick, comic-book reader, and music lover who sports Nerd Glasses, but there's no denying that she's endearingly cute and is a very kind woman overall.
• Made of Iron: Near the end of Chapter 4 and beginning of Chapter 5, she falls down a mine ventilation shaft after being grazed by a bullet, lands on a board halfway down, falls again the rest of the way, and lands on hard dirt. From there, she manages to limp all the way back to town and still has the energy to confront the one responsible.
• Nerd Glasses: Enjoys doing nerdy activities like playing video games and reading comics and also wears a pair of glasses.
• Nice Girl: Barring occasional fits of anger caused by her empathetic abilities, Alex is generally kind and charming. Unlike Max, Chloe, or Sean, making "mean" choices with her is near-impossible aside from using her powers to deliver a vicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Mac and condemn Jed for his actions (both of which can be done for perfectly understandable reasons). She's just that nice.
• No Sympathy for Grudgeholders: Averted. She suffers no ill consequences whatsoever if she refuses to forgive Jed for his crimes.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Alex has a habit of avoiding eye contact with people, except during her Breaking Speech to Jed, when she maintains eye contact with him the whole time.
• Parental Abandonment: Her father abandoned her and Gabe to the foster care system and juvie, respectively.
• Power Incontinence: She states that she had empathic abilities since she was a preteen, yet has no way of turning them off, so she'll sense and pick up on people's feelings whether she wants to or not. After being forced to rescue Ethan while he's extremely scared, she gets a better handle on her powers and stops being overwhelmed by the feelings of others.
• Power Stereotype Flip: She's pretty introverted for an empath. Justified since she had to deal with feeling countless negative emotions from other foster children.
• Psychometry: She can experience echoes of memories tied by particularly strong emotions to physical objects.
• Replacement Goldfish: Because she's not used to people actually wanting her around, she has some lingering worries about Steph and Ryan just seeing her as a replacement for Gabe.
• Secret-Keeper: She has the option to hide from Riley that her grandmother is suffering from Alzheimer's.
• Sole Survivor: It's revealed in Episode 5 that both of her parents died before the start of the game. When Gabe dies at the end of Chapter 1, she is the only member of her family still living.
• Specs of Awesome: She wears red round glasses that makes her extremely cute and is the most toughest character in the game.
• Stronger Than They Look: Having to learn how to defend herself in foster care, Alex (also under Mac's anger) was able to beat him to a pulp and bruise Gabe's jaw unintentionally. Later on, she was able to handle a bullet graze to the head and followed by a long fall into the mine while only rendered unconscious.
• Telepathy: In addition to her empathic powers, she has the ability to pick up thoughts associated with whatever emotion she's reading, though this doesn't work on everyone.
• Tomboy: Alex's outfits are mostly jeans and shirts. Steph is shocked when Alex comes to the Spring Festival wearing a skirt, as she didn't realize Alex even owned one. She also prefers the gender-neutral "Alex" over her given name "Alexandra" or any of its more feminine variants.
• Tragic Keepsake: Alex's mom gave her her necklace shortly before she died. She doesn't have it in the present day because her dad took it with him when he abandoned her and Gabe, but she ultimately gets it back when she finds it in the old mine and realizes that her dad was one of the miners who Jed let die.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Like Max and Daniel, Alex's abilities manifested after suffering a certain amount of trauma, from the grief of losing her mother, the terror of her father abandoning her, and the frustration of her entire foster care system.
• Troubled, but Cute: She grew up in a foster care who had a tragic backstory and "emotional problems" as a empathy, yet without a doubt, she's incredibly adorable and one of the sweetest characters of the series.
• Twofer Token Minority: She's a bisexual Asian-American woman.

Steph Gingrich

Stephanie "Steph" Gingrich

^{Click here for her appearance in Before the Storm}

Voiced by: Katy Bentz (English), Yuka Maruyama (Japanese)

In Before the Storm, she's an openly lesbian student at Blackwell who likes to play tabletop roleplaying games and is also the Blackwell student body's prime source of bootleg DVDs. Following her graduation, she moved to Seattle to study video game design in college and got into the local music and art scenes. After forming a punk band with her then-girlfriend, they toured the country and made a stop in Haven Springs, where Steph fell in love with the small town and decided to stay. By the start of True Colors, she manages Rocky Mountain Record Traders, DJs the local radio station, and is a good friend of Gabe's. She's Promoted to Playable in the True Colors DLC bonus episode, "Wavelengths".

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In general:

• Birds of a Feather:
  • In Before the Storm, she and Mikey are best friends and share common interests such as their love of filmography and tabletop games.
  • She has a similar dynamic with Alex in True Colors, mostly in regards to their love for music.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's usually a calm and collected girl. Even the anger she expresses against Damon Merrick in Before the Storm is somewhat restrained. But in True Colors, if your choices result in Ryan believing Jed over Alex and Steph, Steph will become righteously furious and begin cursing him out before Alex intervenes.
• Breakout Character: Steph's popularity among the fans has her promoted from a supporting character in Before the Storm to a main character as well as romance option in True Colors to becoming the star of her own DLC. She's even the protagonist (and title character) of the first ever Life Is Strange prose novel; and plays the Deuteragonist role in both the second comics arc and second novel, which take Alex as their protagonist.
• Broken Bird: No matter the timeline, poor Steph always goes through some major trauma between Before the Storm and True Colors, since her ending up in Haven Springs and meeting Alex seems to be a significant event across the multiverse. However, she has a slightly different Trauma Button in each timeline:
  • In the "Bae" timeline following on from the original game, it's the deaths of the people who were killed in the storm, in particular her mother Lita and close friend Drew North.
  • In the "Bay" timeline following on from the original game, it's the murders of Rachel and Chloe at the hands of Mark Jefferson and Nathan Prescott.
  • In the Alternate Universe timeline established by the comics, the original ending choice to the first game never occurred, but this version of Steph was instead forced to witness Kate Marsh's suicide, since Max never came to Blackwell in this continuity and so wasn't there to help Kate, whose death thus went from a possibility to a certainty.
• Butch Lesbian: Downplayed. She's more of a tomboy than anything.
• Cold Ham: When playing tabletop games in Before the Storm and LARPing in True Colors, Steph gets really into it, but keeps her tone of voice down to fit with the mysterious vibe of the game.
• The Cutie: She's absolutely both beautiful and a certainly sweet woman in general.
• Death Glare:
  • Gives a hilarious one to Mikey in Before the Storm when he teases her about her crush on Rachel in front of Chloe.
  • A less hilarious example occurs in True Colors, when she can stare daggers at both Jed and Ryan, if the latter ends up siding against her and Alex.
• Game Master: Is a pretty good one, mainly for Mikey (and Chloe if she joins them) and Drew at the end of the game in Before the Storm, and also puts her skills to use as stage manager for the play. By the time of True Colors, she has expanded her interests to LARPing in addition to tabletop games, and organizes a LARP for the whole town to cheer up Ethan after Gabe's death.
• Gaydar: In Before the Storm she (correctly) suspects that the relationship between Chloe and Rachel is more than just friendship.
• Hopeless Suitor:
  • In Before the Storm, she has a crush on Rachel, who is unfortunately Chloe's love interest. Even in the event where Chloe chooses to tell Steph she doesn't know where her relationship with Rachel stands, Rachel still goes missing and gets killed in the end before Steph has the chance to confess.
  • In True Colors, she can potentially become this again if the player decides to have Alex romance Ryan instead of Steph.
• Killer Game Master: Played for Comedy, but she shows some shades of this when playing D&D with Chloe and Mikey in Before the Storm, seeming to revel in how deadly of an opponent Duurgaron the Unscarred proves to be against their characters. The Wavelengths DLC for True Colors shows that this is a trend for her games with Mikey, with her having killed his character at least twelve times.
• Mentor in Queerness:
  • Acts as a low-key one to Chloe in Before the Storm, since she's Chloe's (presumably only) out lesbian friend just at the point where Chloe stops denying her own attraction to women. Even the fact that they're both interested in the same girl doesn't stop Steph from being as helpful and supportive as she can.
  • In Wavelengths, she gives advice to a girl who calls in to the radio station during Pride Month, and helps her out some more later on when she reaches out again over email.
  Steph (internally): It's an honor to be chosen as Olivia's Elder Gay.
• Nice Girl: She's friendly and fun to be around, and puts friendship above everything else, as seen in Before the Storm when either Drew or Mikey gets sent to the hospital and she gives up on managing the play to be by her friend's side.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Mikey in Before the Storm. She reconnects with him in Wavelengths and they resume this dynamic, with him being the one person she's unable to push away even at her most self-sabotaging.
• Shipper on Deck: Despite having a crush on Rachel, she's supportive if she finds out Chloe and Rachel are involved with each other in Before the Storm. Wavelengths reveals that she viewed their later relationship with something close to awe, regarding them as having something truly special with each other. Considering what ended up happening in either ending of Season One, it's hinted that this overly romanticised view contributed towards her disillusionment with relationships by the time True Colors rolls around.

In Before the Storm:

• Commonality Connection: She appears to start reaching out to Chloe when she (correctly) suspects that Chloe might be attracted to girls. If Chloe admits that "it's complicated" with Rachel in episode 2, Steph will offer her advice.
• A Friend in Need: If Mikey gets injured by Damon, she doesn't hesitate to miss the play she's stage managing to go to the hospital with him and Drew.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Has a crush on Rachel, but treads carefully when she notices that Rachel and Chloe might already be dating. If the player has Chloe say she's not sure (which is as close as she'll get to saying "yes") after being asked if they're together, Steph will back off and offer Chloe her advice.
• Queer Establishing Moment: The fact that she likes girls is pretty much the first thing the player learns about her if they read her character sheet as soon as it becomes available. Otherwise, it's mentioned that she has a crush on Rachel during her introductory scene.

In True Colors:

• All Witches Have Cats: When she dresses up as a witch during the LARP, Valkyrie makes the perfect familiar.
• Amicable Exes: The Wavelengths DLC implies that Steph and her ex-girlfriend Izzie eventually become this.
• Ascended Extra: Steph was a supporting character in Before the Storm. In True Colors, she is a much more pivotal character, a possible Love Interest for the protagonist, and Promoted to Playable in the DLC bonus episode.
• But Now I Must Go: Possible. Steph will leave Haven Springs to pursue her musical career unless she's been romanced by an Alex who wishes to stay.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Very downplayed, but she will be silently frustrated and jealous if Alex decides to send Ryan to distract Diane instead of her, since the decision is framed as Alex choosing which of them she thinks will be "the hotter distraction."
• Closet Key: She proves unexpectedly successful if she's chosen to hit on Diane as a distraction, leaving her flustered and blushing. Prior to that, Steph, Alex, and Ryan weren't even sure if Diane was interested in women.
  Alex: Steph, there's a very real chance that you... awoke something in Diane.
  Steph: It wouldn't be the first time.
• Cuteness Proximity: A memory Alex can find shows Steph devolving into baby talk when she first meets Valkyrie.
• Deuteragonist: She's a key character, becoming one of Alex's closest friends in Haven Springs and potential love interest.
• Developers' Desired Date: True Colors itself doesn't express a preference, but most follow-up materials (like comics and novels) follow a timeline in which Steph and Alex are an Official Couple following the events of the game.
• Differing Priorities Breakup: Steph's romantic relationship with her former girlfriend Izzie ended because Steph wanted to stay in Haven Springs while Izzie wasn't too keen on the idea, primarily because she would be the only transgender person in a rural town.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Alex can pick Steph to distract Diane so that she can steal her USB Drive with information on Typhon by asking her out on a date. It works.
• Fake Band: Was a drummer in a band called Drugstore Makeup.
• Girls Like Musicians: She can fall in love with Alex who likes to sing and play the guitar.
• Her Own Worst Enemy: The Wavelengths DLC reveals one of the main reasons that all of Steph's previous relationships failed: her trauma from either the death of her mother and the destruction of Arcadia Bay or the deaths of Chloe and Rachel (depending on which choice was made at the end of the first game) has caused her to self-sabotage by withdrawing from people once she starts to care about them.
• Home Sweet Home: Will set aside her dream of seeing the world and forming a music band if Alex romances her and chooses to stay in Haven Springs.
• Hot Witch: She doesn't have any magical abilities, but she dresses up as a witch for the LARP session in Episode 3 and looks good while doing so.
• I Can't Believe A Girl Like You Would Notice Me: Steph is left visibly stunned if Alex proposes marriage to her during the LARP session. Justified, as reading her thoughts reveals that she is either unsure whether Alex is really attracted to her, or (if you used Ryan to distract Diane) thinks that Alex is attracted to Ryan and is not interested in her.
• I Miss Mom: If Max sacrificed Arcadia Bay in the first game, the Wavelengths DLC reveals that Steph's mother died during the storm, and Steph is still haunted by her death five years later.
• Insecure Love Interest: Looking at her thoughts during the LARP session reveals that she feels unsure if Alex really considers her attractive.
• Jealous Romantic Witness: Played for Drama after-the-fact in the Wavelengths DLC, where it's revealed that in the aftermath of either the destruction of Arcadia Bay or the deaths of Chloe and Rachel, Steph feels extremely guilty about having once been jealous of Chloe and Rachel's relationship.
• Love Interest: A potential one for Alex.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Her usual confident, snarky demeanor collapses around Alex after a while, with her occasionally displaying fearful thoughts that her feelings are unreciprocated. She can also become completely enamored with Alex during their performance on stage at the Spring Festival, and if they meet up on the roof, she ends up begging for Alex to kiss her in her head.
• Phony Psychic: In Wavelengths, she pretends to be a psychic on her radio show, giving people advice based on d20 die rolls.
• Promoted to Love Interest: She was a platonic friend (and romantic rival) to Chloe in Before the Storm. Upon her return in True Colors, she is now a potential love interest for Alex.
• Promoted to Playable: She's the playable protagonist of the bonus prequel chapter, "Wavelengths", included with the Deluxe Edition of True Colors.
• Queer Colors: The shirt she wears in the first episode has a d20 die in the colors of the lesbian pride flag on it.
• Second Love: Alex can end up becoming this for Steph as her relationship with her band mate, Izzie (as well as those with other girls) didn't work out.
• Secret-Keeper: Becomes one for Alex after Alex tells her about her empathy powers.
• Singing Voice Dissonance: Her singing voice in the Wavelengths DLC is considerably higher and softer than her husky speaking voice.
• Squee: Her internal reaction after Alex offers her her hand in marriage during the LARP session.
  Steph (In her mind): "I do! I do, I do, I do!"
• Stunned Silence: Alex's marriage proposal during the LARP session shocks her so much that she is visibly stunned and unable to say anything for several seconds until Ethan's comment snaps her out of it and allows her to regain composure.
• Troubled Backstory Flashback: In Wavelengths, she has a few during the Halloween section due to it taking place around the anniversary of either the storm (which caused her mother's death) or Chloe and Rachel's murders, depending on which ending was chosen for the first game.
• Undying Loyalty: In episode 2, she tells Alex that she's got her back no matter what, and she means it. In the finale, she's the only one who will always believe Alex's accusations about Jed's crimes, even if no one else does. She also doesn't hesitate to give a scathing What the Hell, Hero? to Ryan if he sides with his father, pointing out the bad condition Alex is in because Jed tried to kill her.
• Watching Troy Burn: If Max sacrificed Arcadia Bay, Steph was forced to helplessly watch her hometown be completely destroyed.

Ryan Lucan

Ryan Lucan

Voiced by: Eric Emery (English), Karato Shuntaro (Japanese)

A Colorado State Park Ranger who lives in Haven Springs and is Gabe's best friend.

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• Ambiguously Bi: Word of Gay confirms him to be part of the LGBTQ+ community, but his exact sexuality isn't made clear in the game or its DLC (aside from him taking joking offense to Steph making a straight joke at him).^note The general consensus seems to be that he is asexual.
• Animal Lover: He's a big fan of wild animals, as befits his choice of profession. When Alex first meets him he's buying a CD of bird calls just for personal enjoyment.
• Best Friend: He was Gabe's best friend until Gabe's death early in the game. He helps Alex discover the truth behind the mysterious circumstances surrounding it.
• But Now I Must Go: Only if you romance him and have Alex to choose to leave Haven Springs. Otherwise he stays in his hometown.
• Butt-Monkey: Can be this, depending on the player's choices. He can lose his best friend, suffer from extreme guilt and self-loathing, and will learn that his dad is responsible for trying to kill Alex along with covering up Gabe's murder. If he decides to side with his dad, he also loses any relationship he had with either Steph or Alex. Some of the endings can just involve him staring out at the town, breaking into tears at how much his life has been shattered.
• The Confidant: Alex tells Ryan the secret of her empathetic abilities, something that she's never told anyone other than Gabe before.
• Conflicting Loyalty: During the climactic confrontation, he is torn between believing Alex or his father about what's going on. Depending on Alex's past choices and how many other townsfolk believe her, he may end up going either way.
• Deuteragonist: One of Alex's main allies in her quest to find the truth behind Gabe's death.
• Endearingly Dorky:
  • His first meeting with Alex involves the revelation that he's buying a CD of bird calls purely for pleasure, which Alex can call "the nerdiest thing [she's] ever seen," and he only gets dorkier from there, but it just makes him more likable.
  • He is one of the few people to break character in the LARP, just so he can deliver a snake fact.
• Guide Dang It!: Getting him to support Alex over his father requires a very specific combination of choices across multiple episodes^note don't take Charlotte's anger in Chapter 3, take Pike's fear in Chapter 4, and also have the support of at least three out of the four total determinant characters, making him by far the most difficult out of the people whose support is determinant. It doesn't help that most of the choices that determine whether he sides with Alex or not aren't immediately obvious that they'd affect that.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Is implied to have had a friendship of this nature with Gabe, as Alex can find evidence suggesting Ryan had a big part in Gabe turning his life around when he came to Haven Springs.
• Hunk: He's a burly park ranger, and is definitely not unattractive, as Alex can pursue him romantically.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Feels immense guilt for not being able to save his best friend Gabe from the mining accident.
• It's All My Fault: He blames himself for Gabe's death because he was the one who cut the rope tying Gabe to Alex in order to keep her from falling down the ravine as well. Alex can either tell him Gabe would have forgiven him, give him her own forgiveness, or tell him that he has to forgive himself.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy; Regardless of if you have Alex flirt with him, he's implied to have a crush on her. However, if you romance Steph instead of him he'll make a teasing post on My Block congratulating Steph, showing he's fine with his friend and crush ending up together.
  • Like Steph, a romanced Ryan will say he's fine with either Staying in Haven Springs or leaving, wanting to do whatever makes Alex happy. Likewise, in the chance that he believes Jed over Alex he's perfectly understanding if she doesn't forgive him, and wishes her well.
• Love Interest: A potential one for Alex.
• Manly Tears: Sheds them when he breaks down during his talk with Alex the day after Gabe's death.
• Missing Mom: His mother is revealed to have died sometime before the game's current events.
• Nature Lover: He's a park ranger and a self-described "rugged mountain man type" who's a big fan of the great outdoors, even to the point of listening to CDs of bird calls.
• Secret-Keeper: He's the first person after Gabe who Alex tells about her empathy powers.
• Thicker Than Water: If Alex doesn't have enough support when accusing Jed, Ryan will end up siding with his father against her.
• What the Hell, Hero?: If the player's choices result in Ryan refusing to believe Alex when she reveals Jed's secrets at the town council meeting, Steph will blast Ryan for distrusting her after everything they've been through together. Alex can then potentially choose not to forgive him.

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