Episode 3: Hell is Empty
We resume right where the last episode finished, as an awkward conversation begins between Chloe and Rachel and Mr. and Mrs. Amber. After confirming that Rachel wants Chloe to hear it too, James begins to tell the story of how he met (and left) her mother. The flashback is shown in an abstract way, with Chloe and Rachel looking through a viewfinder together as they did in the park when they first saw Sera and James. Sera and James Amber were high school sweethearts, and they had a child together. Sera had a serious drug habit, though, which resulted in her endangering newborn Rachel, leading to a breakup. Sera has been receiving monthly payoffs ever since but recently cleaned up her life and wants to meet up with Rachel—something that terrified James. Rachel heads upstairs to lie down as Chloe talks with both Rose and James. Rose is not threatened by Sera and James wants Chloe to talk Rachel out of reuniting with her.When the player heads upstairs, the opening credits play to "I Don't" by Koda, as the camera pans around Rachel's room. Chloe cheers Rachel up by improvising a lightshow from Rachel's bedside lamp and an emergency torch. The two then lie in Rachel's bed together, as Rachel explains that she can't trust anyone anymore, except Chloe (comparing it to the revelation that the stars have been dead for millions of years). Rachel wants to meet Sera, so Chloe suggests that they can ask Frank and she can fix up the flatbed in the junk yard to take them to her. Chloe confides in Rachel about the dreams she has about her father, speaking of which...
Chloe "wakes up" on stage, wearing the Ariel costume. She's in William's car once again, but this time it's represented by four chairs, with all the major characters in the audience watching the two of them and providing a laugh track. Chloe complains (with clear subtext) that none of it is real, while her dad suggests that perhaps withholding the truth can make the world seem a bit more pleasant. He lampshades his inevitable death, reassuring Chloe that none of it is real, before he and the chairs are flattened by the truck, leaving a bloody streak along the stage. Chloe falls to her knees as the dream version of Victoria boos.
In the morning, Chloe sneaks back into her room, possibly discovering that David has ransacked the place (unless she emptied her pockets and didn't have any weed). Chloe calls Frank and offers to exchange the favor she did for him earlier for information about Sera Gearhardt. They agree to meet in the junkyard to discuss the matter. Meanwhile, Chloe finds David has completely moved into the house and that Chloe has missed mother's day. Chloe takes time to dye one of her forelocks blue in homage to her friendship with Max (who had bought the hair dye years ago).
Chloe finds Joyce and David having a good time together. David apologises to Chloe (either saying he's decided to take Chloe's word in future at Joyce's insistance, or outright apologising for the search if she didn't have any weed) and tries to make a peace offering to Chloe with the picture of an old friend he lost during the war, and Chloe can either accept his overture or reject him. Chloe leaves for the junkyard taking her father's toolbox and an old repair manual with her.
At the junkyard, Chloe fixes an old truck while she waits for Frank. She takes it for a joyride around the junkyard, before heading into the hideout to clean the grease off her hands. Rachel shows up and compliments her hair. As they head outside, Frank shows up and compliments her new ride. Unfortunately, he brought Damon along with him. They both (Frank more politely) warn the girls to back off and stop asking questions. Things get worse when Damon realises that Rachel's the DA's daughter, draws a knife, and demands to know why everyone's so interested in Sera. Frank tries to calm Damon down, but Rachel - in another fit of anger - decides the best solution is to find herself a 2x4 and give Damon a close look. Damon proceeds to return the favour with his knife. Cue "Burn it Down" by Daughter.
Frank grapples with Damon so Chloe can escape, so she rushes Rachel to the hospital and waits for many hours, until James updates her on Rachel's condition; a few more minutes and she would have died, he'll let her know when Rachel wakes up. In the waiting room, Chloe can steal a candy bar from the vending machine, place any money she might still have on her in the fire-fighter's fund, run into the couple she and Rachel stole the wine from (now expecting) and eavesdrop on Sean Prescott talking to either his son's psychiatrist or Samantha's mothernote . In lieu of anything else to do, she can pay Mikey, Drew and Steph a visit. Outside the room is Anthony, Mikey and Drew's dad, who Chloe can speak to. He'll ask Chloe if he knows why his sons have been acting so guilty lately; the player can have her answer that she knows nothing, or tell him to ask Drew. Inside the room, Chloe can chat with Steph and the boys about recent events. If Mikey was injured, the player can choose to join Mikey for another game of D&D (with Chloe's character revived). If Durgaron wasn't killed off, he shows up again, now played by Drew, otherwise Drew joins the party as an annoying gnome bard (who Durgaron would have otherwise already killed). The session culminates in a backtalk challenge to convince Mikey to let Chloe sacrifice her character to save his; regardless of the outcome, Drew decides to roll his own character and play with Mikey. If Drew was injured, there's a shorter scene where Chloe can backtalk him into handing over his pudding.
Rachel convinces Chloe to break into her dad's office to find out more about Sera, and gives her a code to disarm the alarm. While there she finds evidence that James lied about a lot of things (for example, leaving out the letters Sera wrote to Rachel, the fact that she was pursuing visitation rights legally and had stopped accepting his hush money some time ago), and discovers that Damon has Sera (and is about to cause her to relapse into her heroin addiction at James's request). At that point she's confronted by Eliot, who followed her from the hospital. He traps her in the office and starts getting aggressive, trying to force her to accept that Rachel's bad news; Chloe can secretly call the police, and bluff him with a successful backtalk challenge to avoid giving her coded message away so he's arrested. If the player fails, Eliot gets violent and Chloe sets the alarm off, so they're both forced to run. Either way, she runs off with Damon's money as the police show up.
Chloe leaves and drives to the old mill, stopping only to contemplate her own relationship with her father, and wondering if he might have disappointed her in a similar way, had he lived longer. Chloe confronts Damon who has Sera tied up in a chair, but gets knocked to the ground. Damon proceeds to kick or threaten to drug Chloe while she's down, causing Sera to tell him to back off, so he drugs her to keep her quiet. Frank enters to confront his old friend, and Damon knocks Chloe out with a kick to the head before they begin their knife fight again. Chloe wakes up and talks with Sera who tries to convince her to not tell Rachel about anything that happened at the mill. The player can try and convince Sera to reconnect with Rachel. Chloe returns to the hospital and has to decide whether to lie to Rachel or possibly ruin her relationship with James forever by telling her everything.
In the final montage, there's a shot of the Ambersnote ; Frank sadly looks at a photo of him and Damon, before leaving it and his knife in a box and emptying a beer next to it (clearly having won their second knife fight decisively); David proposes to Joyce, as either they both hug an ambivalent Chloe, or she flips them the bird (depending on how the relationship between Chloe and David is); Eliot packs up everything from his dorm, either having apparently been expelled for his behaviour (if Chloe got him arrested) and being glared at by Wells or dropping out, bitterly tearing up his photo of him and Chloe; Steph, Drew and Mikey happily play D&D together; Nathan approaches Samantha, who either leaves or lets him join her reading under the tree depending on how their relationship went; Victoria leaves the main building and smiles in a bemused manner at Evan as he continues his quest for the perfect photo; meanwhile Chloe smirks at Wells as she waits in her car, before being joined by an enthusiastic Rachel, who almost bowls Wells over to get to the flatbed.
There's a further montage of Rachel and Chloe spending time together; watching the sun set at the lighthouse (possibly being joined by Sera, if Chloe convinced her); Chloe revealing her fully dyed blue hair; they look at the map in Chloe's room; Rachel adds "Rachel was here" below Chloe's in the hideout; Chloe and Rachel show off each other's tattoos in the back of the pickup in the junkyard.
After the credits roll, there's yet more; Chloe and Rachel pose for shots in a photo booth, which fades to one of the shots as an image on Rachel's phone, sitting ignored on a glass table, with an incoming call from Chloe (and seventeen missed calls). The date on the phone is April 22nd, 2013, a camera can be heard clicking in the background, and just to confirm what's going on, a red binder comes into view...
Tropes in this episode:
- Awful Truth: Her father reveals this about Rachel's birth mother being a drug addict. The real awful truth turns out to be he was willing to have her drugged with heroin to ruin any chance of her being taken seriously or reconnecting with her daughter.
- Asshole Victim: Frank is heavily implied to have killed Damon to protect Chloe and Rachel. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Damon proves to be this with James.
- Bittersweet Ending: Both endings fall under this. The "Protect Rachel from the Truth" Ending has Rachel's family life go on relatively the same as before, Chloe all too aware of how bad her father really is even as she becomes a regular guest at their home. In the "Tell Rachel Everything" Ending, if you decide to tell Rachel the truth, it utterly ruins her relationship with her parents and destroys their marriage. In either ending, Chloe and Rachel end up as a couple, Damon is (presumably) dead and gone from everyone's lives (but Frank is devastated, becoming the Anti-Villain we see in the original game), David proposes to Joyce (leading to Chloe's dysfunctional family dynamic), Drew joins Mikey and Steph's tabletop games, Eliot leaves Blackwell (either getting expelled, suspended or simply moving away depending on the player's actions), Nathan either joins Samantha or is snubbed by her (again, depending on the player's actions), and if Chloe manages to convince her, Sera meets Rachel at the lighthouse for the first time. The last shot of either ending sits on Chloe trying to call Rachel, her phone sitting on a glass table in Mark Jefferson's dark room, a camera flashing in the background.
- Broken Pedestal: Played with. Chloe remembers her dad as being perfect, acknowledges that he probably wasn't, and wishes that he'd lived long enough for her to be disappointed in him. Sera also suggests that Chloe not tell Rachel the truth about what her father tried to do so that the already cracked pedestal she puts him on won't shatter completely.
- Call-Forward: The closing montage is one big one, in addition:
- Chloe's distress at freezing up when Damon attacks Rachel explains her own response to whether Max tries to shoot Frank or not in a similar situation in the original game (praising her if she shoots, quickly forgiving her if she also freezes up).
- Once again, Chloe can play D&D, and this time she has to convince Mikey to sacrifice her character (much as she tried to do in the ending to the original game) after she was miraculously revived (as happened to Chloe at the start of the original game).
- Damon's knife appears to be the one that Max uses to pry open a vent when she and Chloe explore Frank's trailer in the original game.
- Chloe's return to her room is an extended shout out to the second episode of the first game, with her possibly finding it ransacked by someone she antagonised, choosing to water a plant (which parodies the Guide Dang It! nature of the choices that prevented Lisa the plant from dying by making it impossible to save) and taking a shower.
- Doomed by Canon: The episode ends with a Player Punch and Happy Ending Override that bleeds into the events of the original Life Is Strange.
- Double-Meaning Title: The line "Hell is empty" is spoken of Ariel's handiwork after they've been sent to bring a relative of Prospero to him (by way of analogy, Rachel sends Chloe off to look for Sera). The line which follows is "and all the devils are here" (also the name of the achievement for completing the episode), and sure enough, this episode has everyone with malicious intent showing their true colours and becoming an antagonist. More specifically; Damon (who was clearly a bastard, but had no specific gripe with Chloe until now); James Amber (who was behind the whole mess, and much less reasonable than he pretended); and Eliot revealing his abusive Entitled to Have You attitude towards Chloe.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Sera gets this if Chloe wins a truly impressive argument with her: Chloe convincing her to meet with Rachel.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Frank realizes Damon is a lot more of a scumbag than even he can tolerate. Even though Frank is implied to have killed Damon, he did it to save Chloe's life and in self-defense so he could actually be considered a hero for it.
- Evil All Along:
- Eliot (whose behaviour had become a little sketchy in the previous episode) reveals an Entitled to Have You attitude towards Chloe and gets rather abusive, physically attacking her to try and make her stay put (complete with a Why Did You Make Me Hit You? and the textbook abuser tactic of trying to convince their victim that only they care about them).
- James Amber begins looking like he's just being overprotective of Rachel, and perhaps a little classist. Eventually it turns out he's been less than honest about Sera, as he engineered Sera's kidnapping (and forced her back into an addiction that would surely lead to her early death) in exchange for destroying evidence (Chloe ends up being the one who does it, but James was clearly ready to go through with the deal). Notably, the final choice is whether or not you reveal this to Rachel.
- First-Name Basis:
- Mrs. Amber tells Chloe to call her Rose after the beginning, making it clear that she respects her at this point.
- James once again calls Wells "Ray" when he suggests that he might be able to get Chloe back into Blackwell, as thanks for saving Rachel's life.
- Foreshadowing: In Chloe's dream, she can suggest that the spark plugs are broken in William's car, and he responds that they were just replaced. When she's fixing the flatbed, guess what component she salvages from the wreck of William's car?
- Good All Along: While Sera was built up to be a walking disaster who decided she wanted to see Rachel out of the blue, it's revealed that she had since gone clean for a year and James has been preventing her from knowing her daughter the whole time. When Damon forces heroine onto her, she decides that it would be better if she didn't see Rachel and that James shouldn't be arrested for it out of the belief that it's what's best for Rachel. If Chloe manages to make a convincing enough argument, the episode ends with Sera meeting them at the lighthouse.
- Happy Ending Override: The ending of the episode is sweet and tender before the credits end and you see Rachel kidnapped and held in the Dark Room.
- Hypocrite: James believes Sera is a toxic influence for bringing drug dealers and worse into his daughter's life. He works with drug dealers to have Sera kidnapped.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Sera is willing to let James get away with everything he's done in order to give Rachel a stable homelife.
- Justice by Other Legal Means: Implied, since despite Damon's drug dealing, dog fighting ring, and multiple acts of violence, the DA's office are going after him for assault.
- Improbable Weapon User: In James's office, a file notes that Damon attacked someone with a fire poker, which is the crime he wants the evidence against him for destroyed.
- Knight Templar Parent: James crosses this line when it's revealed he had Sera kidnapped to prevent her from meeting Rachel.
- Tap on the Head: Chloe is knocked out by a kick to the head from Damon before his and Frank's rematch, and she wakes up an unspecified amount of time later with no problems (or any suggestion from Sera, who was waiting for her to wake up, that she seek medical attention).
- Wham Shot: The episode ends with one of Rachel's phone, on the day she died in the original game, with multiple missed calls from Chloe and enough circumstantial evidence to make it clear she's in the Dark Room.
- Would Hit a Girl: Damon complains about the double standards of Wouldn't Hit a Girl when Rachel shoves him off Chloe, but he's perfectly happy to stab Rachel a short time later and beat up a helpless Chloe in the finale (not to mention he's preparing to forcibly dose Sera with heroin, and has no problem hitting her while she's tied up).
