Careful, unmarked spoilers for this game as well as the original game ahoy!
Confirmed
The raven / crow represents Chloe and Rachel.
For Chloe, the raven is a messenger to mortals and connects between life and death. This is evident when it appears in Chloe's nightmare, which William was present giving her insight and advice about Rachel. It also symbolizes prophetic insight, supported in Chloe's nightmare that Chloe's journal of Max is three years later and Max's text saying she will see Chloe when Chloe is dead. For Rachel, the raven represents her trickster and manipulative nature that even Chloe calls out that Rachel likes to play games, act, and lie. Rachel also seems to be manipulative, especially getting Chloe to open up while revealing little about herself and influencing her on bad habits such as stealing bottle of wine.- Pretty much confirmed for Chloe, as the crow is her motif for the game from the designs of many of her clothing to the frequent appearances of crows throughout the game. Fire seems to be Rachel's motif in this game, while her doe motif from the first game doesn't seem to be in play here.
The mistress is Rachel's biological mother.
She looks similar enough to Rachel to be related. It's plausible that Rachel is the result of an affair years ago and abandoned by her mother to be raised by her father and his wife. Now that he's a District Attorney she could be trying to get back in the picture.- Partially confirmed in Episode 2. Sera Gearhardt was James’ wife by the time Rachel was born. Her drug addiction ended their marriage, and she’s spent the past year or so finally kicking it, now wanting to properly meet her daughter.
Damon Merrick will become an antagonist.
- He's given at least three mentions in Episode 1: Chloe can find a slip of paper indicating that some poor sap owes him a thousand bucks, his name is tagged on a wall in the sawmill, and the guy that Chloe gets in a fight with is mentioned as working for him. Clearly, this guy is a big deal and from what little we know of him, he seems like just the sort of person Chloe would get mixed up with.
- Confirmed: His actions form the basis of an important choice in episode 2 (so he's officially an antagonist) and he clearly isn't done.
Rachel doesn't have any powers.
Her possible weather control is just a Red Herring that Deck Nine put in place to guard a bigger twist.- Confirmed. Deck Nine intentionally made the fire seem supernatural and strengthened by Rachel's anger later being put out as soon as Rachel is wounded to give off that impression, but it's all completely coincidental.
Jossed
Rachel has superpowers.
When Rachel and Chloe are burning Rachel's picture, Rachel started the forest fire. We see her scream triggering a strong wind that fanned the flames. It is also be interpreted that Rachel is the storm in the main game Life is Strange. A sign at the beginning would be that Rachel plays Tempest’s Prospera, a sorceress with power to create a storm. There are a few possibilities if Rachel is the storm. As Rachel died likely knowing Jefferson and Nathan’s schemes due to her angry expression in the Jefferson picture, the resulting storm could be not Max's fault at all but instead Rachel's curse or revenge on Arcadia Bay due to her dreams being destroyed and her dislike of Arcadia Bay from her eagerness to leave. There's also a deleted line from Life is Strange episode 5 that had nightmare Rachel speaking directly to Max in the dark room about now she can never reach her dreams now that she is dead. Another interpretation of the storm would be that Max's vision of the storm is a message from Rachel to Max and is the catalyst for Max’s powers in order to guide and reunite Max and Chloe to find out the truth about her death and other women by Nathan and Jefferson. Her doe spirit also leads Max and Chloe to her buried body and guiding Max and Chloe to the beacon of lighthouse.- Another explanation is that Rachel's existence created a kind of balance of the winds, which was disrupted by her death. This caused the massive storm over Arcadia Bay.
- If Rachel causes the storm as revenge for her death, then that puts the ending of the first game in a new light. It's not that Max's powers cause the storm, it's that Chloe needs to die so that she can soothe Rachel's spirit and they can pass on together.
- Jossed, at least in reference to the forest fire. Rachel herself seems completely unaware of having powers assuming she does unlike Max or Daniel, nor does she confide in Chloe about them. Word of God states that
the implication and ambiguity of Rachel having powers was entirely deliberate, but never supposed to be taken as absolute fact, and that Rachel's actual "power" is her charisma.
The mistress will be an antagonist.
There is a mysterious woman in a white dress smiling at the forest fire at the end of the episode. This woman appears throughout episode 1. She was kissing Rachel’s father and was waiting under the tree when Rachel and Chloe were just arriving at the park. When this mistress was sitting close to the forest fire, it's possible she knows that Rachel and Chloe started it. It seems the woman knows much more about Rachel than Rachel about her. Is she also plotting against Rachel in her murder? Or she is going use her knowledge of the forest fire to blackmail Rachel and Chloe in the future?- Jossed. One could say she might even be a Hero Antagonist for the first episode.
The mistress is the homeless woman.
Crack theory: They both have similar hairstyles and both know of Rachel and Chloe since the mistress could be watching Chloe and Rachel burning the forest. Also, the homeless lady knows a lot about Arcadia Bay and its residents and says she sees everything while no one sees her. Chloe has mild prophetic abilities
- Her second dream sequence all contains elements that appear in the very next scene (the crow/raven, which she follows to a tree she finds Rachel under, and then everything catches fire). It also features Max in her appearance from the first game - something Chloe won't see for another three years - and the texts from Max in the dream have her mention that she'll see Chloe when she's dead; the next time Max sees Chloe, Chloe had just gotten shot.
- If Chloe tries to talk about the weather while making small talk with Rachel, she'll screw it up and say "Nice Rachel we're having". Rachel later appears to have, at least, power over the wind.
- The second dream sequence in episode 1 has a poster for the Tempest, with Chloe on it in the role of Ariel. The same role she ends up playing in the school production of it in episode 2.
Chloe has a superpower
- Which is to cause other people to develop superpowers.
- Her journal does state that Chloe and Max used to write stories where they had superpowers; this would explain why someone like Chloe's mom doesn't appear to develop any powers, since Chloe has to imagine that person with powers in order to trigger it. If Chloe began to see Rachel as a surrogate for Max, it's natural that some powers would be given to her until Max came back into her life, on top of the Prospera display.
- This may also extend to other people. For instance, her determination to dislike David for trying to replace her dead father may have empowered him with the ability to say exactly the wrong thing every time he opens his mouth, fueling her disrespect for him in order to keep it going.
Alternately, Chloe is a Reality Warper with Power Incontinence.
- Combining both of the above theories, Chloe doesn't simply predict the future, but subconsciously influences it, as well as the people around her; not only does Chloe empower people, she can also make them do what she wants with her Backtalk.
- This could also relate to why the storm in Arcadia Bay centers around Chloe's survival, and doesn't appear if you let Chloe sacrifice herself, even though that too overextends Max's time travel: because in reality, she is the cause of the storm, creating it with her own emotional turmoil over learning Rachel Amber's fate.
- Also, why birds and whales keep dying in the alternate timeline: Chloe's own desire to die causes animals to.
Sera is another time-bender, or something equally powerful
She seems too strange to be just an ordinary person, suspiciously appearing at several key moments in the game and always smiling smugly.- Jossed. She's just been keeping tabs on Rachel for a while since she's been wanting to meet her for years, and she's finally sober enough to do so.
Mr. Amber will send Chloe to infiltrate Damon's operation
He knows that she knows Frank thanks to her "we have the same dealer!" outburst, and when Frank sends you into Blackwell, one of the dialogue options when you're asked what you're doing on campus is to sarcastically say you're on a secret mission from the district attorney. Foreshadowing, much?- Jossed. James is in cahoots with Damon to keep Sera from seeing Rachel, and Chloe finds this out, using all of the evidence in his office to track down Damon and rescue Sera.
Life Is Strange takes place after the "Truth" ending of Before the Storm
The Rachel of Before the Storm and the Rachel implied by Life Is Strange seem to be completely different people. How does a straight A student with a loving best friend/girlfriend become a drug addict who sleeps around in just three years? When Chloe tells Rachel the truth about her father]], this shatters her worldview, leading her to act more and more irresponsibly, culminating in [[spoiler: her death in the Dark Room at the hands of Nathan, who was trying to impress Jefferson. Yes, the Dark Room stinger plays regardless of the player's ending choice but Rachel's implied character traits in Life Is Strange make no sense unless she suffers a huge trauma.- As a corollary, the events of Life Is Strange don't happen or happen very differently in the Hide the Truth from Rachel ending, with perhaps Rachel being alive.
- Rachel is already pretty wild (remember how she and Chloe met in the first place? and whose idea it was to skip school? and whose idea it was to drop everything and leave town? and how she already knew Frank?) There's nothing inherently contradictory about a straight-A student being promiscuous, drinking, and smoking weed. She's also a skilled liar and manipulator, and seeing as how she's got Mr. Keaton and Principal Wells both wrapped around her finger it's possible she's coasting through her classes.
- Except that flashforward scene at the end makes it pretty clear that it happens either way.
Frank didn't kill Damon.
It is implied that Frank managed to overcome his injuries in his first battle with Damon to defeat and kill him. Yet, the body of Damon was never shown, and his grave wasn't shown.- What happened to Damon, then? Simple... Pompidou ate him :).
- Jossed. Damon is as good as dead. Frank even pours one out to his fallen former friend.
Open-Ended/Misc
Samantha will be Doomed by Canon
- The fact that she has a crush on Nathan opens the possibility of her being one of Nathan and Jefferson's first victims.
- Potentially jossed. There's no folder with Samantha's name on it in Nathan and Jefferson's creep cave. It's entirely possible she wasn't even around when Jefferson arrived at the school.
PissHead will be successful, allowing Skip to resign and leave his job open for David
This will be the impetus for David marrying Joyce (thanks to the increased income). Note that an advert for one of their concerts can be seen in Chloe's room in the alternative reality during Chapter 4 in the original game.- The demo Skip plays can be heard on the radio in Episode 2.
Ruth is Raven, and is The Svengali for Rachel
Based on that bit of Raven trivia Chloe can find, Ruth gave Rachel her wind powers, then started her affair with Rachel's father to piss Rachel off and help her develop her powers. Steph's crush is actually on Chloe
While she seems (and claims) to be planning on making a move on Rachel, her questions also confirm/deny whether or not Chloe is single. If you want to find out if your crush is single, it makes more sense to find out from them, than someone they might be dating. This would also fit in with her giving Chloe the DVD (for having good taste in movies — i.e. liking something she does), warning her about Wells and trusting her if she texts asking for information about Drew (even though she knows there's bad blood between them). Not to mention she tells Mickey off for "showing off for Chloe"...and proceeds to do just that by acting all Killer GM. Hospital employee in blue is the homeless lady
After Rachel is checked in at the hospital, Chloe can slam the out of order vending machine to get the snack. The game briefly shows the hospital employee in blue scrubs working at the desk. If you look closely, her face and hair is very similar to the facial features and hair of the homeless lady in the original game. Compare this to this
.- Furthermore, she lost her job at the hospital because she didn't keep an eye on the vending machine and let the snack be stolen.
- The snack was stuck in the vending machine, meaning someone had already paid for it. If Chloe stole it from anyone, it was the person who put the coins in and got nothing for it. They wouldn't fire someone for costing them nothing. This does not, however, mean that she didn't get fired for some other reason off-camera and become the homeless woman.
Before the Storm takes place in a different timeline from the original Life is Strange
This would explain the many Continuity Snarls, different voice actors and why none of Chloe's decisions in BTS actually affect anything that happens in LiS.Max and Chloe are both unreliable narrators
As an alternative to the above theory, the original game and Before the Storm both present the world as each protagonist sees it, but not necessarily as it truly is. This is why everyone sounds slightly different — but even more so, why some of them behave subtly differently, i.e. Joyce coming across as a less involved and caring mother in Before the Storm compared to Life Is Strange (Max sees the best in Joyce, Chloe still loves her but feels more resentment towards her). It could even explain some of the continuity differences between the two titles, i.e. Chloe and Warren acting like they don't know each other in LIS when BTS confirms they were at school together: Max never knew that they'd been briefly acquainted years ago, so reads their occasional interactions as those of strangers rather than vague acquaintances, and constructs her worldview around it.