I just thought about something…what if Max didn’t save Chloe, but Chloe saved Max? Hear me out. It’s obvious that Jefferson had an obsession for Max, it’s something much stronger than anything else he had felt for his other “muses”. There almost seems to be some affection there, at times, but it’s more corrupted, more perverted, not unlike lust. Depending on how you play Max and the answers you choose, her admiration for Jefferson can come off as a crush (I mean it almost always does if you take the time to read her journal). Now, there’s a fair chance that if Chloe had never been at the wrong place, at the wrong time, if she had never been thrown into this mess, Max would have gotten closer to Jefferson. She would ultimately have submitted a picture for the contest and Jefferson would have picked her, and even if she didn’t, he would have used her insecurities to get closer to her down the line. When he changed his plan, killed Chloe and kidnapped Max, he only did so BECAUSE he didn’t have a choice, but he expresses disappointment at multiple occasions. It suggests that maybe this was not the worst case scenario. Maybe Max would have been tricked into an abusive relationship (she is both young and insecure, and Jefferson is a figure of authority she trusts and respects), maybe she would have suffered from emotional and physical abuse only to be discarded or killed if she ever lost the “purity” he admired in her. This could have dragged on for months, years…who knows, maybe she would have even accepted to help him with his project at one point, maybe she would have turned into Nathan (which also says a lot about what kind of relationship he had with Jefferson, although I think Jefferson knew exactly which role to play with Nathan: the father he never had). Now, I can even go farther than that, what if the blue butterfly is actually Chloe trying to guide Max? What if, the first time Max sees it, it’s telling her exactly where she has to be? She hides, which allows her to assist to the scene, and then rewind it, which she wouldn’t have been able to do if Nathan had seen her. Then she rewinds. What does she find in this alternate reality where she interrupted Nathan? The truth about Jefferson. If you choose to “Save the Bay”, Max uses it to put Jefferson behind bars, and while it saves a few people in the process, it saves her too. It was all very well thought, Max had to be at the right place, at the right time for everything to work out the way it did, and who made that possible? The butterfly. I think that this gives even more strength to this ending, because when the butterfly lands on the casket, it’s telling her that this is exactly where Chloe is supposed to be. In peace, knowing she saved her best friend from a tragic end.
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