#caulscott

Thank you so much !! 💕 I'm sorry Anon, it took me a while to get to your request. I figured that with the LIS : Reunion announcement, now was the perfect time. So here’s my humble contribution in support of the Nathan enjoyers who probably won’t be seeing him in this new game either haha. We’re in this together !

Don’t you think about it?

Well, I do. A lot.

First of all, it’s interesting that in this particular storyline, before we even get the chance to properly search Nathan’s room, he actually hints at what might be inside during the conversation with him and Victoria right before Kate tries to jump from the roof:

“V: Oh, please do. Take a selfie of this moment.”

“N: Yeah, Max. So I won’t forget you.”

I have several theories concerning this. First of all, we all know that Nathan is a kleptomaniac—he can’t resist stealing things, even despite the amount of money he has. He steals the Tobanga (we’ll get to that later), and he steals Kate’s memorial if she dies — which might suggest that he feels guilt. So did he steal Max’s photograph out of guilt after he trashed her room? That’s a theory I’ve seen often, but I don’t think it’s that simple.

Going back to Tobanga; Arcadia Bay was created based on Tillamook Bay, a real place. A Native American tribe also lived there, and their legends tell stories about thunderbirds and whales, creatures that were described as having enormous size and power. Their actions are used to explain storms and earthquakes. The shaking of the land and floods from the sea symbolize the battle between the thunderbird and the whale (and in many versions of the myth, the thunderbird actually kills the whale, too). Nathan is known to be symbolically connected to whales, since they began dying on the day of his death, and he calms himself by listening to whale songs.

Nathan tries to steal the Thunderbird statue. And the photograph of Max that he chooses, out of all the possible ones, shows her at a football game wearing a sweatshirt with the “Thunderbirds” team logo. A coincidence? I don’t think so.

I had some ideas about Tobanga having some influence on Max receiving her powers or perhaps influencing the apocalypse in some way, but I don’t think that’s very important. We also know that Nathan saw the storm in his dreams, just like Max did—they simply cut that content off from the final version of the game.

So what do we have? Max as the thunderbird, unaware of her power, and Nathan as the whale, sensing the approach of death, where the storm ultimately becomes the inevitable outcome of their existence within the same system.

Nathan is impulsive, but his impulses are always drawn to symbols, whether they represent guilt, mystery, or inevitability. He doesn’t just steal things, he’s full blown appropriates them, trying to take control over what frightens him. He doesn’t know who Max really is, but he clearly senses that she is directly connected to everything that’s happening. And the photograph he chooses seems far too precise to be random, where Max is literally marked with the symbol of a creature that, in mythology, is associated with storms, disasters, and the collision of forces.

Nathan doesn’t steal because he wants to, but because he’s trying to freeze something, to hold onto something, to stop at least something in a world where it feels like everything has slipped out of control. Stealing Max’s photograph, for him, is an attempt to claim control over what he instinctively senses as the source of the catastrophe. It’s also important that the photograph appears only in the branch where Max decides to report him to the principal: she becomes active, she interferes, she openly opposes Nathan for the first time, and that’s exactly the moment he notices her.

Referring back to his earlier line (“so I won’t forget you”), it no longer sounds like a threat, but almost like panic, as if he already knows that forgetting her, or what she brings to this town, will be impossible. The cut content about his dreams makes this even more painful, I think, because Nathan, like Max, saw something, he definitely knew something. But unlike her, he received neither the ability nor a way out—only a premonition and the certainty that he has completely lost his mind. And that’s why he breaks.

Close ups ↓↓↓