Liz Parker
Encyclopedia
Liz Parker is a fictional character
and the protagonist
of the Roswell High
book series and Roswell
T.V. series, which ran from 1999 to 2002. The character was portrayed by Shiri Appleby
.
Liz is considered to be the protagonist
of the series, along with Max Evans
. Liz is the main narrator throughout the three seasons and she has been described as the "heart and soul" of the show. She made her first appearance in the Roswell pilot episode and remained a core character until the series finale.
Liz Parker attends Roswell High School, where her favorite subject is science. Her best friends are Alex Whitman and Maria DeLuca
. At the beginning of the series, she breaks up with boyfriend Kyle Valenti
and engages in a dramatic relationship with alien
-human
hybrid Max Evans
, which is the crux of the television series.
She is beautiful though she doesn't really realize it. She is smart and very direct about her opinions, sensible, confident and levelheaded.
Her home was above the diner her family owns, the Crashdown Café, and until the last episode, she worked there as a waitress after school.
She did well in school, especially in science that had been her passion since she was a child. Her dream was to go into molecular biology at Harvard university. However, after the events in the season three finale, Liz's whereabouts are unknown.
Liz is a complex character; very sweet and kind overall, yet strong and determined.
Control is something very important for her: with it, she can get facts and answers and this makes her feel more safe about herself, those she loves, and life in general.
However, her real nature isn't really so controlled. When Max saves her life and she falls in love with him, everything in her life changes; Max is the living proof that people cannot control everything and even science doesn't have all the answers. She understands this, and realizes that she has to follow her heart and live in the moment, because no matter how people try, they can't control everything and they can't choose with whom they fall in love.
Liz emerges as the "brain" among the group. She is the one who continuously gets the very core point of their problems and is able to find a solution most of the time - especially if the problem is science related.
However, her determination and selfless spirit mixed with her sometimes controlling nature can also be a character flaw when it leads her into making decisions where she takes too much of the responsibility. This is also a characteristic that she shares with Max Evans
.
It is stated that she loves White Roses in the season 2 episode, End of the World.
.
The Co-executive producer of the series Ronald D. Moore
, along with Jason Katims
, stated more than once that Max and Liz represented the heart and soul of the series.
Max has been in love with Liz since the first time he saw her at school, when he was just six years old (shortly after emerging from the pod). However, he kept himself distanced from her, primarily because of his concerns about being an alien and her being a human, so Liz did not know about his feelings and did not suspect that her laboratory partner had been secretly in love with her. This secret ends only in the pilot episode when she gets shot at the Crashdown Cafe and he saves her life, risking everything for her and starting the lead plot of the show.
Liz does love Max from the first time she gets the chance to see his soul and to really know him. This happens when Max does give her the chance to connect with him through a reversed connection created by his alien powers in order to make them even since the same happened when he healed her and he got flashes from her about her life and her inner feelings. In that moment, Liz can see his thoughts, especially about her, and she realizes that he's lonely, he loves her and he does not want to hurt people, so she starts to help him and his friends, from the beginning making the decision to renounce her normality.
She shares a deep, mysterious connection with him. It is with her involuntary help that he starts to find more clues about his origins. Also, Liz is able to feel whether Max is in danger or hurt (in the third season she feels when he dies), and they save each other's lives more than once.,, For this powerful connection between them and their deep and natural affinity
and compatibility
, they are considered soulmate
s by both the characters of the story and the creators of the series.
boy and a human
girl, Max and Liz s relationship is another modern example of forbidden lovers, with many references to Romeo and Juliet
through the series by both the characters and the writers.
Most notable examples are when Maria De Luca called them "Romeo and Juliet against the world", or when Liz herself used the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet into her own tragic speech in the episode "The End of the World" from season two.
The producers and writers of the series were not unaware of the parallelism either.
In the episode "Four Aliens and A Baby", Liz blasts Tess Harding
twice, using a green energy that exited from her hands. In "Graduation", she starts to see flashes about the future after touching people. She sees a customer of the Crashdown Café in danger and she and Max save her. While she is making out with Max she gets a flash of Max, herself, Michael
and Isabel
being killed by someone. Thanks to this power, they flee Roswell at the end of the series, before the FBI can kill them.
In the season two episode "Max in the City", viewers can see her "change" start to develop when she saves Max's life by projecting her image from Roswell to New York with Isabel's help.
collected from the pencil tip on a slide, and examines the slide through a microscope
. She can see that his cells
are not human. When she confronts Max about everything that had happened to her and his alien cells, Max confesses to her that he is an alien that had been on the alien craft that crashed in Roswell in 1947
.
With growing suspicion coming from the local sheriff, Jim Valenti, Liz devises a plan to throw him off Max's scent. She is successful and Valenti, though still cautious and wary of Max, lets him go. After this incident, she starts developing deep feelings for Max, despite her current relationship with the sheriff's son Kyle Valenti
. For a while she lies to her friends Alex and Maria, but eventually Maria confronts Liz about what is going on. Liz eventually relents to Maria's questions and tells her all she knows about Max, Isabel and Michael. Kyle grows jealous of the growing relationship between her and Max, and a group of his friends beat up Max. She breaks up with Kyle in response to this, causing a rift between them. However, her relationship with Max grows very strong and she finds herself falling in love with him. An incident involving Michael Guerin, however, scares Max away, and he realizes that doesn't want to hurt Liz in any way. He is an alien and doesn't know what is going to happen to him or who might come after him; he wants her to be safe.
However, Liz and Max end up falling in love. Max, as an alien, had a profound effect on her, and when they kiss Liz gets images of Max's past, which help Max, Michael and Isabel discover a healing stone., This doesn't last long, as Tess Harding arrives in Roswell and begins to influence Max in a strange way. Liz sees Max and Tess kiss and is heartbroken, but after hearing Max out she and the others start to believe that Tess could be the fourth alien named Nasedo
using a female appearance and she's influencing Max's thoughts by making him hallucinate. She forgives him and with her help the group discovers that Tess is not Nacedo but another hybrid like Max, Michael and Isabel and her unique power is to create mindwarps.,,
Feeling that Liz is a threat to his plans, the real Nasedo shapeshifts
into Max and takes her. When she kisses him, she realizes he is not Max because she has visions of his past. Max, worried about Liz and what Nasedo might do, goes after them. Maria and Alex tell Sheriff Valenti that they are worried because Liz is with Max and she called claiming that she was scared because Max was acting weird. This was done in order to try to find Liz faster. They are found in a theme park. In the house of mirrors
, Max is grabbed by the FBI and Nasedo grabs Liz. She kisses him and again realizes that he is Nasedo when she gets images from his past. She is deeply heartbroken when Max is abducted by the FBI and has to tell the news to Michael and Isabel. With the help of Nasedo, the gang saves Max from the FBI.
In the season one finale, "Destiny", she goes with Max to the alien pod chamber in the rock formation that was disguised as the alien craft that crashed. Max, Michael, Isabel and Tess' destiny is revealed when they use the alien s to contact Max and Isabel's (alien) mother. Max, Michael, Isabel and Tess are the Royal Four of their home planet Antar. They were all killed in their former lives by their enemy Kivar. During their deaths, their alien DNA was mixed with human DNA and sent to earth so their race could preserve the Royal Four in order for them to return some day to rule again. In their former lives, Max was Zan, the king of Antar. Tess (Ava in former life) was Zan's wife, Isabel (Vilandra) was Zan's sister and her husband was Michael (Rath), Zan's second in command. After realizing that Max and Tess are destined to be together and the importance of Max to his race, Liz decides to let Max go in order for him to fulfill his destiny, because she now sees he is destined to be with Tess, no matter how much they love each other. As she leaves the cave, Max follows her but Michael stops him, saying, "You have to let her go".
In the episode "The End of the World", Liz is asked by a future version of Max to help him get the modern-day Max to fall out of love with her. Future Max claims that if they don't do this, the world will end and they will all die. Shocked, she only accepts it when Future Max predicts that Max will turn up with a Mariachi
band and sing a love song for her. When this transpires she agrees to help Future Max. He goes on to tell her the kind of future present-day Max and she will have if they do not succeed. He tells her that after she and Max made love for the first time, it cemented their relationship and they were never apart again. This upset Tess and she left Roswell. Max and Liz were married in Las Vegas when they were 19 and were together until the end of the world came because when Max's enemies came to earth, Max, Michael, and Isabel were not strong enough in their powers without Tess. So they have to get Tess and Max together to save everyone and rewrite the future. She tries to get Tess to help by attracting Max towards her but it fails when Max catches Liz watching. Liz at the end has to resort to making Max think that she slept with Kyle. This succeeds; as Max walks to the window, he sees Liz talking with Kyle in bed, which breaks Max's heart. Liz has one last dance to her future wedding song, "I Shall Believe" by Sheryl Crow
, with the Future Max, but he disappears because the future has been changed and he no longer exists.
Liz attracts the attention of Maria's cousin, and they have a few dates, but nothing serious comes out of it., She is left devastated when she hears that Alex has died in a car crash. She visits the destroyed car that Alex was driving and finds a picture of Alex and a girl he met in Sweden
, but his head was cut off in the picture. This leads her to suspect that Alex was murdered, and she begins to try and find the supposed truth by asking the last person who saw him what Alex had said to him. At the funeral gathering in Alex's home, she accuses an alien of killing Alex. This deeply offends Max and the others, more so Isabel who had grown close to Alex. This creates a "them vs. us" scenario and the whole future of the formerly tight group looks bleak.
She decides to go to Sweden to find the people with whom Alex was staying, but she receives a call from the Swedish government claiming that the building Alex was standing in front of in the photo, supposedly taken in Sweden, hasn't existed in several years. She comes to the conclusion that Alex never went to Sweden. Her investigations lead her, Maria, and Michael to Las Cruses University. They discover that Alex had been working there on a translation program for the alien book that was given to Max and the others. Liz sees the girl with Alex in the photo at a Nelly Furtado
concert but loses her in the crowd.
Liz returns to Roswell, and she finds out that Tess is pregnant with Max's child, and that he has to leave Earth and go back to Antar. He has to do this because the baby is dying, as he can't survive in the Earth's environment. Max also asks her about the girl at Las Cruses. Wanting to know why he is asking, she learns that Max suspects the girl to be an alien and that he has to kill her to stop her from being a threat. She asks whether she could go with him to witness it, and he agrees, but as Max was about to commit the act, Liz realizes that the girl is human; she saves the girl from the fire that Max has caused. They head home confused because they do not know who killed Alex and it now looks like they will never know. Max tells Liz and that he has to go back to Antar with Tess, Isabel and Michael because the baby is dying. Liz is heartbroken and angry at the same time at the thought that Max is leaving her. Max discovers the truth about Kyle when he asks Liz if she really slept with Kyle and she tells him no. Upon realizing this he sees the huge mistake he has made with Tess. He wishes he could go back because he has always loved Liz, despite being with Tess. Liz asks him if he loves Tess and Max says, "Not like I love you". What he felt for Tess was only care. He wants things to be different, but he feels that his duty is to his son, and thus has no other choice than to save him. Max and Liz share a passionate kiss. When Liz doesn't have a vision, Max breaks down in tears. He realizes that their futures did not intersect. If he goes with his son, he will never see her again. Liz goes to Maria's cousin, Sean, and declares that Max has broken her heart, but she realizes that it isn't Sean's fault and she can't use him as Max's replacement.
During the day the aliens have planned to leave, Liz, Maria, Sean and Kyle are at the Crashdown Café talking. Maria and Liz notice that Kyle keeps tapping the table in a peculiar sort of way. When they mentioned this, he says that he has no control over it and doesn't even know he's doing it. They go to Maria's house and find her mom remembering about a hostage situation in which they had been. Tess uses an alien power to blank her memory. They confront Maria's mother and she appears fine and seems to forget again. But she then starts to tap the same way that Kyle had done earlier in the day. Liz remembers that Alex used to tap his bass guitar the same way, and she realizes that this isn't a coincidence. They confront Kyle and tell him to look around the room to see whether anything will jerk his memory. When he looks in the mirror, he remembers that Tess killed Alex and that he had been mindwarped by Tess to carry Alex's dead body to the car. Liz and Maria go to the pod chamber just as Max, Michael, Isabel and Tess are about to leave the planet with the granlith. At the last minute, Michael decides he cannot leave Earth because this is his home and he is in love with Maria and can't leave her. As Michael leaves the pod chamber, the door opens and Liz and Maria tell Michael that Tess killed Alex. Max confronts Tess and realizes that it was all a setup and that the baby was a part of the plan. Kivar wasn't Tess and Nacedo's enemy. The truth is that 40 years before, Nasedo had made a deal with Kivar: go home to Antar, delivering Max and his friends to him (that would have killed them) and carry Max's heir in the process.
Angry, Max wants to kill her but then realizes that she is carrying his son so he lets her go in order to save the baby. He regroups with Liz and the others on the mountainside. Max then tells Liz that he was wrong about many things but not about her, that he loves her, and will always love her. They embrace and the season ends with Max saying that he must save his son.
. Liz and Max come up with a plan to hold up the store and when Liz is holding the shop clerk hostage, Max will go down and check to see whether the ship is there. Max gives Liz a gun and when they hold up the convenience store, Max finds that there is a ship and it is still working, but his time is cut short as the police arrive. They try to escape, but they fail. They are caught after a police chase, and both are arrested and held in the local jail. Max is let out after the police find that nothing was taken from the shop. They couldn't find the weapon, but due to a witness seeing Liz with the gun, Liz is kept in jail.
She gets saved by Max, as he is able to bribe the FBI into pulling some strings and getting the case dropped. However, Liz's panic-stricken father forbids her to see Max, and bans Max from coming into the Crashdown Café. She defiantly breaks the rule, and upsets her father on numerous occasions. The reason that her father bans Max is that her father was a wild teenager, and his high school sweetheart died in a car crash because of his drunk driving. Realizing this after her mother tells her, Liz's attitude towards him changes and they begin to reconcile their differences.
Even if Tess' fiasco still did hurt her, Liz takes responsibility for her own mistakes and realizes it wasn't only Max's fault things went that way. She and Max love each other and they don't want to give up on their love no matter what. She understands that Max does need her so she stands by him trying to help him, putting herself in danger, finding and saving a baby. Thinking about Max's serious problem, she hides her inner feelings for most of the season, giving him her support, but then she begins to suffer some side effects towards Max's touch. Whenever Max touches her, a spark appears on her body and causes her pain. This scares her, as she realizes that when Max healed her in the pilot episode, saving her life, he changed her and they don't know whether she is safe or not. Max is scared for her; he wants to contact the FBI, the same people who tortured him in the end of season one, in order to find a way to keep her safe and know what is happening to her. He realizes that what happened with Tess is still hurting Liz and they need to talk about it. But Liz realizes that she needs a little time alone away from Roswell and Max in order to find her balance again and give their love another chance. She decides that she wants to leave Roswell temporarily, so that she can get better and understand what is happening to her, not only the alien aspect but the confusion about her life. Max respects her decision, waiting for her in Roswell. She goes to an all-girl boarding school
to start fresh.
However, it is not long before Liz's life in Roswell catches up with her. While sleeping she suddenly wakes up realizing that Max has died. She is heartbroken and decides to drown her sorrows with alcohol. While drunk she sees Max (whose body has been taken over by an old millionaire named Clayton who wanted to kill her because Max's soul was still alive in him only for her and his memories about her that Clayton got), she tells Maria who doesn't believe her. But they are both in shock when Max (when his body was still taken over by the old millionaire) comes to kill Liz as she is all he thinks about. They are both falling from the top of a building when Max regains control and he saves Liz's life by putting a force field in her path to break her fall. But, realizing that Clayton would kill her, he doesn't let himself hit the ground; he sacrifices his life for her. When Liz wakes up she realizes that Max has died; there is no heartbeat and no breath from him, so she kisses him with a desperate goodbye. Believing Max to be still dead, Liz is shocked as he wakes up and appears to come back to life. They realize that Liz has saved Max's life making him come back with a kiss.
Back in Roswell, Max and Liz are shocked when Tess appears with Max's baby. Tess had to return because Kivar betrayed her, trying to kill the baby because he was fully human, as it was the human parts of Max and Tess that made him. Max discovers that the baby is fine and his sickness was another lie. The baby wasn't sick on Earth, this was just another mindwarp by Tess in order to force Max's return to Antar. She had crash landed on Earth and slaughtered everyone around her ship at the air base. Tess and her son are now being hunted by the Army
. Max and the others start a vote in order to decide whether they should deliver Tess to the FBI because it was her fault they were suddenly all in danger again. In the end, Liz's final vote is no because she never wants to be a killer like Tess and she can't deliver her to the FBI—that would have done to Tess what they did to Max in the end of season one.
In the night, Tess realizes that the only way to save her son is to destroy the base with all the proof and kill herself in the process. Amazed at how Liz didn't vote against her, Tess asks for Liz's help, trusting only her in the group. She understands her mistakes and she tells Liz that Max always loved only her and all the times that she and Max were together she always got flashes of Liz in his mind. Liz appreciates her sincerity and Tess asks Liz to not let the FBI study her like a laboratory animal.
After Tess' death, Max decides to give up his child for adoption so he can have a safe, normal life. The decision destroys Max's heart, but Liz comforts and supports him, letting him cry in her arms.
Later Liz realizes that she now has a power: to see the future. When she touches Max she has visions that she, Max, Isabel, and Michael are going to die. Michael says that Max, Liz and Isabel should leave Roswell separately because the FBI knows who they are and their life in Roswell has to be over. Maria is upset by this because she doesn't want to be left in Roswell alone without Michael or Liz. Max proposes to Liz, making the choice to be with her even if they have only 12 days. Liz says yes. They all attend their graduation and when they realize this is where they are supposed to die from one of Liz's flashes they all escape into the desert. Now Max, Liz, Michael, Maria, Isabel and Kyle decide to leave together because even though Maria and Kyle were not going to be killed, Kyle wants to be with his own kind when he develops his alien powers from Max's healing and Maria wants to be with Michael. They leave Roswell that night, and go together in a van, deciding to live life using their powers to do good deeds on the road. Liz sends her father her journal, continuing the truth about everything so he can understand why she left and finally know what has been going on in her life. Liz marries Max in a beautiful country church.
got interviewed many times about her character, what many don't know is that the actress originally auditioned for all the three female roles in the show (Liz, Maria, Isabel) before finally landing the part of teen heroine Liz Parker
From the same interview she also explains what drew her to the story:
Appleby describes her character as both the innocent and strong-tempered woman that is result of her evolution through the series.
The actress is particularly proud that Liz has always stood by her convictions and she believes that her character can be a positive example for younger girls:
Regarding the character's relationship with Max Evans
(Jason Behr
) and her chemistry with the actor, Shiri states that their chemistry was there since the first time they read a scene together
When they asked her if the chemistry between her and Jason Behr
worked she answered:
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
and the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
of the Roswell High
Roswell High
Roswell High is a young adults book series written by Melinda Metz and published by Pocket Books. The 10-book series chronicles the adventures of three teen aliens and their human friends, who attend the fictional Ulysses F. Olsen High in Roswell, New Mexico...
book series and Roswell
Roswell (TV series)
Roswell is an American science fiction television series developed, produced, and co-written by Jason Katims. The series debuted on October 6, 1999 on The WB and moved to UPN for the third season. The last episode aired May 14, 2002...
T.V. series, which ran from 1999 to 2002. The character was portrayed by Shiri Appleby
Shiri Appleby
Shiri Freda Appleby is an American film and television actress. She is best known for her leading role as Liz Parker in the television series Roswell...
.
Liz is considered to be the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
of the series, along with Max Evans
Max Evans
Maxwell "Max" Evans is a fictional character created by Melinda Metz for the young adults book series Roswell High and adapted by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell...
. Liz is the main narrator throughout the three seasons and she has been described as the "heart and soul" of the show. She made her first appearance in the Roswell pilot episode and remained a core character until the series finale.
Fictional character summary
- Note: This article is about Liz Parker as the television character of RoswellRoswell (TV series)Roswell is an American science fiction television series developed, produced, and co-written by Jason Katims. The series debuted on October 6, 1999 on The WB and moved to UPN for the third season. The last episode aired May 14, 2002...
only. Although the two versions are similar the character of the original booksRoswell HighRoswell High is a young adults book series written by Melinda Metz and published by Pocket Books. The 10-book series chronicles the adventures of three teen aliens and their human friends, who attend the fictional Ulysses F. Olsen High in Roswell, New Mexico...
is considered an alternative universeParallel universe (fiction)A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality...
version.
Liz Parker attends Roswell High School, where her favorite subject is science. Her best friends are Alex Whitman and Maria DeLuca
Maria DeLuca
Maria DeLuca is a fictional character created by Melinda Metz for the young adults book series Roswell High and adapted by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell...
. At the beginning of the series, she breaks up with boyfriend Kyle Valenti
Kyle Valenti
Kyle Valenti is a fictional character created by Melinda Metz for the young adults book series Roswell High and adapted by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell. He was portrayed by actor Nick Wechsler in the television series.- Fictional character...
and engages in a dramatic relationship with alien
Extraterrestrial life in popular culture
In popular cultures, "extraterrestrials" are life forms — especially intelligent life forms— that are of extraterrestrial origin .-Historical ideas:-Pre-modern:...
-human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
hybrid Max Evans
Max Evans
Maxwell "Max" Evans is a fictional character created by Melinda Metz for the young adults book series Roswell High and adapted by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell...
, which is the crux of the television series.
Characteristics
Liz Parker is portrayed as a typical girl next to door, at least from the outside.She is beautiful though she doesn't really realize it. She is smart and very direct about her opinions, sensible, confident and levelheaded.
Her home was above the diner her family owns, the Crashdown Café, and until the last episode, she worked there as a waitress after school.
She did well in school, especially in science that had been her passion since she was a child. Her dream was to go into molecular biology at Harvard university. However, after the events in the season three finale, Liz's whereabouts are unknown.
Liz is a complex character; very sweet and kind overall, yet strong and determined.
Control is something very important for her: with it, she can get facts and answers and this makes her feel more safe about herself, those she loves, and life in general.
However, her real nature isn't really so controlled. When Max saves her life and she falls in love with him, everything in her life changes; Max is the living proof that people cannot control everything and even science doesn't have all the answers. She understands this, and realizes that she has to follow her heart and live in the moment, because no matter how people try, they can't control everything and they can't choose with whom they fall in love.
Liz emerges as the "brain" among the group. She is the one who continuously gets the very core point of their problems and is able to find a solution most of the time - especially if the problem is science related.
However, her determination and selfless spirit mixed with her sometimes controlling nature can also be a character flaw when it leads her into making decisions where she takes too much of the responsibility. This is also a characteristic that she shares with Max Evans
Max Evans
Maxwell "Max" Evans is a fictional character created by Melinda Metz for the young adults book series Roswell High and adapted by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell...
.
It is stated that she loves White Roses in the season 2 episode, End of the World.
Relationship with Max Evans
The important premise and core plot of the show is Liz's relationship with the character Max EvansMax Evans
Maxwell "Max" Evans is a fictional character created by Melinda Metz for the young adults book series Roswell High and adapted by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell...
.
The Co-executive producer of the series Ronald D. Moore
Ronald D. Moore
Ronald Dowl Moore is an American screenwriter and television producer best known for his work on Star Trek and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries and television series, for which he won a Peabody Award for creative excellence in 2005 and an Emmy Award in 2008.-Early life and...
, along with Jason Katims
Jason Katims
Jason Katims is an American television writer, producer, and playwright. He is best known for Relativity, which he created and wrote for; Roswell, which he developed, produced, and wrote for; Boston Public, which he co-wrote; Pepper Dennis, a short-lived dramedy starring Rebecca Romijn on The WB;...
, stated more than once that Max and Liz represented the heart and soul of the series.
Max has been in love with Liz since the first time he saw her at school, when he was just six years old (shortly after emerging from the pod). However, he kept himself distanced from her, primarily because of his concerns about being an alien and her being a human, so Liz did not know about his feelings and did not suspect that her laboratory partner had been secretly in love with her. This secret ends only in the pilot episode when she gets shot at the Crashdown Cafe and he saves her life, risking everything for her and starting the lead plot of the show.
Liz does love Max from the first time she gets the chance to see his soul and to really know him. This happens when Max does give her the chance to connect with him through a reversed connection created by his alien powers in order to make them even since the same happened when he healed her and he got flashes from her about her life and her inner feelings. In that moment, Liz can see his thoughts, especially about her, and she realizes that he's lonely, he loves her and he does not want to hurt people, so she starts to help him and his friends, from the beginning making the decision to renounce her normality.
She shares a deep, mysterious connection with him. It is with her involuntary help that he starts to find more clues about his origins. Also, Liz is able to feel whether Max is in danger or hurt (in the third season she feels when he dies), and they save each other's lives more than once.,, For this powerful connection between them and their deep and natural affinity
Affinity (sociology)
Affinity in terms of sociology, refers to "kinship of spirit", interest and other interpersonal commonalities. Affinity is characterized by high levels of intimacy and sharing, usually in close groups, also known as affinity groups. It differs from affinity in law and canon law which generally...
and compatibility
Interpersonal compatibility
Interpersonal compatibility is a concept that describes the long-term interaction between two or more individuals in terms of the ease and comfort of communication.-Existing concepts:...
, they are considered soulmate
Soulmate
A soulmate is believed by some to be the person with whom one has a feeling of deep or natural affinity, similarity, love, intimacy, sexuality, spirituality, or compatibility. A related concept is that of the twin flame or twin soul, which is thought to be the ultimate soulmate...
s by both the characters of the story and the creators of the series.
Recurring Themes
Due to the nature of their relationship and the obvious difference between an alienExtraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
boy and a human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
girl, Max and Liz s relationship is another modern example of forbidden lovers, with many references to Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
through the series by both the characters and the writers.
Most notable examples are when Maria De Luca called them "Romeo and Juliet against the world", or when Liz herself used the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet into her own tragic speech in the episode "The End of the World" from season two.
The producers and writers of the series were not unaware of the parallelism either.
Effect of Max's powers on Liz
After Max Evans heals her in the pilot, he converts her to the alien side and she changes. At the end of the show, she is still human, but has developed some alien powers.In the episode "Four Aliens and A Baby", Liz blasts Tess Harding
Tess Harding
Tess Harding is a fictional character created by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell. She was portrayed by actress Emilie de Ravin.-Fictional character summary:...
twice, using a green energy that exited from her hands. In "Graduation", she starts to see flashes about the future after touching people. She sees a customer of the Crashdown Café in danger and she and Max save her. While she is making out with Max she gets a flash of Max, herself, Michael
Michael Guerin
Michael Guerin is a fictional character created by Melinda Metz for the young adults book series Roswell High and adapted by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell...
and Isabel
Isabel Evans
Isabel Evans is a fictional character created by Melinda Metz for the young adults book series Roswell High and adapted by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell...
being killed by someone. Thanks to this power, they flee Roswell at the end of the series, before the FBI can kill them.
In the season two episode "Max in the City", viewers can see her "change" start to develop when she saves Max's life by projecting her image from Roswell to New York with Isabel's help.
Season One
In the pilot, while Liz is working at her parents' restaurant, Crashdown Cafe, she is shot accidentally by two men who are having an argument. When Max saves her life by healing her gunshot wound, her life is changed forever. He puts his hand over her wound and miraculously makes the wound and bullet disappear. Realizing that there is something incredibly amazing about Max, she decides to investigate. She takes Max's pencil, which Max had been chewing on, places the salivaSaliva
Saliva , referred to in various contexts as spit, spittle, drivel, drool, or slobber, is the watery substance produced in the mouths of humans and most other animals. Saliva is a component of oral fluid. In mammals, saliva is produced in and secreted from the three pairs of major salivary glands,...
collected from the pencil tip on a slide, and examines the slide through a microscope
Microscope
A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy...
. She can see that his cells
Cell (biology)
The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing, and is often called the building block of life. The Alberts text discusses how the "cellular building blocks" move to shape developing embryos....
are not human. When she confronts Max about everything that had happened to her and his alien cells, Max confesses to her that he is an alien that had been on the alien craft that crashed in Roswell in 1947
Roswell UFO incident
The Roswell UFO Incident was the recovery of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly an extra-terrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and of...
.
With growing suspicion coming from the local sheriff, Jim Valenti, Liz devises a plan to throw him off Max's scent. She is successful and Valenti, though still cautious and wary of Max, lets him go. After this incident, she starts developing deep feelings for Max, despite her current relationship with the sheriff's son Kyle Valenti
Kyle Valenti
Kyle Valenti is a fictional character created by Melinda Metz for the young adults book series Roswell High and adapted by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell. He was portrayed by actor Nick Wechsler in the television series.- Fictional character...
. For a while she lies to her friends Alex and Maria, but eventually Maria confronts Liz about what is going on. Liz eventually relents to Maria's questions and tells her all she knows about Max, Isabel and Michael. Kyle grows jealous of the growing relationship between her and Max, and a group of his friends beat up Max. She breaks up with Kyle in response to this, causing a rift between them. However, her relationship with Max grows very strong and she finds herself falling in love with him. An incident involving Michael Guerin, however, scares Max away, and he realizes that doesn't want to hurt Liz in any way. He is an alien and doesn't know what is going to happen to him or who might come after him; he wants her to be safe.
However, Liz and Max end up falling in love. Max, as an alien, had a profound effect on her, and when they kiss Liz gets images of Max's past, which help Max, Michael and Isabel discover a healing stone., This doesn't last long, as Tess Harding arrives in Roswell and begins to influence Max in a strange way. Liz sees Max and Tess kiss and is heartbroken, but after hearing Max out she and the others start to believe that Tess could be the fourth alien named Nasedo
Nasedo
Nasedo aka Edward "Ed" M. Harding is a fictional character from the television series Roswell, portrayed mainly by actor Jim Ortlieb, although also by many others whose form he "shapeshifts" to.-Biography:...
using a female appearance and she's influencing Max's thoughts by making him hallucinate. She forgives him and with her help the group discovers that Tess is not Nacedo but another hybrid like Max, Michael and Isabel and her unique power is to create mindwarps.,,
Feeling that Liz is a threat to his plans, the real Nasedo shapeshifts
Shapeshifting
Shapeshifting is a common theme in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. It is also found in epic poems, science fiction literature, fantasy literature, children's literature, Shakespearean comedy, ballet, film, television, comics, and video games...
into Max and takes her. When she kisses him, she realizes he is not Max because she has visions of his past. Max, worried about Liz and what Nasedo might do, goes after them. Maria and Alex tell Sheriff Valenti that they are worried because Liz is with Max and she called claiming that she was scared because Max was acting weird. This was done in order to try to find Liz faster. They are found in a theme park. In the house of mirrors
House of mirrors
A house of mirrors or hall of mirrors is a traditional attraction at funfairs and amusement parks. The basic concept behind a house of mirrors is to be a maze-like puzzle. In addition to the maze, participants are also given mirrors as obstacles, and glass panes to parts of the maze they cannot...
, Max is grabbed by the FBI and Nasedo grabs Liz. She kisses him and again realizes that he is Nasedo when she gets images from his past. She is deeply heartbroken when Max is abducted by the FBI and has to tell the news to Michael and Isabel. With the help of Nasedo, the gang saves Max from the FBI.
In the season one finale, "Destiny", she goes with Max to the alien pod chamber in the rock formation that was disguised as the alien craft that crashed. Max, Michael, Isabel and Tess' destiny is revealed when they use the alien s to contact Max and Isabel's (alien) mother. Max, Michael, Isabel and Tess are the Royal Four of their home planet Antar. They were all killed in their former lives by their enemy Kivar. During their deaths, their alien DNA was mixed with human DNA and sent to earth so their race could preserve the Royal Four in order for them to return some day to rule again. In their former lives, Max was Zan, the king of Antar. Tess (Ava in former life) was Zan's wife, Isabel (Vilandra) was Zan's sister and her husband was Michael (Rath), Zan's second in command. After realizing that Max and Tess are destined to be together and the importance of Max to his race, Liz decides to let Max go in order for him to fulfill his destiny, because she now sees he is destined to be with Tess, no matter how much they love each other. As she leaves the cave, Max follows her but Michael stops him, saying, "You have to let her go".
Season Two
Season two begins with Liz returning from a summer away from Roswell. She has a new job as an intern for Congresswoman Whitaker, who later turns out to be a Skin, an enemy of the hybrids. While Liz continues to have strong feelings for Max, she stands by her decision that their relationship stands in the way of his destiny. Max, on the other hand, tries everything he can to be with her.,In the episode "The End of the World", Liz is asked by a future version of Max to help him get the modern-day Max to fall out of love with her. Future Max claims that if they don't do this, the world will end and they will all die. Shocked, she only accepts it when Future Max predicts that Max will turn up with a Mariachi
Mariachi
Mariachi is a genre of music that originated in the State of Jalisco, in Mexico. It is an integration of stringed instruments highly influenced by the cultural impacts of the historical development of Western Mexico. Throughout the history of mariachi, musicians have experimented with brass, wind,...
band and sing a love song for her. When this transpires she agrees to help Future Max. He goes on to tell her the kind of future present-day Max and she will have if they do not succeed. He tells her that after she and Max made love for the first time, it cemented their relationship and they were never apart again. This upset Tess and she left Roswell. Max and Liz were married in Las Vegas when they were 19 and were together until the end of the world came because when Max's enemies came to earth, Max, Michael, and Isabel were not strong enough in their powers without Tess. So they have to get Tess and Max together to save everyone and rewrite the future. She tries to get Tess to help by attracting Max towards her but it fails when Max catches Liz watching. Liz at the end has to resort to making Max think that she slept with Kyle. This succeeds; as Max walks to the window, he sees Liz talking with Kyle in bed, which breaks Max's heart. Liz has one last dance to her future wedding song, "I Shall Believe" by Sheryl Crow
Sheryl Crow
Sheryl Suzanne Crow is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, musician, and actress. Her music incorporates elements of rock, folk, hip hop, country and pop...
, with the Future Max, but he disappears because the future has been changed and he no longer exists.
Liz attracts the attention of Maria's cousin, and they have a few dates, but nothing serious comes out of it., She is left devastated when she hears that Alex has died in a car crash. She visits the destroyed car that Alex was driving and finds a picture of Alex and a girl he met in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, but his head was cut off in the picture. This leads her to suspect that Alex was murdered, and she begins to try and find the supposed truth by asking the last person who saw him what Alex had said to him. At the funeral gathering in Alex's home, she accuses an alien of killing Alex. This deeply offends Max and the others, more so Isabel who had grown close to Alex. This creates a "them vs. us" scenario and the whole future of the formerly tight group looks bleak.
She decides to go to Sweden to find the people with whom Alex was staying, but she receives a call from the Swedish government claiming that the building Alex was standing in front of in the photo, supposedly taken in Sweden, hasn't existed in several years. She comes to the conclusion that Alex never went to Sweden. Her investigations lead her, Maria, and Michael to Las Cruses University. They discover that Alex had been working there on a translation program for the alien book that was given to Max and the others. Liz sees the girl with Alex in the photo at a Nelly Furtado
Nelly Furtado
Nelly Kim Furtado is a Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer and actress. Furtado grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.Furtado first gained fame with her debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, and its single "I'm Like a Bird", which won a 2001 Juno Award for Single of the Year and a 2002 Grammy...
concert but loses her in the crowd.
Liz returns to Roswell, and she finds out that Tess is pregnant with Max's child, and that he has to leave Earth and go back to Antar. He has to do this because the baby is dying, as he can't survive in the Earth's environment. Max also asks her about the girl at Las Cruses. Wanting to know why he is asking, she learns that Max suspects the girl to be an alien and that he has to kill her to stop her from being a threat. She asks whether she could go with him to witness it, and he agrees, but as Max was about to commit the act, Liz realizes that the girl is human; she saves the girl from the fire that Max has caused. They head home confused because they do not know who killed Alex and it now looks like they will never know. Max tells Liz and that he has to go back to Antar with Tess, Isabel and Michael because the baby is dying. Liz is heartbroken and angry at the same time at the thought that Max is leaving her. Max discovers the truth about Kyle when he asks Liz if she really slept with Kyle and she tells him no. Upon realizing this he sees the huge mistake he has made with Tess. He wishes he could go back because he has always loved Liz, despite being with Tess. Liz asks him if he loves Tess and Max says, "Not like I love you". What he felt for Tess was only care. He wants things to be different, but he feels that his duty is to his son, and thus has no other choice than to save him. Max and Liz share a passionate kiss. When Liz doesn't have a vision, Max breaks down in tears. He realizes that their futures did not intersect. If he goes with his son, he will never see her again. Liz goes to Maria's cousin, Sean, and declares that Max has broken her heart, but she realizes that it isn't Sean's fault and she can't use him as Max's replacement.
During the day the aliens have planned to leave, Liz, Maria, Sean and Kyle are at the Crashdown Café talking. Maria and Liz notice that Kyle keeps tapping the table in a peculiar sort of way. When they mentioned this, he says that he has no control over it and doesn't even know he's doing it. They go to Maria's house and find her mom remembering about a hostage situation in which they had been. Tess uses an alien power to blank her memory. They confront Maria's mother and she appears fine and seems to forget again. But she then starts to tap the same way that Kyle had done earlier in the day. Liz remembers that Alex used to tap his bass guitar the same way, and she realizes that this isn't a coincidence. They confront Kyle and tell him to look around the room to see whether anything will jerk his memory. When he looks in the mirror, he remembers that Tess killed Alex and that he had been mindwarped by Tess to carry Alex's dead body to the car. Liz and Maria go to the pod chamber just as Max, Michael, Isabel and Tess are about to leave the planet with the granlith. At the last minute, Michael decides he cannot leave Earth because this is his home and he is in love with Maria and can't leave her. As Michael leaves the pod chamber, the door opens and Liz and Maria tell Michael that Tess killed Alex. Max confronts Tess and realizes that it was all a setup and that the baby was a part of the plan. Kivar wasn't Tess and Nacedo's enemy. The truth is that 40 years before, Nasedo had made a deal with Kivar: go home to Antar, delivering Max and his friends to him (that would have killed them) and carry Max's heir in the process.
Angry, Max wants to kill her but then realizes that she is carrying his son so he lets her go in order to save the baby. He regroups with Liz and the others on the mountainside. Max then tells Liz that he was wrong about many things but not about her, that he loves her, and will always love her. They embrace and the season ends with Max saying that he must save his son.
Season Three
At the start of season three, viewers can only see flashes of some moments of the summer when Liz and Max reconcile in order to understand what happened after departure and what brought them to "busted" and then together again. They arrange to go out on a date, a way to start things over from the beginning. They are on their date when Max decides to go skinny dipping. As Liz is about to join him, Max gets a vision from his son and begins to drown. Liz saves him. Max realizes that his son is in trouble. They search for a ship that they believe is held in a storage facility in the basement of a convenience store in UtahUtah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
. Liz and Max come up with a plan to hold up the store and when Liz is holding the shop clerk hostage, Max will go down and check to see whether the ship is there. Max gives Liz a gun and when they hold up the convenience store, Max finds that there is a ship and it is still working, but his time is cut short as the police arrive. They try to escape, but they fail. They are caught after a police chase, and both are arrested and held in the local jail. Max is let out after the police find that nothing was taken from the shop. They couldn't find the weapon, but due to a witness seeing Liz with the gun, Liz is kept in jail.
She gets saved by Max, as he is able to bribe the FBI into pulling some strings and getting the case dropped. However, Liz's panic-stricken father forbids her to see Max, and bans Max from coming into the Crashdown Café. She defiantly breaks the rule, and upsets her father on numerous occasions. The reason that her father bans Max is that her father was a wild teenager, and his high school sweetheart died in a car crash because of his drunk driving. Realizing this after her mother tells her, Liz's attitude towards him changes and they begin to reconcile their differences.
Even if Tess' fiasco still did hurt her, Liz takes responsibility for her own mistakes and realizes it wasn't only Max's fault things went that way. She and Max love each other and they don't want to give up on their love no matter what. She understands that Max does need her so she stands by him trying to help him, putting herself in danger, finding and saving a baby. Thinking about Max's serious problem, she hides her inner feelings for most of the season, giving him her support, but then she begins to suffer some side effects towards Max's touch. Whenever Max touches her, a spark appears on her body and causes her pain. This scares her, as she realizes that when Max healed her in the pilot episode, saving her life, he changed her and they don't know whether she is safe or not. Max is scared for her; he wants to contact the FBI, the same people who tortured him in the end of season one, in order to find a way to keep her safe and know what is happening to her. He realizes that what happened with Tess is still hurting Liz and they need to talk about it. But Liz realizes that she needs a little time alone away from Roswell and Max in order to find her balance again and give their love another chance. She decides that she wants to leave Roswell temporarily, so that she can get better and understand what is happening to her, not only the alien aspect but the confusion about her life. Max respects her decision, waiting for her in Roswell. She goes to an all-girl boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
to start fresh.
However, it is not long before Liz's life in Roswell catches up with her. While sleeping she suddenly wakes up realizing that Max has died. She is heartbroken and decides to drown her sorrows with alcohol. While drunk she sees Max (whose body has been taken over by an old millionaire named Clayton who wanted to kill her because Max's soul was still alive in him only for her and his memories about her that Clayton got), she tells Maria who doesn't believe her. But they are both in shock when Max (when his body was still taken over by the old millionaire) comes to kill Liz as she is all he thinks about. They are both falling from the top of a building when Max regains control and he saves Liz's life by putting a force field in her path to break her fall. But, realizing that Clayton would kill her, he doesn't let himself hit the ground; he sacrifices his life for her. When Liz wakes up she realizes that Max has died; there is no heartbeat and no breath from him, so she kisses him with a desperate goodbye. Believing Max to be still dead, Liz is shocked as he wakes up and appears to come back to life. They realize that Liz has saved Max's life making him come back with a kiss.
Back in Roswell, Max and Liz are shocked when Tess appears with Max's baby. Tess had to return because Kivar betrayed her, trying to kill the baby because he was fully human, as it was the human parts of Max and Tess that made him. Max discovers that the baby is fine and his sickness was another lie. The baby wasn't sick on Earth, this was just another mindwarp by Tess in order to force Max's return to Antar. She had crash landed on Earth and slaughtered everyone around her ship at the air base. Tess and her son are now being hunted by the Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
. Max and the others start a vote in order to decide whether they should deliver Tess to the FBI because it was her fault they were suddenly all in danger again. In the end, Liz's final vote is no because she never wants to be a killer like Tess and she can't deliver her to the FBI—that would have done to Tess what they did to Max in the end of season one.
In the night, Tess realizes that the only way to save her son is to destroy the base with all the proof and kill herself in the process. Amazed at how Liz didn't vote against her, Tess asks for Liz's help, trusting only her in the group. She understands her mistakes and she tells Liz that Max always loved only her and all the times that she and Max were together she always got flashes of Liz in his mind. Liz appreciates her sincerity and Tess asks Liz to not let the FBI study her like a laboratory animal.
After Tess' death, Max decides to give up his child for adoption so he can have a safe, normal life. The decision destroys Max's heart, but Liz comforts and supports him, letting him cry in her arms.
Later Liz realizes that she now has a power: to see the future. When she touches Max she has visions that she, Max, Isabel, and Michael are going to die. Michael says that Max, Liz and Isabel should leave Roswell separately because the FBI knows who they are and their life in Roswell has to be over. Maria is upset by this because she doesn't want to be left in Roswell alone without Michael or Liz. Max proposes to Liz, making the choice to be with her even if they have only 12 days. Liz says yes. They all attend their graduation and when they realize this is where they are supposed to die from one of Liz's flashes they all escape into the desert. Now Max, Liz, Michael, Maria, Isabel and Kyle decide to leave together because even though Maria and Kyle were not going to be killed, Kyle wants to be with his own kind when he develops his alien powers from Max's healing and Maria wants to be with Michael. They leave Roswell that night, and go together in a van, deciding to live life using their powers to do good deeds on the road. Liz sends her father her journal, continuing the truth about everything so he can understand why she left and finally know what has been going on in her life. Liz marries Max in a beautiful country church.
Shiri Appleby about her character
During the time when the show aired Shiri ApplebyShiri Appleby
Shiri Freda Appleby is an American film and television actress. She is best known for her leading role as Liz Parker in the television series Roswell...
got interviewed many times about her character, what many don't know is that the actress originally auditioned for all the three female roles in the show (Liz, Maria, Isabel) before finally landing the part of teen heroine Liz Parker
From the same interview she also explains what drew her to the story:
Appleby describes her character as both the innocent and strong-tempered woman that is result of her evolution through the series.
The actress is particularly proud that Liz has always stood by her convictions and she believes that her character can be a positive example for younger girls:
Regarding the character's relationship with Max Evans
Max Evans
Maxwell "Max" Evans is a fictional character created by Melinda Metz for the young adults book series Roswell High and adapted by Jason Katims for the 1999-2002 American science fiction television series Roswell...
(Jason Behr
Jason Behr
Jason Nathaniel Behr is an American film and television actor. He first starred in the American television series Roswell, for which he was twice nominated for a Saturn Award, followed by roles in the films The Shipping News and the American remake of the Japanese horror film The Grudge...
) and her chemistry with the actor, Shiri states that their chemistry was there since the first time they read a scene together
When they asked her if the chemistry between her and Jason Behr
Jason Behr
Jason Nathaniel Behr is an American film and television actor. He first starred in the American television series Roswell, for which he was twice nominated for a Saturn Award, followed by roles in the films The Shipping News and the American remake of the Japanese horror film The Grudge...
worked she answered: