Maximum Ride Wiki
Register
Advertisement
I'm sorry, Max. But as you've probably figured out, we're shutting down all of our recombinant-DNA experiments. All of the human-lupine blends have been retired, and it's time to retire you too.

–Anne Walker, Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

In the Maximum Ride series, "retire" was a term used by the whitecoats in place of "kill" or "exterminate". It was used in context with mutants such as the Erasers.

History[]

Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports[]

After Max asked the Voice where all the Erasers had gone, it told her that all of them had been retired, marking the first time the term was used in the series. When the Flock was kidnapped later in the book, Anne Walker told Max that Itexicon was retiring all their recombinant-DNA experiments, and that the Flock would be next to die. Ari Batchelder also revealed that he would've been retired along with the other Erasers, but was spared because Jeb Batchelder was his father and because his expiration date was very close.

Controversy[]

Retire as in kill? Is that how you live with yourselves? By using euphemisms for death and murder?

–Max to Anne Walker, Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Max expressed strong hatred of the term in the third book, going so far as to asking how the whitecoats lived knowing they used it the way they did.

Advertisement