Maxwell McGrath

Maxwell McGrath, also known as Max or Max Steel, is the main protagonist of the Max Steel (2013) series.

A normal teenager, who upon moving to a new town finds out is able to generate and control Tachyon Unlimited Radiate Bio-Optimized (or TURBO) energy.

In the AWA fics, Max is listed as a purchased prisoner from the Slave Fortress.

Appearance
Max is a tall, skinny teenager with an athletic body type. He has brown chestnut hair and blue eyes. When is not saving the world, Max uses normal clothes, consisting in a blue jacket with the symbol of Steel on its chest, a white watch, black jeans and white shoes. In the halfway of the second season, Max's jacket turned to grey.

After the time skip, Max gets a larger build and he gets more akin to his classic counterpart. Max's facial structure also gets larger and he has short chestnut hair (In Turbo-Charged, however, his facial structure and hair style slightly changed, the last being more similar to when he was 16 years old). His day-by-day clothes consists in a white t-shirt with the Steel symbol on his chest (but slightly modified), black pants and black shoes.

Personality
Max is a charismatic, outgoing, heroic and energetic boy. He had a strong desire to know more about his past, just like Steel and would be willing to do risky things to get the answers that they needed, like for example when Max and Steel allied with Colonel Jasper in order to know more about their pasts without knowing that he secretly was allied with Dread.

As Max Steel, he is described as a "intelligent superhero with a wicked sense of humor" by the official YouTube channel. He constantly tries to give good example to other people, for instance, stopping at red lights even when Max is late for school. Max is also altruistic, as he strives to save everyone, including his family and friends, whom he is extremely loyal and deeply cares for. During many times, he risked his own life to save them, like when he gave the last piece of the Turbo Star to Dread (who also states that Max's weak spot is his loyalty for the others) to save Forge. A remarkable trace of Max is that he is quite optimistic no matter how bad the situation is and during most of the time, while fighting against his enemies, he makes jokes about them. For instance, when Max interacted with Terrorax and made a joke about his mask, he pointed out his "legendary banter". Max also would constantly attempt to defeat villains and contain them and in rare occasions he was forced to kill them.

After he discovers the truth about his past, Max feels a little depressed and angry, mainly towards his mother. He even thought he didn't knew how to talk with his friends anymore. However, Max eventually accepts his alien heritage and proudly states that he was the son of Ja'em Mk'rah. Though he doesn't mentions, deeply Max does feels insecure about not being being good enough for Steel and living up for his father's heritage, as mentioned by Makino in The Wrath of Makino. Due to his double life as a superhero and a normal teenager, Max keeps in mind that he sometimes have a strange behavior towards his friends, especially to Sydney Gardner, which he keeps asking to himself is he already knew that he was lying to her.

After the time skip, Max is much more mature, but still retains some traces of his personality, such as his sense of humor, bravery, opitmism and loyalty to his friends and family. He now enjoys practicing extreme sports (which makes him more akin to his classic counterpart), like skateboarding and sky-diving, no matter how extreme they are. Max also seems to be not afraid to reveal his secret identity to the world anymore, as he rarely uses a mask while not fighting villains. He is also currently leading a team of superheroes and always does his best to lead them. Initially though, Max would constantly doubt about his potential as a leader, such as when he thought he had risked Rayne and Alex's lives when they fought against the Elementors and lost, or when in Team Turbo Fusion-Tek when the team was captured and enslaved by Mortum and he was blaming himself.

Abilities
Max, since he is half Tachyon, has the ability of producing T.U.R.B.O. Energy. In his human form, he is very strong and agile for an average individual. With Steel's help, he can ultralink with him, generating one hero known as Max Steel, able to turn into different types of Turbo Modes.
 * Superhuman Strength: Due to the fact that Max is half Takonian, he is stronger than an average individual.
 * Superhuman Speed: Max is naturally faster than an average human.
 * Superhuman Reflexes: Max could easily dodge Mortum's attacks on Team Turbo Fusion Tek at blur speeds.
 * T.U.R.B.O Energy Generation: Max is capable of generating endless amounts of T.U.R.B.O. Energy, which make him stronger and faster than average individuals. Max manifests this in many forms, such as launching T.U.R.B.O. Energy through his fists, leaking it through his eyes, getting angry and others. The energy is both beneficial and harmful, considering that Max can partially use it to activate his Turbo Modes and get superhuman conditions, but if he is not linked with Steel, he could overload and ultimately explode, thus causing his death.
 * Green T.U.R.B.O. Energy Generation: During the events of Turbo-Charged, Max starts to generate a new variation of T.U.R.B.O. energy featured by its green color. The energy makes him exceptionally stronger, as he was capable to lift with ease many heavy rocks and faster, as he stated in Turbo-Charged that he had ran around 30km and he wasn't tired.

Skills

 * Leadership Skills: During the events of Team Turbo, Max started to develop his leadership skills.
 * Swordsmanship: Max has ability with swords. In Team Turbo Fusion Tek, this becomes more evident when he was fighting against Mortum, wherein he easily and quickly wielded his daggers.
 * Driving Skills

Trivia

 * In some episodes, when Max is not using his mask, some of The Elementors (like Earth and Fire) see his real face, although that they don't know his secret identity.
 * It was revealed in The Legend of Ja'em Mk'rah that Max is a Tachyon-Human Hybrid, which explains why he generates T.U.R.B.O. Energy, as well that Jim McGrath is an alien.
 * Max has a crush on Sydney Gardner.
 * In Makino Strikes: Part One, Max felt very depressed and upset that he is a Tachyon-Human Hybrid, even calling himself as a "alien freakshow", and that his mother never told him in the first place, which he stated that he could accept his half alien if he knew from the start. Molly also stated that she never told him because she wasn't sure if Max was ready for the truth.
 * In Full Metal Racket, Max wore a suit with blue spikes during the concert with his band, which is coincidentally very similar to Turbo Spike Mode, a Turbo Mode that Max unlocked episodes later.
 * When he was a baby, he used Steel as a pacifier.
 * Max's friends constantly question about his actions, like for example when he uses weird excuses on why he is leaving, how he talks to himself and having a lot absences since he arrived on Copper Canyon High School. In The Dawn of Morphos, Sydney created a theory that in fact, Maxwell McGrath could be Max Steel using as evidences his strange actions and phrases, even though that Molly McGrath denied everything.
 * Few characters in the show that Max is Max Steel, most of them being N-Tek Agents: Steel, Forge Ferrus, Berto, Jefferson Smith, Kat Ryan, Sydney Gardner, Molly McGrath, Jim McGrath, Ven-Ghan, Alejandro Villar, Rayne Martinez, C.Y.T.R.O., Commander Parker and other N-Tek workers.
 * Makino, Mortum, Terrorax and the Nexus legion are the only villains who knows about Max's secret identity.
 * Initially, Max's action figures weren't as tall as other characters in the line due to the fact that he was a teenager. While villains and other heroes stood around 12 inches, Max stood 11 inches. In 2016 however, Max's action figures now stand the same size as other characters in the line as he got older.
 * As seen in Team Turbo, Max learned how to read Planet Tachyon's language.
 * According to reel clip, Max's teenager face took a while to be created and molded, and the final result made the modelers very happy and proud of their work.
 * After the timeskip, Max's face is now modeled after his classic counterpart, specifically when he was younger. Following Turbo-Charged, his facial structure was slightly altered.
 * In Driven, Max obtains his driver license, which reveals that he was born in June, 07, 1995. It is also revealed that the series takes place in 2012, thus making Max seventeen, unlike official sources who stated that he was sixteen.
 * In the bonus clip Anniversary, it is stated that Max and Steel are linked together more than a year.