May is one of the two playable leads in It Takes Two. She and her husband, Cody, are parents to a young daughter named Rose, and the game opens with May and Cody preparing to divorce.

Spoiler note
This guide covers May’s full character arc and the main story beats.

May at a glance

• Role in the game: Co-op protagonist alongside Cody
• Family: Rose’s mother; married to Cody at the start
• Inciting event: May and Cody’s minds end up inside dolls their daughter made
• Doll form: May is portrayed as a wooden doll
• Voice actor: Annabelle Dowler
• How some reviews describe her: a hard-working engineer and mother

What May is dealing with

May is written as someone who’s trying to keep life functioning while her relationship is collapsing. The game doesn’t present the divorce setup as a single person’s fault; it starts from disconnection, resentment, and years of talking past each other.

A useful way to read May is as “high standards under stress.” She tends to push for solutions and forward motion, especially early on, which is part of why her clashes with Cody feel sharp. That edge is intentional: the story needs both characters to begin defensive so their growth is visible later.

Her place in the core premise

The premise is simple and deliberately weird: May and Cody, in the middle of a divorce, are transformed into dolls and forced through a co-op journey where progress requires collaboration.

They’re repeatedly pulled into “relationship homework” by Dr. Hakim, a talking relationship therapy book who keeps steering them away from shortcuts and into cooperation.

May’s arc in plain terms

May’s arc is less about becoming a different person and more about regaining access to the parts of herself that got buried under responsibility and frustration.

Key beats that define her arc:

• From tunnel vision to teamwork: she stops treating Cody like an obstacle and starts treating him like a partner again.
• From control to trust: she learns she can’t “manage” her way through every emotional problem.
• Rediscovering passion: the story explicitly ties late-game progress to May reconnecting with music and singing.

Story recap focused on May

May and Cody tell Rose they’re divorcing. Afterward, Rose takes handmade dolls that resemble her parents, and when her tears land on them, May and Cody wake up trapped in the dolls.

From there, May spends most of the game in a tug-of-war between urgency (get back to Rose, fix the “spell”) and the uncomfortable reality Dr. Hakim keeps forcing on them: they can’t brute-force their way out without actually rebuilding cooperation.

Late in the story, the game frames a major emotional turning point around helping May reconnect with music and singing, culminating in a performance that signals the relationship has genuinely shifted.

How playing May feels

If you’re choosing who to play, May often reads as the more direct-action character in moment-to-moment gameplay. Some guides summarize it as Cody being more “strategic” while May gets more “explosive” or aggressive tools.

That isn’t a hard rule for every chapter, but it’s a good expectation-setter: May commonly gets abilities that finish problems once Cody sets the opportunity, and that rhythm matches the story’s theme of coordination.

Signature abilities you will recognize

The game constantly swaps powers by chapter, so it’s smarter to remember the pattern than memorize a full list.

A few widely referenced examples:

• Shed section: May uses a hammer while Cody uses nails, built around timing and shared traversal.
• A later section example: one level gives Cody time manipulation while May can create copies of herself, requiring synchronized execution.

Common misunderstandings about May

• May is not written as the villain. The game starts with both partners bitter and defensive, then uses the journey to expose blind spots on both sides.
• Her competence is not the point of the conflict. Even sources that label her a high-achieving engineer still frame the marriage problem as emotional disconnection, not intelligence or capability.
• The “doll curse” is a metaphor engine. The plot uses the dolls and Dr. Hakim to externalize relationship work into physical cooperation challenges.

Why May works as a co-op protagonist

May is effective because she creates friction without becoming a caricature. Her urgency, sharpness, and competence make co-op moments feel earned: when she and Cody finally sync up, it lands because the game has shown how hard that is for them.

And because the game is built only for cooperative play, May isn’t just “the wife character.” She’s half of the system. The story premise, level design, and power-swapping are all structured around May and Cody needing each other to move forward.