Love and Deepspace Caleb: How to unlock him, and his lore and backstory explained
Everything you need to know about LaDS' fifth love interest, a childhood friend who's unexpectedly returned… but isn't quite the same any more.
If your taste in dating sim love interests runs towards the yandere end of the scale, then Love and Deepspace's Caleb could just be the LI for you. First introduced as the heroine's childhood friend slash surrogate brother early on in the story, Caleb dropped off the map for a while both IRL and in-universe, only to reappear as the game's fifth love interest when Version 3.0 launched in January 2025.
Caleb's long history with the heroine is one of the most integral motivations for her actions in Love and Deepspace's main story, so even though it takes a while to reach the point where you can actually date him, it's worth sticking around for the long-haul. To help you out, we've put together an overview of everything we know about Caleb in Love and Deepspace, including his lore and backstory, and how to unlock him.
On this page:
- Who is Caleb in Love and Deepspace?
- How to unlock Caleb in Love and Deepspace
- Caleb's lore and backstory explained (SPOILERS!)
Who is Caleb in Love and Deepspace?
Caleb is first introduced early on in the first chapter of LaDS' story, where he briefly cameos as part of a scene involving the heroine's family and home life: Caleb and the heroine were raised as foster siblings by their "Grandma" Josephine after both being orphaned during the Chronorift Catastrophe. Their family dinner is cut short, however, when an explosion in Josephine's house results in her death and seemingly kills Caleb as well. Uncovering the perpetrators and the reason behind the bombing to get justice for her family is a driving force behind the heroine's actions for much of the first year of LaDS' story.
That's the last we see of Caleb until the new story (released in January 2025) with Version 3.0, Homecoming Wings, in which he and the heroine are reunited when she finds herself on an undercover operation in the floating district of Skyhaven, infiltrating the secretive Farspace Fleet which is based there for ease of patrolling the Deepspace Tunnel. Here she's shocked to learn that the Fleet's already-legendary new Colonel is none other than Caleb himself – although why he allowed his "death" to go misreported, and why he abandoned his dream job as a fighter pilot in order to work for the Fleet, is something he refuses to discuss despite his obvious happiness at their reunion.
Despite their upbringing as surrogate siblings, Caleb has harboured romantic feelings for the heroine since they were young, although up until his disappearance he endeavoured to keep this hidden from everyone but himself. Though he frequently teases her, he has also been extremely protective and even possessive of her since they were children – to the extent that one of the very few canon interactions between LIs in Love and Deepspace hints at him discouraging Zayne from pursuing her when all three were students together – an attribute that quickly begins to border on obsession once they're reunited in Skyhaven.
Many of Caleb's defining traits are established through the heroine's reminiscences of their shared upbringing both before and after their reunion, revealing that he was always one of the most popular kids in their neighbourhood growing up, and that his talents outside of his physical prowess include being an impeccable chef. The distinctive apple necklace he wears on a chain with his dogtags is revealed to have been a gift from the heroine which she later gives back to him after being presented with them as proof of his "death", causing him to tease her about re-gifting him the same item twice.
Caleb's side-stories reveal that he also suffered a traumatic incident during his pilot training. After almost failing his exams due to his psychological profile raising red flags with his superiors, he was nevertheless ordered to enter the Deepspace Tunnel during his flight exam, and became lost in an uncharted zone, nearly dying as a result. Returning after being MIA for a week, Caleb made a rapid physical recovery. But while he refuses to talk about his experiences in detail, he has suffered from nightmares and dissociative episodes ever since, for which he takes strong medication that runs the risk of addiction. Due to the incident, he also never formally graduated flight school, and it's implied that he instead transferred to the Farspace Fleet much earlier than he later leads the heroine to believe.
How to unlock Caleb in Love and Deepspace
Despite how early on in the game you catch your first glimpse of Caleb, you have to wait a little bit in order to actually unlock him as a love interest, which only happens once you've completed Chapter 1-3 of Homecoming Wings, the new storyline added with Version 3.0 and the fourth main story overall. Until you've completed the aforementioned story beat, you won't be able to go on dates with Caleb, encounter him at Destiny Café, view his information or make edits to his room decor under the With Him tab, or track your Affinity gains with him.
However, you can have Caleb as your combat partner as soon as you obtain some Memories of him, meaning you can begin getting to grips with his kit and levelling up his cards as soon as you get into the game proper and begin to interact with the gacha. Unlocking him as a love interest later on will immediately grant you all the Affinity gains you've stored up from pulling and levelling his Memories in the meantime, so none of your interactions prior to unlocking him go to waste, even if you can't view them early.
LaDS does also give you the option to skip to any storyline immediately once you've completed the prologue and basic tutorials, so you can just jump to Homecoming Wings if you know you're really just here for Caleb. However, doing this will drop you straight into the fourth major part of the ongoing story without the context of everything that happens in Versions 1-2 and the extensive Version 3 Prologue, which – as well as introducing all of the other key plot points and characters – provide a very crucial background to understanding Caleb's relationship with the heroine by the time of Version 3.0. Therefore, the game is definitely best experienced in the intended order when it comes to getting caught up on the story, even if you're locked-in on romancing Caleb and no-one else.
Caleb's lore and backstory explained (SPOILERS!)
Like the heroine, Caleb was an orphaned child test subject under the control of EVER Corporation after the Chronorift Crisis. The pair were, in fact, designated Subjects 001 and 002, showing the most potential thanks to their unique and powerful Evols. They were eventually rescued and raised by "Grandma" Josephine, who was originally one of the lead scientists who tested on them before her conscience forced her to intervene.
While the heroine has lost potentially all of her memories of the pair's time at EVER – thanks to her regenerative Evol causing her to forget her past every time she dies and revives – Caleb is still very aware of everything that happened to them as children.
Having viewed himself as the heroine's primary protector since childhood, Caleb's fixation on protecting her at all costs becomes something more troubling after he's injured in the explosion that kills Grandma Josephine. As it currently stands, their relationship in the main story is strained due to the extreme lengths he goes to in the belief that keeping her safe will always justify the means, even if it means isolating her against her will. The heroine eventually calls out Caleb's refusal to respect her autonomy, and so the two aren't on the best of terms right now in the central canon.
Luckily, this doesn't extend to Caleb's date side-stories, where the heroine's relationship with him is given equal treatment to those of the other love interests, and they aren't portrayed as unhappy together. Also, more of Caleb's dates are flashbacks than those you can experience with other characters, due to the length of their history together.
Though Caleb's possessiveness of the heroine definitely predates his injury, there is more to his sudden aggressive shift in behaviour toward her, as revealed in the Homecoming Wings main story. Having barely survived the explosion at the family home, Caleb's life was saved by the mysterious Professor Lucius, who specialises in "rescuing" and radically bionically modifying desperately injured individuals with strong Evol powers.
Caleb's right arm from the elbow down has been replaced with a mechanical augmentation, visually indistinguishable from the real thing but causing him to lose all physical sensation in the limb. Worse, he's been implanted with a Toring Chip, which can be used to overwrite areas of his memory and personality, triggering automatically if he becomes overly stressed or upset. He's given to understand that the influence of both modifications will inevitably worsen over time, meaning he'll eventually become completely physically and emotionally disassociated.
One of Caleb's Myths – incidentally the only Myth story to date to take place in the main timeline of our heroine's current incarnation – sees him wrestle some control of his personality back from the Toring Chip, after the heroine barely survives being implanted with one herself as she attempts to understand what's happened to him. However, Professor Lucius remains confident that his ability to regain control of Caleb's mind remains intact.
Caleb's second Myth takes place on the planet Philos, a futuristic human colony where many of LaDS' counterpart stories take place. Here, alternate versions of Caleb and the heroine meet as heavily modified cyborg soldiers known as A-01 and X-02.