Dutch van der Linde in ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’Image via Rockstar Games
Dutch van der Linde gives Red Dead Redemption 2 players plenty of reasons to wonder when he lost his way. As the Van der Linde gang falls apart, its leader grows increasingly ruthless, and the failed trolley robbery offers one possible explanation. Did Dutch change after hitting his head, or had Arthur Morgan and John Marston been following a man who was capable of those choices all along? It is a debate fans can revisit every time they play through the gang’s final months. Roger Clark, who played Arthur, has his own answer, and it places far more weight on the people around Dutch than on any injury.
When asked about the trolley theory during a Red Dead Redemption panel moderated by Collider’s Maggie Lovitt at FanX Salt Lake Comic & Pop Culture Convention with Clark and John Marston actor Rob Wiethoff, Clark did not leave much room for doubt. “I disagree. I don’t believe in that at all,” Clark said. He pointed to Dutch’s killing of Heidi McCourt, an innocent bystander whose death predates the trolley crash. For Clark, that makes it difficult to pin Dutch’s cruelty on a single blow to the head, even if the robbery comes at a point when his behavior is becoming harder for the gang to excuse.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Western Icon Are You Most Like? No Name · Doc Holliday · Wyatt Earp · Mattie Ross
Pick your name, your gun, your horse and how you spend a night in town, and we will tell you which legend of the Old West you would have been. Four icons are waiting at the end of this: the stranger who never gives his name, the gambler who would die for a friend, the lawman who never wanted the badge, and the girl nobody has ever talked out of anything.
🚬No Name(Dollars Trilogy)
🃏Doc Holliday(Tombstone)
⭐Wyatt Earp(Tombstone)
🐎Mattie Ross(True Grit)
01
The town is about to learn your name. What do they call you? In a Western, what people call you is already half the character.
02
What are you carrying? Everything out here is character, right down to what is sitting on your hip.
03
What are you riding? A hero and their horse is one of the oldest relationships in cinema.
04
You have got one evening in town. How does it go? The saloon is where these films quietly tell you who somebody really is.
05
A stranger offers you money for a job that sounds like trouble. Somebody always turns up with a full purse and a bad idea.
06
Somebody is waiting for you in the street. What does the town see? Two people, an empty road, and everybody else watching from behind the shutters.
07
What is the one thing you will not do out here? The code is about the only thing west of the river that actually holds.
08
The job is finished. Where does the story leave you? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your icon.
The Dust Has Settled Your Western Icon Is…
Four icons and four completely different ways of walking into trouble.
This is the one you would have been out there, why it fits, and what it would have cost you.
The Dollars Trilogy · 1964–1966
The Man With No Name
You have never explained yourself and you have never needed to,
because people work out fairly quickly that you are the most capable person in the room
without you ever having to mention it.
Eastwood built the character out of everything he refused to do, stripping away the
backstory, the speeches and every bit of reassurance until only the competence was left.
You keep your own counsel, and while other people occasionally find that unnerving, you
have never felt any real need to fix it for them.
The Dollars films work because he genuinely is in it for himself right up until the
moment he is not, and he never explains that part either.
You would be gone before anybody got a chance to thank you.
Doc Holliday · Tombstone · 1993
Doc Holliday
You are the funniest person in most rooms and the most loyal
person in all of them, and you would be genuinely insulted if somebody suggested those two
things were in any tension.
Doc has no real reason to be in this fight beyond the fact that his friend is in it,
which is the only reason he has ever needed for anything.
You lead with wit, and it does a very effective job of hiding how seriously you take the
handful of people you actually care about.
Val Kilmer’s performance is the most quoted in the entire genre because the jokes keep
getting sharper as the situation gets worse.
You would spend everything you had on this and still describe it as a good week.
Wyatt Earp · Tombstone · 1993
Wyatt Earp
You never wanted this job, and you took it anyway because the
alternative was standing there watching somebody less careful do it badly, which is the most
Western reason there has ever been.
Earp is the reluctant authority figure, a man who came to town specifically to be left
alone and somehow ended up answerable for all of it.
You are protective by instinct, so when something goes wrong your first thought is who
is exposed rather than who is to blame.
These films understand that keeping order costs far more than breaking it, and that the
person holding the line almost never gets thanked.
You would do the whole thing again, and you would complain about it the entire time.
Mattie Ross · True Grit · 1969 & 2010
Mattie Ross
Nobody has ever successfully talked you out of something you had
already decided was right, and a long line of grown adults has found that out the hard way.
Mattie is the most relentless character in the Western canon and she manages it through
argument, paperwork and flat refusal rather than a fast draw.
You have no patience for being managed, so you negotiate, you check the details and you
turn up exactly when you said you would.
True Grit is the rare Western where the moral centre is the youngest person on screen
and every adult around her has to catch up.
You would get what you came for, and the film is honest about what that takes out of
you.
Roger Clark Thinks Hosea and Micah Tell Us More About Dutch Than the Trolley Does
Arthur Morgan bids John Marston farewell on ‘Red Dead Redemption II’Image via Rockstar Games
“I think the trolley had nothing to do with it,” Clark said. “I think Hosea leaving the gang had more to do with it.” He described Hosea Matthews as the angel on Dutch’s shoulder and Micah Bell as the devil who took his place. In Clark’s view, Micah did not create a new Dutch so much as give him room to act on impulses Hosea had helped keep in check. That reading makes Dutch’s downfall harder to pin to one scene. Clark said the question of whether Dutch was always like this or declined over time is part of what makes him interesting, and he suspects the answer is “a bit of both.” He also stressed that Dutch begins Red Dead Redemption 2 as a leader who cares about his people, which makes the gang’s collapse more painful to watch. “I don’t think it was one moment,” Clark said. “I think it’s lots of little small moments piled up on top of each other that change us.”
The trolley crash may be an easy moment to point to, but Clark sees Dutch’s choices, Hosea’s absence, and Micah’s influence as a much more revealing explanation. Stay tuned at Collider for more.
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