not to get sad about cowboys on main again, but i can’t stop thinking about the possibility of sadie finding jack marston again after the events of rdr and how she’d react knowing he hunted down and killed ross.
in a lot of ways i think sadie would be utterly sympathetic to jack and his motivations. taking from those who took from you is a language she knows. she understands better than most how the loss of people you love (especially good people) to things you can’t control eats at you, changes you. she knows how the parts of you that were good because of them die too.
but equally, sadie is under no illusions of how damaging it all is. arthur calls sadie and himself more ghosts than people, and she agrees with him. she says the o’driscolls made her a monster when she kills the last of them at hanging dog ranch. she’s a character that isn’t blind to her trauma - she knows exactly why she does what she does and where her explosive anger comes from.
and yet, as nihilistic as she can be, she goes on this journey over the course of the game taking her from suicidal depression to getting shot and continuing regardless to help john and his family. i would be remiss to not mention abigail here. she is one of sadie’s closest friends, arguably the one who gave her help when she needed it most after sadie joined the gang. i mean hell, sadie mounts a goddamn jailbreak to free john when dutch won’t just so abigail doesn’t become a widow like her.
the game wants you to believe that sadie’s character arc in rdr2 is driven by her need for revenge for her husband’s death, but i don’t think it is. her growth is driven by three things:
abigail’s friendship and kindness towards a traumatised widow who others think is just another drain on camp resources
her friendship and loyalty to arthur
her desire to fulfill her promise to arthur and help john and abigail escape the outlaw life
so spinning back to the question of jack, this leaves a really interesting conundrum. because on one hand, sadie would understand why jack has chosen the gunslinger path. hell, she has too. but then she also knows what his parents had wanted for him, and what they did to offer him a better life. she knows the loneliness of her own life, the sacrifice. and she remembers the little boy he was - not a rough and tumble child, but quiet and thoughtful, with a head of imagination and good stories.
we all love sadie for being this fierce, ballsy woman who takes no shit and gives as good as she gets. but i just wonder, when faced with a young man looking down the tracks of a life so similar to her own, if she wouldn’t try to help john and abigail one last time and dissuade him from following in her footsteps.
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