It's hard to find a character in Red Dead Redemption 2 who isn't a villain in at least one person's story. The game's heroes are a gang of outlaws who murder people while also believing that, in some sense, they abide by a certain code of ethics at the start of the story. Often the people they steal from are ruthless in their own right, and yet many more innocent lives are lost along the way.
There are two main characters that many players would call the central villains of Red Dead Redemption 2. One is Dutch Van Der Linde, whose tragic fall over the course of the prequel sees him become the madman players hunt down in the first game. The other is Micah Bell, whose sadism and corrupting influence helps catalyze the dissolution of the Van Der Linde gang. There is another force at play, however, that Red Dead 2 focuses on as game's greatest evil, even eventually corrupting Red Dead 2's most innocent characters.
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Red Dead Redemption 2's story is deeply invested in time. When the Van Der Linde gang attempts to rob the US Army, Dutch delivers a line which sums up the predicament of almost all the characters in the game, whether they know it yet or not. "You can't fight nature, Captain" he says as the Army has Dutch and Arthur pressed up to the edge of a cliff. "You can't fight change. You can't fight gravity." The pair then jump to a river below, escaping the law to die another day.
This moment is a direct reference to Dutch's eventual death in the first Red Dead, when he allows himself to fall backwards off a cliff after finally being caught by John Marston. While the line can come across as another of Dutch's quips in Red Dead 2, nature, change, and gravity all stand in for the relentless march of time. The pair escape to die another day, but that's all they do - there is no final escape or victory, only semi-successful attempts to marginally delay the inevitable.
The inevitable isn't just death. Throughout the Red Dead games time is the real test of all of the characters' supposed morals. The first mission after Arthur's death is titled "The Wheel." This is a reference to the ideal of the Wheel of Fortune which appears in Le Morte D'Arthur, one of the most important texts on Arthurian mythology. Red Dead 2 contains many direct references to Arthurian legend, and the Wheel of Fortune is used in Le Morte D'Arthur to explore the idea that every person is fated to commit acts of both good and evil on the road to their final destination.
Through this the game plays with the idea that Dutch was bound to become a villain eventually. One of his great "plans" was bound to fail, and the sudden change in circumstances was bound to change his reaction to the world around him. This proves true when the Saint Denis robbery goes wrong, and the survivors become stranded on the island of Guarma. It is there that Arthur first begins to question Dutch's morality when Dutch shoots an old woman. It isn't fair to say that only Dutch has changed. Everything has changed, dragging Dutch along with it.
Even players who go the High Honor route with Arthur all the way through Red Dead 2 can't avoid doing evil. Arthur contracts the disease which will kill him when shaking down a poor man with tuberculosis for money he owes an associate. Regardless of the player's Honor, Arthur later threatens to put that man's son in the grave as well, and throughout the game there are reminders that Arthur has done terrible things in his past. There is no way to keep Arthur consistent - to have him be entirely good or entirely evil.
John Marston's escape is framed by the knowledge of his eventual brutal death at the hands of the law in Red Dead 1. Jack Marston, who is one of the characters closest to a pure innocent in Red Dead 2, is framed by the fact that Red Dead 1 players know he will eventually follow in his fathers footsteps and become a killer. Micah Bell's selfishness and sadism is a drop in the ocean. Ultimately, Micah has as little power to affect events as any of the other characters, and many of the worst things in the game have nothing to do with him despite how unlikable he is.
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When Arthur exasperatedly tells Dutch that "there's always a god damn train," he's right on multiple levels. There are only a few ways things can work out for the Van Der Linde gang. They could die during a job, as several do. They could be caught and executed. They could make a score so big they're able to retire. Even the last option spells the death of the Van Der Linde gang and the freedom-loving "Old West" lifestyle that Dutch talks about throughout Red Dead 2.
The player gets the sense than in Dutch Van Der Linde's ideal world the gang would keep successfully robbing trains forever, without failure, and without ever retiring. This is the only option that's impossible, and that attempts to fight an unwinnable battle with a the inevitable - whether it's called nature, change, gravity, or simply time.
Throughout Red Dead Redemption 2 players are reminded that the Old West is dying. Players are also reminded that the version of the Old West as seen by characters like Dutch did not really exist to begin with, but was an idea predicated on romanticizing or ignoring the immense violence the gang was committing while focusing on their occasional acts of nobility like saving Sadie Adler.
Time is the true villain of Red Dead Redemption 2. The fear of time and the inability to overcome it drives the gang to destruction far more than Dutch or Micah Bell do as individuals. Even after the gang's dissolution, the game's place as a prequel leaves its ending bitter sweet, with players knowing just what fate will befall many of the surviving members, John Marston, and his family in the future.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is available now on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.