WARNING: This article should only be read once you have completed the main story in Red Dead Redemption 2 as we will be spoiling events that happen at the end of the game.
Rockstar is known for having some very strange things in their game such as Bigfoot, aliens, and in Red Dead Redemption, a mysterious man who follows John Marston. This unnamed man never reveals his identity and when John attempts to harm him, nothing happens. He’s almost supernatural, always appearing and disappearing from John’s life, seemingly all-knowing.
In Red Dead Redemption 2, a man matching the attire and personality of the mystery man is embedded within Dutch’s Gang. This man is known as Josiah Trelawny, a magician who is one of the few gang members who doesn’t actively live with the gang themselves. He’s known for talking himself into and out of trouble, being able to disappear without a trace, and much more.
The game never outright addresses it but there’s a lot of clues that lead us to believe Trelawny is indeed the mysterious stranger from Red Dead Redemption. You may be wondering why John doesn’t remember Trelawny from his days with the gang, well, minor spoilers but to my recollection, we never see them interact in the story.
Add to the fact that Trelawny doesn’t really live in the gang’s camp, it’s entirely possible they never engaged. John’s first encounter with the Strange Man does see him ask if he knows him from somewhere. So he’s probably seen him talking to the likes of Dutch or Arthur but just in passing so it never stuck out in his mind.
“Why would you remember me, friend? You’ve forgotten far more important people than me,” the Strange Man says in response to John’s inquiry, implying they have definitely met at some point and has new meaning now that we know there are men like Arthur Morgan who John never mentions in RDR 1.
The Strange Man also reminds John Marston of a woman named Heide McCourt, a woman who Dutch brutally shot in the face in the failed Blackwater heist. In Red Dead Redemption 2, Josiah Trelawny briefly brings her up when you go to rescue Sean in West Elizabeth. “I keep hearing about this woman, Heide McCourt, some young mother Dutch murdered on the boat.” This is one of the only references to her in the whole game outside of a nod earlier in the story.
Finally, if you choose to go to Armadillo in the open world as John Marston once you’ve completed the game, you can find a very interesting picture. At Herbert Moon’s general store, there’s a familiar picture on the back shelf. John will ask who that is and why it’s there, noting the man looks familiar. Herbert Moon says that it’s pretty much always been there but he doesn’t really know much about it. Get closer and you can see it strongly resembles Trelawny/the Strange Man.
In Red Dead Redemption 2’s credits, we also get closure for pretty much every character who doesn’t appear in RDR 1 and has yet to have died. Trelawny, however, is the only character whose fate and life remains a complete and total mystery as he is not in any of the credits sequences.
Of course, people have been theorizing this ever since Trelawny was revealed in September and some have shot it down due to small differences in his appearance. Slightly different mustache, different jawline, and he speaks quite differently as well. While these are all valid, the timespan between RDR 2 and RDR 1 is 12 years so his mustache could easily be styled differently. His other visual discrepancies could be chalked up to just the evolution of graphics and changing minor elements of their characters.
As for the voice? This one is harder to defend but could simply be the fact that they changed some voice actors between games so not everyone sounds exactly like the versions of themselves in RDR 1. With John Marston feeling like he knows the man in some capacity, it feels like RDR 2 would be the perfect place to introduce where he knows the man from in some shape or form as opposed to keeping it super vague.
What do you think? Is Josiah Trelawny using his magician skills to taunt John Marston in his final days or are all these things merely a coincidence? Red Dead Redemption 2 is a massive game so it’s entirely possible we haven’t even seen every possible clue linking the two together.
