Bad Bell Rising

Micah Bell is a finely crafted, super effective villain, and as much as we hate him, I think some grudging props are in order.

(Spoiler Alert: I’ll be candidly discussing the game in its entirety, assuming my readers have completed both the main story and the epilogue.)

Micah. Even just his name clenches the jaw of any self-respecting Red Dead Redemption 2 fan. I mean seriously, what a dick.

From our first introduction to this blonde bastard in chilly Colter, to our final standoff between the peaks of Mount Hagen, Micah Bell is a vindictive thorn in the player’s side and a cruel antagonist to Van der Linde Gang members. Rude, racist, demanding, violent and unpleasant though he may be, Micah’s dastardly brilliance manifests in a number of ways, making him a uniquely dangerous villain.

Questions and theories abound regarding Micah’s involvement and impact on the gang, but one stands above the rest: was he the rat the whole time? We know that Micah was an informant for the Pinkertons at least since his return from Guarma…but what about before? Things seemed to have gone wrong a lot for the gang — but exactly how much of it was Micah’s fault?

Let’s check it out.

The Blackwater Massacre

In the bleak opening chapter of the game, the gang is already bleeding members, and we begin getting details about The Blackwater Massacre. We hear about briefly it in Red Dead Redemption, and while it’s still the stuff of legend, the player has dialogue and notes in Arthur’s journal to help put it together: Arthur and Hosea had a lucrative scam in the works, but Micah convinced Dutch to rob an incoming ferry supposedly carrying $150,000. The plan was for the gang to rob the ferry and take off; Arthur and Hosea would pull their scam the next day and disappear as well.

But the raid ended in disaster, forcing the gang to flee into the mountains with hardly any provisions and no plan. John and Micah went scouting together, but Micah is alone when we meet him. The player goes with Javier to find John, first locating his dead horse, and then following his cries for help. It’s revealed then that our beloved John scored his signature scars from wolves after getting lost. Odd that John wound up so far off track, and Micah was just outside Colter.

During that mission, Javier gives us the next pertinent information:

Javier: “We had the money, everything seemed fine…then suddenly they were everywhere.”
Arthur: “Bounty hunters?”
Javier: “No, Pinkertons.”

Blackwater local law does turn up to the raid — the Sheriff’s office is right on the waterfront — but they didn’t show up first. Pinkertons did. Many characters believe it was indeed a trap. Even Dutch says “Oh they knew we were coming.” This always struck me as interesting — how would Pinkertons get there first? Why would Arthur immediately think it was bounty hunters?

Clearly the gang hadn’t much interaction, if any, with Pinkertons up to this point, if Arthur first thinks “bounty hunters” of all things. We get other clues from gang members that the Pinkertons are a decidedly new threat—just like Micah is a decidedly new gang member.

We don’t encounter the Pinkertons again until Ross and Milton corner Arthur and young Jack on the banks of the Dakota River. Agent Milton reveals that he killed Mac Callander—a “mercy killing. Slow, but merciful.”

Two things leap out to me here: first, a bit of dialogue from Micah in the very first mission of the game, Outlaws from the West. Dutch reveals Davey Callander is dead, to which Micah replies with a chuckle,

“That’s too bad. Davey was a real fighter. Both of them Callander boys is, or… was.”

Nobody else had a definite idea about what happened to Mac or Sean; Dutch optimistically claims that they’ll both be back. The only one who began addressing Mac in the past tense was Micah.

Secondly, this interaction at the river comes at a very specific point in the timing of the game—even though it’s possible to change it, the official mission order reveals something sneaky and sinister.

Agents Milton and Ross find Arthur and Jack between two Micah-centric missions: Blessed are the Meek and An American Pastoral Scene.

What was Micah doing in Strawberry? Lenny, who happened to be along for the wild ride, tells us about Micah’s cryptic dodging of the question.

Lenny: “Micah’s got a crazy side, Arthur.”
Arthur: “What were you boys doing? You were supposed to be scouting ahead for us.”
Lenny: “I kept asking him what we was doing, but he was "you worry too much, kid", "just some business to attend to, kid"… you know how he is.”
Arthur: “Yes I do.”

Micah either sought out or encountered an old accomplice in Strawberry named Norman, gets into a drunken fight and kills two men. When we rescue Micah, he doesn’t come back to camp.

No, he sets up camp just north of Strawberry, suggesting he has to bring back a score for Dutch as repayment for the chaos he caused.

Why stay so close to Strawberry? The player inevitably amasses a huge bounty during the escape, and surely Micah would—logically—as well. Yet he stays so near the epicenter. While he’s gone, suddenly agents Ross and Milton have the gang’s location nailed down almost exactly.

Moving on to Clemens Point

Dutch sends Arthur and Charles to scout out a new camp location Micah gave him—Dewberry Creek. Right away, it’s obviously a bad spot.

Arthur: : “I think that must be it up ahead. The old dried up creek.”
Charles: “Seems very open.”
Arthur: “Yeah, it does. Ain’t sure it’d be the best in the rain, neither...”

We know what happens—the pair find a dead body and a ransacked camp, rescue a German and discover Clemens Point, your new home for Chapter 3.

Blessed are the Peacemakers is a particularly infamous and brutal Chapter 3 mission. It’s given by Micah, who is sitting in Dutch’s tent. He pushes Pearson to tell Dutch and Arthur about something he’d conveniently stumbled upon on the road—O’Driscolls. Pearson claims things were about to get ugly, but “somehow it didn’t”, and they got to talking about potentially making peace. The following exchange shows how easily Micah can manipulate Dutch into doing what he wants.

Dutch: “Colm O’Driscoll? Have you lost your minds?”
Micah: “You’re always telling us, Dutch… do what has to be done… but don’t fight wars ain’t worth fighting.”
Hosea: “They want a parley? It’s a trap.”
Micah: “Well of course, it’s probably a trap… but what have we got to lose finding out?”
Arthur: “Get shot.”
Micah: “We ain’t getting shot because you’ll be protecting us. It’s a trap, you shoot the lot of them… if it ain’t a trap, that slim chance…”
Dutch: “I don’t see the point in any of this…”
Micah: “It’s a chance we gotta take.”

Mere seconds later, Dutch agrees. He and Arthur follow Micah, who sows more seeds of distrust between Arthur and Dutch, such as referring to Arthur as “Doubting Thomas”. Micah knows exactly where to go, as well: they stop off and Micah sends Arthur up to a ridge to keep watch on the exchange.

(Note: dead things are an omen that seems to follow Micah around. First, the dead body at Dewberry Creek and then the dead wolf/coyote on the ledge where Arthur is meant to hide. It makes John’s dead horse in the mountains all the more part of the theme, suggesting Micah was involved in his disappearance.)

We know how it goes: the peace summit is a failure and Arthur is kidnapped by O’Driscolls

Odds are good Micah choreographed what appeared to be the chance encounter between Pearson and the O’Driscolls. Pearson likely misunderstood the situation and believed things could have gotten ugly, when it was never the intention at all. O’Driscolls almost always escalate chance encounters—but this time, suddenly, they didn’t? No, they were there specifically to plant this preconceived plan in Pearson’s head, without any suspicion falling back on Micah.

Later Micah is left behind with Kieran to guard the camp while the rest raid Braithwaite Manor in a desperate attempt to find the missing Jack. Kieran is the bottom rung of the gang, and Micah being left with him could mean two things—first, Dutch is leveling some punishment at Micah for the botched peace talks with Colm O’Driscoll and Arthur’s kidnapping and torment that nearly cost him his life. Or, he trusts Micah so much, he’s willing to leave him with his least-trusted gang member to defend the whole camp.

Not long after, Agents Milton and Ross arrive at Clemens Point.

Milton offers a deal—the rest of the gang gets three days to escape and assimilate into “civilized society” if Dutch goes with him right then.

Dutch “surrenders”, but the gang draws weapons, and ultimately, Milton and Ross leave empty handed.

Off to Shady Belle we go.

Players have the unique privilege of not having to deal with Micah much at all through Chapter 4. In fact you can get almost all the way through the chapter without seeing him, but there is this one little mission:

Banking, the Old American Art

That’s right, you all know the one. Dutch, Arthur, John, Micah, Bill, Javier, Lenny, Charles, Hosea, Abigail head into Saint Denis. Hosea and Abigail create a distraction, occupying the police, while the rest of the guys hit the bank.

In a chilling parallel to the ferry job in Blackwater, everything seems fine, they have the safe open and their hands on the cash.

And then, Pinkertons.

No more deals, just chaos—Milton kills Hosea right in front of the gang. Lenny dies too; John is arrested, Charles narrowly avoids capture and the rest flee Saint Denis on a boat headed to the Caribbean.

We’re going to cruise over that whole chapter—you’ve done it, and unless there’s something we missed, there’s hardly a chance Micah could screw anything up that royally in the chaos of the Guarma rebellion against Alberto Fussar.

But now we’re back in the States—Arthur tracks the gang from Shady Belle to Lakay. When we arrive, Micah has made it back first. We don’t know exactly how long he’s been there before we arrive, but we do know that Pinkertons arrive unnoticed just seconds after Dutch and Bill. Bill, being Bill, appears to be at fault:

“Well here you is. Well I asked everyone I could find…and eventually someone knew. Said you fools were out here.”

Stupid move from Bill, yes, and Micah capitalizes on this to further foist blame onto him.

“Asked everyone you could find, did you, Bill?”

Agent Milton doesn’t just casually roll into Lakay—he has an army of Pinkertons and managed to pull a wagon and mounted maxim gun in without anyone noticing.

It’s this timing that raises questions with many a Red Dead Redemption fan. Maybe the Pinkertons followed Bill, but we know they didn’t have to. Micah’s been back, found the gang, and is the Pinkerton informant by this time. Whether it was dumb luck that they turned up just as Dutch returned, or that they really did follow Bill somehow, Micah had time to tip them off to the gang’s location.

Micah doesn’t help defend Lakay—Arthur, Bill and Sadie handle the situation. Micah sticks by Dutch and only kills one mortally wounded Pinkerton, perhaps to ensure that in his final moments he didn’t let anything slip.

From the Snow to the Cave

The continued destruction and distrust tears the gang apart. They move to Beaver Hollow, Arthur’s dying, Dutch is losing it, Micah is tightening his grip. And then Molly makes a grave mistake.

Uncle finds Molly drunk in Saint Denis and brings her back to camp. Molly tells Dutch that she was the one that told Milton and Ross about the bank robbery. She tells Dutch she wanted them to kill him. We know Molly did no such thing—Milton tells us later they took her in for questioning a few times, but she never said a word. So why did she tell Dutch she had, leading to Grimshaw blowing her away?

Two theories: one, she wanted to be seen. Dutch and Molly had been fighting increasingly often; eventually Dutch just began ignoring her. She loved him dearly, but was never his priority. She was just sick of being invisible.

Second, Molly was drinking a lot by this point. She was not well. Molly wanted Dutch dead for how he treated her, and desperately wanted to rat him out to the Pinkertons. In her drunken state, it’s not impossible to think that she believed she had. Molly probably pictured it over and over to the point where, when she was inebriated, couldn’t tell the difference between fact and imagination.

And what a blessing this was for Micah. Molly had taken the blame and punishment, and he was free to meddle to his shriveled heart’s content.

One Last Job

Arthur and John blow up Bacchus Bridge. It’s obvious by now Dutch has lost it and Micah running the show. He’s brought on new gang members and has forced Dutch and Arthur apart with irreparable broken trust. They chase the train as it barrels north through Saint Denis and the heist is on.

John is lost in the scuffle; Dutch and Micah tell Arthur he’s dead and there was nothing they could do.

Once the robbery is done, Tilly is in a panic—Abigail was taken by Pinkertons to Van Horn. Micah tells Dutch to abandon her to her fate, and he does without a second thought. Arthur and Sadie rescue her, leading to that tense final interaction with Agent Milton. He says,

“Micah Bell. We picked him up when you boys came back from the Caribbean. He’s been a good boy ever since.”

Sure, this could mean that Micah’s only been the rat since the return from Guarma—but what is actually said is he’s been cooperating properly with the Pinkertons since then. There’s a very real possibility here that Micah has been the snitch the entire time—this wording isn’t accidental.

After Arthur’s death, we don’t see Micah again until American Venom, the very last mission in the epilogue.

According to in-game newspapers Micah has spent eight years amassing a large gang and committing heinous crimes. These eventually became too much for even Cleet—we remember Cleet, from Beaver Hollow, as one of Micah’s associates Dutch welcomes with open arms. Sadie, John and Charles catch, interrogate and execute Cleet before heading up the slopes of Mount Hagen. Charles takes a bullet right away but survives; Sadie makes it further and sustains a stab wound, but eventually follows John’s path of destruction up the side of the mountain for the final showdown with Dutch and Micah.

You know the score: Dutch shoots Micah. Micah attempts to but John shoots first (in a furious moment of button-mashing, trigger-pulling and revenge-getting that is truly the most fun a player can have without having to cuddle after) and peppers Micah with bullets. Micah takes a few defiant steps but ultimately falls dead. It’s over.

I’ll be the first to admit—I messed up.

On my first playthrough I completely skipped and ignored the credit scenes because I wanted to free roam! I had real money now! Clothes, guns, horses, chaos!

It wasn’t until my second playthrough did I wait and watch, and wouldn’t you know it…I had missed something big. When I say my heart dropped into my stomach, I mean it.

A cutscene, in which Agent Ross finds Micah’s frozen body on the top of Mount Hagen. He sends his partner into the cabin, but check out the body language on him when he comes back out. Nothing. Empty.

How did they know Micah would be up there? How would they know to check that shack? They weren’t really there for Micah—they’d already found him, so why keep looking?

Because they were there for someone else.

Someone that left without a word or trace.

Dutch Van der Linde.

My theory: Micah has been a rat his whole life.

Micah, his father and brother were all career criminals, committing sometimes heinous crimes. Way back after we break Micah out of jail, he says that a bank job down south “did not go well”. There really isn’t a timeframe for when that happened, but we know how the Pinkertons operate. We see it with John in Red Dead Redemption—they kidnap his family and extort him to hunt down Bill, Javier and Dutch.

Specifically, Agent Ross. Milton’s right-hand man.

Milton could have caught up with Micah after that botched bank job and, just like John having what was most important to him taken away, offered Micah his freedom in exchange for infiltrating the Van der Linde Gang and delivering Dutch himself.

Through the whole game, and even before, events that involve Micah frequently also see either the threat of, or complete and total Pinkerton interference. The Blackwater ferry job, Arthur’s kidnapping, Pinkertons arriving at Clemens Point, the Saint Denis bank job. Every time Micah was left alone, Pinkertons somehow got one step closer to the gang. Even after the events of American Venom, there they are. In every instance he knew just what to say to sew distrust and make other members look untrustworthy, weak, foolish…whatever the situation called for. All just to earn Dutch’s trust. He’s cunning, quick on his feet, and values one thing above all else—himself.

To each their own I suppose, but I’ll always be a firm believer that Micah was pushed into joining the Van der Linde Gang, and it all went to hell from there.

Gotta Give Him Credit…

Micah was able to scheme for decades to achieve his ends — the only one able to stop him is literally you. The player. We don’t even have to guess what it’s like for a guy like Micah in the real world: we all know an asshole that gets ahead because they’re an asshole. They are just that much better at reading people, sizing them up, figuring them out, and breaking them down. They use people, information, doubts and fear as a weapon, and wield it with a smile.

Micah is brilliantly written, and he himself is brilliant. I honestly love him, because of just how effective he was. How painfully real. He’s an intensely perceptive and clever person—in just a few months he fully picked apart the Van der Linde Gang hierarchy, figured out exactly how to get to Dutch, and pulled each string perfectly to cut Dutch off from his trusted allies and replace them. Micah perceived exactly what it would take to make the tight-knit, loyal, “been-together-all-our-lives” Van der Linde family implode, and did it in less than a year.

And damn, if that’s not the best bad guy I’ve ever seen.