#i may also be giving the impression that i deeply love hosea

[angeldormante]

a common speculation i see that i don’t necessarily agree with is that dutch’s behavior wouldn’t have gone completely off the rails if hosea hadn’t died. personally, i think it would have been just as bad, maybe even a little worse -- the only improvement i can see is how the others might rally and pick their sides more carefully.

dutch? hosea knew that dutch has been gone since the start. literally, in colter, hosea can have a conversation with arthur where he expresses that he’s trying to keep dutch from getting everyone killed. even that far back, he was sizing up their lot. his arguments with dutch continue into horseshoe outlook and all the way to shady belle, and the thing is? 

he rarely (if ever) actually manages to stop dutch from pulling his schemes. hosea is touted as this heavy counterweight to dutch’s stupidity right up til the end, but as often as he does throw his lot in against dutch, it never actually stops the man from doing whatever the hell he feels like. i don’t doubt that he used to be a stronger influence, but i feel like that changed once micah “echo chamber” bell came along, and we.... never actually got to see a time when he had a better handle on dutch’s impulses.

in fact, it’s pretty easy to see that hosea rapidly switches gears from “heel, dutch” to “ok well screw dutch”. as early as horseshoe outlook he’s consistently putting most of his energy into planting thoughts in the others’ heads: lenny, abigail, john, arthur, he is constantly dropping unsubtle hints left and right that blind loyalty to the gang is no longer a viable philosophy. and that is ballsy, essentially telling people to gtfo of dodge right under dutch’s nose, considering how paranoid the man already is by the time they’re in shady belle. hosea does all of this while still getting into the occasional row with dutch because this man does not give a single shit, and just because he’s accepted dutch as a lost cause doesn’t mean he isn’t going to give him an earful about it whenever the opportunity presents itself.

this is why i think a universe where hosea had survived the bank would have an even messier climax, albeit in perhaps a good way: because he died before the splits in the gang got truly ugly, hosea was never forced to choose sides. and there were going to be sides whether he lived or not; hosea recognized this, or he wouldn’t have spent the entire game trying to prepare the others for it. i have zero doubt in my mind that hosea would have been the first to denounce dutch, and frankly? i’m pretty sure that would have hit dutch a lot damn harder than hosea’s death did. hosea died to dutch as a loyal friend, but if he had lived and chosen a side, he would have been dead to dutch as the ultimate traitor. and we all know how well dutch takes traitors -- imagine what it would to do him to see hosea, of all people, truly standing against him.

tbh the whole reason this gets me so tilted is because essentially?? hosea was fucking FRIDGED for dutch’s manpain when i’m 100% sure that things were going to go sideways whether he lived or not. hosea deserved so much better honestly and like.... r* was super not subtle about killing off pretty much everyone who would have sided with arthur, but why

i would have loved to see it. i feel like dutch’s and especially hosea’s character arcs were cheated out of this potential: of their differences finally coming to a head, of hosea making the choice to save his family and dutch not having the excuse of grief pushing him over that edge. 

hosea spent so long trying to prepare his family for the fallout he saw coming. all he wanted was to see people safe before he passed, but he recognized that he may not even have the chance for that, and that the best he could do was teach his boys that it was okay for them to take a stand for themselves. he deserved to see that he succeeded.