Evergreen Forevermore

Sadie Adler would've been just as famous. She was a gunslinger like the real life Calamity Jane and Anne Oakley and she was an outlaw at one point like Laura Bullion, Pearl Hart, Belle Star, The Cassidy Sisters, and more.

The other women of the camp would've probably been less popular but still very intriguing figures to people in the future.

In the newspapers, we see that there are songs about Dutch's boys and books too. Trelawny mentions them being on dime novels. In the future, the pieced together story of the Van Dir Linde gang might've gotten adapted into a movie, similar to "Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid" or "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". They could've gotten biopics, documentaries, and more.

Historians and fans of the wild West era would dig up records, find pictures, and maybe even track down people who were apart of the gang, accomplices to the gang, or victims of the gang. They would try to piece together stories to figure out the mystery of what actually happened to the gang.

People would argue over things that happened in the gang and have their evidence to back it up. Letters written by gang members would become so valuable. If they ever someone come across Arthur's journal, it would probably be considered one of the most valuable pieces of documentation to ever exist for that time period.

The guns of the gang would probably be kept in museums if found. Albert Mason's portrait of Arthur Morgan would be found in history books, same as other pictures.

Dutch would probably be a very controversial figure in history- some would hail him as a failed hero and others would condemn his violence no matter the reason- they wouldn't know what the people in the gang knew- especially in the end. Same with the rest of the gang members.

They'd probably all get romanticized. Hosea and Dutch's friendship, the raising of the boys, Dutch and Annabelle and his fued with Colm, Mary and Arthur, John and his family, Javier being a revolutionary- no one would know the full story.

And then there is Jack- he may live to see the 1960s and 70s and 80s. He may have grandchildren who'd pull him into a theater to watch a retelling of the gang that he was a part of at one point. He'd be amused. He'd think that the actor playing his father was too clean looking, too pretty. He'd think that the movie Arthur was too skinny. He'd think that the man playing Dutch had a funny voice as he tried to mimic the accent. He'd laugh and make notes in his head of the historical accuracy. He'd feel sorrowful at the deaths of the characters- he knew them at some point. And no one at the theater would know that the old man with the rowdy bright eyed boys who brought him there was Jack Marston, the last of the Van Dir Linde gang.

Jack might talk about it to the public. He might do interviews. He might even write a book about his father, the infamous John Marston. Those would be priceless. Even Beecher's Hope might be kept around and visited as a historical site for history goers.

Arthur offers his hand to Mary to help her get on the train, he's helping her going away from him again once more, he's not fighting it. He wants her to be happy and he's aware that wouldn't be possible if she stays or they go back together.

When Mary tells Arthur that he's never going to change, he's assimilating those words; something has broken inside of him once again, something that was already shattered. Mary's giving up on a life with Arthur despite having been away from each other years before this moment.

Arthur's shadow represents the man he could have been if he had gotten on the train with Mary in that exact moment or the many times Mary told him to run away together. He stays there thinking about the life he could have had if he packed the few things he owned and left the gang behind. But loyalty to Dutch and the others is something he cannot betray.

Saying goodbye to her in the trolley station here and in the train station later in the game. He looks at the window as the train goes and stays there once it's gone. It's as if it's written in the stars for her to move forward while he stays still in the present. Because Arthur can't afford to dwell on the past, he can't begin to think about his future. His days were numbered even before the TB, and he was aware of that. It's foolish to expect to live a long, fulfilling life when you've been an outlaw almost all your life, when you've been on the run for as long as you can remember.

Look at that expression, waiting patiently to hear something he already knows. That he's not going to live happily ever after with Mary, that her family will never accept him as he is, and that, at the end of the day, he can't escape the person he has become.

As he says at the end of the video, Mary is the only person that could convince him to give everything up, and she has given up on it and given up on him. Their love story represented in a 1 minute clip; a cowboy who wanted more than anything to be with his beloved, but absolutely everything was against them.

How we say in Spanish, "the train only passes once".

The art for the original soundtrack and the original score are telling an interesting story: the original soundtrack shows us Arthur on the cover itself, and in the inside of the vinyl, are the gang in their prime riding together - all of the iconic imagery we're used to see during the game.

However, the art of the original score is almost exclusively Micah related: the cover is a clear contrast to the original soundtrack (black and white vs. colour, villain vs. hero), but what I personally find most interesting is the art inside of the vinyl:

From what I've seen, the internet seems to be in disagreement over who Micah might be shooting; while it makes sense it is Arthur given the story of the game, seeing him in a pitiful position feels out of character.

To me, this art looks like Arthur's portrayal from Micah's eyes; there are 6 graves, possibly to represent past gang members who died during the game? (aka Sean, Kieran Lenny, Hosea, Molly, and Grimshaw).

Micah was not responsible for all of them, but it was his mission to try and get cut as many gang members as he could "loose."

There's also 7th grave being dug (represented by the shovel), presumably prepared for Arthur, given their relationship and his ending.

Micah first mentions it, almost mockingly. The way he says it sort of implies this: Arthur may act big and tough, but to Micah it’s all an act. He believes that Arthur isn’t any better than him, and therefore isn’t really that intimidated/threatened (at least at this point in the story).

Micah says Dutch told him that, and it does sound like something Dutch would say. But what I find interesting is that this phrase could be interpreted another way, and it’s the contrast of these two interpretations that sheds some insight on character dynamics.

To me, “tiny trees cast big shadows” means that even the smallest acts of goodness can have lasting impact. If you play a High Honor run as Arthur, you’re constantly doing acts of kindness— ranging from something as simple as offering someone a ride back to town, to turning the tide with story missions. A big part of Arthur’s arc is him realizing that while the sun is setting on his time, he can still leave the world and the people he loves in a better place.

The world may not remember Arthur Morgan, but the people he touched— the lives he impacted… that’s his legacy. This tiny tree casted quite a big shadow after all, and arguably his sacrifice set forth a series of events that lasted far beyond his death.