Charles Smith

Origins

Rockstar Games' official presentation of the Van der Linde gang calls Charles Smith "A relatively recent recruit to the gang". It describes him as "quiet and reserved but extremely competent in everything he does and virtually unbeatable in a fight", and ends on "A decent, honest man who also happens to be deadly." The games give neither his date nor his place of birth. Charles describes his early years to Arthur Morgan and Hosea Matthews in 1899, in "Eastward Bound". His father was a Black man. His mother was Native American. According to what Charles was told, his father lived among his mother's people for a time, like a number of other free men.

The family did not stay. When the tribe was forced off its land, the father, the mother and the boy fled together. Charles says he was too young to remember much of it, and that he has been on the run his whole life. A couple of years later, soldiers captured his mother and took her away. Father and son never saw her again. The two then drifted from place to place. Charles describes his father as a very sad man with a heavy drinking problem. At about thirteen, Charles left and went his own way. In 1899 he says he does not even know whether he has a tribe, at least not one he can remember. A photograph shows him as an infant with his mother and father.

One relative appears in his memories besides his parents. When Charles asks Arthur to bring him Oleander Sage, he explains that an uncle taught him as a boy to make poisoned arrows with the plant. After leaving his father, Charles lived alone for years as a drifter. He rode with several gangs during those years. He found the solitary life wearing: in 1899 he tells Arthur he did it "for a long time" and is "done with it", because a man alone always wonders whether someone will kill him in his sleep. He joined the Van der Linde gang about six months before the story begins: in the spring of 1899, Arthur estimates that he has been with them for "Five, six months", and Charles agrees.

Red Dead Redemption 2 (1899)

Chapter 1: Colter

Charles reaches Colter with an injured hand. In "Outlaws from the West", once the gang has reached the abandoned mining town in a blizzard, Charles comes up to Dutch and Arthur with two horses and asks: "You need horses?" Arthur rides off on Charles's mare, Taima. Dutch orders him indoors: "You need to rest that hand." Charles answers "I'll live", and Dutch insists: "Get indoors, son! I... we, need you strong." In "Old Friends", Dutch leaves Charles at camp with Hosea and Pearson to guard it while the others raid the O'Driscolls. The raid brings back a prisoner, Kieran Duffy; Charles is then put in charge of the horses and of guarding him.

In "The Aftermath of Genesis", Charles walks in on Pearson and Arthur arguing about the lack of food and cuts them short: "Enough of this. We'll go find something." Since he cannot draw a bow with his hand, he gives his to Arthur, telling him that a gun would scare off every animal for miles, and adds: "You're never too old to learn... I imagine." On the way out, he says he is fine "apart from this hand. Stupid mistake.", and expects it to heal in a day or two. He also admits that he still does not really know what happened on the boat in Blackwater. On the mountain he teaches Arthur to read tracks in the snow, to move slowly and stay low, and to aim for the neck or head, "Quick and clean".

Arthur kills two deer. On the way back, Charles steers them away from a hungry grizzly and refuses to push their luck. He asks Arthur about the O'Driscolls, whom he has never dealt with. He also explains why he stays: "Dutch is different." Arthur answers "Dutch is certainly different.", and Charles goes on: "He treats me fair. Most of you do. And for a feller with a black father and an Indian mother, that ain't normally the case." When Arthur thanks him at Colter, Charles says he only showed him a little, since the bow "Takes a lifetime of practice to master."

In "Who the Hell is Leviticus Cornwall?", Dutch gives Charles the job of watching for outriders and asks about his hand; Charles says he will be fine. When Micah keeps asking about the money left behind, Charles says going back to Blackwater would be crazy with the town full of Pinkertons, and Dutch silences him. Once the train is stopped, Dutch sends Arthur and Charles with dynamite to blow open Cornwall's private car. In "Eastward Bound", Charles and Hosea hold up Arthur's wagon while he refits a wheel. When three riders appear on a cliff, Charles remarks: "If they wanted trouble... we wouldn't have seen them." They are Rains Fall, Eagle Flies and Paytah, of the Wapiti tribe. As Hosea describes how the Army drove the local tribes off their land, Charles asks: "How do you rob and kill people pleasantly? We don't, in spite of Dutch's talk." Arthur then asks about his tribe, which leads to the account of his childhood. Charles rides the rest of the way in their wagon to Horseshoe Overlook, where he is soon chopping firewood.

Chapter 2: Horseshoe Overlook

In "Americans at Rest", Charles is drinking with Javier at Smithfield's Saloon in Valentine when Arthur arrives. Bill starts a brawl, and Charles breaks a chair and fights with his fists; when Bill wants to shoot, he answers "Oh come on, we can handle these fools!" Outside, he cheers Arthur on during his fight with Tommy. Dutch then arrives with Josiah Trelawny, who reports that Sean MacGuire is alive and held by bounty hunters, and sends Charles to find out what he can, "carefully". In "The First Shall Be Last", Charles and Javier watch Blackwater from a cliff. Charles thinks Sean is being kept as bait, or for a public trial. When Arthur says they must rescue Sean now or "cut him loose", Charles replies: "We're not cutting anyone loose."

Arthur sends Charles to the north side of the valley. He covers Arthur and Javier from the top of the canyon, then joins them for the assault on the bounty hunters' camp, joking along the way that they might as well turn Sean in themselves. After the rescue, Arthur tells Sean that he would have left him to rot "if Charles hadn't stopped me".

Arthur can also go bison hunting with Charles in the Heartlands. After they kill one, Charles explains what the animal meant to his mother's people: "Where the bison went, my people went. They were the center of all life... we couldn't survive without them." He adds that the herds provided food, clothing, shelter and tools. The two men then find a trail of bison carcasses left to rot, which angers Charles. They track down the two poachers responsible. When one of them provokes him, Charles shoots him dead with his sawed-off shotgun. Questioned by Arthur, the survivor admits that they killed the animals to make it look as though the Native Americans were doing it. Arthur can let him go or kill him. Sparing him raises Arthur's honor, and Arthur tells Charles that the man can warn other poachers off the same scheme. Charles then rides off.

In "Pouring Forth Oil III", Arthur proposes Charles for the train robbery John has planned ("Charles?"; if John took the oil wagon himself: "I like Charles Smith for this kind of thing"), and John goes to fetch him. In "Pouring Forth Oil IV", Charles checks that the horses are untethered so they will follow the wagon. When Sean keeps talking, Charles asks him: "Why do you have to speak so much? It's... incessant." Sean answers by nicknaming the trio "Sulky, Angry, Scar Face", "Sulky" being his nickname for Charles. On the tracks, Charles knocks out the engineer; if Arthur kills the man instead, Charles tells him to keep his head. After the escape, he wonders whether the lawmen followed them from Blackwater. In "A Strange Kindness", Dutch sends Arthur and Charles to look at Dewberry Creek, a spot Micah had suggested. They find a corpse and a German family whose father has been kidnapped. Arthur wants to leave; Charles insists on helping. They follow the trail to Flat Iron Lake, kill the kidnappers and free the man. Arthur takes him home while Charles rides back to lead the gang to the lakeside spot, Clemens Point, a far better camp.

Chapter 3: Clemens Point

Charles throws Micah to the ground on the spot when Micah calls him a "redskin". In "Magicians for Sport", Dutch sends Arthur and Charles to check on Trelawny. They find signs of a struggle at his caravan in Rhodes, question two men in the woods and track his captors, bounty hunters working for Cole Stoudemire, to the corn fields near Braithwaite Manor. When one of them takes Arthur hostage, Charles kills him.

In "An Honest Mistake", Charles joins Arthur, Uncle and Bill to rob a wagon Uncle believes unguarded. The driver turns out to work for Cornwall Kerosene & Tar, and the four flee from Cornwall's guards into the woods and hide in a barn. When the guards search it, Bill knocks over a bucket and gives them away; the two guards sent to search the barn, Lowe and Cooperforth, die there, and the barn catches fire during the fight. In the trees they split into pairs, Charles with Bill, before finishing off their pursuers and sharing the take. After Sean is killed in Rhodes and Jack disappears, Charles rides with Dutch, Arthur, Hosea, John, Bill, Javier and Lenny to Braithwaite Manor in "Blood Feuds, Ancient and Modern". The gang kills the Braithwaite men, burns the house and learns from Catherine Braithwaite that Jack was handed to Angelo Bronte; the boy, she says, is either in Saint Denis or on a boat to Italy.

Chapter 4: Saint Denis

During the chapter, Charles leaves Shady Belle for a few days to help Eagle Flies free members of his tribe who are being sent to a reform school. Arthur offers to go with him; Charles turns him down. In "Horsemen, Apocalypses", the O'Driscolls attack Shady Belle after sending back Kieran's mutilated body. Once the gang has fallen back into the house, Dutch gives John, Charles and Arthur their positions. Near the end of the fight, Charles bursts out of a side door, knocks an O'Driscoll to the ground and kills him with a machete before joining Arthur and Sadie Adler. Afterwards Dutch asks Swanson to bury Kieran, and Swanson asks Charles to help him with the body.

Charles is part of the crew in "Banking, The Old American Art", the robbery of the Lemoyne National Bank. His task inside is crowd control, with Bill and Micah. The Pinkertons surround the bank; Hosea is killed in the street, John is captured and Lenny is shot dead on the rooftops. Charles hides until nightfall in an empty apartment with Dutch, Arthur, Micah, Bill and Javier. At the heavily guarded docks, he draws the Pinkertons away so that the other five can board a ship, and stays behind. He gets out of the city hidden on a stagecoach and rides back to Shady Belle.

Chapter 5: Guarma

While Dutch, Arthur, Micah, Bill and Javier are stranded on Guarma, Charles stays with the rest of the gang in Lemoyne. Sadie takes charge and moves the group from Shady Belle to Lakay, an abandoned village in the bayou, northwest of Saint Denis and southeast of Lagras; Charles helps her organise the move and keep the group together. The two also took part in recovering the bodies of Hosea and Lenny from the city morgue and burying them in Bluewater Marsh. Charles is at Lakay in "Fleeting Joy", when the survivors of Guarma rejoin the group and the Pinkertons attack the village.

In "That's Murfree Country", Dutch decides that the gang cannot go further east and must head north. He sends Arthur and Charles to Beaver Hollow, a cave in Roanoke Ridge. The pair can ride there or take canoes; if the player does not choose, Charles picks the canoe. On the way, Charles tells Arthur about the flight to Lakay and about the help he has been giving the Wapiti, Rains Fall's tribe, while Arthur was gone, and says their situation is bad. At the cave, the two men quietly kill the Murfree Brood members outside, then clear the cave itself. Inside they find a young woman, Meredith Buckley, held and abused by the Murfrees. Arthur takes her home to Annesburg while Charles rides back to guide the gang to its new camp.

Chapter 6: Beaver Hollow

In "A Rage Unleashed", Eagle Flies, son of the Wapiti chief Rains Fall, rides into Beaver Hollow escorted by Karen and Javier. The Army has seized his people's horses. Charles tells him that he told Rains Fall he would not fight over some horses. Dutch decides on the spot to help, and Charles and Arthur, wary of his motives, go along. Paytah has canoes ready near Van Horn; at night they paddle quietly up to the Army boat, where Paytah stays behind. The others climb aboard, Charles and Arthur overpower the guards, and Dutch runs the boat onto the rocks; the horses are swum ashore. Dutch rides off with Eagle Flies, and Charles asks Arthur to go and see Rains Fall. Rains Fall later asks Arthur and Charles to attend his peace talks with Colonel Favours. In "The Fine Art of Conversation", Charles persuades a reluctant Arthur to come. If Eagle Flies has just been arrested after "Favored Sons", Charles is angry on the way about Dutch's involvement. When Favours has Captain Lyndon Monroe arrested for treason, Arthur takes a soldier hostage to get him released; the three escape under fire, and Arthur and Charles put Monroe on a train at Emerald Station; Charles then leaves.

Eagle Flies is then captured and held at Fort Wallace. In "The King's Son", Charles waits for Arthur at the reservation and sends him into Rains Fall's tent. Riding to the fort, Charles explains how he means to get in and out, and criticises Dutch for exploiting the Wapiti's situation for his own ends. That night he warns him: "Any day we can die. We're about to break an Indian Chief's son out of a cavalry fort. We can both die tonight." Arthur then tells him that he is dying. Charles replies: "You're lucky. You got the chance to... to do something better... My guess is maybe that's why you're here now." Unlike Hosea, Lenny, Sean or the Callander brothers, he says, Arthur still has time to make amends.

The two men wait for dark before moving in. They take out the sentries along the wall with bow and knife, and at the back Charles throws a grappling hook so they can climb over. From a tower, on Charles's suggestion, Arthur shoots a distant lantern to start a fire that pulls the guards away. Charles kills the jailer, and Arthur takes the keys and cuts Eagle Flies loose. When the alarm sounds, Arthur blows open a weak section of the wall with dynamite. The three ride for the river, where Charles had left canoes, and go down the rapids with soldiers still firing at them. Back on the bank, Charles takes a horse left behind by a soldier and brings Eagle Flies home to the reservation.

In "My Last Boy", Eagle Flies rides into Beaver Hollow with a war party to attack the Army at the Cornwall refinery, against his father's pleas. Rains Fall turns to Arthur, who agrees to help; Charles is the next to follow, before Dutch and most of the gang. At the Heartland Oil Fields, Charles, Arthur and Sadie ride down with a group of Wapiti to reach Eagle Flies, who is fighting on a walkway, while Dutch leads the others round another side. Charles's group later rejoins Dutch's men at the warehouse. The gang takes state bonds from the refinery office. Charles refuses any share: "Those money, those bonds, whatever it is... I don't want a cent. There's too much blood on it." Arthur's journal records the takings under the initials "A, D, C, B & S". After Colonel Favours mortally wounds Eagle Flies, Charles, Arthur and Paytah take him to the reservation. On the way, Arthur and Charles talk about Dutch abandoning Arthur in the warehouse, about what the gang has turned into and about their dismay at the fighting between the Wapiti and the Army.

Arthur and Charles carry Eagle Flies into Rains Fall's tent, where he dies after a last moment with his father. Outside, Charles tells the Wapiti that they must move on, and decides to stay with them rather than return to Beaver Hollow. He helps them flee to Canada, out of the Army's reach. Arthur offers to stay as well. Charles tells him to go back, since other people in the gang still need him. The two men embrace and part; it is the last time they see each other. From then on Charles is no longer at the camp. He takes no part in the gang's final collapse, Micah's unmasking as the informant or Arthur's death. He is heard only in memory: in the "Red Dead Redemption" mission, with high honor, Arthur recalls during his last ride a line Charles said to him near the end of "The King's Son". After the gang falls apart, Charles buries Arthur and Susan Grimshaw: Susan in Roanoke Ridge, Arthur on a hilltop in the Grizzlies East, north-east of Bacchus Bridge.

Red Dead Redemption 2: the epilogue (1907)

Epilogue II: Beecher's Hope

The game does not show what Charles did between 1899 and 1907. By 1907 he lives in Saint Denis and fights in bare-knuckle matches, under the ring name "Lone Wolf". The newspaper article "Notorious Bad Man Alive" names him among the Van der Linde gang members still at large, with Bill, Micah and John. In "Bare Knuckle Friendships", Uncle tells John that Charles is alive and in the city. The two take the train there. Checking a saloon or the fence, John hears of a "big Indian" fighting in the slums, and the pair find Charles talking to an organiser. Charles had believed John dead and is stunned to see him alive. He bets on himself, beats "Simon of Wales" and collects his winnings. He had in fact promised to lose the fight, for men working for Guido Martelli.

Walking with John to the docks to collect his bag, Charles talks about Arthur. With high honor, he says Arthur "was a good man" and that his illness gave him "some kind of understanding... what his life was really all about"; with low honor, that he "wasn't a good man" and that the illness gave him "something to cling on to". He adds that Arthur is where he would have wanted to be, on a hillside facing the evening sun. John tells him that Micah betrayed the gang. Charles tells John that Leopold Strauss was arrested by the Pinkertons and died in custody; he was tortured for information about the gang. At the docks, four of Martelli's men confront them, and John and Charles kill them. Charles drives a wagon out of the city, warning that Martelli has the police chief "in his pocket". Uncle meets them outside Saint Denis, and the three ride to Beecher's Hope.

At the ranch, in "Home Improvement for Beginners", Charles pours John coffee while Uncle mocks the shack, then helps pull it down with the horses: "Almost there! We got it." John leaves for Blackwater to buy a pre-cut house and tells him: "Charles, make him work. Whip him if you have to." In "The Tool Box", Charles, having heard that the Skinner Brothers are active in the area, joins John with two hired guns, Wayne and Devon, to escort the wagons through Tall Trees. The Skinners ambush the convoy and carry off Wayne. John and Charles follow and kill them, but find Wayne dead, tied to a tree. Charles explains the gang's habits to John, then takes Wayne's body away for burial. In "A New Jerusalem", Charles and John spend several weeks building the house while Uncle gives orders, and the three drink a toast when it is done. John tells Charles that he has a home at the ranch if he wants it.

"Uncle's Bad Day" opens with a night of drinking to celebrate the finished house and barn; at one point John chases Uncle around with Charles riding on his back. The next morning Charles shakes John awake: Uncle is missing. Tracks outside show that the Skinner Brothers have taken him. Following the trail, Charles warns that Uncle may be hurt so badly that killing him would be the kindest thing. Close to the gang's hideout, the two men continue on foot. They find Uncle tied to a spit above a fire. In the fight, each of them kills a Skinner who has jumped the other. John clears the way while Charles carries Uncle to the horses. Back at the ranch, Charles tends to Uncle's burns and tells John that the Skinners, having lost most of their men, should leave them alone from now on.

In "American Venom", Charles calls John out of the house when Sadie arrives with a lead on Micah. He agrees at once: "I will." On the road to Strawberry, Sadie says they owe this to Arthur. With high honor, Charles wonders whether Arthur cared about revenge, "especially not at the end"; with low honor, he says revenge is something Arthur could have understood. Sadie says she has heard he is building houses; Charles answers "When I'm not killing old friends." He turns down her offer of bounty work: "I think I might get out of here. Go North. Canada. Find a woman. Start a family, if I can." In Strawberry, he and John search one bank of the river while Sadie takes the other. Once Cleet is found, John and Sadie haul him onto the gallows and make him name Mount Hagen, while Charles deals with the townspeople: "My boss is a licensed bounty hunter. She can do what she wants."

Charles leads the way up the pass, mentioning an old watchtower the gang might be using as a camp, when a sniper hits him. Asked by John whether he is alive, he answers "Just about." He stays in cover while John and Sadie work their way up and John kills the marksman. When they come back to him, Charles sends them on: "Move fast... or they'll come down that hill and kill us all", and says he will follow them up, only slowly. Further up, one of Micah's men grabs Sadie and stabs her; Charles, who has followed them, shoots the attacker and John finishes him. John then tells Charles to stay with Sadie and goes on alone to Micah's cabin. After Micah's death, the three return to Beecher's Hope. Charles, still recovering from his wound, attends the wedding of John and Abigail with Sadie, Uncle and Jack. Some time later, he says goodbye to the family and to Sadie and rides away from the ranch. The game does not show where he goes.

Rockstar's character description reads: "A relatively recent recruit to the gang, Charles is quiet and reserved but extremely competent in everything he does and virtually unbeatable in a fight. A decent, honest man who also happens to be deadly." In the game he speaks little. On the longer ride of the bison hunt, when it is played in chapter 3, he tells Arthur that the silence helps clear his mind. At the campfire, when Uncle presses him to say more, he answers that silence is sometimes better. During the party for Sean's return he stays on watch the whole night and says he will leave the partying to the professionals.

He does not stay idle. At Colter his hand is burnt; asked how he is holding up, he answers: "I'm okay, apart from this hand. Stupid mistake." He still cuts short Arthur and Pearson's argument about food with "Enough of this. We'll go find something." When Arthur tells him to rest, he points at the camp and asks: "You think this is rest?" In "The Aftermath of Genesis" he explains that he rode alone for a long time and is done with it, tired of "always wondering if someone's gonna kill you in your sleep". He adds that Dutch, and most of the gang, treat him fairly, which he says is not the usual lot of a man with a Black father and a Native American mother. On the bison hunt he shoots one of the poachers who have left the animals they killed to rot.

He judges the gang without illusions. In "Eastward Bound", when Hosea says that part of the army had been "particularly, uh... unpleasant" in driving the Native Americans of the Heartlands off their land, Charles asks how anyone can rob and kill people pleasantly, and says the gang does not either, whatever Dutch claims. In a campfire conversation he confides that other people seem to know why they were born, while he feels he was born only to suffer, and that he feels stuck in this land. He plays the harmonica.

Names and nicknames

In "Pouring Forth Oil IV", Sean nicknames the three men riding with him "Sulky, Angry, Scar Face", "Sulky" being his name for Charles. In 1907, when John asks around Saint Denis for him, he is told that a "big Indian" is boxing in the slums. Micah calls him "boy" and "redskin" in a camp scene. In another camp scene Bill says Charles has been a "bad apple" ever since he joined. Arthur, back from their first hunt, tells Pearson: "Charles is a wonder."

Appearance

In 1899 Charles wears his black hair long and loose. His face carries a few scars and a short stubble, and he is heavily muscled. In the first chapters he usually wears a blue shirt with a white dot pattern, brown trousers and black boots, with a black winter coat at Colter and a blue coat over a green vest at Horseshoe Overlook; on missions he often puts on a hooded green wool coat. For the Saint Denis bank robbery he is dressed in a dark brown suit with a red necktie. Once Arthur is back from Guarma, Charles has braided his hair into a mohawk-like style. In 1907 the hair is loose again, with an eagle feather tied into it, and he wears a white pinstriped shirt, an open brown vest and dark grey trousers, adding a black leather coat and black gloves for the hunt for Micah.

Hunting and tracking

Charles is the gang's tracker. At Colter he is put in charge of the horses. In "The Aftermath of Genesis", unable to draw a bow with his burned hand, he gives his bow to Arthur and talks him through the hunt: a gun would scare off every animal for miles, the deer will feed now that the weather has eased, and no wind at all is bad while too strong a wind keeps them still. He reads fresh deer tracks in the snow, says the eye learns to track almost as well in grass and woods, tells Arthur to stay low, move slowly and aim for the neck or head, then steers him away from a hungry grizzly. Thanked for the lesson, he answers: "I only showed you a little. Takes a lifetime of practice to master."

His bison hunt with Arthur in the Heartlands, a companion activity of chapters 2 and 3, rewards Arthur with a bison pelt and the Poison Throwing Knife pamphlet. When asking for oleander, Charles says his uncle taught him as a boy to make poisoned arrows with it. His camp requests are both arrow ingredients: oleander for poison and moonshine for fire arrows. If Arthur stays away from camp too long, Dutch may send Charles, among other members, to find him, and the player can then ride back to camp with him by fast travel. In the epilogue Charles is the only one sent after John when he stays away from Beecher's Hope, with the same option.

Fighting

In 1907 he wins a bare-knuckle bout against "Simon of Wales" in the Saint Denis slums after betting on himself. His ring name is "Lone Wolf" ("le loup solitaire" in the French edition). Whatever the player does, he knocks his opponent down. If Arthur provokes the camp too often, Charles can punch him and throw him out. In "Magicians for Sport" he subdues one of two bounty hunters in the woods with his hands, then kills the man who takes Arthur hostage in the cornfield. In "The King's Son" he kills guards in silence with arrows and knives, climbs the wall of Fort Wallace with a grappling hook and kills the jailer. He is one of four non-player characters, with Sadie, Micah and Bill, who throw knives, only in scripted scenes.

Weapons

Where the other gang members carry a revolver as their sidearm, Charles carries a Sawed-off Shotgun. His model is unique to him, with a white varnish and a black steel barrel. In "That's Murfree Country" he is seen putting away a Cattleman Revolver, then taking the shotgun once he knows where they are heading. He also carries a bow of his own, a tomahawk, a machete and throwing knives, and uses a Lancaster Repeater, a Double-Barreled Shotgun and a Bolt Action Rifle.

Horses

In 1899 Charles rides Taima, an Appaloosa mare whose coat the game calls Gray Snowcap Spotted. Arthur rides her at Colter and thanks Charles for her in "The Aftermath of Genesis"; Charles calls her "a strong one". Charles is the only gang member whose horse Arthur rides himself; the one other case is "Our Best Selves", where Arthur rides as a passenger behind Dutch on The Count. In "The King's Son" Eagle Flies escapes from Fort Wallace on Taima, seated behind Charles. In 1907 Charles rides Falmouth, a male horse with a Grey Roan Sabino coat of the Nokota breed, on which he climbs Mount Hagen and leaves Beecher's Hope in the credits. In "Bare Knuckle Friendships" he drives the wagon out of Saint Denis.

Charles appears in 28 story missions of Red Dead Redemption 2: 21 from the opening of chapter 1 to the end of chapter 6, six in the second part of the epilogue, and one, "Red Dead Redemption", in which only his voice is heard. The table lists them in story order and adds the bison hunt, a companion activity he offers in chapter 2. Charles is never playable. He is the mission giver of "The King's Son" and of the hunting activity, and he appears in no mission of the first part of the epilogue.

Notable people Charles kills

The table gathers the named or singled-out victims Charles kills in the missions. Soldiers, bounty hunters, Murfrees, Skinners and members of Micah's gang killed in gunfights alongside Arthur or John are not listed one by one.

The lines below are given as spoken in the game, in the original English, with the mission and the person addressed. The last three are not tied to a specific mission.

Red Dead Redemption 2, chapters 1 and 2

• You're never too old to learn... I imagine.

  The Aftermath of Genesis (RDR2, chapter 1), to Arthur, who has never used a bow

• Sooner or later a job's going to go wrong. Nature of life.

  The Aftermath of Genesis (RDR2, chapter 1), to Arthur, about the failed Blackwater robbery

• I did that for a long time. I'm done with it. Always wondering if someone's gonna kill you in your sleep.

  The Aftermath of Genesis (RDR2, chapter 1), to Arthur, who asks whether he would rather move on alone

• He treats me fair. Most of you do. And for a feller with a black father and an Indian mother, that ain't normally the case.

  The Aftermath of Genesis (RDR2, chapter 1), to Arthur, about Dutch

• Unpleasant? How do you rob and kill people pleasantly? We don't, in spite of Dutch's talk.

  Eastward Bound (RDR2, chapter 1), to Hosea, who says part of the army was particularly unpleasant in driving the Native Americans off the Heartlands

• If they wanted trouble... we wouldn't have seen them.

  Eastward Bound (RDR2, chapter 1), to Arthur and Hosea, about the Native riders watching them from a cliff

• We're not cutting anyone loose.

  The First Shall Be Last (RDR2, chapter 2), to Arthur, who considers leaving Sean to his fate

• Why do you have to speak so much? It's... incessant.

  Pouring Forth Oil IV (RDR2, chapter 2), to Sean, on the way to the train

Red Dead Redemption 2, chapter 6

• You know I told your father I will not fight over some horses.

  A Rage Unleashed (RDR2, chapter 6), to Eagle Flies, who asks the gang to help recover the tribe's horses

• Any day we can die. We're about to break an Indian Chief's son out of a cavalry fort. We can both die tonight.

  The King's Son (RDR2, chapter 6), to Arthur, on the way to Fort Wallace

• You're lucky. You got the chance to... to do something better... My guess is maybe that's why you're here now.

  The King's Son (RDR2, chapter 6), to Arthur, after he reveals that he is dying

• Those money, those bonds, whatever it is... I don't want a cent. There's too much blood on it.

  My Last Boy (RDR2, chapter 6), refusing his share of the take from the oil refinery

• The time has come for us to draw our own lines, Arthur. Decide where we go from here.

  My Last Boy (RDR2, chapter 6), to Arthur

Epilogue

• Mm-hmm. When I'm not killing old friends.

  American Venom (RDR2, epilogue), to Sadie, who has heard that he is building houses

• No, that work ain't for me. I... I think I might get out of here. Go North. Canada. Find a woman. Start a family, if I can. I see how that life... well, I'd like to try it.

  American Venom (RDR2, epilogue), to Sadie, who offers him bounty hunting work

• I will be... but go on... go on now! Move fast... or they'll come down that hill and kill us all...

  American Venom (RDR2, epilogue), to John and Sadie, after the sniper's shot on Mount Hagen

Camp and activities

• Where the bison went, my people went. They were the center of all life... we couldn't survive without them. They provide us with everything... food, clothing, shelter, tools. There was a lot of respect...

  Hunting (RDR2, chapter 2), to Arthur, during the bison hunt

• Other human beings seem to understand why they were born, but, for me... it seems like I was born to hurt and suffer myself. That doesn't always seem like a really good reason. Uh... I wish there was another way. But here, in this land, uh... I feel very stuck.

  Camp (RDR2), during a campfire conversation

Lines without a mission

• I don't kill for fun. I kill when I need to.

  Red Dead Redemption 2, line not tied to a mission

• All this death and for what? Just so we can have enough money to be able to run from what we've done?

  Red Dead Redemption 2, on the state of the gang

• We lived a very bad path...

  Red Dead Redemption 2, on his years in the Van der Linde gang

Casting

Charles Smith is played by Noshir Dalal, an American actor credited with both the voice and the performance capture of the character. Dalal was not the first actor cast in the role. In an article on Roger Clark published by VG247 on 6 February 2019, Kirk McKeand wrote that most of the core cast stayed the same during production, but that the actor first chosen for Charles was replaced because he was not the right fit. The name of that actor has not been made public. Rockstar presented Charles in a series of character descriptions released on 6 September 2018 and published the next day by The Hollywood Reporter; the text is quoted under Personality. The official guide states that he joined the gang about six months before the story because he agreed with its outlook.

In 2019, Dalal also voiced Wolf, the protagonist of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. He later played Kotallo in Horizon Forbidden West (2022), Bode Akuna in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023) and Jubei in Ghost of Yōtei (2025). In August 2024, during the strike by video game performers of the SAG-AFTRA union, he told the Associated Press that transparency and pay were central to the protections actors wanted against the use of artificial intelligence.

Playing Charles

Dalal discussed the role in a round table with members of the cast published by The Hollywood Reporter on 8 November 2018. Asked about a character rarely seen in Westerns, the son of an African American father and a Native American mother, he said he did not know what project he had joined until he arrived on set, and that he did what research he could. What struck him most was that Charles is "a man who's half of one world and half of another and belongs in neither", and that the gang is the only group that ever treated him as family. Dalal said he related to this personally: he is half Japanese and half Parsi, and neither community sees him as one of its own. He added: "I've lived in the States so I was mostly around white folks", and said he drew on those parallels for the role.

In the same interview, Dalal said that the friendships he formed with the other actors over the years made Charles's attachment to the gang easy to play. He said he had never worked anywhere where "the human story and narrative were driven so far in front of any other requirement or need", and that he felt the character, from a social, political and cultural point of view, "needed to be told in the right way" within the limits of a game. He also said he broke so many things on set that Rockstar set up a "break jar" into which he had to put a dollar for each incident. In an interview with Eurogamer published on 12 December 2018, Gabriel Sloyer (Javier Escuella) described the cast taking on their characters' habits during breaks, with Dalal "doing some one-handed push-ups".

Cut content

The game files contain unused clothing for Charles: a hat for the heists, a vest, gloves and a gunbelt. Gunbelt props showing earlier designs for Charles, Dutch, John and Javier also survive, as does concept art showing Charles with Molly O'Shea and Javier. An unused line recorded for "Outlaws from the West" has Charles telling Arthur that the horse he took is in bad shape and offering him Taima; in the released version of "Outlaws from the West", Charles simply turns up with two horses and Arthur rides off on Taima. Another unused cutscene would have played if Arthur were arrested in Annesburg: Charles arrives with a hostage and demands his release.

The files also hold an unfinished chapter 4 mission, labelled "ntv0". In it, Arthur, Charles and Eagle Flies were to ambush an army convoy carrying Native American children to a boarding school. Its surviving animations show a Native American pleading for his life because he has a family, and a soldier who claims he only obeyed orders and tries to kill him. The dialogue between Arthur and Charles recorded as the mission's opening survives in a shorter form, as a rare chapter 4 camp scene that ends with Charles riding away. In that released scene, Charles says he will be away for a few days to help Eagle Flies free members of the tribe being sent to a reform school, and declines Arthur's offer to join him.

Four recorded camp scenes involving Charles did not make the final game. Bill was to trip him and keep needling him until Charles hit him. At Horseshoe Overlook, Pearson was to grumble to Charles about members who do little to bring in food, then ask Arthur for help if he came near; Arthur's reply is a noncommittal "maybe". Micah was to ask Charles whether he had ever taken a scalp, earning a threat to have his own taken. At Beecher's Hope, Charles was to ask John, while tending hooves, whether he remembered Colter. John points to his scars; Charles says the gang could have left sooner and that Dutch kept them there to punish them and show his power, and John replies that there is no use dwelling on it. Fishing with Charles also appears among the gang activities that were removed or cut back.

Reviews

Reviews published on 25 October 2018 mentioned Charles among the gang members. In USgamer's review, Mike Williams wrote: "Charles Smith is a reserved and competent hunter, but certain things get his murderous dander up." In IGN's review, Luke Reilly said the gang's members came from many cultures, "from Irish thug Sean Macguire to Native American brawler Charles Smith", and that "they all feel like credible human beings and not caricatures."

In Polygon's review, Chris Plante wrote that the gang's members of color introduce Arthur to the way America treats them. He described Charles, "who is half Native American", as helping Arthur hunt and acting as a liaison with a tribe moved from reservation to reservation. Plante noted that Charles's own tribe is never identified, and that Rockstar told him the Wapiti are "not modelled on a specific tribe". He wrote that the game's mixing of real peoples, places and groups produced story beats ranging "from benign to confused to insensitive and harmful".

Rankings

• Game Informer, 27 December 2018: 5th of the 24 members of the Van der Linde gang in the staff ranking. The staff called him "one of the best new additions to Red Dead's world" and one of the most dependable members of the gang, cited his "wry sense of humor", and ended with: "Here's hoping we get some DLC playing him."
• TheGamer, 10 August 2019: 4th of the ten most prominent members of the gang, in a ranking by Jerrad Wyche, who calls him "underrated and underappreciated" and names Charles and Sadie Adler among the closest pairings in the gang.

Fan interpretations

Gayming Magazine reported on 8 July 2020 that Dalal had posted a video on Instagram in support of fans who interpret Charles, and Wolf from Sekiro, as gay. He criticised hostile comments aimed at those fans and said: "It's not up to you, and it's not up to me." He described Charles as "a man who has never felt like he belongs" and who still tries to do the right thing.

Marketing

Rockstar's character description of Charles is quoted in the Personality section above. He appears in the official teaser artwork and in promotional artwork drawing his bow. The second trailer, released on September 28, 2017, shows him on horseback saying "We need an extra gun." The third trailer, released on May 2, 2018, shows him with the rest of the gang. On September 6, 2018, Rockstar posted the portraits of the gang's members on Twitter, Charles among them; the composite of the series places him in the back row, between Hosea and Bill.

Red Dead Redemption 2: The Complete Official Guide, published by Piggyback on October 26, 2018, gives him a profile on page 359.

In the game world

In 1907, the newspaper article "Notorious Bad Man Alive" reports that Dutch's gang was believed to have broken up in 1899, after Hosea Matthews and Arthur Morgan were killed in separate Pinkerton raids. It names Bill Williamson, Micah Bell, John Marston and Charles Smith as members still believed to be at large, and says that Javier Escuella is thought to live in the mountains of Mexico. Sadie, who rode with the gang in 1899, is not mentioned.

Appearances

At the Red Dead Redemption II cast panel of SacAnime Summer 2019, in Sacramento in June 2019, Roger Clark, who plays Arthur Morgan, named Charles as his favourite character.

Story and characters

• Charles has a burnt hand at Colter. In "The Aftermath of Genesis" he tells Arthur: "I'm okay, apart from this hand. Stupid mistake." Red Harlow, the part Native American hero of Red Dead Revolver (2004), also begins his story with a burnt hand.
• In "Americans at Rest", Charles throws a chair when the saloon brawl breaks out. That shot was motion-captured by Benjamin Byron Davis, the actor who plays Dutch.
• Scouting for a new camp in "A Strange Kindness", Arthur assures Charles that hiding in a cave goes against everything Dutch stands for. In chapter 5 the gang's last camp, Beaver Hollow, is a cave.
• In the "Gang Savings" section of Arthur's journal, the take from "My Last Boy" is credited to "A, D, C, B & S" (Arthur, Dutch, Charles, Bill and Sadie), although Charles refuses his share in the mission. John and Javier, who also took part, are not listed.
• In "Bare Knuckle Friendships", John asks the barman or the fence about "a boxer", although the game had never shown Charles boxing before. If John bets on Charles, he wins 40 dollars.
• In the dockside shootout of the same mission, Martelli's men carry Mauser Pistols, which surprises John; Charles answers that new inventions come quickly. A remix of "The Outlaw's Return", from the score of Red Dead Redemption, plays as the two men leave the city.
• In "American Venom", while John and Sadie threaten Cleet with hanging in Strawberry, Charles keeps the townspeople back with lines such as "My boss is a licensed bounty hunter. She can do what she wants."

Lines that depend on Arthur's Honor

• In "Bare Knuckle Friendships", Charles's assessment of Arthur depends on his Honor at death. With high Honor, Charles calls him "a good man" whose illness gave him an understanding of what his life was about; with low Honor, he says Arthur "wasn't a good man" and that the illness gave him something to cling to. The low Honor version also plays when the mission is replayed. John's account refers to Arthur's choice between the money and helping John escape.
• In "American Venom", on the ride to Strawberry, Charles wonders whether Arthur cared about revenge at the end if his Honor was high, or says that revenge is something Arthur could have understood if it was low. Sadie's answer changes in the same way.

Gameplay

• In "The Aftermath of Genesis", Charles gets upset if Arthur kills the deer with a gun rather than the bow. When Arthur remarks on the grizzly they meet, Charles answers: "We've got enough here, no need to push our luck." If the player attacks the bear anyway, he shouts: "What are you doing? Shoot!" Their talk about the new mouths to feed changes depending on whether "Old Friends" has been completed.
• After "Eastward Bound", Charles is absent from Horseshoe Overlook until "The First Shall Be Last" is completed. After "Pouring Forth Oil IV", although Arthur tells everyone to split up, Charles, Sean and John ride back to camp together.
• The bison hunt can also be played in chapter 3, when the longer ride from Clemens Point adds dialogue.
• In "A Strange Kindness", the player can track the missing man with Eagle Eye; if Arthur finds the trail fast enough, he points out the direction before Charles does. Earlier in the mission, Charles speaks his line about the dead man in the dry creek bed as if he had found the body himself, even when the player reached it first.
• "That's Murfree Country" offers a choice between riding to Beaver Hollow and paddling there. If the player hesitates, Charles loses patience and settles on the canoes. On that route the last stretch is covered on Tennessee Walkers borrowed from the village.
• In "Uncle's Bad Day", the player can kill the Skinner driving the wagon instead of following him to the hideout; the mission continues, but Charles is disappointed.
• A bug can bring Charles back to Beecher's Hope after the epilogue, during the family dinner. If John speaks to him, he talks about the Skinner Brothers as he did before leaving the ranch.