Fan Casting Judge Holden in Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West (2025)

A huge, pale, and hairless man who may or may not be supernatural. He is a polyglot and polymath and a keen examiner and recorder of the natural world. He is extremely violent and deviant. He is said to have accompanied Glanton's gang since they found him sitting alone on a rock in the middle of the desert. The judge subsequently saves the gunpowder-less gang from pursuing Apaches by leading them to various natural resources from which he is able to collect and eventually create gunpowder. It is hinted that he and Glanton have some manner of pact. He gradually becomes the antagonist to the kid after the dissolution of Glanton's gang, occasionally having brief reunions with the kid. Unlike the rest of the gang, Holden is socially refined and remarkably well educated; however, he perceives the world as ultimately violent, fatalistic, and liable to an endless cycle of bloody conquest, with human nature and autonomy defined by the endurance and omnipresence of war. His beliefs are expounded upon in speeches and stories throughout the novel.