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

The novel's anti-heroic protagonist or pseudo-protagonist, the kid is an illiterate Tennessean whose mother died in childbirth. At 14, he runs away from his father and sister. He is said to have "a taste for mindless violence" and is involved in brutal actions throughout the novel. He enters inherently violent professions, those primarily being his recruitment into Captain White's filibuster company and later Glanton's gang of scalphunters, thereby securing release from a prison in Chihuahua, Mexico. The kid takes part in many of the Glanton gang's scalp-hunting raids, including those against peaceful agrarian Native Americans and unprotected Mexican villages, but ultimately displays a moral fiber that puts him at odds with the judge. "The kid" is referred to as "the man" in the final chapter of the novel, which takes place in 1878.