The mysterious new Red Dead Redemption 2 easter egg hole deepens, and I'm in awe at how far it seems to go

With GTA 6 currently scheduled for November and unlikely to see a PC release this year, we’ve had to turn back to the classics to scratch the Rockstar itch, and Red Dead Redemption 2 has delivered. In what’s been dubbed the ‘Spider Dream Mystery,’ or simply the spiderweb easter egg, one off-hand discovery has sent the community spiraling down a bizarre rabbit hole that only continues to stretch out as the days roll on. Personally, I’ll take any excuse to revisit one of the best open-world games ever made, but this particular thread has continued to surprise me as more clues seemingly appear, including one possible nod over in GTA 5 land.

In case you didn’t catch up on the initial steps of the Spider Dream Mystery, a chance post to the r/reddeadmysteries subreddit about an unusual, time-sensitive spiderweb on a telegraph pole in Saint Denis has sparked a chain reaction of discoveries among Red Dead Redemption 2 theorycrafters. A network of eight similar web-laden poles has been discovered, with each only appearing for an hour each day. Players followed the tracks to yet another pole, which then revealed an inscription reading ‘NW,’ along with a symbol resembling a guitar or a gourd.

The investigation has seen a serious surge of interest – subreddit mod ‘Kaineferu’ notes that the page saw its weekly view count skyrocket over 175,000 as players poured in to help. Since we last checked in, the clue-seekers have been scouring Fort Wallace – the most likely target of the north-west indicator, and a space which loosely resembles a guitar shape from above. A suggestion from ‘FindingNo7’ seemingly points to the next hint, which you can see in the video below from ‘Strange Man.’

A guitar atop a table in Fort Wallace nudges us to a tower there, where another guitar inside points up onto the roof. There, marked on a pair of adjacent roof tiles, are two matching bird-like symbols that look to be aiming north. Some investigation of the game files helps to verify that this design likely isn’t an accident, as it uses the same custom wireframe technique to carve them out as the initials that can be seen on the Butcher Creek outhouse.

So what are we to do with two birds? Strange Man seems to think it could be pointing towards the Giant’s cave, a location where you’re able to have a conversation with an unseen NPC who claims they went into hiding because they were “too big.” Others such as ‘Turbulent-Sleep6958’ believe that it refers to Two Crows in New Austin, where some early investigation has uncovered a hatchet symbol carved into the underside of a table.

Yet another player, ‘LSF-VirtueSignal,’ thinks that perhaps this Fort Wallace clue is a red herring. All of the other discoveries have been related to the power lines spread across the map, they explain, and so stepping away from that feels like a strange step to take. They’re instead looking further northwest towards Cotorra Springs, which lies near a train tunnel, and features a strange area that appears to boast electric-powered lights with no visible power lines.

There’s one more wrinkle to the tale, however. Red Dead Online fortune teller Madam Nazar was added to GTA Online as part of the Diamond Casino Heist in late 2019, and many of her phrases make nods to well-known events and easter eggs in the world of RDR2. Among them, one in particular says, “I see a web, still tangled after years of unraveling. Will you be the one, I wonder?”

Perhaps, all those years ago, someone at Rockstar was eager to let us know that one of Red Dead Redemption 2’s most deep-set mysteries had yet to be uncovered. So the question remains: will you be the one to solve it? If you’ve got ideas, be sure to drop by the pinned threat on the subreddit to offer your best suggestions. Whatever comes of it, I can’t wait for the truth of this web to finally be laid out in full.

Update: Another possible answer has surfaced, this time courtesy of Strange Man once again. Upon following the path to the location of the Giant’s birds, they show a mountain in the distance that features a distintive question mark. Its actual location is out of bounds, but commenters note that the path taken to get there, when traced out as a series of straight lines, resembles a backwards question mark.

Coincidence? Or yet another step in the puzzle – perhaps pointing us to the location of the dot. It’s another diversion from the original theme, making me wonder if this might be a separate easter egg altogether. However, the symbol being reflected in the path we’ve taken so far makes it feel more substantial. Unless we actually discover the gold at the end of this metaphorical rainbow, we won’t know for sure.