one of the most fascinating and also haunting things about the good the bad and the ugly, in my opinion, is that it's a movie that is both ostensibly a prequel, and is also intensely cyclical. we watch the man with no name acquire the outfit and become himself. we watch the end recall the beginning. blondie learned his lesson. blondie makes the same mistakes and he'll keep making them. tuco is going to catch him once more in some other town, like always. tuco is never going to see him again. does either of them know?
and it's so eerie when you consider the other movies. the noose at the beginning of a fistful of dollars. the fact that the poncho is so much cleaner than it was in gbu, where it has the bullet holes of the duel with ramón that hasn't yet happened. blondie's hat has the damage from mortimer shooting it off his head, which won't happen for ten more years. everything happened in a straight line. none of it happened at all. it will happen over, and over, and over.
at the end of for a few dollars more, there is a three way standoff in that same stone circle, only with different surroundings. manco asks mortimer to settle down with him, and he is left to settle alone.
