I actually made a post about this in the wiki here a few years back, and my opinion hasn't changed, but my reasoning and also proper way of expressing it has gotten better so I'll try to do it here.
I'm not saying I hate Sadie. Not at all. I like her and she's still a good character. But I can't stand her most of the time, and she's not this great character everyone makes her out to be. She's a independent badass woman, sure but she's not a goddess. I liked Sadie alot in my early playthroughs but over time as I did a new playthrough, I began to dislike her alot.
I feel like one of her weakest character points is her revenge mission. I get it, the O'Driscolls killed her husband, and god knows what they did to her, whether she was hiding or captured in the cellar or not. But I just feel like the writers made her extremely one dimensional, especially after Chapter 2. I know they wanted to have a badass female character who Arthur could trust and eventually John, but there's ways of doing it and for Rockstar, who are great at crafting such great characters with crazy depth, complexity and etc, they dropped the bag on Sadie. Sadie in the Epilogue is more likeable for me at least, cause she's not consumed by revenge here anymore.
But yeah Sadie in the main game from Chapter 3 to 6, I often just rolled my eyes or got annoyed by her actions. She constantly puts herself, Arthur and others in danger in pursuit of her revenge mission against the O'Driscolls. Maybe it's just me who has no clue on how revenge can be for people and how they aggressively pursue it, but just it annoyed me how she constantly put her and others in danger and near death to kill a few O'Driscolls. She gets the Arthur Hot Air Baloon guy (can't remember his surname) killed unnecessarly, and even Arthur criticizes it before Sadie ignores it to reveal Colm is arrested and sentenced to hang.
At this point in the game, for the gang, they're desperate. They're being cornered now. Contrary to Dutch's reasoning for "noise" to escape out of sight, it's actually not what they need now, considering they've made a shit ton of noise in Blackwater, Valentine, Rhodes and Saint Denis. Arthur doesn't care for the O'Driscolls, cause in his eyes, he and the gang got bigger problems. But Sadie is so bloodthirsty that she ignores it cause she wants to see Colm hang. That part genuinely angered me, that she ignored a valid criticism that she constantly causes trouble in pursuit of revenge, now that caused a innocent man's death who has zero connections to either gangs beyond Sadie meeting him and having Arthur go with him on the hot air balloon so to be able to locate John.
And I feel like the message of "Revenge is a fool's game" is redundant when Sadie suffers no consequence for her revenge mission. One of the themes of Red Dead Redemption (forgive me if I misunderstood it) is that revenge is a idiot's game, or a luxury we can't afford. When we pursue and fullfil a revenge mission, often that can cause consequences. John goes after Micah, and you wanna know what happens after? Agent Ross locates him and it sets into motion of the first game. Dutch goes after Angelo Bronte in revenge for setting him up (even though honestly Dutch shouldn't have believed his bullshit yarn about alot of money in a trolley station), right after, the Saint Denis bankheist fails and Hosea and Lenny die in the chaos (you can argue whether or not the gang going after Bronte essentially was why the Pinkertons understood the gang were going to rob the bank, but the consequence of revenge here is still evident). We don't know for sure what happens to Jack after he goes after Ross, but the consequence of that I would say is Jack is a killer now, a possible outlaw, a lifestyle Arthur, John and Abigail didn't want to happen to Jack. The bottomline is: Revenge causes consequences.
Sadie suffers no consequences for her revenge mission. At all. She gets to do whatever she wants in the Epilogue and is more than likely alive still in South America despite her participation in the revenge mission against Micah (though I would excuse that with her being in another country, same with Charles, whereas John remains in the country).
But yeah, to sum it up, I don't like Sadie. She's too one dimensional and makes the message of revenge is a fool's game almost redundant. This isn't to tell you to hate Sadie, I respect your opinion if you love her and if you disagree. But I had to get my personal frustrations with Sadie out
I just feel she's incredibly underwritten, and I wished there was some form of consequence for her, not to punish her but more to have her question herself or feel guilty
She does that in the Epilogue to a degree when she's worried about John being involved with her in bounty hunting, but that's really it (at least from what I remember).
Anyways, I'll stop ranting
