Anton Chekhov said that if there’s a gun onstage, it must go off before the end of the story.

While Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise contains many items, characters, and plot threads which
recur at dramatically important and often ironic times, nothing exemplifies the idea of the
proverbial Chekhov’s gun better than Thelma’s own handgun.

The gun is first introduced at 8:51, right when the women have begun their road trip, when
Thelma shocks Louise both over her having brought the gun on the trip and her casual attitude
towards it. Louise’s questions surrounding why they would need a gun are answered brutally at
20:33, when she has to save her friend from a brutal rape. It is only the gun, not Thelma’s cries
and protestations or Louise’s presence, which gets Harlan to stop his attempted assault. Both
literally and symbolically, this gun provides the women with an independence they previously
lacked, the freedom to protect themselves against harm from men.

However, there is a dark flipside to the gun’s protective attributes. The only reason the gun can
provide Thelma and Louise the safety to exist in a dangerous world is because of its lethal
capabilities. At 21:32, the film changes dramatically, when Louise murders Harlan for his
continued cruelty and harassment in the assault attempt aftermath. Because of this gun, the
story has now irrevocably changed, as the protagonists are now technically murderers and
could face a lifetime imprisonment.

The gun likewise serves as an equalizer, both between the sexes and the protagonists. There is
no chance that either Louise or Thelma could physically go up against the men who would do
them harm, due to their slim frames, lack of physical training, and biological differences.
However, with the gun, Louise did not need to physically fight Harlan or the crude truck driver
at 1:51:32.

The gun likewise helps to put the coprotagonists on an equal footing. When the gun makes its
first appearance, Louise dismisses Thelma for packing it, writing it off as just another example of
her ditzy behavior. Thelma regularly decries Louise for being overly cautious, while Louise sees
Thelma as impulsive and flighty. By packing protection, Thelma saves herself from assault and
later shows clever if immoral thinking getting out of trouble with the cops at :38:47 and using
JD’s robbery techniques at 1:14:58. Louise likewise is able to be impulsive, more like her friend.

Yet, in the handling of the gun, they are allowed to take on some of their friends’ strengths. In
packing a means of self-defense and placing it in the secure yet accessible glove compartment,
Thelma shows herself to be increasingly thoughtful. Through jumping to action and instinctually
killing Harlan, Louise is more like Thelma than initially appearing.

The gun ultimately serves as the pair’s undoing, as the pair’s initial murder and subsequent
crimes is what leads to the climactic police chase and their untimely deaths in the iconic
Bolivian Army Ending of the pair driving their cars off the cliff.