Never figured out why those guys killed Nicholson’s character.............
Trying to make sense out of Easy Rider’s plot line is pretty much a pointless exercise.
Here’s my take. The whole movie is a parable, and every character is like an archetype. Nicholson’s character shared their ideals, but unlike Hopper and Fonda he wasn’t dealing drugs to fund his own pursuit of happiness. He might have been a drunk, but he wasn’t cheating.
So his death is the “death of innocence”. His death represents the death of the childlike idealism of that generation, as they become jaded and hedonistic.