#and also yeah lol if we want to get into the suffering olympics izzy lost half a leg to gangrene and ed was beaten to near-death soooooo

[cuddlytogas]

I mean, the point is that both sides there are getting it wrong! stop listening to fandom takes and just watch the show, and it's obvious. it's as wrong to say "Izzy didn't do enough" as it is to say "Ed didn't do enough", and arguably, that's the whole point of s2: no one is beyond help, change, or healing.

as I see it, the show relies on a) normal people acting normal, and b) pirate logic. there's no big grovelling apology scene from either Ed or Izzy because honestly, that's not how normal people interact! in the real world, people (especially men) don't make grand redemptive gestures, particularly not when they live and work in close quarters. it'd be weird to make a whole Thing about it once the dust has settled and you feel stupid and terrible for the shit you did.

instead, both Ed and Izzy alter their behaviour towards the people around them. Izzy allies with the crew, redirects some of Ed's anger onto himself, loses a lot of his threat by injury, and visibly softens towards others, training Stede, supporting Ed's relationship, and joining the Calypso party. he doesn't need to ~redeem himself~ - he's changed, and the crew, Ed, and Stede have the grace to accept that for the apology and development it is.

and the same goes for Ed! Lucius is right, his actual spoken apology is pretty lacklustre. but in action and attitude, he changes: he adheres to the rules made to help others feel safe, he tries to help Lucius through his trauma, he opens up to Stede, and he sincerely apologises to both Fang and Izzy.

and this is THE ENTIRE POINT of 2x05 and 06!! the show explicitly tells us that dwelling on pain is worse than forgiving, and by showing the crew happily partying together, Ed back in his leathers instead of the onesie, and Izzy singing and congratulating Ed and Stede, it's showing us that these people have made their amends and apologies, which have in turn been accepted by the people around them. it's that simple!

as to just sort of forgetting things that happeneds in s1 - sure, maybe we would've liked to see specific incidents mentioned, but it's a half-hour comedy about pirates. by its very genre, the show has a warped relationship to violence, of many kinds. so Izzy sold them all out to the English, and Ed deliberately sailed into a storm. Roach has never gotten an apology at all, and Archie's used to just moving on! their lives are violent and melodramatic, and what seems extreme to us can be brushed off by them by nature of the genre.

but the show is very, very explicit that no one has to go crawling and begging for forgiveness, because that wouldn't mean shit. as @ourflagmeansgayrights said in the replies, it's not interested in "redemption", but empathy. people make their amends through vulnerability and meaningful changes in attitude and behaviour - which both Ed and Izzy do. literally, it's just fucking Wild Geese by Mary Oliver:

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. ... Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Please, someone, anyone. I know Izzy had a redemption arc in season 2, but please explain to me what exactly he did to redeem himself. I love listening to podcasts and watching reaction videos of this show, so I'm not talking about the canyon here and how they believe he didn't even have to redeem himself to begin with.

More than once, I've heard complaints about Ed, saying he hasn't really redeemed himself, that he went way too far, that he has disappointed them and he should've apologized more... But then, they'll say that Izzy has become their fav in season 2 despite not liking him in season 1 because of his antagonistic actions. Ok? Apart from Ed, who exactly did Izzy apologize to then? Or is Izzy exempt from this? Izzy must've done something to redeem himself in their eyes to become their fav after not liking him, right? Or did they absolve him of everything because he shed a tear and was feeling bad? What did Izzy do that was enough to be redeemed (apart from the writers wanting him to have that arc), but Ed aparently didn't? He cried too, he was feeling really bad as well and Izzy himself had a hand in this. So surely it was something else? I keep trying to rearrange the pieces but it makes no sense? What am I missing?

Please, help me understand. I feel like I'm going crazy over this.

#49.