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itsclydebitches · 3 years ago

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Our Flag Means Death: A Deep Dive

The Obligatory Introduction

Hello, Our Flag Means Death fandom! I am so excited to finally post this. I have a couple of things I'd like to say before anyone reads further though. Let's make a fun Q&A out of it:

How long is this meta?

Too damn long. It’s nearly 35,000 words, so... yeah. It’s the longest single meta I've ever written! (Is that an accomplishment, or...?) Seriously though, do not click “Read More.” Stick this in a separate tab. If anyone actually has an interest in working through this monstrosity, I can only recommend that you approach it in chunks. Take breaks. Drink some water.

Are there sections?

Yep! Eight of them after this intro. They're all fairly self-contained, so feel free to pop around. Also, I hate coming up with titles so I just threw out whatever meme-based stupidity popped into my head. You have my apologies:

Beep Beep, Bitch, Everyone's Gay Queer

"We're Dead! We're Dead! We've Survived but We're Dead!"

The Feminine Urge to Reject Toxic Masculinity

BlackBonnet and Balancing Identities

Stede Is a Lighthouse (Duh)

Izzy Hands (Affectionate and Derogatory)

The Garbage Heap of Miscellaneous Thoughts

Conclusion (AKA When I Finally Rest)

Okay, I read some of this and I super disagree with your takes.

Awesome! Seriously, one of the things I love most about OFMD (and its fandom) is the wealth of interpretations we've got going on, some of which contradict and yet manage to exist simultaneously in the category of Things I Believe In because that’s fiction for you. It's rad. The only thing I ask is if you want to respond to this post, please do so respectfully, both to me and to others. The community has been wonderfully chill thus far and I'd love to keep it that way. Basically, to quote Lucius, "Don't be a dick."

Why do your pictures look so weird?

Because HBO Max won't let me take screenshots, so I had to settle for lackluster phone pics. Sorry 😬

Why in the world have you done this?

Boredom? A love of writing? The desperate need to purge myself of this show before it consumes me whole? Idk take your pick.

I'm not gonna lie, this meta is something I’m feeling pretty iffy about. Partly because I could only stand to work on it for so long, despite all the ways it could still be improved. Partly because there are some aspects of the show I haven't properly worked through yet, let alone figured out how to discuss. Partly just because it is, frankly, scary to throw out this many opinions into a new and still developing fandom. I’ve written a lot in a short period of time and I'm not sure yet if the result is a disaster or not… but for what it's worth, I love this community and I hope at least a few of you get something worthwhile out of this <3

Okay, let’s go!

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Beep Beep, Bitch, Everyone's Gay Queer

Let's begin this massive undertaking with one of my favorite things about OFMD: the queer rep. Specifically, the ways in which Lucius functions as a reflection of Stede — elder gay helping out the baby gay — and preps the audience for our primary Ed/Stede romance. Though the Pilot episode clearly establishes Stede as the other among a group of (supposedly) bloodthirsty pirates, Lucius is largely his equal in that regard. It's easy to miss given that, again, the focus is on how Stede fails to fit in, but nearly everything that separates him from the crew is something that Lucius embodies as well. Stede is the educated aristocrat who brings an entire library to sea? Lucius is the only other one onboard who can read and write (at least, he thinks as much without knowing Jim's secret) and he’s learned beautiful calligraphy to boot. Also, like Stede, it's implied that he enjoys literature for its own sake, given that he's apparently taken him up on his offer to borrow books. Though OFMD does a lot to undermine the idea of "real" intelligence (primarily by balancing Stede and Ed's knowledge of their prospective worlds, positioning both educations as beneficial and capable of solving their problems,) Lucius nevertheless demonstrates the kind of "correct," aristocratic intelligence that Stede hails from. He's a reader, a writer, a thinker, and — like Olu and Jim — someone capable of planning ahead and considering the bigger picture. Olu is the one who points out that Stede is providing them with everything they need to survive so they might as well take advantage of that while they can, while Lucius is the one who looks back at Frenchie sticking his tongue out at the hostages and quickly agrees that yes, the kind of stupidity their captain represents is quite preferable to the other kinds of stupidity pervading the ship.

Stede is emasculated through his disgust of gore and an unwillingness to solve his problems with violence? Lucius likewise displays an unwillingness to get down and dirty, so to speak. Unlike the rest of the crew who revel in the violence that breaks out over dinner with the British— Black Pete has had his gun cocked this whole time, Wee John barges in with an intent to set things ablaze, Jim starts it all off by skewering the racist soldier's hand, etc. — Lucius gives a kind of half-faint when the fighting starts and slinks down in his chair. Later, when we cut back after Stede accidentally kills Badminton, Lucius appears to be hiding under the table rather than joining the brawl. He also hides behind the accordion player when the fight breaks out at Spanish Jackie's. Perhaps most tellingly, he can't engage with Badminton's body any more than Stede can. While Olu tells a panicking Stede that yes, this is happening, Lucius is staring off into the distance, looking like he's just as much in denial about this turn of events as his captain is.

Lucius is a man who, when defending himself from Jim wielding both a knife and murderous intent, still screams "I'm sorry!" after smacking them with a stick. Though we don't know his backstory yet, there might be something to the fact that Lucius looks downright murderous when Badminton forces Stede to recount his bullying — that is, something more than Lucius' general regard for Stede; a slowly developing friendship. That could be the look of someone who understands this kind of bullying all too well because as a gay, educated, effeminate man, Lucius may have suffered similarly.

Other connections surface as the season continues. For example, Stede's expensive, vibrantly colored wardrobe initially sets him apart from everyone else, Lucius included, but it's only Lucius who's dressed up in "A Damned Man" to match Stede when they attempt to sell their hostage off. In the Pilot the crew separate the two, this time with Stede coming out more positively because he's able to do the "wooden boy voice" in their bedtime story. Though Lucius might lack Stede's storytelling skills, he comes to represent Pinocchio (a bit) by becoming part wood thanks to Black Pete's whittled finger and he’s constantly referred to as "the boy" throughout the show. (Also, you know, something something the theme of the whole crew becoming the real people they want to be + Ed in particular becoming a "real boy" rather than simply the persona of Blackbeard, the equivalent of a puppet for all it emotionally fulfills him without "Ed,” "Edward," and the other facets of his identity to add depth). Even tiny details like Stede struggling with the ladder and Lucius freaking out while being lowered to clean the ship — "This is far too fast, this is far too fast, this is far too fast" — help draw them together, especially when we consider that as a duo they may well parallel Izzy and Ed, each right-hand man mimicking their captain in temperament. In short, Lucius mirrors Stede in many ways which allows the show to more easily bridge the gap between the toxic masculinity pirate code that everyone is initially working from — kill people, loot things, die early, bottle it up, you’re definitely straight — and the Gentleman Pirate code that Stede would like to implement — spare people, give back as much as you take, live a long and fulfilled life, "talk it through as a crew,” everyone is queer. Though Stede asserts (and is correct) that everyone on his ship has the capacity to unlearn this cycle, Lucius is the bridge between the two worlds, acting as evidence that they're not nearly as far apart as they may initially seem. Stede wants to be a Gentleman Pirate? Lucius is already a slightly less exaggerated version of that.

Similarly, Lucius is a kind of bridge between two types of television for the viewer, acting as a reassurance before we get into the meat of the story. To better explain what I mean by that, you have to understand that I'm old enough to have lived through the Golden Age of Queerbaiting. Now, when I use the term "queerbaiting" I'm referring both to shows suffering under the literal definition — a marketing scheme wherein people associated with the product (actors, producers, writers) knowingly stoke the idea of a queer relationship without having any intention of making it canonical. These implied promises exist only to draw in a hopeful audience and inevitably leave queer viewers with a sense of betrayal when all is said and done — as well as the more ambiguous definition that's cropped up over the years: a show with very heavy subtext (queercoding), to the point where it feels like the relationship is being teased in an underhanded way, even though that feeling never leaves the confines of the story itself, rendering it technically non-queerbaiting. To be clear, queercoding is not inherently bad, far from it, but the line between an artistic implication and what feels like queerbaiting’s less malicious cousin has become blurred over the years. This is the realm of, "Who are you to say what the writers should have done?" and "Idk, seemed pretty platonic to me. Plenty of BFFs star longingly into each other's eyes!" If you've been in one of the latter fandoms, you know how difficult it can be to explain the difference between mere subjective interpretation and a surety that feels like a knife-twist when it's never acknowledged, if only because you’ve been denied that acknowledgement so many times before. Toss in some more specific categories like, "The authors did everything they could to secure a queer relationship, but the higher ups still mostly killed it and that sucks" (Korra) or "Turns out it wasn't technically queerbaiting, but we spent fifteen years thinking it was and the tradeoff was a Bury Your Gays, so... yay?" (Supernatural) and you start to get an idea of why queer fans might be a little suspicious of what winds up on screen.

(However, and this is a note that is very near and dear to my heart, Good Omens does NOT fall under any definition of queerbaiting. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.)

So, simply put I've come to organize everything I watch into three, broad categories.

Shows That Are Not Queer (And That's Usually Fine)

Shows That Are Queercoded (Let's See How It Pans Out)

Shows That Are 100% Unambiguously Queer (!!!!)

Needless to say, I don't encounter shows in the third category very often. OFMD is one of the rare exceptions that’s so far into Category #3, so fast, that it’s not even a debate. But more than simply giving us queer characters and queer story-lines, OFMD understands how many viewers, like myself, are approaching media with — not to be too dramatic about it — our hearts in our hands. We’ve been burned by queerbaiting for so long that we’re uneasy about it, to say the least.

Okay, great. What does all this have to do with Lucius?

Well, as said, Lucius (along with a few other characters and significant details) is a bridge between Category #2 and #3. The kiss between Stede and Ed doesn't come about until "Act of Grace" and honestly? I wouldn't expect it to. I wouldn’t want it to. Not if we're considering what the story needs, rather than what the audience may want in terms of reassurance. We have to introduce these characters, let them meet, take them on the journey of realizing their feelings for one another and then craft the perfect moment to act on them... if anything, I would have liked a little more buildup to the kiss, more filler episodes to play with their dynamic, more pining, more hesitation before the extreme of running away to China together sounds like the best option. The desire to have queerness acknowledged quickly and overtly is entirely a product of a queerphobic media history; everyone recognizes that a good story needs time and space to develop a relationship, as well as the ability to embrace subtlety. Which is precisely why "They just look like friends to me" and "You're too impatient. It’s only been five years!" are easy shields for others to hide behind). If you want time to develop your queer protagonists, but you know your audience will likely read any "Will they, won't they?" storytelling as potentially cruel teasing, what are you to do? What's the middle ground here?

More queer characters.

Though by the end of the first season OFMD has at least seven confirmed queer characters according to my count (+Izzy heavily implied and Spanish Jackie included too, depending on how you read twenty husbands), at the start Lucius is set to carry that weight, to the point where you might even wonder, very early on, if he's the show's token gay. First though, we start with the suggestive jokes. The Swede sits rubbing his balls in the ball room. Stede comments that everyone wants a piece of the Gentleman Pirate. Lucius is described as being "young and succulent" which, outside of the cannibal context, sounds pretty lewd. Basically, there's no shortage of innuendos throughout and many other shows could have, would have, just left it at that. Even the reveal in episode two, "A Damned Man," that Lucius is gay isn't particularly revolutionary in 2022. As said, he may well just be the token queer whose sexuality is thrown into a single scene to waylay any criticism; the breadcrumbs that many fans will still celebrate because hey, it's better than nothing.

However, by episode three Lucius has gone back on the declaration he made in episode two. He swore to Jim that he's great at keeping secrets. "My mum thought I liked girls for years!" He follows this up with “I understand what it’s like to live in disguise. Let’s just say, not all beards are actual beards, if you catch my drift.” Though it's fantastic to confirm Lucius as gay this early on, this speech also prompts the audience to expect a certain type of story moving forward. Lucius is living in a world where homophobia exists, just like ours, hence keeping his preferences secret from his mom. He only comes out to Jim under duress, specifically as a way to save his own skin. The way that he tries to reassure Jim is by drawing attention to the fact that they both hide: Jim wears a literal beard to hide their identity and Lucius has presumably taken metaphorical beards (fake girlfriends) in the past to pass as straight. The implications of this speech are pretty clear: that queerness is not accepted, it's hidden, only admitted to under extreme circumstances, and a panicked coming out is probably the most the audience should expect. Maybe Lucius will kiss someone in another season or two, if we’re lucky.

Except then OFMD doesn't do that! At all! "A Gentleman Pirate" airs and Jim has their beard removed, prompting Lucius to exclaim in relief because he's "so bad at keeping secrets." He lied. That first scene lied. Not when it comes to Lucius' preferences, but rather in regards to this idea that the world — this show — revolves around hiding, deceit, and subtly; queerness as a rare occurrence and something to be vaguely ashamed of. That reading lasted barely an episode. In removing Jim's disguise, the show simultaneously removes the barrier between my Category #2 and #3. OFMD goes from another dime a dozen show with comedic innuendos, a queercoded lead, and one (1) canonically queer character to, well, what we have now. The representation builds and it builds fast.

As we leave the world of mere innuendo, Stede gets mistaken for a prostitute and instead of being disgusted by the attention of another man, he's merely disappointed that he's yet to sell his captive. That’s not the kind of “booty” he was hawking. Meanwhile, the man in question says that "We could have made magic," framing their potential union as thoroughly positive and something everyone (him, Stede, the audience) is missing out on. Then we watch Spanish Jackie coming onto a woman, thinking she's a man, except later it's revealed that Jackie knew Jim was a woman all along, until later still it's revealed that Jim isn't actually a woman at all! So congrats on the presumed het, presumed lesbian, ultimately queer near-makeout session.

Thing is though, all of this is still fairly surface level stuff. Don't get me wrong, it's way more than what most other shows will do, but it's still fleeting, or used for comedy, or, in the case of Jim, requires that the viewer get through several more episodes before they understand precisely how this might function as representation. The point is that between this sprinkling of queerness that the audience may not be sure what to make of yet, and the overwhelmingly canonical romance of our two leads, Lucius is there to fill the gap. "The Best Revenge is Dressing Well" slams in hard with what is now one of my favorite scenes in television history. I am, of course, referring to the moment when Izzy finds Lucius and Pete post-coitus. I mean seriously, this scene gives us so much in such a short period of time. Reasserting that Lucius is gay (AKA not leaving that as a one-time admission for representation clout). Confirmation that Black Pete is also queer. Revealing that they've started a supremely cute relationship. Wee John taking a nap two feet away, annoyed only that they're disturbing his rest. And, of course there's, ah...

Look, I'm trying to approach this meta with a modicum of respectability. I’m trying to write clearly, provide evidence wherever I can, all that jazz. But here I must take a break from the professional veneer and scream that IZZY LIMP-WRISTS HIS WAY INTO REVEALING HE HAS A FUCKING DADDY KINK AND I'M STILL NOT OVER IT, HOLY SHIT.

This show is A Lot.

I'll get into our queerphobic gay later, but for now the fact that OFMD did all of the above plus blessing us with the most intense second-hand embarrassment I've experienced in years demonstrates just how fast the show moves from Category #2 to #3 — and Lucius, the one who is most like Stede, is at the center of it all. In the same episode he gets out of the work Izzy has assigned by seducing Fang and I oh so love that this come-on is not presented as predatory, or even a lie. It would have been so easy to have Lucius wield his queerness as a weapon and then immediately ditch Fang once he'd gotten what he wanted, sending the message (however unintentional, given the rest of the show) that such interactions are inherently duplicitous. But instead, Lucius likes Fang. Sure, his "stunning cheekbones" comment is initially a means of distracting Fang from his duty, but when it works Lucius is all for following through on that compliment. His praise while sketching Fang is genuine and it likewise draws attention to OFMD's support of not just queer relationships, but the variety of queer bodies.

Fang: "I've never met anyone whose taken an interest in my form before."

Lucius: "You've never met anyone worth a damn then."

That's a wonderful line on its own, but it means so much more when delivered to a black, fat character. Just like it would have been easy to make Lucius the seductress who wields his charm solely as a means of achieving other ends — the only time it's actually used as such is against Izzy who tries to undermine the open, diverse environment the crew has built — it likewise would have been easy to give Lucius a cute twink to sleep with, someone considered palatable to look at on screen (note my disdain for the term). Someone the audience can find attractive too, if you’ve got a very narrow definition of “attractive,” that is. Hell, our entire cast might have been made up of Very Handsome Men (+ Jim) with makeup and costuming departments working hard to emphasize their Hollywood acceptable features. Think chiseled abs, waxed chests, dehydrated bodies, perfectly styled hair, etc. We’ve seen it before.

The above may make it sound like I don't think the cast is handsome. The cast is fucking hot, but it's important to note that it's an explicitly anti-Hollywood, queer kind of hotness: boundary pushing, outside of the established norm, rife with all too human blemishes that make us go, “Hell yeah that’s a real person, not a photoshopped Ken doll.” With the exception of dressing Ed all in leather as a heavy-handed, satire-esque nod towards traditional masculinity (though it's a look that nevertheless has its own detailing: the slight pudge of his stomach, a purple undershirt, to say nothing of the general association of leather with the pride community) the cast is refreshingly honest in regards to their looks. The crew has bellies, muscles, long hair, shaved heads, body hair, tattoos, torn shirts (not artfully), bare feet, sweaty faces, grimy hands, crooked teeth, accents galore, and they come in a variety of ages. They feel like people, not actors dolled up to look society-approved #hot regardless of whether that makes sense for the story (for example, final girls must make running for their lives look oh so sexy, right?) and I often find myself admiring that as I watch. For me, this is a crucial part of Lucius' story intertwining with Ed and Stede's. The kind of writing that allows an openly gay man to lovingly sketch the cock of a fat black man of yet undetermined sexuality is the exact kind of writing that takes the question of, "What if a closeted, middle-aged, former aristocrat and a queer, silk-loving, also middle-aged pirate fell in love?" seriously too.

So, we move through the innuendos, the one-line reveal of a queer character, before finally exploding with representation before our main couple has even passed out of the buddy-duo stage. I think that's why Stede and Ed are able to have their symbolism laden relationship without the audience becoming frustrated with that approach. Yes, a large part of it is also how quickly OFMD arrives at the kiss — ten episodes can't compare to, say, Supernatural's fifteen seasons, or RWBY's eight Volumes, or any of the other shows that have taken literal years to reach some kind of queer confirmation. OFMD got there in twenty-one days — but even if they'd allowed Ed and Stede to slow burn for years, or never made them canonical at all, the queercoding of that hits different when we've got Lucius in a loving relationship with Pete, Fang blushing as he poses naked, Oluwande getting it on with a non-binary Jim. There’s an inherent understanding — though it’s still technically non-canonical —to the guys almost-kissing under the moonlight, or co-captaining together, or touching hands in a sickbed, or going through the beats of a breakup before they're confirmed to be together, etc. We’re shown all these ways in which queerness is traditionally woven into television, but that’s a lot more enjoyable to watch not just when you know the kiss is coming, but when you already have a wealth of queer rep regardless of what happens between Stede and Ed.

Of course, we do get that confirmed love story between them. That's what's amazing about OFMD: it not only gives us the rep so many of us (still) crave, but is knowledgeable enough about queer media history to realize how the initial queercoding might look — even how our tragic season finale might look — and went, "We're going to make sure you understand, without a shadow of a doubt, that we love these queer characters and are going to treat them well." As an added bonus to all this, I'm personally able to enjoy Ed and Stede's friendship a whole lot more when I'm not reading it through a potentially queerbaited lens. "Dammit, Jack, he's my friend!" Ed cries and instead of worrying about the possibility that the show is going to try and pass this off as an eternal no homo, I'm instead cheering because yes, of course you're friends! You should be friends with the person you're dating!

Alongside simply having compassionately written rep, it's also worth acknowledging that the representation has diversity—we're given options!—and I'm not simply talking about the number of queer characters, their differing sexualities, genders, or the three+ couples they make up. I've seen a few fans comment about how happy they are that OFMD doesn't have any coming out stories, though I have to disagree with that claim. OFMD has two coming out stories, it's just that they're treated as such a natural part of the story-world that there's not an obnoxious amount of focus on the event like you might get in another tale (and that you might therefore want to avoid). Not everyone wants to read another story of the closeted individual, the terror of coming out, the big production it's turned into, the fallout with friends and family, etc. That is indeed one very important kind of queer story, but it's far from the only one and in recent years I've seen a distinct uptick in various communities going, "Can't we have more stories where we're just... there? An established part of the world already? Sometimes I want fiction to grapple with lived experiences and sometimes I just want some damn escapism. Watching another high schooler—when I'm an adult—panicking that their family will disown them for who they kiss doesn't feel very escapist." So OFMD gives us that sense of significance by alluding to a queerphobic world (Lucius' line) and writing a queerphobic character (Izzy), but the show also gives us two coming out moments that, while undoubtedly important for these characters, don't consume the show as a whole.

The first—not chronologically, just in terms of impact—is Stede himself. "Wherever You Go, There You Are" confirms what's implied throughout the rest of the season: that Stede hasn’t yet come to terms with his own sexuality. Which makes complete sense, when you think about it. He's an aristocrat forced into an unhappy marriage with a woman by his father. Stede continually frames his more stereotypically queer characteristics—a love of fine clothes, a compassionate disposition, a connection to nature, etc.—as weaknesses, demonstrating a certain amount of learned, internalized homophobia. Not to the extent of Izzy who lashes out at others and, as of yet, never reaches the same self-reflection as Stede, but enough to feel as if he's a failure for not fitting in, unable to live up to society's expectations. Stede spent years pretending to be straight the same way he spent the Pilot pretending to be eager for a violent, bloody raid. Stede also has a literal, secret closet on his ship that he reveals only to Ed, the man he loves! In retrospect, it's obvious that he hadn't come to terms with his sexuality yet. Yet when he does, it's an easy admission that's immediately embraced by Mary. Though I only had a split second to think about it as the scene aired, a part of me expected Stede to keep his love for Ed a secret, deliberately hide it away this time and agonize over how to tell people, because aren't those the stories we've grown used to? Ones where being queer is treated as something inherently dangerous, something that might lose you everyone you love? And it can be, of course it can. As said, we do need those kinds of stories... but personally, hearing

Mary: "Who is she?"

Stede: "Ed. His name is Ed"

and having Mary accept that instantly, moving in to hug Stede, was like a breath of fresh air. I love this moment, folks.

The second character to come out is Jim. Initially their story is presented as a woman hiding out as a man and indeed, the way others refer to Jim early on confirms this reading. Olu arguably knows them the best, but refers to them as a "waitress" when discussing their past. In the same conversation, Spanish Jackie calls Jim a "bitch" and both continue to use she/her pronouns: "But you do know where she is though, right?" So, we've got both a friend and an enemy acting fairly confident in Jim's gender, yet when the disguise comes off and they're asked if they've really been a woman this whole time, the answer is,

Jim: "Yeah. I guess. I don't know."

Well, that's an unexpected response. Rather than confirming that yeah, sure, they were just a woman dressed as a man, the act of questioning their gender forces Jim to reconsider it (as well as, we assume, the act of pretending to be a man for a time). Seem ridiculous? Well, it happened in real life.

Now, with the disclaimer that I wasn't able to back-track the source (due entirely to my iffy knowledge of other social media sites, I'm sure) here we have a member of the OFMD crew going through, in essence, precisely what Jim did. The simple act of Vico asking for their pronouns led to a moment of self-reflection and, according to this comment, coming out as non-binary. Similarly, the crew asking Jim if they've been a woman this whole time does the same sort of work. They move from surety (“Yeah.”), to vague agreement (“I guess.”), to outright doubt (“I don’t know.”), all in the span of just a few words. This questioning doesn't occur as a dramatic, angsty subplot, but simply a line of dialogue embedded in an otherwise full scene. We haven't deviated from the show's tone or primary couple, but that's not to say that this line isn't a game-changer for Jim's development. Further questions reinforce this line of thinking—are you still Jim then? (Roach), surely a lady can't be named Jim, right? (Wee John)—and by the time we reach the "Are you a mermaid?" conversation, Jim has hit on a simple solution. They're still Jim. That's it. That's all you need to know. I believe that "This is Happening" is the first time that another character uses they/them pronouns for Jim—Olu saying, “I think Jim should do it, seeing as they’re from here”—and just to be sure the audience didn’t miss it, we get a couple other conversations referencing Jim this episode, such as Frenchie and the others admitting that they'd love to be stabbed by them. Clearly, Jim has come out to the crew and either by process of elimination, or in an off-screen request, they've rejected "he" and "she" for "they." We get this same, easy acceptance from Jim's nana. "I go by Jim now," they say and it's like cool, awesome, come in for some cake. Notably, their nana continues to call Jim Bonifacia—something they seem fine with—while also using they/them pronouns, demonstrating a complex relationship with gender that I personally loved to see. Sometimes coming out is a weirder conversation than explicitly saying, "I'm non-binary." Sometimes changing pronouns happens on the fly, hardly worth a mention. Sometimes you change your name, but people in your past still know you as something else, and provided you're comfortable with that then sure, do that. Jim has a coming out story—a rather complex one, I'd argue—but it feels like any other subplot because OFMD treats it as such. Jim changing parts of their identity isn't some shocking revelation that halts the story in its tracks, it's just a thing that everyone instantly accommodates.

And isn't that what we want? A world where not only do queer people abound, but you can go, "I'm Jim" and everyone around you responds with, "Sure. Always liked Jim :)"

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“We’re Dead! We’re Dead! We’ve Survived but We’re Dead!”

At the very start of the series OFMD introduces the thesis that pirates, simply put, are destined to die. Before we even see any of the characters, we’re shown text that moves sharply from optimism to, well… not. It’s 1717, the Golden Age of Piracy, and “Wealthy landowner Stede Bonnet [has] set out to find adventure and renown on the high seas.” That sounds pretty good! The golden age, wealth, land ownership, adventure, and renown are all positives, setting up the expectation that things have gone well and will continue to go well for Stede Bonnet. However, this start is immediately undermined with the follow-up, “Things did not go as planned…” with the letters fading from white to blood red, just to make it that much more ominous.

In case anyone misses that implication, Frenchie opens the story proper with a much more overt acknowledgement of death. He sings a song—and then another later in the episode—about how “a pirate’s life, [it’s] short but nice,” “we won’t live long,” and just to hammer things home, “to death we go, a certain death we go.” Everyone on this ship not only expects to die, but to die soon. Frenchie sings his songs (and note that this is the only acceptable way for pirates to express themselves before Stede steps in and orders other options as captain: Lucius should sketch their adventures for prosperity, everyone should make a flag for the ship, the Swede is coaxed into singing, etc.) while everyone else takes a less chipper approach to their supposedly inevitable demise. Olu talks about how dangerous a life this is and is sure that Stede will be dead soon, so best to enjoy his captaining while they can. Ed equates good pirating with survival, claiming that Stede must be great because “Most of the pirates I know? They’re dead, so you’re doing a hell of a lot better than them.” Black Pete grumbles about how he should have killed at least twenty people by now, which is another way of saying that they might be a part of another pirate’s twenty. Hell, it’s in the name of the show. Our flag means death! At least it’s supposed to. Real pirates don’t fly buttons, or cats, or even mere cannibalism, they’re a sign of your impending demise. In short, death is a staple of the career. It’s a given.

Olu: “Looks like we’re gonna live after all.”

Jim: “For a little while longer at least.”

But what happens if you don’t die?

That’s the question Ed is facing. Everyone else is working under the assumption that their days are finite and, by and large, that assumption is proven true, simply due to how much death otherwise infuses the show. Jim’s father is killed and they find one of the men responsible already decaying in Spanish Jackie’s back room. This is after Jim killed one of Jackie’s husbands. Jackie then finishes Geraldo off. Geraldo turns the whole crew over to the Spanish where Stede is stabbed and nearly hanged. They ended up there because of a hostage they took while killing a bunch of British officers. The act of tricking said officers by dressing in fine clothes starts Pete on a journey that leads to his relationship with Lucius and the line, “Death, I’m used to death, but not, you know, your death…" and so on and so forth. Ed stands apart as a pirate who has beaten the odds, so talented and successful that he’s managed to survive in a world that’s un-survivable for very long. The result is a boredom so intense—and yes, for the purposes of this section I am simplifying a deep depression into "boredom”—that he’ll do anything to alleviate it, even consider forcibly bringing about a pirate’s natural end that he’s somehow dodged up until now.

Izzy: Well, as bored as you might be if you don’t make a decision soon we’re gonna fucking die.

Blackbeard: Ohh, now there’s an idea. I haven’t done that yet. I haven’t died yet, have I? Maybe we should try that.

Izzy is left wrong-footed and more than a little confused, stuttering out “D-do what?” and following it up with a sarcastic, “Yeah, ‘cause that makes sense.” He doesn’t understand why Ed is bored, perhaps because he has Blackbeard just like Ed will soon have Stede. Regardless, Ed’s boredom is eating at him, whether Izzy understands that or not, and it’s directly paralleled to Stede’s “monotony” in the previous scene:

Mary: “Why on Earth would we [go to sea]?”

Stede: “I don’t know. Break the monotony? … I just think, why waste our time here, day after day, doing the same old thing when we could be doing this!”

The theme crops up again in episode five when they visit the party and despite having everything that someone would presumably want—wealth, connections, the social freedom to do as they please (such as marrying a sibling)—the rich assholes are just as bored as Ed and Stede were. They immediately lose interest in Stede despite the fame he’s adopted. Ed’s ignorance of their social norms provides a brief distraction before mocking him becomes the latest entertainment instead (they’re “fickle”) and he too is reduced to a monotony: “How will you [kill us], Jeff the accountant, by boring us to death?” When Stede suggests a party game, something that’s the norm for such gatherings, the response is an immediate, "I’m already so bored I could die.” This is what boredom leads to: death, either metaphorical in the sense of Stede burying his personality and interests in his marriage to Mary, or literal in terms of the aristocrats throwing themselves to the sea when their ship is set ablaze.

For Ed and Stede, both of them are disenchanted with the life they’ve been given and desire what the other has, making them a perfect couple when paired up, capable of providing new opportunities for one another. When together, Stede can dress Ed up in fine clothes to set a ship on fire; Ed can teach him fuckery to be implemented like a fancy play—intertwining aspects of both their lives to create something original. They balance one another, but it’s important to remember that in this journey to dodge boredom and ultimately death, Stede is still the one with all the privilege, even though it might feel like Ed has more power. After all, he doesn’t have a father insisting upon an arranged marriage, or anyone of greater social status calling the shots. Basically, who would fuck with Blackbeard? If he wants to loot others’ fine silks and start his own library, who the hell is going to stop him? It seems simple on the surface, but the reality is in Ed’s flashback. It’s short, but we see a rather crucial conversation between him and his mother about how people like them simply don’t get nice things. “We’re just not those kinds of people. We never will be.” It’s that "never will be” that he’s internalized. It doesn’t matter how much he learns from Stede because, as the insulting captive says, “a rich donkey is still a donkey.” It doesn’t matter if Ed dresses in fine clothes, he still can’t hold the attention of the aristocracy when his table manners are less than perfect. It doesn’t matter if Ed manages to learn those rules down the line, people like that captive will always view him as lesser due to the circumstances of his birth: “My kind? What’s that supposed to mean?” Class distinguishes them in a way that cannot easily be overcome through tutelage and Ed knows that. Notably, for a man who is haunted by killing his father and has fostered off all the other murders on his crew (kinda), this is the moment when we see Ed at his most cruel. No, he doesn’t kill the captive himself, but he still gives the detailed, horrific order to skin him with a fork, then toss him overboard. As he admits to Stede later on, that comment cut deep.

That’s how the (very flawed, very awful) world works. Stede, meanwhile, is still a member of the aristocracy whether he’s at sea or not. He might not get a say in who he marries, but the privilege of being a white, wealthy, able-bodied, literate, high society man who was born into that role and intrinsically maintains those characteristics regardless of his current profession has taught him that anything he really wants is within his reach. That’s how his world works. Ultimately, it’s a whole lot easier for Stede to build a ship and become a pirate (even a bad one) to dodge his metaphorical death than it is for Ed to enjoy a fine fabric; the feelings of being trapped in his own social circle, and the monotony of the part he plays there, pushes him closer to a literal death: “Maybe we should try that.” Stede is able to go after his dreams all on his own as a means of shaking up his life and the status quo. Ed, however, needs someone else—Stede—to offer him the opportunity and he needs help to sustain it. They might be co-captains, equal in their respect for one another, but that’s not the same thing as either of their societies seeing them as equals, or the both of them needing the same sort of support.

Stede lasted weeks of being a pirate captain despite everyone on board telling him he wasn’t suited for it. It’s only when things have really fallen apart—when the British have wormed their way onto his vessel, when he’s just starting to believe Olu’s advice to give the pirate life up, when he’s accidentally killed Badminton—that Stede displays some of the same worrying thoughts as Ed.

Olu: “Do you want to live?”

Stede: “That’s a tough question… I think so. Probably.”

Later, we move from a purely comedic admission to a far more honest one:

Ed: “You ever feel trapped? Like you’re just treading water, waiting to drown?”

Stede: “Yes. I very much have felt that way.”

Stede is forced into a kind of emotional death when he weds. Mary is too. ("You know you’re killing her, right?”) The story is adamant in arguing that they’ve both been hurt by this match, they both have had a hand in its downfall—“We just can’t seem to stop hurting each other, can we?”—and they both deserve to find happiness, and I absolutely love OFMD for that. It’s a bit on-the-nose to cut from the (un)happy couple straight to a pair of headstones. What’s a bit more subtle though is when the camera pans down from their graves to their dining table sometime in the future. Meaning, their married life is, from a cinematography perspective, six feet under. By living together they’re already beneath those headstones, in every way that truly matters, up until Stede makes the radical choice to try being a pirate. Now, faced with the typical violence of his chosen profession, Stede questions continuing on when it appears that much of what he tried to leave behind has followed him onto his ship: an inability to handle the blood and gore that characterize “real” men. But beyond that comedic admission to Olu, and a moment with Ed in which Stede uses the past tense (“I very much have felt that way”), he displays a remarkable perseverance, likely because—despite other, obvious hardships—Stede did grow up with a certain amount of self-worth, simply by virtue of being the cream of the crop. He’s an aristocrat, indefinitely. Wealthy and titled and innately lucky in so many respects. He’s “fortunate.” All the bullying and insults from others didn’t teach him to hide his preferences, merely move them to a new community where they’re given another chance to flourish. Being a “lily-livered rich boy” might be a negative trait from the perspective of a father who values a very narrow set of characteristics, but ultimately, it’s that “rich” description that allows Stede to chase what he wants and leave his metaphorical death behind. Money allows him to build a ship, pay a crew enough to keep them around (even though they all agree he’s a terrible captain), and even leave his family well off to try and assuage his guilt. Hell, it’s his education—the ability to read—that helps stall the mutiny because will they really kill Captain before learning the end of Pinocchio? However, scarred by his father’s words, Stede does a lot throughout the season to distance himself from his wealth so that he might be more than just the pathetic rich boy. We start the season with Stede dumping two baskets of fine fabrics for the crew to turn into pirate flags—ripping and tearing the material, turning it into (supposedly) scary imagery, a symbol of his class literally being repurposed—and we end it with Stede giving up his fortune in full, setting out to sea with nothing but a dinghy and the clothes on his back.

His father said that only peasants married for love? Alright then, guess he needs to make himself a peasant in order to love Ed. Yet despite all this, despite Stede choosing love over those social privileges, we cannot deny that it was this wealth and an aristocratic upbringing that allowed Stede to make an attempt at the pirate life in the first place. Even now that he’s left it behind, Stede maintains an education and bearing that inevitably sets him apart. Stede might not have the money to buy a melon spoon anymore, but he’ll always be able to recognize one on the table.

In contrast, all Ed’s power and resources stem from the persona of Blackbeard, so if it’s that very persona he wants to change… the ability to do so is lost because that power is lost. It’s a circle. Ed has no wealth to purchase his fine fabrics as Stede had to purchase his ship and the ability to loot those fabrics depends on remaining the man who wouldn’t want those fabrics in the first place. Ed lasts just a few days in his gown and painted nails before he reverts to the life he believes he’s supposed to live—the one designated by his birth—despite the fact that Izzy is the only one pressuring him to reclaim it and everyone else on board is supportive of his new self-expression. Yet without Stede’s support, being Blackbeard becomes a necessity once more (as well as, of course, a reaction to Stede’s abandonment) because they live in a world where it’s a whole lot easier for an aristocrat to make the insane choice of becoming a pirate than it is a pirate to make the insane choice of becoming a gentleman. You can move down the ladder as much as you please, but not up; Stede can return home to a group of gentlemen eager for his stories, but Ed can’t keep his spot at the aristocrat’s table for longer than a single course. Ultimately, OFMD is as much about class as it is toxic masculinity. Or rather, the two themes go hand-in-hand, with much of Ed’s toxic characteristics resurfacing because that’s how you survive without a rich man to pay your wages. It’s no coincidence that the characters’ wardrobes and overall appearance—one of the most overt indicators of wealth (or lack thereof)— are equalized when the narrative likewise wants them to be on equal footing with one another. Stede and Ed have their almost-kiss after the party, but that’s no good. Not just because they have a lot to work through still, but because they’ve just come from a place where Ed has been forcibly reminded of the difference in their stations and he’s still dressed in an outfit that, ultimately, isn’t him. “You wear fine things well,” Stede says and it’s true, but notably Ed never puts the swatch of silk back on display. It’s not something he’s comfortable with after a lifetime of hearing that it’s not for people like him and though I hope the story continues to nurture his love of fine things, he’s not quite at that place yet. So instead, we get an adorably awkward kiss when they’re both prisoners. More specifically, when both have given themselves up for the other, with both in the same scratchy clothes, both momentarily stripped of their individual power (wealth, Ed’s beard) with nothing to show one another but exactly what they currently are: two middle-aged men who haven’t figured it all out yet, but they know that the other makes them happy. Isn’t that enough?

(Not to distract from the Blackbonnet content, but the same sort of equalizing also occurs between Stede and Mary. Rather than their conversation taking place during a moment when Mary is reminded that she’s legally beholden to Stede under God, or when Stede is reminded of her hatred and infidelity, they come to an understanding while they’re just two people in their nightgowns—nothing more, nothing less.)

So, is just being a middle-aged person who makes the other happy enough? Well, yes… but Ed and Stede aren’t quite going about it in the right way yet. As I’ll discuss more in the Blackbonnet section, Ed in particular struggles with accepting all aspects of himself, instead choosing one facet for a time—usually to make someone else happy— before inevitably crumbling into the next when he can’t be that limited person anymore. He can’t be fearsome Blackbeard all the time, or poetry-loving Edward all the time, or a guy who only wants to fold things all the time, etc. To summarize, Ed is continually running away from parts of himself and each time this manifests as a kind of death. At the start of the season, he wants to kill off Blackbeard entirely, becoming Stede Bonnet instead. By the end, he’s still trying to murder key parts of his identity by changing everything: his name, his backstory, his crew, where he lives—“Our old lives would be gone, dead, never were.” And I’m like Ed, honey, it doesn’t work that way. Sure, Stede “died,” but significantly that first death was a bust that resulted in going back to his family because the past has to be dealt with.

The second death via cheetah-carriage-piano murder (what a fuckery!) works because everyone that matters knows that Stede Bonnet is still alive and, more importantly, after doing that emotional work he’s finally free. He’s accepted both parts of himself: the part that’s a pirate and the part that’s an aristocrat who abandoned his family; no more “My family is here now. At sea” avoidance. Pretending those parts of yourself don’t exist, never existed, is just letting them fester until they eventually come back to haunt you. You know, like a Badminton.

Lucius tries to teach Ed this in the blanket fort, encouraging him to face his feelings and asking, “What if it’s not a death? What if life just begins again?” Yet when Ed emerges, he’s still singing “Life’s a hard, sad death and then you’re dead,” omitting the death as a new beginning part. (Mary gets it though: “We’re alive, they’re dead. This is your time, Ellen. Because if not now, when?”) Sure, Ed’s enjoying himself with the crew and cleaning up his space a bit (progress!) but he’s still entranced by this belief that he can just sever the parts of himself he doesn’t want to deal with right now, going so far as to demand, “Why are we even being pirates?” when Buttons reveals his, uh…. talent of making tonal noises. It’s cute from the perspective of him encouraging the rest of the crew to express themselves (I wish we could have gotten that talent show), but Ed is playing the avoidance game like nobody’s business. He knows he’s not going to give up the pirate life completely, to instead dress in a silk robe all day and perform for others. That’s only a small part of who he is. Izzy says that becoming Edward is a "fate worse than death” and technically he’s kind of right… just for the totally wrong reasons. There’s nothing shameful in Ed sharing his poetry, or dressing in nice clothes, or changing his name, etc. but it’s unhealthy to deny all the other parts of himself, as Ed is attempting to do here. Izzy might tell Edward to “watch his fucking step,” but that’s not what seems to turn him into the Kraken. We don’t end that scene on Izzy’s threat, or the picture from Stede’s book. Rather, we end on the crew above deck, calling for another song and chanting the name “Edward” over and over and over again.

They want Edward, Izzy wants Blackbeard, and Ed is left trying to kill one and then the other, swinging wildly between two extremes. The Kraken won’t be able to sustain itself because Ed isn’t truly that cruel on a day-to-day basis, but neither can Edward sustain himself because Ed also isn’t a #softboy who just wants to sing on a day-to-day basis either. Ed’s attempts to become someone like Stede—dressing in his robe, lying in his room, having a heart-to-heart with his scribe, even lighting dangerous fires on the ship like a maniac—were always doomed to fail. Not because Ed isn’t allowed the nice things that a wealthy man like Stede represents, but because a lifetime of being Blackbeard—being poor, being a pirate, being bloodthirsty—can’t simply be waved away at will. Ed needs to face those parts of himself, incorporating them into the whole of who he is, like Stede faced his family and has now returned to sea as someone who is not ignoring his aristocratic upbringing, but rather choosing to prioritize other things like love over it instead.

Class, then, is something the characters can’t escape. Even the absence of Stede’s wealth and title will be something for season two to grapple with. As Olu reminds Stede, they don’t act with violence because they want to, but because they have to. What will the crew do now that Stede’s wealth can no longer support their wages, circling right back around to, “If you don’t steal, you don’t eat”? How will Ed nurture the softer parts of himself now that all symbols of wealth have been tossed overboard and Stede has nothing else to offer? The presentation of masculinity displayed by Izzy and Blackbeard is, in many respects, a direct result of not being born a Stede Bonnet. If you’re not born fortunate, you toughen up to the point where you can forcibly take whatever you need.

Or you die.

What other option is there? Well, the whole story is an answer to that question, starting with how Stede approaches the concept of piracy as a whole and, eventually, what he and Ed are able to offer one another, beyond the trappings of wealth, or the knowledge imparted by a fearsome legend.

Stede: “Ed?”

Ed: “Better alive than dead!”

━━━━━━━━┛ ✠ ┗━━━━━━━━

The Feminine Urge to Reject Toxic Masculinity

Early in the Pilot, Stede describes pirating as a “cycle of abuse” to Lucius. Or, to put that another way, the wealthy aristocrat who went to sea a few weeks ago describes piracy to the actual pirate. It’s easy to read this as simply a joke in-and-of itself, especially when OFMD makes similar jokes elsewhere. Stede describing piracy to a pirate may generate a “Uh huh, sure” reaction similar to him explaining what “tapas” means to Geraldo (“Yeah, I know about tapas”). As mentioned above, Olu even points out how cavalier he’s taking this, “Me and Jim, we don’t do this because we like it, we do it because we have no other choice.” The implication is that anyone who did have another choice, like a wealthy landowner, would never stick around. Therefore, it’s inevitable that if Stede doesn’t die, he’ll eventually grow bored of the presumed game he’s playing and leave this difficult life behind. It’s a sentiment that’s echoed at the very end of the season when Ed sails away from the rest of the crew on the island saying, “Farewell, Bonnet’s playthings.” (Note that this is the only time when Ed calls Stede “Bonnet.” He’s trying to create distance between them, a far cry from initially introducing himself with the personal, intimate “Ed.”) Basically, all Ed knows is that Stede stood him up on that dock. He doesn’t know about Badminton’s threat, his death, or even Stede’s horrible guilt over leaving his family. I believe he only mentions them once to Ed in passing, right before they both hit on the lighthouse scheme. So, which seems more likely? That Stede underwent a traumatic experience during the few hours Ed was gone and finally tried to make amends for a mistake Ed isn’t privy to, succumbing to the pressure of performing masculinity “correctly” by returning to be a husband and a father, all of it influenced by the fact that he hasn’t fully realized he’s in love with a man yet … or that Stede simply decided he’s done playing pirate? Ed’s heartfelt plea to run away to China put a bit of a damper on his fun, so playtime is over. It’s back to his fine things and his finer company. Goodbye, toys that Stede Bonnet played with. You and I were both fooled.

So, there’s this pervasive question of why Stede is here. Is it simply due to a naive, child-like desire for adventure, or does he legitimately want to be a pirate, despite how absurd that seems to those who can’t escape the life? Well, it’s both. Stede isn’t so altruistic (or even wise) to have approached this endeavor purely to help a bunch of pirate strangers, but nor is he so callous and fickle that he’d build a ship and leave his family without intending to make something of that decision. Stede does desperately want to be a pirate, but what that really translates into is him wanting to be himself, with piracy as a concept representing freedom (“He’s free,” Mary says, as Stede is shown walking back into the sea). For all his fun pretending to be Blackbeard for a day, at no point does Stede change himself beyond his wardrobe because he’s never liked the blood and violence and intimidation that being Blackbeard would require (and, of course, Ed has conflicted feelings about it too). He wants Stede Bonnet—flower picking, cashmere-loving, marmalade hoarding middle-aged man—to be able to be a pirate, which requires changing the profession, rather than changing to fit the profession instead. Of course, it takes Stede a couple of episodes to come to terms with that, given that he initially tries to play the part of a violence-loving, “I [killed him]. On purpose” fighter but, obviously, fails rather spectacularly at it. We might examine the potential metaphor of Stede trying to push his ship back into the water through pure stubbornness alone. It’s not gonna move, Stede. You’re not suddenly going to become a traditional badass just because you’re putting effort behind it (though I maintain that Stede is a badass in numerous other ways). At some point you’ve got to step back, stop trying to move the immovable object, and start talking your identity through with the imagined ghost instead.

So, once he overcomes the initial shock of having (accidentally) killed a man and had a quick therapy session with the village elder, Stede begins to approach his new life with the intent to make the world accept him for the pirate he wants to be. He will be a Gentleman Pirate, killing only with kindness, daring to want parts of both worlds: “I may be landed gentry, but I’m thrilled to be granted entry!”

Because Stede is right. Despite being the outsider here, Stede recognizes the same problems that plague his own aristocratic society, namely the idea that “real men” are defined largely by their capacity for violence (be it of the literal physical variety—his father—or through passive aggression—the party goers). By the end of those first couple weeks, he’s likewise realized that much of that violence, and the ensuing ways in which it’s upheld as a romanticized act worth emulating, come about simply because no one has said, “Hey, you don’t have to do that.” Stede becomes that person. “If I can help this crew grow as people,” he says, “then I will have succeeded in being a pirate captain.” That’s the world Stede wants to live in. Despite being enamored with traditional piracy, that interest seems to stem primarily from what he’s been taught he should like, not what he actually craves, with the added acknowledgment that a life of danger and adventure is simply exciting. Basically, a part of Stede only wants to be Blackbeard because he’s spent 40-odd years having toxic masculinity beat into his head, but when given the space—literally via his own ship—to ask himself, “What kind of pirate do I want to be?” his answer is a very firm “One who helps his crew” not “One who terrorizes people, loots vessels of valuables that would be missed, etc.” Stede says explicitly that for him, success in pirate captaining equals helping his crew to grow and then he sets out to make that a reality. As captain, Stede is in a position of authority over the others—even if it’s a very tenuous authority that nearly leads to mutiny—so when he says, “This is okay” the crew is inclined to listen, even as they’re simultaneously upholding those performative criticisms of him among themselves, because it wouldn’t do to become too accepting of these changes too fast.

There is a range though. Some of the crew waver back and forth a bit (Wee John). Some already have other, complicated presentations on their mind (Jim). Contrasting Lucius’ support that grows over several episodes, I think it speaks volumes that Buttons is the most deferential to Stede at the very start, the closest thing we see to a First Mate on board. “On your feet for your captain!” he screams while the others plan mutiny and, of course, he’s the one to tell Stede about the mutiny itself. He is, basically, the weirdest person on board. Among a group already made up of outsiders, Buttons is arguably the one on the outsider’s outskirts. Frenchie might believe that cats are demons and Roach is a little too into torture, but those exaggerations of classic pirate characteristics (superstition, violence) can’t hold a candle to speaking seagull, moon bathing, and having a “fight or bite” response. Buttons is odd… and so is Stede. Like recognizes like. The conversation between them regarding the mutiny strikes me more as Buttons speaking what he thinks is an inevitable truth, rather than encouraging Stede to permanently change. Basically, he suggests that Stede use an “iron fist” because that’s what everyone else does—and thus far Stede’s efforts aren’t producing the best results—not because that’s something either of them actually want. Buttons is fully on board with a new kind of pirate captain because he’s already a different kind of pirate. Meanwhile, others in the group—those we might think of as more “normal”—need to warm up to the kind of diversity that Stede represents.

Black Pete is the most obvious example of this. He starts the series being quite vocal about what is and is not appropriate for a pirate. Or, to put that more generally, what’s appropriate for a man, given that this is the gender makeup of the crew prior to Jim coming out. They should be killing people, not playing cards! Only sissies get paid wages! Sewing is women’s work! All of this is not pirating. You know who’s a real pirate, a real man? Blackbeard, not this guy in fancy clothes trying to get us to talk about our feelings. Though it’s not taken as far and nor does it last as long, early Pete is basically a version of Izzy, acting as the Traditionally Masculine Voice who sneers at the others who enjoy listening to bedtime stories, or designing pretty flags. We even get a direct parallel between Pete complaining about having to make use of Stede’s wardrobe to trick Badminton’s crew— “making us dress up like a bunch of fancy boys”—and Izzy trying to demean Ed for wearing Stede’s robe: “Not some namby-pamby in a silk gown pining for his boyfriend.” Both consider fine clothes to be emasculating and equate the wearing of them with homosexuality. However, the difference is that by episode five Pete has very much come around to the Bonnet way of thinking, enjoying Lucius’ company in the pantry and encouraging his (gay) artistic pursuits. Pete demonstrates his growth even as Izzy digs in his heels, trying to use Lucius’ sexual freedom as a form of blackmail. By the end of the season, Pete is eagerly awaiting the talent show in full makeup and costume while Izzy rows back to The Revenge, having successfully ignited a trauma response in Ed that has him sinking deeper into toxic masculinity than ever before. As our antagonist, Izzy is the exception, with the rest of the crew’s growth shown not only in how they support Stede before the British, but in who they choose as captain when planning their second mutiny. At the beginning of the show Pete announces that he’s the obvious choice because he’s Blackbeard’s tough, former sailor, a symbol of masculinity. Duh. If it can’t be Pete than it has to be Jim, the even tougher pirate with the menacing presence and knife skills. Yet after everything between then and the finale, the crew announces that Olu is the only possible choice. Intelligent, caring Olu who’s had the crew’s back this whole time.

Then his first act is to try and throw Izzy overboard, but that’s neither here nor there lol.

Stede is, quite obviously, someone who abhors violence. His flashback isn’t exactly subtle about it, showing him turning away when a bird is beheaded, the blood splattering across his face and neck. This is a “man’s work,” bloody and deadly, so if Stede can’t stomach it then, by the logic of society, he must not be a real man. It’s a conclusion that’s repeated by those who are able to meet society’s expectations, such as when Badminton’s sailor announces that there’s a “heavy-set woman in a silk dressing gown” on Stede’s ship, right before we get a phallic insinuation as Badminton rejects the tiny spyglass as well as the slightly bigger spyglass, before finally pulling out his stupidly massive spyglass to see Stede for himself. He’s the big dick to Stede’s supposed woman, with femininity presented as the clear lesser whenever the story is filtered through the eyes of those who represent the status quo.

However, it’s not simply that Stede looks nauseous at the sight of blood, or likes to pick flowers, or any of the other, more obvious ways in which he challenges traditional masculinity. A theme that resonated strongly with me is the connection among queerness, leisure, and a presumed lack of functionality. Basically, much of Stede’s outsider status is conveyed through his love of fine things purely because fine things exist, not because they’re achieving something practical. Izzy considers the library a "perverse misuse of space” (and ain’t “perverse” a loaded term coming out of his mouth…). Badminton thinks it’s “ridiculous.” The two characters who do the most to uphold traditional masculinity without questioning it—as Ed does: “Incredible”—believe that having a collection of books you love at sea purely because you love them is inherently absurd. Stede’s not even getting any new knowledge out of them because he’s read them all! The space should be used for something practical, obviously.

Beyond the books, Stede’s cabin is a direct challenge to the masculine standard, with that contrast made all the more evident when we see Ed’s space on the Queen Anne’s Revenge. A lot of the difference comes down to lighting. Ed’s room is all shadows with the exception of a single light-beam that illuminates him, whereas Stede’s cabin is lit so that every detail is on display in all its wealthy, foppish glory. The lighting coincides with assumed temperaments too— Ed at this point is still Blackbeard, the ruthless killer; Stede is the affable Golden Retriever looking to “kill with kindness”—as well as emotional stability—Ed is in a deep depression that has pushed him to chase anything remotely interesting; Stede, while struggling to be a “real” pirate, is nevertheless still achieving his life-long dream—but beyond all that, Ed’s space is far more practical than Stede’s. It’s smaller, for one, and the furniture is built for functionality, not leisure. There are two chairs, but both are placed behind Ed’s desk, ensuring that anyone who enters the room is separated from him. The design requires that those like Izzy stand to deliver their reports because they’re here in a professional capacity, not for a personal visit. Compare that to Stede’s dual facing couches surrounded by the library, an addition that encourages others to take their time, hang out for a bit, and bond with him over (he hopes) a shared interest.

Ed does have a number of knickknacks he’s collected over the years—and we can compare that to the spartan room that the Kraken works from at the end of the season; a version of Ed that denies himself even the simplest joys—but they’re all objects that reflect how fearsome Blackbeard supposedly is: a skull, a skin, a pufferfish with its spikes extended. The rest of it is indeed practical for a pirate (rolled up maps, a dagger), or simply isn’t taken care of. There are no fine, gauzy curtains here. Ed has a painting, but it’s propped on the floor instead of hanging on a wall. Like Stede, he has a chandelier, but it’s on his desk rather than hanging from the ceiling. Everything is placed slightly crooked, or misused, appears dirty, damaged, forgotten, there are cobwebs in the corner and dust hanging in the air. The mise en scène tells us that proper pirates equate functionality with discomfort. It’s not just that Stede has a library, or fancy fainting couches. By equating his captaincy with a clean, luxurious room built more for comfort than intimidation, Stede allows his personality to extend past the point of his own person. Stede doesn’t merely say, “I’m a pirate who likes wearing pretty robes and keeping his nails clean,” he physically changes the world around him to reflect his self-expression, challenging those masculine norms in the process. A pirate’s inner sanctum can be beautiful. A pirate’s crew can express themselves through music and crafts. A pirate’s itinerary can include dressing up to go to fancy parties. This concept of leisure—doing things simply because they bring you joy; obtaining objects simply because they’re beautiful and displaying them as such—is something that Ed very much craves, a contrast to the masculine productivity of, “And then what? Then we fսcking execute the plan, then we get another plan, then what do we do? We execute that, and so on, and so on, and again, and again, and again, and again. It’s all so fսcking boring!”

Alongside the beauty of physical objects, we also have a strong connection between this newfound community—the emotional intimacy that men are usually denied—and one of the most beloved forms of luxury: excess food. I love that the scurvy crisis comes about specifically because Stede had Roach make them a cake requiring forty oranges. It’s about the decadence and, in turn, the joy of sharing that with others. The fandom has already latched onto the imagery of the orange as a form of nourishment, specifically in regards to Jim and Olu’s relationship, but that extends outwards to Ed and Stede as well. Jim’s home, a space saturated with love, but filtered through the intensity of revenge, is the only place in St Augustine that has escaped the blight, resulting in sacks worth of ripe, beautiful oranges. Yet Jim leads Olu to a dead tree and it’s only when Stede starts digging, spurred on by his desire to have a fun outing with Ed, that he discovers one orange left. Sure, it’s petrified, but as Jim says, the “old tree still had some fruit to give after all.” Stede offers them the orange and the humor of him not really wanting to give it up aside, Jim doesn’t need it. They have their nana and Olu right there, to say nothing of how the oranges are connected to the trauma of Jim losing the rest of their family. Jim’s memory of the event begins with the gang leader biting viciously and messily into an orange, right before killing their father. With an image like that, it’s no wonder that they might prefer to build different memories with Olu, rather than continuing on with oranges. Their tree having one left for a friend is enough.

So instead, it’s Stede who needs to take the orange home where it’s split in half by Alma, one portion going to his family while the other travels with him to find Ed again. It’s an act that means all the more after her shout of, "I don’t want your old food!” at the breakfast table. Upon reflection she does. Not because a petrified orange is actually a cool treasure (though I admit the geo-like inside looked nice) but because, however silly, this will be a tether to her father after he’s left again. It’s also a tether between Stede and Ed. “How was your day, Edward?” Stede asks the orange, giving it a toast when the rest of the family is absent from dinner, uninterested in spending time with him.

Stede needn’t be a traditional father at home with the kids, he can be his own brand of father traveling the seas with his crew. Stede needn’t be a traditional husband at home with a wife, he can be his own brand of husband to another man. Food bridges the gap, challenges the norm, and there’s simply something wonderful in taking the formerly decadent fruit and turning it into a petrified “rock”—the decadent aristocrat likewise turning into a pirate with just the clothes on his back. Both versions, however, offer something to others, be it delicious food, a paperweight, a cure for scurvy, a symbol of the past, hope for the future, a reminder of your father, or your love.

The next episode it’s over lunch that we all realize “this is happening,” Ed and Stede grilling up a surprisingly good snake while chatting about the Bar & Grill they’d attend together. They nourish their relationship as they nourish their bodies, once again combining their unique skill-sets. Ed is good at flinging a snake off him and viciously stabbing it to death? Stede is good at turning that into a tasty meal, complete with banana leaf plates and a tender moment where he picks a bit out of Ed’s beard. And though they’re small, the season has numerous other references to food that reflect the cast’s growing acceptance of diverse identities. Black Pete moves from sarcastically asking whether they should bake their captives a pie to becoming the most eager to lead this orange expedition. Stede and Pete’s internalized racism is shown through assuming that the tribe members are cooking those captives, but no, it’s just a tasty looking pig (or whatever that was). Stede offers a delicious breakfast to both Ed and Calico Jack when he’s determined that the three of them get along— Doug does the same for Mary after his talk with Stede—yet when Jack’s cruelty is revealed, when he insists upon the classic, masculine performance of violence and drink, he and Ed are reduced to whipping for fish in the water, then having more rum, despite how it’s just too early for that. “Well, well, well, look who’s eating seaweed,” Stede says, laughing at their plight.

It’s when Stede is missing from the aristocrats’ table that everything starts falling apart for Ed. It’s when most of the crew is having lunch together that Jim gets to come out as, well, Jim. As expected, it’s Izzy who stands in contrast to this norm. He’s the one who demands that everyone get back to work because real pirates don’t eat unless he says so (compare that to Stede waking Ed up for marmalade) and when Izzy is freely offered food it, uh… doesn’t go well. Of course that sandwich bounces off his head when Roach throws it to him. Izzy hasn’t accepted the community aspect that would allow him to catch it, as per the rules of this new genre he lives in. He’s still viewing everything from the perspective of the gritty action-drama where food is scarce, withheld, or unappetizing, and the only way to handle a guy like Izzy who’s offered good food anyway is to make him the butt of the joke. OFMD has this strong connection between food and family, but that reads differently when we consider that the backdrop of pirate society, where Izzy and Blackbeard hail from, is still largely governed by the “if you don’t steal, you don’t eat” rule. Basic needs like finding nourishment are tied up in that toxic cycle of abuse—the reason why so many good people like Olu inevitably succumb to it—so by offering his crew food, Stede offers them other life options as well. More than that, the excess he offers is a reassurance. The forty-orange cake says, “You’re safe here. You have a family to take care of you. You don’t need to fight and kill and struggle anymore, working so hard to uphold the masculine ideal—not unless you want to. Feel free to take up some craft projects instead.” OFMD is about love, family, community, the ties that bind. Whether that’s expressed through food or something else, the story makes it clear that isolation, another symbol of toxic masculinity, is never something these characters benefit from. Whether it’s Stede appearing quite small on his ship the first time he leaves.

(Which contrasts with the closeup we get in the finale, followed by Stede finding his crew before the credits roll.)

Ed waiting alone on the dock.

Izzy rowing away from The Revenge.

Ed, no longer vibing with Calico Jack, doing the same.

Or Jim standing in their field.

The medium to long shots, combined with wide shots, make them all appear vulnerable, too small to handle the world on their own. It’s no surprise then that Stede immediately finds himself a crew, Ed rows back to The Revenge, Izzy heads to Spanish Jackie’s for new allies, Ed dives in the water to return to Stede, and Olu is already right behind Jim, having tracked them down despite his tendency to get lost. Off the top of my head, the one time such a shot conveys contentment is Mary waking up alone in bed, months after Stede has left.

(Compared, of course, to this:)

But as we quickly see, she’s not isolated. She’s playing with her kids, dating Doug, and hosting a widows’ support meeting. Mary is more embedded in the community than she ever was while married to Stede, regardless of whether anyone is currently sharing her bed. I don’t even need to theorize that because she says it explicitly: “the most unexpected gift has been community.” Here, the leisure of stretching alone in bed is aligned with the unconventional—but very happy— family of a widow, secret boyfriend, somewhat murderous BFFs, and two kids with a pirate father somewhere out at sea. When Mary and Stede have reconciled, we’re shown both him and Doug at her bedside, this dynamic no more conventional than what Mary had before. Embracing what they want as opposed to what is expected of them as per the gendered rules of society has led to stronger ties and, as a result, far more happiness than they ever had while playing the part of appropriately masculine husband and faithful wife.

Of course, the ultimate example of leisure as a means of challenging social norms is Stede teaching Ed about the concept of retirement: giving up work entirely for a life of kicking back. Or, more accurately, giving up required work for a life where you pick and choose what and how much you’d like to do each day. Basically, what they had going on The Revenge before Izzy threw a wrench in those plans. The show makes it very clear that this ignorance is a result of pirate culture as a whole (the cycle of abuse); it’s not specific to Ed alone. He doesn’t know about retirement, but Izzy thinks the only retirement available to them is death and everyone else doesn’t even know what a vacation is. They equate downtime with torture and blowing things up, worrying that there’s a way to do vacation wrong. What will the punishment be? Stede starts out small by introducing the concept of solving problems without violence (what if you shared that fabric instead of throwing a punch over it?) and, as those ideas take root, he expands them outward to encompass more and more of their lives. What if our entire motto was “Talk it through, as a crew”? What if my brand was built on kindness? What if we really did retire and damn everyone who says a pirate can’t? Much of what OFMD is built on stems from a quick, almost throw-away conversation between Ivan and Fang:

Fang: “I hate it when he does that [Izzy pulling his beard]. It really hurts.”

Ivan: “Why don’t you say something about it?”

Fang: “What’s the point?”

If even Blackbeard’s crew, the toughest of the tough (the ones with the most power in their society, but it’s a power based on meeting masculine expectations), thinks that challenging these norms is a useless endeavor, what does that say about everyone else? Stede has entered a world that wants the kind of kindness he’s offering; the characters verbally, explicitly express that they want to exit the cycle of abuse, but they don’t think it’s possible. Stede’s willingness to simply be himself, from libraries on vessels, to forty-orange cakes, tells everyone else that yes, this is possible. Here’s living, breathing proof, with the “living” part being particularly important. Remember, Olu and Lucius were originally convinced that sure, Captain is great, but he won’t last. There’s no way he could in this business. Stede’s continued survival represents that change in genre; a move from the gritty action show where you have to continue the cycle in order to survive, to the rom-com where sure, there’s danger, but you can also stab as a form of flirting, or take a header against the ship’s side and it’s fine. The combination of Stede being himself, surviving this long, and rewarding others for their own, small displays of kindness—“You’re a good man, Ed”—is what allows other characters to follow in his footsteps, to the point where they can suddenly imagine a life of leisure free from both toxic masculinity and the abusive cycle it’s bound up in—this “retirement.” Stede is badass because he sets the example for a better future. He’s “original.”

However, it’s important to point out that Stede is a white man enacting these changes among a diverse cast and we should all absolutely be interrogating the intersection of gender presentation with race. I’m only going to touch on this briefly because I myself am white and know just enough about the conversation to try and strike a balance between speaking up without speaking over. There are others in the fandom who have done, and will no doubt continue to do, that work instead. Suffice to say, OFMD puts many people of color at the forefront of the narrative—in terms of development and romantic relationships—while also taking a less than subtle stance against racism. There’s no “[gasp!] How could you think that?” reaction like there is to Black Pete describing sewing as “women’s work,” but it’s not like OFMD let’s bigotry slide. Whether it’s Jim stabbing a man for screaming at the “savages” serving lunch—“Enough interruptions, slave!”— or the subplot of Olu and Frenchie helping the servants to escape with all the aristocrats’ investments, displays of masculine bonds are intimately tied up in how the non-white characters are perceived by the rest of the world.

Actually, to throw out just one moment I enjoyed, let’s talk real quick about the entirety of the party’s destruction coming about thanks to Frenchie, Olu, and the other servants’ knowledge. Stede might be the white man whose skin color and bearing allows him to trick the nobles into his game, but it’s entirely the others’ information that does the actual work. In the end, even the secrets gathered from the servants (a child out of wedlock, debt, married siblings) aren’t enough to bring the aristocrats to their knees. That honor goes to Olu and Frenchie whose “pyramid scheme” (lol) results in everyone attacking one another, which in turn leads to the ship going up in flames. Though the story doesn’t draw a direct connection between the two scenes, I personally read this as an important moment for Stede post-the meal with Badminton. It didn’t escape my notice that during Badminton’s visit he put Frenchie and Olu in the position of servants. Sure, it makes sense based on Badminton and his crew’s expectations, but when has Stede ever bowed to those? He’s a foppish aristocrat turned pirate with a library on board! Yet still Stede bows to those conventions—those with the darkest skin must play the role of the servant—only to later learn precisely how powerful that role actually is, using it to undermine and reject the very society he tried to emulate four episodes before.

Okay, this time I’m done 👍‍

To summarize, if you’d like a visual representation of all this growth, consider the humble plant:

Stede steals the foliage while attempting to function as a traditional pirate—a “real man”—would, by boarding and looting a vessel under threat of violence. It doesn’t matter that the vessel is a rickety fishing boat, that the boarding went horribly, that Stede’s violence is nearly nonexistent, or even that he considers the plant to be loot at all. The point isn’t how well Stede executes these expectations, only that he’s trying to uphold them. So, he gets a nearly dead plant for his trouble but then, under the care and support of his crew throughout the season, it blossoms! He is the plant. The plant is the crew. People (and foliage) can only thrive in the kind of environment that exists near the end of the season, not where we started out. The fact that the plant reappears, looking quite healthy, when the crew is insisting that Stede is indeed a real pirate to the British is certainly no coincidence. The toxic masculinity of Stede’s original pirating attempts can’t help anything grow. The Gentleman Pirate though? He helps things flourish and that is as much real piracy, a better piracy, than any of them have seen before.

As a final note for this section, something I’m hoping for in season two—or later, depending on the story’s pacing and how many seasons we can expect total—is for Stede to change the name of his ship. After all, The Revenge is a little too fitting, in that it embodies the exact sort of harmful behavior that everyone is working to leave behind. Lots of characters seek revenge in OFMD, but none of them come out the better for it. Jim is forced into the life and it’s a miracle they came out as “well adjusted” as they did. They make it clear that they never truly wanted to go after those men, they want to stay on the ship with Olu, and it’s a credit to both their character and the themes of OFMD that they’ve already returned. Jackie seeks revenge on Jim for the death of her husband, but when push comes to shove, they’d rather take the guy out of the picture and help one another instead. Badminton is after revenge for his brother— an example that shows how easily revenge can become twisted. After all, he doesn’t know or even care that it was mostly an accident—and in the end he takes things too far, to the point where his own men turn on him because no, killing Stede is not the right action, not when he’s asked for grace. We even get an episode titled “The Best Revenge is Dressing Well” in which Ed attempts to achieve a kind of social revenge against the captive who insulted him, as well as the community he represents. Ed succeeds in a way, the party ruined and the ship on fire, but that’s only through the assistance of Stede, a man who was always a part of those circles, wielding a weapon— passive aggression—that is uniquely suited to these people. Ed comes out of the encounter feeling vindicated, but still shamed. Most notably though, Izzy seeks revenge on Stede for acting as the catalyst that changes his captain, but what does that get him? The crew’s dismissal, exile from the ship, a plot that results in Ed punching him, nearly thrown overboard… Sure, you could technically argue that he wins in the end by reverting Ed back to Blackbeard, but the audience is well aware that this so-called victory isn’t healthy for either of them and, under the rules of the rom-com, it’s inevitably temporary. It’s only a success in Izzy’s warped, short-term perspective and, as I’ll argue later, I’m not at all convinced he truly wants this.

Revenge is a part of the cycle of abuse. It results in kids like Jim losing their childhood and people like Izzy losing everything due to an obsession with hanging onto the past. The Revenge is an excellent ship name for a wannabe pirate who’s still just a little too naive about what the life is actually like, or for a crew that’s still immersed in the consequences of revenge, both their own and others’. But now, most of the crew is breaking away from that, OFMD has shown in a mere ten episodes how damaging revenge really is, how irrevocably tied up in toxic masculinity, and Stede, as their captain, has been one of the biggest proponents of forgiveness. He immediately sets Ed’s attempted murder aside in the name of their friendship. He does the same for Mary, forgiving her for the skewer, the infidelity, and in turn being forgiven for abandoning the family and refusing to meet her halfway. I hope that when Ed eventually forgives Stede too that the ship— their ship now, as true co-captains—will change to reflect what they’ve come to value in both themselves and one another.

Cheesy and stupid as it sounds (fitting for the show, perhaps?) I’m kind of rooting for The Unicorn. Even if her maidenhead was blown up by the British :(

Really, I loved The Revenge’s maidenhead the moment I saw it, not just for how fitting it is in regards to Stede’s sexuality (he’s not going to put a woman on the bow of the ship), or his personality (he loves all things beautiful and rare), but also because of what it represents in terms of his own existence and, eventually, that of his crew. Stede, simply put, shouldn’t exist. A Gentleman Pirate? A soft, kind, forgiving man surviving on the high seas? It’s an oxymoron that shouldn’t be possible—the exact kind of absurd originality that drew Ed to him in the first place—and yet, here Stede stands. He’s a unicorn, an impossibility that, if it were to exist, everyone would flock to and instinctively love.

More importantly though, this crew deserves to have a ridiculous and totally lame ship name. The Revenge, though important for season one, just isn’t their brand anymore.

━━━━━━━━┛ ✠ ┗━━━━━━━━

BlackBonnet and Balancing Identities

As discussed above, OFMD approaches the dismantling of toxic masculinity with a great deal of nuance. Specifically, it doesn’t say that masculinity itself is inherently bad (it’s not, that’s why we apply the “toxic” label), nor that every way of performing it is automatically a problem within the bounds of that cycle of abuse, nor even that one type of self-expression is ultimately better than another. Rather, the way to approach your identity—both in the show and in real life—is not to swap out one binary presentation for another—the “bad” thing for the “good”—but to be open to any and all aspects that resonate with you. What this results in is a cast who doesn’t just go “Oh, we’re allowed to like traditionally feminine things? Great! Let’s do that instead” but rather integrates such options into the personalities they’ve already built, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the character.

There’s no better example of this then, of course, Ed himself. I’ve seen a couple of takes the past few weeks that reduce Izzy and Calico Jack’s presence in his life to purely negative influences. They force him to adopt a persona he hates; one he’d give up in a heartbeat if it were socially acceptable—something he can presumably do with Stede instead. However, I’d argue that the Blackbeard persona isn’t really a persona at all, but rather just one part of Ed’s complex identity. The problem doesn’t lie in him being Blackbeard, but rather the pressure to only be Blackbeard, 24/7. As he implies when Stede first wakes up from his stab wound, it often feels like he’s working for the Blackbeard reputation, rather than that being an aspect of his identity that he’s proud to introduce himself as. Stede and Ed’s initial introduction of

Stede: “You’ve heard of me?”

Ed: “Oh, I’ve heard all about you.”

is built entirely on both their reputations, with the Blackbeard brand of screaming, smoke, and blood literally surrounding him at that moment. It’s a sharp contrast to their second meeting when Stede wakes up and sees “Ed” tending his bedside, backdropped by art and luxury. Ed has been on Blackbeard’s crew for a long time… arguably too long, with no one allowing him a reprieve to serve any other part of himself. Add onto this the problem of the rest of the world conflating Blackbeard with an exaggerated legend and you begin to understand why he feels the need to cut that part of himself out completely, never-mind the fact that he can’t.

Ed has to contend not only with those who expect him to act as a bloodthirsty pirate at all times— performing traditional masculinity through violence, leadership, repressing emotions, etc.—but also those who have built Blackbeard up in their minds to be far more than he actually is. Where are your nine guns? Where are your red eyes and smoking head? If you once skinned this guy for talking back, why aren’t you doing that to everyone who so much as looks at you funny? That’s an exhausting way to live.

So, we see Ed’s desire for a more balanced identity early on, notably in one of the first scenes where he is not hidden by shadows, or looming dramatically over a semi-conscious Stede. Izzy finds him observing the clouds and wants him to “focus” because seriously, now is not the time to be finding pretty pictures in the sky, not when the Spanish are bearing down on us. What this moment comes down to is miscommunication (with a healthy dose of Ed being a dramatic ass who likes revealing his plans at the last moment). Izzy doesn’t understand how observing the clouds might be useful for their survival and Ed doesn’t understand why it’s so hard for him to chill for a second, regardless of whether their cloud gazing has a practical application or not: “If you just put some fucking imagination into it… it’s like pulling teeth with you sometimes, man.” Izzy continues to be a roadblock to the complexities of Ed’s identity even when they do something as simple as greet the crew. Unlike Izzy who suggests “the usual” of making them repair the ship and then executing them, or Fang who hits Black Pete pretty much on instinct, this time Ed doesn’t want to start a relationship with violence and fear. He discourages Fang from hurting them further—"No need to brutalize our guests,” with “guests” undermining Izzy’s perspective of them as “captives”—he shakes hands with everyone he comes across, tries to keep Roach from addressing him as Sir, and even, in his own pirate-y way, compliments the crew by teasingly drawing attention to their unwashed bodies, the rope many of them wear, and Wee John’s size. Ed is thriving here, essentially code-switching between a group like the Spanish who expect the fearsome Blackbeard, and the crew of the fascinating Stede Bonnet who deserve the far more amenable Ed. Frankly, everything is going great until Izzy interrupts Frenchie’s question with a shout for everyone to get back to work because Blackbeard is busy. He doesn’t have time for chatting. He wouldn’t want that, surely, and Izzy’s cry causes Fang to hit Pete again, hissing afterwards. As his First Mate, others take their cue from Izzy about how to act around their captain. Obviously, he’d want to keep things as they’ve always been… right?

Yet Ed’s expression says it all.

What Ed is looking for is someone who will allow him to be all aspects of himself, simultaneously, the scarily brilliant Blackbeard who divines the skies to avoid his enemies and the imaginatively inclined Ed who sees not just sausages, but specifically frankfurters on the horizon; the fearsome Blackbeard who takes out a Spanish vessel with blood and screams, and the charming Ed who bonds with the captives he rescued. Unlike with Izzy, this balance is something Stede actively encourages. This is not the story of a rugged, unsophisticated pirate getting a My Fair Lady treatment, it’s the story of that alongside the “lady” learning how to toughen up and engage in adventure. The pact Stede and Ed make to teach one another their respective skills allows Ed to explore the cashmere-loving side of himself without giving up the aspects of Blackbeard that he still enjoys. It strikes me that Ed is at his most traditionally feminine only when he’s grieving the loss of Stede—otherwise just leaning towards a pirate who likes fancy teacups and bedtime stories—with these scenes deliberately mirroring a girl’s classic breakup routine of lounging around, eating their feelings away, writing bad poetry, getting support from the BFF, and finding solace among a larger group. Basically, it’s a time when the character is going through an extreme, not a reflection of their preferred, ideal state. Though Ed lost the symbol of his masculinity an episode earlier, his beard, I wouldn’t have been shocked at the loss of his hair too: that iconic moment when the dumped party takes scissors to their hair, crying in front of the bathroom mirror as they give themselves a new do to represent their new life.

Of course, Ed still gets a makeover. Given the attention paid to costuming in OFMD, I think it’s worth acknowledging that, stylistically, it’s only in Stede’s company on The Revenge that Blackbeard and Ed co-exist, so to speak. We already know that being Blackbeard 24/7 isn’t working for him. Then, Ed may be supremely eager to attend the party in episode five, but the act of dressing him as an aristocrat backfires: he realizes that he can’t sustain—and ultimately doesn’t really want—the acceptance of such callous, fickle people. “High society in all its grotesque glory,” Stede says and it is quite grotesque. Even before we get to the disastrous dinner, or see how men of color are treated by the aristocracy, the imagery builds a sense of discomfort with the badly applied makeup (note that Stede forgoes powdering his face, making him appear much more approachable) and the harsh, Dutch angles the party goers are introduced with. This isn’t a space of sophistication, more like a deranged funhouse where the clowns attack with words. Ed is ultimately not comfortable in Jeff’s purple outfit because, like being Blackbeard all the time, it requires him to play a specific part indefinitely, one he’s unable to sustain even if he wanted to.

So, Jeff the accountant decked out in bows isn’t a persona Ed can maintain for long. Then in episode ten, Edward appears to be doing alright under the crew’s care, dressed in Stede’s floral robe, his beard gone, at his most traditionally feminine as he sings some of his poetry, but I think the ease with which Izzy and the insistent call of “Edward!” was able to push him into becoming the Kraken, visually Edward’s opposite

speaks to how completely burying that side of himself won’t work either. We literally see that on screen: Ed lasts a few days before he skews hard in the opposite direction, throwing Lucius overboard and forcing Izzy to eat his own toe. The man dressed in that robe is one consumed by grief, not revealing their “real” inner self. Even if Ed hadn’t become the Kraken, I can’t imagine him giving up on pirating entirely. Captaining, raiding, threatening people, setting up death battles between crabs and turtles… Ed likes all of that. “But… this is who I am. This is me.” This line is delivered to Stede as he challenges who Ed is in Jack’s presence and though Ed is wrong that violence is all he’s good for, that lifestyle is a part of him—one that Stede very much wants to be a part of. This is a man who, even in the comfort of Stede’s ship and dressed in Stede’s clothes, is getting a kick out of supposedly life-or-death situations. You’d better decide what we’re doing next, “Blackbeard,” because Lucius is counting down and the Spanish are nearly upon us. You’d better run me through with your sword because otherwise I’m going to shoot you, look, the pistol is cocked, I’m counting down again, do it, do it, do it! Ed thrives on adventure and at least a bit of manufactured danger. He’d never be content settling for poetry and musical numbers alone. As he admits to Stede when he thinks he should leave The Revenge soon, he’s really not made for sitting idle. Idleness (luxury and rest) are important parts of life that he’s learning to embrace, but like anyone else Ed can’t do that 24/7, especially not after a lifetime of living as the most adventurous of pirates. It’s the same problem pervading the version of Ed dressed in prisoner’s clothes, insisting that folding things is fine. Great, even. Funny though that he doesn’t look too pleased about it once Stede is gone.

This is something we’ve seen from Ed before: putting on an emotional show to reassure someone else. The last time it was Izzy, gleeful that Ed “still got it” and yeah, Ed looks just as pleased by that pronouncement until he turns around and the smile drops.

What Ed actually says he wants on the beach is to be able to be “Edward” for a while, someone not required to act in all the ways expected of Blackbeard.

“It’s kinda nice just to take a load off. Just to be… Edward. I don’t know if I want to go back to the old days, just drinking all day and biting the heads off turtles and making some poor bloke eat his own toe as a laugh.”

Here, Ed frames being Blackbeard as non-stop violence and drink, an “all day” affair, rather than something that can influence parts of his life and not others. What Ed wants is that variety. What he intends to do though is to ditch Blackbeard entirely… which is why he eventually comes roaring back, forcing the next poor bloke (Izzy) to again eat his own toe. Yeah, we should totally ditch everyone else to go to China. New names, new ship, new backstories, and we’ll run as far as possible and pretend that half our lives simply never happened. That’ll work! /s Obviously, it didn’t. I don’t think it would have even if Stede had shown up at the dock. His own desire to face his past, his family, is evidence of that. Running isn’t going to help Ed, if only because the adoption of these new personalities that try to ignore Blackbeard’s existence inevitably fail. Jeff hears one bit of passive aggression and he’s threatening to kill everyone at the table; Edward has one moment of doubt and wakes up with plans to maroon most of the crew. Ed has, is seems, spent years pretending that The Kraken killed his father, separating that being from himself through language like “the creature” and even “I tried to warn him.” Inevitably though, The Kraken resurfaces at the end of the season because The Kraken is a part of Ed that cannot be ignored, lest it overwhelm him.

Just as Stede attempts to change the pirate profession rather than denying his true self, Ed needs to accept that he’s Blackbeard—always will be—and rather than ignoring that part of himself, change who others think Blackbeard is (he can lead raids and hold tea parties!). As discussed above, he gets the closest to achieving that balance with Stede on the ship and Ed’s costuming reflects that. Outside of his play dress-up, Ed never gives his leather up completely. Rather, he supplements his base personality (Blackbeard’s leather) with all the things he previously thought were unavailable to him. A bright purple shirt while going off treasure hunting, something Blackbeard has never previously done? That’s a bit of Jeff the accountant and Ed, Stede’s almost-boyfriend. Losing his gloves as the season goes on? That’s a bit of Edward, showing his emotional side as he displays touch as a love language. Ed allows himself to partake in fine things while with Stede, drinking from fancy teacups, or cuddling under Stede’s dressing gown, or having his swatch of silk turned into a pocket square. “This is the most open and available I’ve ever seen him” Fang comments as Ed lounges on the deck, telling the story of how he murdered his father, but twisting it into a type of fairy tale. Ed can’t just shuck off Blackbeard like an ill-fitting coat and come up with something entirely new. As the finale showed, that way lies disaster.

In thinking about how Stede allows Ed to embrace all aspects of his identity, it’s important to note that Ed does the same for Stede. It’s not simply that Ed has gone, “Yeah sure, I’ll teach you how to be a proper pirate if you teach me how to be a gentleman,” but that the writing itself goes out of its way to draw attention to unexpected similarities between them, continually emphasizing that both have sides to themselves that they can’t ignore. Ed appears quite uncomfortable when Calico Jack brings up the ship he burned down—with the crew inside—over breakfast with Stede because Stede is a gentleman, someone who Ed fears will be repulsed by his murderous actions. And yes, to an extent he is, with Stede growing frustrated with how Ed acts around Calico Jack, emphasizing that violent nature above everything else… yet just three episodes prior, Stede was also part of a ship burning down, the crew still inside. Sound familiar? No, he didn’t deliberately set the blaze as Ed presumably did, but neither of them did anything to help the nobles either, too busy having their almost-kiss back on The Revenge. “The Best Revenge is Dressing Well” is essentially the Gentleman Pirate’s version of Blackbeard’s cruelty, giving us just one example of how Stede can be as monstrous as Ed can.

Not that OFMD leaves it at just one example, of course. Everyone realizes that Stede is absolutely deranged, right? I mean yes, I enjoy writing Soft Boy Stede as much as the next fic author (or at least I would if I ever finished this project…) but canonically the man is half insane. You know, just like how Izzy describes Blackbeard. They’re not even sporting that big a difference in the type of insanity, if we consider that both have a “I technically never murdered anyone if anything other than my own hands is the cause of death :)” policy going on. (A policy that, hilariously, Mary and her friend don’t have time for. They’ll just justify things after the fact: “Murder is a natural cause!”) Stede might dislike violence as a general policy, but he’s ultimately fine with it happening provided it’s a) justified according to his own morals and b) he doesn’t personally have to get his hands dirty. Ed’s men are tearing into another ship? Note the gusto, Lucius! These men are now very, very dead? Sure, Ivan, help yourself to their teeth. My wife was ready to stab a kebob skewer into my brain? Yeah, fair enough, sometimes you’ve just got to murder a bitch. This man is feral in ways that go far beyond the foolishness of building a fireplace into his ship. Stede’s desire to be a “real” pirate pushes him to chase after the likes of Izzy Hands, or tell an unknown captain to go suck eggs in hell, or agree to inevitably deadly duels, or try to fire on three naval war vessels. Ed is the voice of reason there who tells him to raise a white flag! This man built a ship in secret and left in the dead of night to become an outlaw. Then, somehow, he accumulated a crew that includes:

A cannibal that speaks seagull

God’s most perfect little assassin

Said assassin’s BFF/boyfriend

Blackbeard’s self-professed right-hand man (Stede believes it)

The cook who’s just a little too into dismemberment

A sweetie built like a fucking tank

Whatever the fuck The Swede’s got going on

A guy who thinks the world is full of soul-stealing cats and demons, but who’s happily singing songs about it anyway

And Lucius (who deals psychological damage)

How was anyone surprised when Stede managed to fall for—and woo—the most dangerous pirate to ever sail the seven seas? These two were made for each other.

Plus, even among the comedy, Stede has moments when he’s legitimately, classically badass. He tells Calico Jack to get off his ship, now, and no one is questioning his orders then. (Note that Ed stands back, allowing Stede to steer the conversation.) After a season of looking like a buffoon in fights, Stede slams Doug down on the table and manages a highly convincing, “Unhand me or bleed.” When Stede leaves for the second time he’s in a sensible shirt and pants, his hair more slicked back than curled, and if we didn’t already know what kind of show this was, Stede would come across as a very different protagonist in that moment. He has layers (thanks, Shrek) which include the ability to be just as badass as his pirate boyfriend. Not, like, Stede is a muppet who managed to outwit Izzy via genre-bending shenanigans badass, but proper badass too.

Not all of the similarities between them are quite so, uh… murderous though. “This is Happening”—along with being the first queer confirmation fans were looking for, important enough to become the very title of the episode— is a thirty-minute exploration of Ed and Stede trying to give the other what he needs without realizing that they each already had it. The conflict of the episode begins when Ed thinks he needs to leave The Revenge soon (thinking Stede wants him to leave) and Stede, in turn, thinking he has to manufacture a daring adventure in order to hold Ed’s interest (he doesn’t). Miscommunication at its finest! In fact, Stede is so focused on keeping Ed entertained that he ignores the legitimate crisis of scurvy and, for the first time, really throws his wealth around in an attempt to solve the problem by buying a treasure map, spending “like, more money than I’ve ever seen in my life.” Even the costume design gets in on the action. Stede is usually the most vibrantly dressed out of the whole crew, a contrast to Ed’s all black ensemble. But here, in the episode where Stede makes Ed his sole focus, he’s the one who stands out in a bright purple shirt, flanked by two beige outfits:

Don’t even get me started on how that purple—not exactly a common color in these parts—is also the protective slip for Stede’s shovel, the tool he’s desperate to use to impress Ed. “Uh, well, we didn’t come all this way not to dig something up.”

The joke at the end of the episode is that “treasure is the real treasure”

but beyond the day spent together, or even the orange as a unifying, familial force across generations, the real-real treasure is the development of Ed and Stede’s relationship. (As well as Lucius getting the hot pirate gossip of the decade lol.) Seriously though, sure, the pan down to the map on the ground is meant to eventually show us that it’s caught on fire, but for the first few seconds of the shot the viewer is left to visually connect “This is happening” to the map in general; a guide towards some yet unnamed treasure. They’re the treasure. They might be screwing a lot of it up right now, but amidst a hatred of nature and a fear that no one is interesting enough for Blackbeard, they’ve found this moment of tenderness over a grilled snake, imagining different lives for themselves as a restaurant owner and customer. Set all the elaborate plans aside, just let them sit together, and Stede and Ed are a whole lot more alike than either has yet to realize.

Furthering that point, I particularly like how Lucius has bookended conversations about their personalities. “Is he always this high-strung?” Ed asks him while Stede is hurrying them off to start their treasure hunting adventure. Yeah, he is. Yet later it’s Stede who accuses Ed of being unable to relax, with Lucius backing that up with, “You are kind of intense, like, all the time.” Both Ed and Stede think the other is so different from them because they’ve each spent their lives embodying just one identity—the aristocrat and the bloodthirsty pirate—as well as internalizing the idea that they’re somehow lesser than this counterpart—Ed isn’t sophisticated enough for a gentleman, Stede isn’t cool enough for a real pirate—yet once you get an outside perspective like Lucius’ the reaction is oh… they’re actually really similar. Not just in terms of Ed enjoying fancy parties and Stede enjoying setting assholes ablaze, but in their core personalities as high-strung individuals desperate to impress the other. Ed despises wandering through nature, but puts up with it because Stede wants to look for treasure, but Stede only wants to look for treasure because he thinks he needs an adventure to impress Ed with, but the adventure Ed was already happy with was what we saw at the start of the episode: planning a raid while drinking tea with “a dollop of milk and seven sugars”—the fearsome pirate and lover of fine things existing in tandem. They’re going in circles. If Stede had simply said, “Hey, can I come on the raid?” or if Ed had gone, “Hey, want to raid with me?” then none of this would have happened. But right now, neither is confident enough in the other liking them to offer themselves as they are; to realize that they’re more alike than they are different.

Their similarities, needs, and attraction are only made obvious to the audience, not them, in “This is Happening,” which means that things inevitably get worse in “We Gull Way Back.” We learn later that Calico Jack was sent to retrieve Ed before the British arrived, which means everything he does after stepping foot on The Revenge is in service of that goal. Convincing the others to head to Blind Man’s Cove is a bit of trickery that the show acknowledges, but beyond that we have to consider how Jack manages to get Ed away from the ship first. Basically, he acts like a dick and in doing so reminds Ed of his “true” self: one who is defined solely by violent past-times and self-destructive tendencies. Everything he chooses to do also does double-duty of painting Stede in an unflattering light, further convincing Ed that they’re too different to maintain this relationship (whatever it currently is). They’re having fun blowing things up, but then here comes Stede making them feel guilty about the antique that’s been in his family for generations. They’re enjoying “whipies” and then Stede Bonnet ruins the mood, grimacing at the injuries they’ve sustained. Why would you want to hang out with such a killjoy, Blackie? Things come to a head when Jack confronts Stede about his relationship with Ed, not only throwing the sexual aspect in his face—What? You’re not buggering? Well huh, I had that with him…—but also verbalizing the worry they’ve both been internalizing: “We’ve got a lot in common, me and him. In a lot of ways, we’re the same man.” AKA, you’re too different to ever have that kind of bond, so just stop trying. Notably, this manipulation doesn’t actually work on Stede. He holds his ground, saying that perhaps Ed is no longer the Blackie he knew, but the conversation still upsets him enough that he heads back to the ship. This gives Jack the perfect opportunity to play the good friend to Stede’s (supposed) tantrum about their coconut war. “C'mon, Stede!” he yells. “Don’t leave!” Jack ensures that when Ed is there, he plays the part of the insecure buddy who’s trying so hard to connect with Stede… and there Stede goes, not even giving the coconut war a chance. Of course, Ed has no idea Jack tore into Stede like that (and pissed on his boots) so Stede’s response reads like he can’t accept any of the violent, pirate-y things that Ed likes, let alone any of Ed’s old mates. It’s exactly as Jack planned. By the time he’s asking who’s going to leave with him, Ed is convinced Stede doesn’t want anything to do with that part of his identity. A part that, as established, it’s not healthy to ignore. “You were always gonna realize what I am.”

It’s clear how Jack is working to alienate Stede from Ed, but I think it’s important to note that it doesn’t work quite as well as he might have assumed it would—and I don’t just mean during the bathroom conversation. Basically, it’s real important to Stede and Ed’s relationship that Stede is supportive of Ed’s time with Jack, even if he doesn’t really like the kind of stuff they’re doing. It’s the extreme, pirate version of going, "I can’t stand horror movies, babe, but you go enjoy that marathon. Hope there’s lots of gore!” Granted, Ed repeats twice that Jack has saved his life, perhaps implying then that he feels he owes Jack the version of Blackie he remembers (parallels to Izzy, anyone?) and in “This Is Happening” Ed grudgingly admits that the moth Stede found is actually pretty cool. So, it may well be that without Jack’s influence, or the debts in their past, Ed would be less inclined towards choosing turtle-crab death battles over every other possible activity, especially when he’s got a lover of animals as a part of the group.

Still, what Ed actually wants aside, it’s important that Stede still tries to accommodate that part of him. When Ed asks him to give Jack a chance Stede does, even though at that point he has good reason to dislike him, reasons that go beyond simply taking up Ed’s attention and bringing out a side of him that Stede is iffy about. He weathers the criticism of his crew when they tear into him for making Jack cry—“Well, it was a pretty bitchy question”—the same way that Stede weathers the aristocrats finding Ed more interesting than him: “Do you never cease with your insistent nattering? We are trying to hear Jeff!” and the rather blunt “You’re just sore that they like me more than you.” Stede is someone who’s never the center of the conversation (not until he heads home and impresses the other bored gentlemen), but he’s also someone empathetic enough not to blame others for that. He doesn’t begrudge Ed his fun, just goes off to find Olu and Frenchie (who, uh, don’t want to see him either…) and here Stede is likewise accepting of Jack and Ed’s popularity. He only snidely questions Jack because Jack insulted him first with a comment about real pirates vs. “store bought types.” Stede woke up this morning to find a stranger on his ship blowing up his antiques, someone who possesses the kind of personality that results in his third mutiny this year. Yet through all of this, Stede says twice “If he’s a friend of yours…” and implies the well-known ending, “then he’s a friend of mine.” Jack might not actually be a friend yet, but Stede is determined to change that for Ed’s benefit.

Of course, the problem lies not merely in Jack’s iffy behavior, or even his underlying motivations to get Stede killed. This friendship was doomed from the start simply because Jack is approaching the world from a perspective that Ed and Stede fundamentally don’t agree with. “What kind of pirate has a friend?” Jack screams when Ed leaves to go help Stede. "We’re all just in various stages of fucking each other over!” We learn here that Jack’s identification as "a friend” of Ed’s when he first arrives was a bit misleading, at best. Yeah, they’re buddies. They’ve saved each other’s hides. They even seem to legitimately enjoy each other’s company. But if you approach life under the belief that real friendship is impossible, then you will inevitably screw over the friends you have in an effort to protect yourself before they do the same to you—a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even Jack’s admission of a sexual relationship with Ed is described as a “dalliance,” brief, casual, unencumbered by deeper feelings. This is the worldview that governs 99% of the pirate community, producing the Jacks, Izzys, and (formerly) Blackbeards of the world. Remember, Ed needed a whole breakdown in the bathtub and Stede’s (frankly insane) nonchalance about the murder attempt to reach a place where he could believe that real friendship was even a possibility. I’m in love with the cinematography of this scene, with the mirrors splitting Ed and Stede and other shots where one or the other is partially obscured by the lights.

There’s a distance here despite the fact that Stede is kneeling directly beside Ed, at least until he manages to convince him that they are friends and yes, they can continue to be friends for as long as they like.

“Why do you all show such loyalty to this—this—this nothing?” Badminton screams when the crew is trying to stay Stede’s execution. Though it’s not outright stated, the answer is quite obviously because they love him. They’re all friends. But the world of OMFD is still in a place where you can’t just say that (unless you’re Blackbeard and you’re also in love with your friend) so instead everyone makes up palatable excuses for their newfound relationships. We’re loyal because Stede is actually a fearsome pirate—look, he stole vegetation! The same thing occurs in our Pilot when the crew agrees not to mutiny because Stede [checks notes] totally murdered that British officer. Right. Everyone’s just going to ignore the fact that they already wanted to drop the mutiny because Stede is a nice guy who reads them bedtime stories. Badminton’s accidental death is just the convenient excuse to let Stede live without losing face. Yet the circulation of those excuses must be real confusing to everyone who doesn’t immediately fall to the Stede Bonnet way of thinking. Everyone still verbally agrees that pirates will inevitably screw each other over and that you only follow those capable of the most heinous deeds… but now you don’t want to screw this guy over and you want to follow this marshmallow man? Badminton, Izzy, and Calico Jack can’t read between the lines, working from a rulebook that everyone else has chucked overboard, even though they keep insisting it’s in play.

The point of all this though is that Stede still tries. It was doomed to fail when it came to Jack, but nurturing that part of Ed—the part that thrives as Blackbeard, or at least as a semi-violent pirate who likes things other than the traditional activities of the aristocracy—is an important part of accepting him for who he is. The fact that Stede suffers Jack’s presence all the way through to pissing on his shoes is a testament both to his love for Ed and his willingness to help Ed maintain the parts of his pirate life that he still legitimately enjoys, slowly leading him towards a cohesive identity, rather than the fractured version we’ve mostly seen thus far.

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Stede Is a Lighthouse (Duh)

“Consider the humble lighthouse. An unwavering light that guides, and you shall be that for each other, for eternity.”

Stede is the lighthouse. I don’t need to tell anyone who reads OFMD meta that.

Still, let’s recap just a bit. We’re introduced to this concept during Stede and Mary’s wedding where the lighthouse is, on the surface, presented as a purely beneficial thing. It’s a humble, unwavering, guiding light that will remain with you for all eternity. Sounds pretty good! Yet even here we understand that the lighthouse is not without its problems, particularly when it’s applied to the wrong people. What good is being humble and unwavering if it keeps them silent about what they truly want? How can eternity be anything other than torture if you’re forced to spend it with someone you don’t love? Being a lighthouse, right from the start, has its pitfalls.

However, they’re pitfalls that Mary attempts to avoid, not Stede. In writing this I’ve been thinking a lot about Stede’s guilt and how it does (and does not) line up with the reality of the situation. Meaning, we can’t say that he screwed his family over in terms of practical needs because other than the “acre or two” he sold for his supplies and such, they inherited both his and Mary’s wealth. We also can’t say that he screwed them over emotionally given that they’re canonically much happier with him gone. Although, really, that’s too simple a spin on things. There is something to be said for the inherent problems in that abandonment—the generalized responsibility he has as a husband and father—to say nothing of how that might impact the kids, specifically. From a realistic perspective yeah, any father running off to chase his own dreams with only a note as a goodbye is #NotGood, regardless of the outcome, but my point is that the show does not emphasize that. Mary is thrilled to be living a widowed life with friends, a career, and Doug. The kids, though they clearly love their father (look at how much fun they have playing pirates with him) and deserve to have that closure with Stede over the petrified orange, also aren’t written as emotionally scarred by the change. The most damning responses to Stede leaving that we see come from Stede’s nightmares while recovering from his stab wound: Mary yelling about the letter and Alma leaning in to kill the “dog.” It’s absolutely more honorable, more emotionally healthy, and all around better that the family was able to amicably split this time, but the fact is that the vast majority of Stede’s guilt stems from his own assumption that he should feel very guilty indeed, not his family’s actual response. His subconscious summons up Badminton, but it’s his family that Stede is truly haunted by and it’s that choice to leave, not an accidental killing, that he needs to work through at the end of the season: “Until you resolve this guilt, you’ll continue to be haunted.” Yet when Stede does return home in an attempt to fix that perceived mistake, his guilt appears to be (mostly) misplaced. Sure, he technically did a bad thing, but if it resulted in a whole lot of good for everyone involved… does it matter?

Again, yeah. It matters in a generalized "Don’t be a dick and leave your family with no warning even if everyone ends up happier” kind of way. But given everything above—the specifics of Stede and Mary’s odd circumstances— I’d argue that Stede is feeling guilty for the wrong reason. He imagines that Mary and the children despise him for his abandonment when in fact they flourished in his absence. Hell, Louis doesn’t even remember who Stede is; he’s already acclimated to the idea that Doug is his real dad. However, what did cause Mary (and to a lesser extent the kids) great pain was Stede’s refusal to engage in the marriage for years while he was around, not his final choice to leave it. It’s Mary who takes Stede’s hand during the ceremony, signaling before they’re even married yet that she’s willing to reach out to him—literally. No, neither of them wants this, but Mary recognizes that they need to make the best of things. The problem is not so much that they’re living a loveless marriage, but that Stede isn’t willing to put forth the work to nurture love between them, even if it’s not the romantic love they’d both prefer. At the end of the season, we see that Mary and Stede actually get along swimmingly, hatching fuckeries together and happily supporting one another, both in their chosen partners (Ed, Doug) and their pursuits (piracy, painting). They might have reached that understanding much sooner if Stede hadn’t closed himself off to Mary, rejecting her every attempt to make their marriage bearable.

We see this disconnect in the gifts that they choose to give one another for their anniversary. Mary, in a rather mature move, has managed to combine her personal interest in painting with the goal of their marriage, something she expects Stede to care about because he too is an adult with equal standing in this relationship. So, she doesn’t ignore her own preferences, but rather tailors them in a way that she hopes will please them both: here’s a handmade gift that I put a lot of effort into, a way of showing you that I care. The gift is a visual representation of the metaphor I’m striving to make a reality. It’s also simply pertinent to the occasion, given that it’s our anniversary and I’ve made you something referencing our wedding. The fact that the lighthouse is literally fractured doesn’t take away from the fact that the overall image is still beautiful and something that Mary is proud to have created. They could build a better, fractured, but still beautiful marriage too. The fact that Stede isn’t just uninterested in the painting, but thinks the kids made it, certainly puts a damper on things and reinforces why Mary would eventually want to remove him from the family portrait. (One that, notably, doesn’t even look like them. It’s a lie, the portrait of a fictional family right from the start.)

Stede? Stede doesn’t put the same kind of thought and effort into his gift as Mary has. Oh, he’s certainly poured a lot of money and personal passion into the project, but that’s where the similarities end. Rather than finding a way to merge his interest in piracy with their marriage, Stede has flat out ignored everything that makes Mary, well, Mary. It sounds nice on the surface when Stede paints a picture (ha) of the family living on the sea together, but that’s before Mary cries out that she hates the sea. That’s not even something she’s admitting to now, dashing Stede’s otherwise understandable hopes. She apparently said that just last week when they were down on the beach together. Stede isn’t listening to her, he doesn’t see her, and ultimately the gift of the ship has nothing to do with her. Stede has gifted a model that only he would enjoy and has commissioned the building of the actual ship without her consent (imagine your partner secretly buying a Ferrari, but so much worse. I know it’s the 1700s and men do whatever they want in the marriage, but still). Then, when Mary pressures Stede, he lies about it, claiming the project is cancelled. Frankly, that’s a lot for any spouse to deal with. They’re both unhappy here—despite what Mary may claim in this exact moment, saying she doesn’t hate their life—they both want different things, and though it’s commendable that Stede takes the plunge to secure the life that he wants (brave too) the result has been years when he made little attempt to salvage the life he had.

Though less dramatic than the gifts, this disengagement is likewise seen right at the start of the flashbacks when the camera sinks six feet under to years after their marriage, when Mary is drinking wine at the table, trying unsuccessfully to engage Stede in conversation. He’s too busy reading—about piracy?—and doesn’t even show any interest in playing with the kids until Mary tells him not to play pirates because it gives them nightmares. But piracy is the only thing Stede is putting emotional energy towards, resulting in him ignoring Mary, his children, and disobeying a stern request that she had good reason to make. After all, right now Stede isn’t striking me as the parent who will deal with those nightmares when they surface.

This scene changes our reading of the other flashback dinner where Mary still sits at the far end of the table, both kids at her side, Stede unsuccessfully trying to offer his opinion about the farm animals. I was actually disappointed in OFMD for a hot second when I first watched this. “Ah,” I thought. “Another shrew wife, huh? Here Stede is trying to connect and Mary is rudely ignoring him, encouraging the kids to do the same. It’s particularly worrying that she’s dismissing a comment about the horse having “kind eyes.” What, can men not like sensitive animals, Mary? Oh well. It’s not like I haven’t seen this before.” “This” being shows that throw their women under the bus for the sake of the guys’ development. OFMD proved me wrong though because all our other flashbacks show Mary trying so hard to connect with Stede while Stede continually rebuffs her attempts. Which means that when they get to this point, years later, Mary is just done. It’s not that she’s inherently uncaring, or looking to oust Stede from the family, and she certainly doesn’t harbor any disdain for his traditionally feminine interests. It’s that she’s spent literal years reaching out to him and continually hitting an emotional brick wall. But then once in a blue moon he tries to get chummy over dinner? Damn, I’d be inclined to ignore him too. By the time Stede has decided to go be a pirate and then comes back to upend Mary’s life again because he “decided to un-abandon [his] family on a whim” I’m like OKAY. Mary can have a little murder attempt, as a treat.

(As a side note, we actually have a third flashback at the dinner table where Stede is sitting right next to his family, entertaining them with a story. I’m on the fence about this one, but right now I’m leaning towards this being a fantasy as opposed to an actual flashback. Out of everything we see from his past, playing pirates with the children is the only other happy moment. Stede just doesn’t have the kind of relationship with his family that would bridge the literal space between one end of the table and the other. That’s the point. He comes out of this supposed memory while staring at the sea, commenting to himself that his family is here now, on the ship. You know, the people he’s reading fairy tales to instead of his own children, the people he has managed to connect with. I see this as Stede imagining up the home life he would have liked to have, one where he somehow made Mary happy and she made him happy too, but given that this moment never actually existed, he’s trying again on The Revenge instead. We see the same “flashback” while Stede is lying in bed at the reformed sailors camp, but it crops up when he’s theorizing that Mary might have reported him dead out of spite and it’s followed by the definitely real moment when she ignores him to ask Alma about her favorite pig. Again, seems more like a moment of brief wish fulfillment than something Stede literally lost.)

All of this is neatly summarized in their final flashback scene, the night that Stede leaves on The Revenge:

Mary: “Stede… I know you’re unhappy. I’m unhappy too.”

Stede: “I’m not unhappy.”

Mary: “No? Sometimes I think I’ve heard you crying by yourself.”

Stede: “Uh… no. That’s probably the wind you’re hearing. Or an owl, it might be an owl.”

Mary: “I know we never would have chosen each other, not in a million years, but all we have is this one life. We have to try, don’t we? Otherwise, what’s the point?

Mary being the only one to emotionally reach out? Check. Acknowledging both her and Stede’s thoughts, but having him deny the truth of it? Check. Stede’s inability to admit to a “weak” response to this unhappiness like crying at night? Check. Him lying to her and ending the conversation by pretending to be asleep? Check. Topping it all off by sneaking off to the ship, revealing to the audience that Stede never intended to meet her halfway, this entire conversation was just a bump in his plan to leave her? A million checks all on top of each other. Stede has turned “We have to try" into “I have to try.” This all might make it sound like I think Stede is The Worst Ever, but far from it. I think he’s wonderfully flawed. OFMD could have easily been the story of a repressed Ed getting coaxed into emotional fulfillment by a Stede Bonnet who already has it all worked out (or vice versa)—and that would have been great. But it’s far more compelling to me to watch two thoroughly floundering men trying to better themselves together. Stede might not be at the level of feeding someone their own toe, but he’s certainly had his fair share of failings. This initial failing of not communicating with Mary about what he wants and needs is something that Stede seems to realize on a subconscious level, even if it takes him until the end of the season to try and do something about it. “Coward,” he mutters while on his sickbed. “I was a coward.” But after they finally confront one another, with complete honesty this time, they’re brought together both emotionally and literally. The cinematography moves from the two of them divided in their own carriages, separated by a split screen, to sharing a carriage as they plan both their futures.

So Stede fails to be the husband Mary needs (he never could have been), but he likewise fails to even meet her halfway, at least at the start. However, this doesn’t mean that Stede has failed as a lighthouse. No, he certainly didn’t guide in the way the pastor assumed he would, but Stede’s selfishness nevertheless led to Mary finding her own freedom, her artistic expression, and the love of her life. If we think about how the lighthouse is an inanimate object, it doesn’t matter whether Stede intends to guide or not—he illuminates for anyone who happens to come within his orbit. Of course, this also means that people are likely to crash up on his rocks whether Stede intends that or not too. When Stede leaves Mary, he believes he’s hurt his family terribly, only to return and find that they’ve been the happiest without him. In contrast, when Stede leaves Ed, he thinks he’s doing right by him, buying fully into the cruel picture that Badminton paints of his actions:

Badminton: “Stede Bonnet is not a human. You’re a monster. A plague. You defile beautiful things: my dear brother, your own family, you even managed to bring history’s greatest pirate to ruin. And here you are, unscathed, God’s perfect little rich boy.”

Stede says he agrees with this assessment entirely (my heart) and even before this he tries to reassure Ed that he’s okay with the execution because at some point he has to “face the music for the things he’s done” and the “people he’s hurt.” This is why Stede leaves. He can’t do anything about either Badminton now, but he can try to fix things with his family and avoid ruining Ed any more than he already has. Problem is, Mary never shattered on his rocks. She guided herself in his absence and it’s Steve’s return that causes strife (until they’re able to be honest with each other, that is). In contrast, Stede has been guiding Ed this whole time—and Ed him—and it’s him leaving that causes Ed to shatter. Stede gets it backwards (love a protagonist who’s allowed to fuck up despite their best intentions) and it’s only at the very end of the season that he realizes that mistake. He needs to return to Ed, the man he can apply those vows to.

Though of course, they already gave a version of the wedding vows, albeit in a different context. Still, given the pervasiveness of the metaphor, there’s something quite romantic about them yelling in synch, “We need to be a lighthouse!” and then pulling off an awesome plan together, one that requires Ed’s daring (blowing liquor into the lamp), Stede’s finery (the reflection of the mirror), and the help of their crew (Wee John making the lighthouse warning call). They might have been creating a fictional lighthouse in that moment, but that’s no more or less real than the metaphor of the wedding vows. “We need to be a lighthouse [to each other].”

━━━━━━━━┛ ✠ ┗━━━━━━━━

Izzy Hands (Affectionate and Derogatory)

Ah, we finally come to this gremlin of a man. Let the discourse commence!

For me, a neat summary of Izzy’s character is that he’s the living embodiment of Black Pete’s fantasy. At the start of “A Damned Man” Pete tells the crew a story that, at first glance, appears to be nonsensically over-the-top. Indeed, as the tale goes on his shipmates start rolling their eyes, disgusted by Stede’s gullibility. Glowing red eyes? Fighting off three men simultaneously? “The Dread Black Pete”? C'mon. How can you possibly believe all this? This is clearly a case of a man spinning a yarn, imagining up a power fantasy and hoping to convince us of it.

The thing is though… this fantasy is pretty realistic.

Now, obviously it’s not real real. The most absurd details of the tale are the exact kind of exaggerations that Ed is upset by. When Stede shows him an illustration of Blackbeard he’s disgusted by the fantasy elements that serve to paint him as more bloodthirsty (and traditionally masculine) than he actually is: “Fucking viking vampire clown with—look at that—one, two, nine guns all over him. Nine guns!” with the use of “him” separating Ed from the drawing. So no, there are no glowing red eyes, skull on his belt, or a head made of smoke. But the reaction these imagined Frenchmen have is exactly on the mark. During the story it might seem ridiculous for a man to throw himself overboard merely from spotting Blackbeard’s ship—it’s supposed to seem ridiculous while Pete is telling it—but we learn later that this is precisely how the pirate world reacts to Ed. The appearance of his right-hand man is enough to keep Jackie from starting a new nose jar. Merely seeing Blackbeard—in a terrified, delusional state, no less—is indeed enough to send grown Dutchmen running for their lives when all the other fuckery of that night barely moved them. There’s a truth to Pete’s story underneath all the absurd details and Izzy is living it. As Blackbeard’s First Mate, Izzy’s life is what other pirate’s fantasies are.

And I think that’s really important for understanding why he’s, you know, an absolutely deranged little man that I want to slide under a microscope and write articles on. Izzy had everything going for him—or at least, everything he thought it was possible to have—before stupid fucking Stede Bonnet showed up.

It’s nothing new in the fandom to say that Izzy is in love with Blackbeard (not necessarily Edward, or even Ed— though the possibility of that is there imo. We’ll get to that.) Nor is it revolutionary to point out that he’s the one human in a muppet cast, a man who went to bed in a gritty action-drama and woke up in a rom-com. However, it’s not just that Izzy is trying to navigate a world whose rules have suddenly and inexplicably been turned inside out—duels are now won through absurd happenstance rather than skill, romance occurs through heartfelt communication rather than violence functioning as subtext—it’s that his original world was celebrated before it was lost. As discussed above, we as the audience recognize how damaging that world can be (or at least, I hope we do), but for the first couple of episodes the entire cast emphasizes how much they love their gritty, dangerous, subtext-fueled lives. It’s in Frenchie singing about how a pirate’s life isn’t just short, but nice. How when given the option to just sit on a beach and relax for once, Wee John vocally prefers to blow things up. Roach is more than a little eager to torture their hostages. Buttons is ready and waiting to cannibalize his friends. Black Pete dreams of slaughtering men at his Captain’s behest and when they make port at a town where men are indeed dying at their feet and vomiting endless blood into buckets, they all comment about how The Republic of Pirates just isn’t what it used to be. Pirates have gone soft and, however much the crew comes to embrace softness for themselves, there is a sense of real disappointment in that loss.

Things are changing. (“Is that a gift shop?”) Stede is furthering that change and the crew is receptive to his efforts. They legitimately enjoy their craft projects and bedtime stories. Quite obviously, much of the show is about these characters unlearning toxic masculinity and figuring out how to embrace all forms of self-expression, no matter what that might look like. There’s a lot to unpack there, but the point for this section is that no one is secretly waiting to chuck aside all traditional aspects of their pirate life once someone like Stede says it’s okay. Roach likes torturing and cooking delicious tapas. Wee John likes setting things on fire and helping his mom make dresses. Ed enjoys going to fancy parties with Stede, but he also enjoys the activities he associates with Calico Jack: whipping bottles off the side of the ship, or betting on a knife-turtle-crab fight. As Geraldo lays out, having “balls” is what really matters. It’s not a matter of gender—Jackie has the biggest balls of them all—but rather how much of a badass you appear in front of others. Such personas are rejected only once they’re taken too far (as often happens with Ed), but the violent, dangerous, strength-based manner of showing off is still very ingrained in everyone’s mindset. The concept of “cool” still holds a great deal of sway and Izzy, more than anyone except Blackbeard himself, is very, very cool.

Or at least he was.

Izzy had everything going for him in this world and goddamn, I can’t help but feel bad for the guy once he loses it. He’s Blackbeard lite. Scarred. Tattooed. Dressed all in leather. In possession of a fantastic voice thanks to Con O'Neill. He has superb sword skills and the position everyone else dreams of. Izzy has it all, right down to the ability to spot the pitfalls in his original genre:

Oluwande: “This is the ghost of the forest!”

Stede: “I didn’t know this isle was haunted.”

Izzy: “It’s obviously one of your men.”

Stede: “But is it?”

Izzy: “Yes, it is.”

Stede: (whispering): “But is it?”

In another version of OFMD this would have worked. I mean, it did work, but here I’m referring to the original intention of Stede’s plan: to convince Izzy of his fanciful tale. I’m sure we can all think of a story where the protagonist successfully tricks the stupider (or simply more gullible) antagonist, even one where ghosts are involved in the lie. If the antagonist is not immediately taken in by the ruse something then inevitably turns the tide of their confidence and they run away scared. We know this scene. Izzy is supposed to stand firm at first, but then falter as Stede continues to insist that a ghost is nearby, or one of his men pipes up with a folk tale they heard and suddenly it’s well shit, if you believe it, then maybe it’s true. But of course, Izzy does none of that. He knows how his own tropes work. There’s a ghost! No there’s not. Yes, there is! Nope. It’s just your men in the woods. You can’t trick a man who knows how their story goes. If the world hadn’t tilted while Izzy wasn’t looking, he’d be so impressive here, but as it stands… Izzy doesn’t know how to navigate a rom-com, resulting in a sudden rock, a silly ambush, and oh, would you look at that. Stede wins.

The absurd position he’s suddenly been thrust into is made clear through the very first shot, in which the formerly badass pirate is framed between Stede’s legs, making for both a ridiculous and slightly suggestive image.

Izzy, like any good character plucked from a homoerotic laden, but ultimately “no homo” story, has numerous moments like this one. As in, far too many for me to list here. Some highlights though would be him getting reeeaal close to other men as a form of intimidation, tearing open Stede’s shirt as a means of scaring him, and the entire debacle that was getting Ed down from his fuckery harness (a scene I’ll come back to). The change in genre doesn’t simply result in Stede’s muppet-ness allowing him to beat Izzy in duels, obliterating his “cool” factor as a result, it also means that Izzy is suddenly faced with text where there was formerly only subtext. He was the ultimate badass not simply because he used to be able to beat the likes of Stede Bonnet with ease, but because he was formerly the Heterosexual Icon in a genre that celebrated such postering, his own queercoding existing only between the lines—and doesn’t the target audience of his original story like it that way? Yet now it’s a rom-com, a queer rom-com, and what was once considered awesome is… not. Izzy now comes across as silly in fights and downright toxic when it comes to emotional maturity. As someone who is queercoded, but ultimately antagonistic towards the rest of the (queer) cast, a man who is struggling to navigate a world that no longer worships all he represents, we come to the big question: Is Izzy Hands queerphobic?

Yes.

But it’s “Yes” with a caveat.

See, fans are correct to point out that Izzy is repeating queerphobic rhetoric regardless of the reason why (AKA, his own repressed attraction). You can’t have a character sneer at another man for wearing a silk gown and pining for his boyfriend, only to turn around and insist that there’s nothing damaging in both believing that and trying to convince Ed of that “truth.” Izzy is queerphobic in the same way a kid calling another kid “fag” as an insult is queerphobic. Yeah, maybe the kid just picked up the slur from a Youtube video and repeated it without any knowledge of the other kid’s perceived sexuality, or maybe this is a kind of defense mechanism to avoid questioning their own attraction, or maybe peer pressure of their friends nearby pushed them to say something they didn’t truly mean, or maybe this is how they connect with someone they secretly like (the pulling of pigtails), etc. Regardless of the imagined context, nothing changes the fact that the act itself, the language and an intent to hurt in at least some regard, is queerphobic. Izzy framing Ed’s grief over a lost boyfriend, as well as the various ways in which he’s no longer conforming to traditional masculinity, as bad is an act of queerphobia, regardless of whatever else Izzy has got going on.

But he does have a lot going on, which is precisely why Izzy is fascinating to me. Because despite what I’ve written above, Izzy is not queerphobic in the sense of hating queer people. Take Lucius, for example. As many others have already pointed out, their confrontation has little to do with Lucius’ sexuality and far more to do with perspectives on cheating. When Lucius refuses to do the chores Izzy assigned him Izzy attempts blackmail with, “I can spill all your beans. You’ve been a proper little seductress, haven’t you? Black Pete. Fang. Who else is there?” Or, simply put, do the work or I tell your boyfriend you’re seeing someone else on the side. Izzy doesn’t care that Lucius is having sex with men, he cares that Lucius is having sex with multiple men without the others knowing.

Now, you could argue that this is biased against polyamory folk, but I personally think it stems more from Izzy’s repressed feelings towards Ed and the single-minded devotion he’s displayed towards him, rather than any generalized belief that people can’t have multiple partners, period. Izzy only loves one person; Lucius loves many. Izzy can’t possibly tell Ed that he cares for him; Lucius is incredibly free with his affections. It’s a “Wait, you can do that?” moment that, given Izzy’s intense repression, leads to anger and confusion, rather than a joyous revelation. Another character with less shit to work through might have come out of that interaction with a new perspective (and, given Lucius’ empathy towards baby gays like Stede, he likely would have offered “You ever been sketched?” more seriously, rather than as a way to make Izzy even more uncomfortable. Lucius only gives as good as he gets: you blackmail me (polyamory) I’ll blackmail you (Izzy the Spewer) right back). In the end, Izzy is knocked off balance by Lucius announcing his sketch session to Pete—seriously, Con is fantastic in this scene, taking Izzy from steady threats to a stuttering, trembling “Fuck off”—because he cannot imagine a world where men not only love each other freely, but do so with none of the familiar, jealously-laden ownership that his own attraction is wrapped up in.

“We don’t own each other,” Lucius says. Well damn, then what does that say about Izzy’s relationship with Blackbeard? He does consider himself owned… despite the fact that he can’t really acknowledge that outside of the First Mate/Captain dynamic. The only way that Izzy can experience Blackbeard’s love is through horrific shit like eating his own toe. Hearing someone announce that sure, queer love can be kind, open, and easy is something he is not equipped to handle. Unlike Stede who rejoices in that description from Mary, Izzy flinches from it.

So, he doesn’t care that Lucius is having sex with Pete, he cares that they’re having sex rather than doing the work of “proper” men. He doesn’t care that Lucius has multiple partners, he thinks other people will care (like those from his original genre) and he can use that to control Lucius. If we put aside Izzy’s own interest in Ed for a moment—the jealousy—I don’t think he even cares that Ed fell in love with another guy, he cares that he fell in love with that guy, Stede Bonnet, the most flouncy, empathetic, un-masculine guy around. Really, Izzy doesn’t seem to have a problem with queer people at all… provided they still act in ways that he’s been taught are socially acceptable. Which yes, is still a kind of queerphobia. If I were to draw another iffy comparison, it’s like your mom supporting you and your girlfriend, but also constantly sneering at the butch look you’ve got going on because it’s not feminine enough. Someone well-versed in queer culture and history understands how denying that self-expression and imposing limiting binaries is inherently harmful—a form of queerphobia even if we’re speaking about things adjacent to the act of dating a member of the same gender. But someone without much understanding of intersectionality here (the mom) views being attracted to women and being butch as two separate things. Why can’t you just love women invisibly and ensure your sexuality never impacts other parts of your life, particularly those that are on public display? It’s fine if you’re queer! Just don’t, you know, make a thing of it.

You (hopefully) get the idea. Izzy is likewise fine with queer folk, provided each of them is embodying queerness in an acceptable, gender-conforming way. When they don’t, well, that leads to a great deal of discomfort and anger for Izzy, and that’s where wires are getting crossed in the fandom. I think a whole lot of viewers—myself included— looked at how that discomfort was acted out and went, “That doesn’t look like a straight guy uncomfortable because he hates queer people, that looks like a repressed queer uncomfortable because he doesn’t know how to work through his own feelings on masculinity or sexuality yet.” We recognize Izzy. We know him. We arguably know the Izzys of the fictional world far better than the Luciuses, the Stedes, and the Eds because though overt queer characters are still a relative novelty in visual media, we’ve spent the rest of that history watching hyper-masculine men get by on queercoding alone, learning to read their presumed wants and desires between the lines of violence, or even their insistence (one might say too insistent) that they’re totally, completely, 100% straight. Odd as it may seem given our call for queer rep, fandom has a kinship with characters like Izzy and many of us were primed from episode one to read him as closeted. He belongs to the likes of Dean Winchester, BBC John Watson, James Kirk, Derek Hale, Lex Luthor, Tony Stark, and a thousand others who are written as skirt chasing men’s men—sometimes even disdainful of anything else—yet the subtext of their writing has bred literal decades of work going, “Honey no, you’re queer.” The only difference between then and now is that Izzy exists in a narrative that might actually do something with that coding, turning the subtext into text.

Does all this make Izzy’s actions any less queerphobic? No, but it changes how a lot of people approach his character. To be blunt, it encourages a more sympathetic reading. For some, anyway. The textual reality is that we do have a character lashing out in a queerphobic manner. Understandably, a lot of fans are uncomfortable with that and others outright despise Izzy as a person, with little possibility that this will change. But for others, the coded-as-closeted individual lashing out feels like a different situation than the straight guy hurling slurs, even if the action is technically the same. For them, there’s a desire to avoid labeling Izzy as queerphobic because we want to distinguish the repressed queer man from the bigoted straight man, yet we don’t have the vocabulary to express all the complexities of that in a social media appropriate way. Basically, “homophobic gay” is a lot punchier for a tumblr post than this massive essay, so many decide to leave it at that. Meanwhile, the other half of the fandom sees queerphobia and label it like it is, regardless of the character’s specific situation. Hence, the tag gets flooded with both interpretations, posters on both sides getting frustrated by the other’s “wrong” takes, when in fact they overlap. They’re interconnected, and trying to separate Izzy’s queerness from his queerphobia would obliterate much of what makes him such a fascinating character.

Now, I’ve admittedly been insisting this whole time that Izzy is queer without doing much to back that up because, frankly, not only would that encompass the vast majority of his screen time, but it’s rather a “You know it when you see it” situation. As said, Izzy is a character built on literal decades of television and, for each of us, a lifetime of learning media literacy. There are choices here that resonate and, while perhaps not meaning much on their own, add up to a recognizable picture: his queerness is in the choice to make him so devoted to Blackbeard that it comes across as obsession, the power dynamics of a Captain and their First Mate, his tendency to get close to other men in an attempt at intimidation, his flustered responses to flirting, the autocannibalism as an act of devotion, and his choice to try and insult Lucius and Pete with an “Oh daddy” mockery when, crucially, nothing in that situation would prompt someone to single out that particular kink. Is all of that inherently queer in the real world? Of course not. Is it all connected to media history in a way many of us recognize, even if it’s only subconsciously? Yes. Queerness is in Con’s every acting choice and the costume/styling departments’ every detail (whether they intended that or not. I assume they did, but the point still stands that authorial intent is a separate beast from what’s actually put on screen). Izzy is the most buttoned-up character, hands down, with long sleeves, a closed shirt, and slicked-back hair that only comes undone when his Captain punches him in the jaw, disrupting the fantasy of saving Blackbeard and being rewarded for it. Izzy wears his leather seriously, as someone from a Black Sails-esque genre is supposed to, and he rejects even a single pop of color. You know, the vibrancy that’s connected primarily to Stede and everything he represents, including the acceptance of his sexuality. Izzy’s queerness is in the ambiguous ring he keeps tied to his cravat. It’s in his choice to wear only a single glove, one bare hand vulnerable to the world, but that’s not the one he’ll touch a fine thing with:

And, of course, Izzy is in love with Blackbeard. As a general rule I don’t put too much stock in authorial claims because, as said, simply because an author intended to accomplish something with a story doesn’t mean that’s what they actually put out into the world. However, in this case Jenkins certainly seems to know what he’s doing and if it sweetens the deal for anyone, he agreed in an interview with The Verge about, at the very least, the loving Blackbeard part:

“And then, at the same time, I think Izzy’s deeply in love with Blackbeard, and it’s a very dysfunctional kind of love, and he’s like the jilted spouse who’s losing his man to fucking Stede Bonnet, and he can’t believe this is happening” (Charles Pulliam-Moore).

Exactly. It’s a dysfunctional love, a toxic love, but that’s precisely the point: this is the only way that Izzy currently knows how to express himself. The “and he can’t believe this is happening” resonates not only because Ed is loving Stede in all the ways Izzy has come to believe are not allowed, but because he’s also loving Stede in all the ways that are appropriate for their original, subtext infused genre. Ed doesn’t just kiss Stede on a beach as they plan a getaway together, he also engages in homoerotic, “It’s a metaphor for sex” activities with him too. Like, you know, stabbing each other with phallic swords so they can hold one another close and moan about it, and Izzy is in the background freaking the fuck out because that used to be their thing. Or at least, given that we don’t know much of their backstory yet, Izzy hoped that he’d one day have that with Ed—the highest form of intimacy that their genre allowed. Regardless, he’s still that jilted spouse. Which is precisely why we don’t simply get anger from Izzy, but disbelief and heartbreak too, all wrapped up in the repetition of “Oh my god.” Even worse than watching Ed do this with Stede is that Izzy can’t do it with him too (RIP my OT3 dreams). Stede is the replacement, not the new addition. Compare the happiness and tender intimacy (alongside comedy) of the stabbing scene to the utter disaster that is Izzy trying to unhook Ed from his fuckery harness.

That’s a (none too subtle) metaphor for sex too, except this one goes very badly: “The fuck you doing with your head between my legs??” Ed cries and Stede even makes a comment about how there’s “Trouble in paradise.” It’s fumbling, and awkward, and neither of them come out of the encounter with what they were hoping for. Ed doesn’t want that intimacy with Izzy—whether he ever did is up for debate—and Izzy leaves the disastrous attempt to (metaphorically) connect with Ed as Stede has arguably at his most vulnerable, yelling about how Ed thinks he knows “everything about everything,” before dissolving into a stammering mess. Then he literally runs away. When we see him again he’s closed off, having flanked himself with backup in the form of Ivan and Fang, finally ready to give up on the idea that Ed will willingly kill Stede for him.

We see the same transfer of intimacy in the two duels of “The Art of Fuckery” where everything Ed teaches Stede is used against Izzy. Ed flirtatiously slaps Stede on the ass with his sword? Stede does it to Izzy while he’s briefly blinded, turning the kind, playful act into a moment of embarrassment. Ed teaches Stede his most useful skill, resulting in the closeness and moans that send Izzy into a fit? That’s the move that allows Stede to not only survive Izzy’s onslaught, but win the duel and exile him from the ship (from Ed). Stede even asks both of them if they’ll consider calling it a draw, with both saying no, though for very different reasons. Stede, quite unintentionally, turns the intimacy Ed has granted him against Izzy, rubbing salt into the proverbial wound. So, if Izzy can’t love Ed in a healthy manner (he doesn’t know how and Ed doesn’t seem interested in romantic love from him anyway) and if he can’t engage in their subtext anymore… the best Izzy can get is provoking Ed to violence. Choking him out is preferable to Ed ignoring him, particularly for someone like Izzy who seems to enjoy the pain.

(Note the lighthouse. You’re crashing up on the rocks of your guiding light, Izzy.)

Yet even as Izzy expresses his love for Ed through masochistic tendencies, there are glimmers of a healthier approach buried deep, deeeep down. I wrote another meta in which I describe Izzy as a “plan-loving, rule-following, not-actually-keen-on-stabbing-first” kinda guy. Izzy loves structure and the safety that it provides, along with the respect that should, theoretically, come as a result of being a talented and reliable pirate. Izzy spends the first season chasing not others’ fear of him—what we would expect from the supposedly ruthless First Mate of Blackbeard—but their respect. Izzy is a man who will pay for the hostages he wants, challenge a man he despises to a traditional duel, and weather a punch from his Captain without throwing one back because yeah, he deserved it. For all his insults and bluster, Izzy extends a certain amount of respect towards others, in his own weird, narrow-minded way. He seems to want to go through life with a civilized approach to their problems, but that requires others extending him at least a smidge of respect in turn. But, because Izzy is a grumpy, happiness-hating, queerphobia performing asshole—someone who doesn’t fit into the new genre and as of yet isn’t willing to bend to it—he can never quite secure the respect he craves. “Dizzy Izzy” and “Izzy the Spewer” are stories that the crew pass around to laugh at him, at least once directly to his face. Yet when Ed tells the story of how Calico Jack once “shat everywhere but in the bedpan,” that gets an inclusive kind of laughter; the crew laughs with him, not at him. We have to ask how a man goes about securing anything other than violence from a loved one when he can’t even get others to extend the most basic respect of using his name—“Jizzy Izzy.”

Izzy’s brief stint as captain is particularly fascinating. The crew says at the start of the season that they want someone who will act as a "real” pirate should—looting, raiding, killing, that sort of stuff—and then here comes Izzy, saying that working under “Captain Hands” will be “hard but fair."

Yeah, he’s still an absolute asshole about it as he sits eating his meal while the others work (chewing open-mouthed in a manner that highlights the difference in class between him and Stede, despite Izzy’s little lunch setup working to put him in the “aristocratic” position on the ship), but compared to what we’ve heard about other "real” pirates and their violent ways, “hard but fair” seems like a damn good deal to me. I mean, let’s be real for just a second: doing chores on the ship that needs to be run is kinda better than, say, the captain that throws people overboard and makes others eat their own toes. Izzy doesn’t threaten the crew with a cruel punishment (a week without rations) until after they’ve laughed at him. Even when offering what others supposedly want, a “real” pirate captain who’s more badass than Stede, but less insane than Blackbeard, no one takes Izzy seriously. The moment he says “Izzy’s Revenge” they’re all cracking up and calling it an intestinal disorder—it’s Izzy the Spewer all over again.

Still, Izzy’s tendency towards (comparatively) civilized solutions and his clear attempts to be respected by others makes me question whether he truly wants Blackbeard, or if he’s only chased the violent legend because that’s what Real Men should aspire to (and, as established, that’s all he can hope to get). After all, Blackbeard the legend is half insane, volatile, the kind of person that Izzy needs to clean up after and he should, theoretically, hate that kind of chaos—“We need a plan, Edward.” But Blackbeard’s also the epitome of masculinity and if you have to be attracted to other guys (already difficult to come to terms with) at least have the decency to be attracted to the right kind of guy. So, Izzy works hard and by the end of the season he’s managed to bring that palatable love back to the surface… maybe. As discussed in another section, I do wonder if Ed will be able to be the Kraken any longer than he managed to be the poet Edward, if his desperate crying in front of the lighthouse painting is any indication that this façade will crumble just as quickly. I also wonder if throwing Lucius overboard is a sign of a new level of cruelty he’s never reached before—the first (intended) murder since his father—or if Ed views the ocean as having killed Lucius, just like fire killed that crew trapped on the ship. However, whether the Kraken is only a flimsy act that Stede will quickly break through, or something that Ed remains for an extended period of time, necessitating that things get even worse before they get better, Izzy is poised to be disappointed with either result.

Why he’d hate Stede’s return and Ed becoming his “soft” self again is obvious. Why Izzy would hate the Kraken he’s worked so hard to create is a little trickier to explain though. Basically, Izzy talks big about wanting the captain to be himself again, but the actual “he’s himself again” line, given in response to Fang asking about his mutilated foot, feels rather forced to me. I wasn’t able to capture the moment in an image, but there’s a brief second when Izzy looks almost tearful, his smile a little too manic to be real. He looks like a guy trying very hard to convince himself that this is what he wants and outside of that brief flash, he does an admirable job. But another potential tell here is the level of anger he displays. It sounds a little ridiculous because the fandom has already made a (wonderful) joke of how angry Izzy is all the time—chihuahua man—but as mentioned above in regards to “civilized” approaches, he actually tends towards calm. Izzy doesn’t throw a fit when Stede tricks him, not even when Ed frames this as Stede beating him at swordplay. Outside of two angry slashes he also remains composed during their duel and, though we have the “pox on all of you” moment in the boat, that’s a quiet, hissed anger. Izzy keeps his cool when Ed punches him—“That’s fair.” He assigns chores when he’s fed up with Lucius. He expresses primarily shock when he walks in on Fang. Even when he’s briefly captain, Izzy speaks calmly and lets a single threat do the work for him. Here though? After the Kraken has been awakened? Izzy is screaming. He’s shouting orders left and right, potentially covering the fear Fang’s question dredged up with even more screams: “Quicker! Quicker!” It’s the most unhinged we’ve ever seen him and though yeah, we could potentially chalk that up to being in an unbelievable amount of pain, the more interesting reading is that Izzy got what he thought he wanted and… holy shit, it’s not what he wanted at all.

There’s that, and the fact that every once in a while, Izzy reveals an interest in the kind of man Ed truly is: smart and capable and kind. That’s the potential, healthier approach to love that I mentioned before, the one buried deep, deeeep down. “Said some things I regret last night,” Izzy says, after the double flip-off he shoves in Ed’s face. “I don’t think you’re a shell of a man, or a twat.”

Interestingly, this retraction is delivered while Ed is still dressed in Stede’s clothes, a visual acceptance of the “softer” man Ed would like to become. “A sentimental bastard” is what Calico Jack calls Izzy, emphasizing that no, he betrayed Stede, not Ed. Though Jack is hardly the best person to be defining healthy relationships, it nevertheless says something that he’d term the supposedly ruthless and mindlessly obsessive First Mate as “sentimental.” As I mentioned in that previous meta, Izzy is the one who’s concerned with the men they lost while attacking the Spanish and when it comes time to describe why he’s honored to serve under Blackbeard, it’s not any of the killing or looting that Izzy mentions, but his brilliance as a sailor. He values Ed’s intellect and creativity far more than his cruelty. Similarly, when discussing with Ivan and Fang the possibility that Ed isn’t going to kill Stede, Izzy reassures them that he will. He clearly has faith in his captain, but why? Because Blackbeard is ruthless? A murder machine? Disdainful of a fancy ponce like Stede? Nope.

Izzy: “The plan is very much alive. He promised me.”

He promised me. Beyond all the toxic-masculinity trappings, Izzy doesn’t want a fearsome legend, he wants a man who’s even half as loyal to him as he’s been for years. He wants Ed to keep his promise, but not because killing Stede is truly Izzy’s greatest desire. Remember he’s the one who offers exile as a punishment in the duel and then gives Stede the ultimatum “Yield or die.” He also stabs Stede in a manner that allows him to pull off one of Ed’s more well-known tricks, something Izzy had to have been aware of (and reminded of after eavesdropping on their training). If Izzy actually wanted Stede dead he would be very dead, muppet logic be damned. No, the jilted spouse reading aside, Izzy wants Ed to go through with the murder because Ed made that promise to him. Izzy’s love language is acts of service and he wants the man he loves to willingly act on his behalf, just as he would: “I’ll happily do it.”

We see the same desperate craving for Ed’s care—not his violence—when Izzy is leaving the ship after losing his duel. I already argued in my first meta that Izzy puts too much stock in a pirate’s honor to go back on his word, particularly when he suggested exile, and I do stand by that. However, he does say, “You’re actually allowing this?” to Ed as he’s preparing to cast off, which I read less as an attempt to weasel his way out of the agreement and more just disbelief that Ed isn’t fighting for him. Are you going to allow this, Ed? Izzy knows it’s only right and proper that he leaves, he knows Ed won’t interfere with the duel’s outcome (he didn’t even do that for Stede), but ultimately neither of those things matter. It’s not about whether Izzy actually leaves or not, it’s about seeing Ed wanting him to stay. Izzy will go on to commit the ultimate betrayal in an effort to get, as he perceives it, the real Blackbeard back because Izzy will do anything for him. Yet here Ed stands, shrugging off the fact that they’re separating for the first time in years; he may never even see Izzy again. "That’s that,” Ed says, a dismissal, a far cry from “I need you here,” given back when Izzy still believed that Ed’s promises to him meant something. And yeah, Izzy’s an absolute dick (as Roach reiterates here) but his asshole approach to the world becomes tragic when we consider that he wants something he thinks he can never have, is fighting for everything that hurts him, and at the end of the day, even if he were to change… the one person he’s managed to extend even a twisted kind of love towards is not only in love with someone else, but has, as a result of that love, lost even the most cursory interest in Izzy. It’s a fact that Izzy is all too aware of: Ed loves Stede and that relationship—that growth—has rendered a repressed First Mate completely obsolete. Out of an emotionally open cast, it’s actually Izzy who gets the closest to calling Stede and Ed’s relationship what it is. He claims that Ed has been “seduced” by Stede, he “adores” him, and he almost gets the “I love you” out when ranting to Spanish Jackie:

Izzy: “Bonnet comes along and he’s like oh, oh, Blackbeard, I really love—I love the way you dress. I love the way your hair, your beard, and all that…”

I don’t deny that Izzy has a masochistic streak a mile long. Even if we didn’t have the insane toe scene, Con’s choice to play Izzy as continually attracted to candles implies a hell of a lot. Something, something the thin line between warmth and pain.

But even taking those kink-y preferences into account, I think that in the face of Ed’s love for Stede (Izzy’s opposite) and the influence of their original genre, he’s learned that violence is the only way he can keep Ed’s attention and the tragedy is that he has convinced himself that any attention, no matter how toxic, is preferable to a "that’s that” dismissal. Violence is an especially attractive option when—like the practice bout between Stede and Ed—violence maintains its own kind of intimacy, even in a rom-com. Ed doesn’t merely cut off Izzy’s toe, he comes to Izzy in the dead of night, when he’s nearly naked (buttoned-up Izzy suddenly laid bare), vulnerable in his sleep, and forces Izzy to consume it while he watches. All of Ed’s attention is on Izzy here, the height of Izzy’s devotion is on display, and the result is that “clean yourself up” likely refers to more than just cleaning the blood off his foot and his mouth. Izzy knows how to goad Ed into slamming him up against a wall, choking him, coming to his bed for something and yeah, he’ll take the intimacy of that violence because what else is on offer? And yet, fascinatingly, he still tries to cup Ed’s cheek.

For a brief moment Izzy tries some of the tenderness that has attracted Ed to Stede (still with his non-vulnerable, gloved hand), but Ed jerks back, repulsed. The grin Izzy gives afterwards looks horribly self-satisfied. At this point in the story he already knows Ed doesn’t love him and that a tender touch from him isn’t something he’s interested in. I find the phrasing of Badminton’s announcement at the trial to be rather weighted, that Ed will be put into the care of Captain Hands, with Izzy giving his awkward little wave—

—but Ed doesn’t want to be in his care, literally or emotionally, and all the wave does is make him seethe to Stede that Izzy betrayed them. Remember, Izzy doesn’t see it that way. Based on what Calico Jack said, Izzy believes this is a betrayal of Stede and Stede alone because, despite Ed’s clear love for Stede, and our own (non-fucked up) understanding that hurting a loved one would hurt us too, Izzy cannot fathom that Ed doesn’t get that he’s acting in his best interest. Izzy has already tried to talk (his version of) sense into Ed, approaching him with more earnestness than we’ve ever seen from him before. After rocking from that punch, Izzy agrees that he deserves it, but begs Ed to understand that he did this for him. I think he only curses once in the entire speech—“twat”—and otherwise is as emotionally open as he’s capable of being. Izzy is, for him, even surprisingly kind towards Stede, trying to reassure Ed that shooting him will be quick, humane, a necessary act, but not a cruel one. Izzy wants to get through to him so badly… but then Ed rejects that devotion, the most open, earnest, non-violent devotion that Izzy can manage. His loyalty to Ed, his work bringing the British here (remember Ed’s mocking question about whether its “hard” to be Blackbeard’s First Mate?), and even the quick death of Stede Bonnet that, Izzy thinks, is the best possible outcome that Ed might take some comfort from… none of it matters. Ed taught him that the most important rule “above all else is loyalty to your Captain” and now Ed doesn’t want that. Or at least, he no longer wants the version of loyalty that the world has taught Izzy to display and that Blackbeard has stoked in him for years. Ed shouts "Act of Grace!” and Izzy whispers, “No,” more broken than anything else. He realizes he’s lost. “Fear is the most powerful emotion. Turn your enemy’s worst fear against them, you’ll own them.” Ed’s worst fear is losing Stede, so yes, he’ll let the King own him to spare his life. Izzy’s worst fear is losing Ed, so he’ll do the same, rendering "service to the Crown” to, in his mind, save him from himself. “Do you really want to lick the King’s boots?” Izzy asks in disbelief because he can’t imagine Ed doing for Stede what Izzy did for him. The difference, of course, is that Ed is working to avoid Stede’s literal death and Izzy is working to resurrect the version of Ed that might love him back, even if it’s a horrific, harmful kind of love. It’s not even what Izzy truly wants, but he’ll take it over nothing at all.

So, a final, failed attempt at tenderness with Ed is just the nail in the coffin. Izzy knows by now that Ed doesn’t want anything he’s tried to give him—not the devotion, not protection from himself, not Izzy’s horrifically warped attempts at compassion for Ed’s “pet”—so at this point he’ll simply take whatever he can get. He’s going to work hard (again) to make Ed Blackbeard because Blackbeard is at least willing to gift Izzy with violence. He’ll take the touch of a hand around his neck, or one stuffing his own toe in his mouth, over no touch at all. Now, is Izzy’s desire for Ed’s attention, no matter what form that takes, capable of withstanding whatever the Kraken might dish out in season two? That remains to be seen. It might seem like a small thing, but I’m rather intrigued by Izzy asking if he should “summon the boy [Lucius] to take notes” after Ed maims him because since when is that a part of their dynamic? Lucius taking notes is Stede’s form of captaining and at the very least, having Lucius in the room would disrupt any continued intimacy of Izzy and Ed being alone together. Yet it’s the first thing Izzy says, automatic, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s a hint as to the influence the crew of The Revenge has had on him, however small—evidence that the healthier version of Izzy isn’t completely lost, even as he deliberately stokes Blackbeard’s unique brand of “love.” Sure, sure, writing-wise it’s an easy way to have Ed tell Izzy he killed him— even to reinforce that murderous Blackbeard is really back—but I do still wonder. Personally, I’d love for things to get dark enough that even Izzy is forced to acknowledge that his twisted crush isn’t worth the consequences. Izzy will maroon all of Stede’s crew, throw out all the ship’s treasure, even suffer a small maiming… but if the Kraken is callous with Blackbeard’s crew? More importantly, if the Kraken truly threatens Izzy’s life? That might be different. Izzy has already announced that he will not die for him and given the hints that he secretly wants something softer, I can’t imagine him breaking that promise for the most violent version of Ed we’ve seen to date.

For now though, the desire to keep Ed close, in whatever capacity that might look like, has led to Izzy putting aside his rule-based approach for manipulation. Like the "Is Izzy queerphobic?” question, this is another “Yes, but it’s complicated” situation. Is Izzy, generally speaking, a manipulative person? No. 99% of the time he’s straightforward to the point of bluntness. If he wants Stede gone he’s going to challenge him to a duel. If he wants the help of former enemies he’s going to ask for it. If he wants those hostages he’s going to go buy them, etc. However, not being a manipulative person most of the time isn’t the same thing as never having manipulated at all. The two times I would point to are Izzy acting as a messenger boy between Ed and Stede at the start of the story and later when he’s trying to convince Ed to put Stede down. The latter is the most overt example imo, where Izzy deliberately lies and withholds information to try and achieve his preferred outcome. He doesn’t tell Stede that it’s Blackbeard who wants to see him, leading to the ignorant “go suck eggs in hell” comment. Then Izzy misrepresents the conversation to Ed with, “I explicitly said Blackbeard desired his company.” And this Stede Bonnet knows who Blackbeard is? "Seemed to.” The intention is to piss Ed off because from Izzy’s perspective, Blackbeard is a man who values his reputation above all else—something he has decent reason to believe, given moments like Ed freaking out because “Blackbeard doesn’t go treasure hunting!”—so surely, if this Gentleman Pirate were to have deliberately slung an insult his way, Blackbeard would be furious. Instead, the plan backfires when Ed instead finds Stede’s response to be “fascinating.” Izzy, who is not bored with the life they lead, can’t fathom that something as unexpected as an insult would be thrilling rather than rage-inducing.

Slightly less devious (but still emotionally manipulative) is Izzy trying to use Ed’s previous decisions against him. When it becomes clear that Ed won’t murder Stede—that he won’t keep his promise— Izzy gathers backup and plays the hypocrite card. You said we couldn’t have pets on the ship. You made Fang kill his beloved dog before he joined. What’s Stede Bonnet if not the human version of a pet? He’s certainly no pirate. So, what’s it going to be, Captain? Can you adhere to the same rules you’ve laid out for your crew? Well… no. We learn in this very episode that Ed holds his crew to a different standard than he does himself, if the standard in question is displays of violence. Ed admits to Stede that ever since the murder of his father he’s never outright killed anyone. Oh, he’ll maim plenty, or create situations where people die of adjacent causes, but any actual, straightforward act is outsourced to his crew; someone else can flay the man with the snail fork and throw him overboard. Ed has a “Do as I say, not as I do” approach to captaining because, as established, the expectations attached to Blackbeard’s reputation aren’t truly things that Ed wants to enforce, at least not all the time. Indeed, just two weeks into his stay on The Revenge, fourteen days in Stede’s company, and Ed appears confused when Izzy brings up the no pets policy. I did that? I made Fang kill his dog? Shit, that’s fucked up, man.

Izzy: “You said the love of a pet makes a man weak.”

Ed: “I said that?”

Frankly, I don’t think Izzy cares much about the pet policy either, or even the hypocrisy of Ed’s orders. After all, he couldn’t have failed to notice Ed’s less than murder-y intentions over the years. To his mind, a good First Mate takes care of all the things their Captain might have trouble with, including offering to kill Stede himself. Izzy’s love language is unquestionably acts of service and he’s at his most loving while standing near the railing with Ed, leaning in close, expression tragically earnest as he says, “I’ll happily end it.” And Izzy would be happy, not just because he lives to serve Ed, but because that perception of service has extended past what Ed explicitly asks for and into the realm of what Izzy thinks he needs. Or at least, what he needs to remain the kind of Captain that would keep Izzy Hands as a First Mate. Hence, manipulation. Based on how he acts, Izzy has presumably spent a lifetime being terrified of intimacy (something that, frankly, only comes about from neglect). The cycle of abuse touches all characters, not just those whose trauma has surfaced in palatable ways, so it’s no wonder that Izzy would fall in love with a reputation that both eschews those softer emotions and upholds a violent, hyper-masculine presentation, all while Ed’s softer side remains a tantalizing, just out of reach possibility. Blackbeard allows Izzy to indulge in fantasies without actually confronting his repression, or engaging in the emotional work of admitting what he might truly want (a man, a soft touch, someone to extend loyalty to him in turn, etc.) Of course Izzy would do anything he could think of to keep that “love” around, having no idea how to possibly go about achieving anything else. You certainly don’t have to feel for the guy, but after all that I personally do.

And as I scroll through the numerous Izzy posts (great job, everyone, keep it up) I’ve noticed the growing trend of reassuring our tumblr audience that yes, we do indeed know he’s a horrible person and yes, we definitely want to see him suffer! Honestly, I think 99% of that is just good fandom fun couched in tumblr’s particular brand of humor. “I want to pickle him,” “I want to watch him eat another toe in HD,” “Izzy Hands execution squad ftw,” etc. Watching the fucked up character continue to be fucked up and experience fucked up consequences for his fucked up decisions just makes for fantastic television, and celebrating his fucked-up-ness with the rest of the community is its own form of fun. I have absolutely no doubt that the vast majority of OFMD fans are chill about this— whether they legitimately dislike Izzy or not—but I’ve been in fandom spaces long enough to recognize the stirrings of moral judgement. Amidst all the playful jabbing, there’s an undercurrent of real, “You can’t actually like Izzy. You know he’s problematic, right? How dare you enjoy something that’s not 100% pure!”

I’m here to say that yeah, I actually like Izzy both because of and in spite of him being supremely fucked up.

See, I have this little thing where I dislike anyone gatekeeping growth. I absolutely love Izzy being the queerphobic gay who manipulates Ed into becoming the worst version of himself because that’s entertaining to watch in my downtime, but I would ultimately like Izzy to unlearn at least some of that toxic behavior because I’m a softie and, you know, that’s the underlying theme of the whole show. OFMD says that anyone can become a happier, healthier person provided they’re given the support to do so: Stede can apologize to Mary and leave his old life behind, Ed can (we currently assume) come back from his time as the Kraken, Pete can learn to stop touting traditional displays of masculinity, Jim can put their family’s obsession with revenge aside to instead choose love, and so on and so forth. In a show where we laugh off a wife about to skewer her husband’s brain, or the ship full of people Ed torched, why would Izzy and his actions—even when they feel quite personal—be the exception? Why would his horrific acts be the line in the sad amidst a cast who has likewise committed horrific acts? Purely because the show needs someone to act as the antagonist? Characters like Badminton and Calico Jack show that there are plenty of ways to achieve conflict, even within the realm of “Male characters representing different forms of toxic masculinity.” As a core member of the group—the found family, if you will—Izzy deserves to unlearn the lessons taught to him by the very society the show is challenging, precisely because he’s the most entrenched in it. He’s the one who needs the most help. Stede starts the show off by saying that the guys are sweethearts, actually, they’re just dealing with a fair bit of trauma. Blackbeard is introduced as someone who has torn through the pirate world, leaving fear and devastation in his wake… but treat him kindly and you’ve got another sweetheart underneath. Putting aside how I wouldn’t want Izzy to become a literal sweetheart (he’s much funnier as an asshole), do we really think he’s the only exception to the concept of self-improvement?

If this question sounds at all familiar, it’s probably because you watched The Good Place. Simply put, Izzy is Brent Norwalk.

If you’re not aware, Brent is… well, the Fucking Worst. He comes into the afterlife (where the show is set) a racist, sexist, completely narcissistic individual who, over the course of the season, appears to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. In fact, the show goes so far as to say that he becomes worse despite the others’ best efforts to improve him… up until one, crucial moment when he begins to apologize. It’s nothing staggering. Hell, by a decent person’s standards the bar is flattened on the floor here, but it’s still an improvement. Brent doesn’t magically become a great guy—by the end of the series he’s still working on teeny, tiny, incremental change—but the fact that he changes at all is what matters. The Good Place says that anyone, absolutely anyone, can become a better person provided they’re given the support to do so. It might take them an incredibly long time to get there, their version of improvement might not meet your personal expectations, but everyone is capable of moving in the right direction. That’s Izzy. Or at least, I think it should be. Though OFMD is a good enough show that I certainly wouldn’t crucify it for going in a different direction (especially when the focus is largely on the rom-com elements between Stede and Ed), at the end of the day I think this message is important enough to apply to the tougher characters, not just those like Black Pete who throw out an iffy opinion before improving off screen. If the show says, “Men can unlearn toxic masculinity, break the cycle of abuse, and find happiness” but then follows that up with, “except for the guy who is most entrenched in those beliefs and most in need of that help” then, frankly, it feels like the message has failed.

And yes, there are plenty of push-backs to that. I can already see the replies about how damaging Izzy’s presence is and how the others shouldn’t suffer just to try and help him; sometimes you need to put your own mental health first (true). Or that this isn’t how the world works, you can’t just hug the problems out of some people; Izzy is dangerous and no one needs to put up with that shit (also true). But my response to anything along those lines is… it’s fiction? OFMD is about love and hope and the enjoyment of tropes over realism. This is the show that has Stede impossibly find his crew on the island because it’s Emotionally Fulfilling and a Good Metaphor. We expect the red cloth to impossibly make its way back to Ed because that’s Very Romantic and Also A Good Metaphor. OFMD has nuance, but that’s not the same thing as being concerned with gritty, hard-hitting realism. Izzy should “impossibly” grow into a better person—even if he remains a bad person compared to everyone else—because that’s a satisfying arc that upholds the lesson OFMD is trying to convey, not because it’s a result we’re likely to see in real life. Yes, some characters exist purely to be antagonists and/or don’t last long enough to undergo that kind of change. Nigel Badminton is an example of such a character, someone whose purpose in the narrative is to establish the criticism Stede faces for how he presents himself and then die as a means of furthering Stede’s development. But Badminton isn’t complex in the way Izzy is, he’s the exact same person he was as a child: shooting cannonballs at Stede’s ship where he once threw rocks at his dinghy. The fact that he can’t confirm them as pirates due to a lack of a flag and has a man observing the “heavyset woman” on board “cowering” from their attack, just reinforces that this is simply a new, more powerful form of bullying. Years later and Badminton has yet to change, not in the ways that Izzy still might. Why should Izzy get that chance instead? Because he’s a main character and, frankly, because the fandom likes him. Con is great at his job and has the talent to pull such an arc off, especially with everything discussed above already in place. Yes, there’s absolutely something to be said for artistic vision—if Jenkins has a different direction he’s set on, I say go for it. I’m perfectly capable of separating my personal preferences from another great writing choice—but television is a medium that evolves from season to season, often in response to the audience’s reaction to previous material. There’s merit in observing the fandom’s interest in the character and going, “Okay, this is someone we’re not going to just toss aside with a redemptive death, or whatever.” Izzy is both popular enough and complex enough to pull off some kind of redemption (I have no desire to specify what), and if anyone is inclined to get into how real life Izzys don’t work like this, claiming that writing such an arc sets a dangerous precedent (or whatever the argument du jour is), then they’ve missed the part where this is a show about talking seagulls, knife-throwing nuns, and the Power Of Love And Self-Acceptance. OFMD has made it very clear where its priorities lie and they’re definitely not with cohesive realism or historical accuracy.

Also, let’s be real. People are like, “Oh, but if Izzy gets therapy and stops being quite so destructive then he won’t be funny anymore :(” and I’m “?????” at that take every time. Sorry, but there’s nothing funnier to me than the potential for this gremlin man to develop respect, healthy coping mechanisms, la de da, and hating every goddamn moment of it. Can you imagine an Izzy forced to come to terms with the fact that Stede is a wonderful and competent human being? That maybe he likes some of the things he originally eschewed due to internalized queerphobia? Getting a(nother) dressing down from Lucius + a “You’re gay, babe” pep talk? Even just a final season where he’s begrudgingly still on The Revenge, everyone bitching that he’s still an asshole, but dammit, he’s their asshole? I know you all can imagine it because I’ve been reading the fics and if you haven’t joined me in that, just picture Ted Lasso’s Roy Kent screaming “FUCK” every time Jamie forces him to confront his internalized biases. Izzy can become the feral cat the crew domesticates. It’ll be great.

Also, not to finish this off with a bit of semi-canonical justification because The Discourse of any fandom is terrifying (and I’m covering my bases as a result), but I was both intrigued and reassured by the interview given by Vico Ortiz to Entertainment. In it they say that they’d be “curious to explore my relationship with Izzy Hands,” at first simply because Izzy is clearly the most competent fighter on Blackbeard’s crew, Jim is the most competent on Stede’s, so it would be interesting if they could interact in that respect. However, they then go on to talk about Jim’s “daddy issues” because they lost their father early on and “So it’s like, is Izzy… Can something happen [with] Izzy? Right? The same way that Olu opened up Jim, Jim open’s up Izzy… Kind of challenge that dynamic.” It’s not a connection I’d considered before but yeah, I’d love to see that too. Or any other version of the show where someone helps Izzy begin to work through his problems rather than allowing them to continually fester. What would it look like if a character like Olu applied the same emotional work to Izzy? Or Lucius? Ed and Stede as a team? Regardless of whether anything like that happens, I’m glad the actors are thinking about such things. From Con gleefully retweeting erotic Izzy fanart (god bless that man) to the costume detailing of the ring he wears on his cravat, I’m personally thrilled to see that everyone involved is considering the complexities of Izzy’s emotional arc, rather than simply going, “He’s an abusive asshole, find someone better to stan,” as some in the fandom have done. Izzy is already a fascinating character, largely because of how fucked up he is, but I don’t think he need be limited to self-destruction alone.

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The Garbage Heap of Miscellaneous Thoughts

This section is precisely what it says on the tin: a disorganized list of observations, theories, and funny (to me, anyway) thoughts I had while working on this project, but that didn’t otherwise fit into the meta proper. There’s no rhyme or reason to their order except for some vague alphabetizing.

Absolutely loving that when Jim goes after their revenge it’s (unintentionally) for their birth family and their found family. Yes, Geraldo is the means by which Jim hopes to find the gang members, but he’s also the one that turned them over to the Spanish… and then he’s a gang member himself! It’s a great little twist after Olu has just told Jim that he could be family too. Jim goes after the guy that hurt their birth family and their ship family simultaneously, fuck yeah.

As “High on a Rocky Ledge” plays at the end of our pilot episode, the line “How many times I’ve been up to see her, goodness knows” plays as Jim is removing their disguise. I enjoy this timing both because (at this point in the story) we believe a “her” is being revealed, and because “knows” aligns almost perfectly with Jim taking their fake nose off.

Based on Buttons’ comment at the start of the “We Gull Way Back,” I think the split between Ed and Stede takes place during a full moon (as does Karl’s death, paralleling the short-term “death” of the relationship). This show is interested enough in fairy tale/fantasy allusions that it feels like there’s something there, though I haven’t quite teased out what yet. Perhaps just the tradition of the world going a bit mad during a full moon: Ed is choosing Jack over Stede and doesn’t that just tell us there’s something very, very wrong afoot? As Buttons says, this is “the big night.”

I always go 👀👀👀 when I see a shot that implies some kind of metaphorical imprisonment. Putting Jack between the two pieces of sugarcane (bamboo? Idk plants) while Stede is framed freely during a conversation about Ed, romance, and friendship feels pretty telling.

If Izzy’s love language is acts of service, then Ed’s is physical touch (he reaches out to Stede with his foot because his hands are bound!!) Someday I hope an awesome vid-maker will cut together all the times Ed touches Stede and I humbly offer a contrast to include: the horrible way he flinches when one of the aristocrats tries to touch his beard.

I haven’t seen enough people talk yet about Roach sleeping with a bag of onions and honestly? That’s a travesty. Roach/Onions OTP.

I kinda want a fic of “The Art of Fuckery” purely from Stede’s perspective because can you imagine how confused the guy must be about Izzy at this point? Neither of them have been off to a good start—“Asshole.” “Twat.”—yet suddenly Izzy is helping Stede talk Ed into toying with the Dutch. He doesn’t know about the murder plan, so Stede is all “maybe I misjudged you.” Then Izzy continues the supposed good will by giving Stede a pep-talk in the library and sure, he calls him a little shit, but that’s just Izzy for you. Stede even repeats Izzy’s advice to “plumb the depths” for their fuckery. They’re finally getting along! (Sort of.) But THEN Izzy challenges him to a formal duel?? Stede doesn’t know wtf is going on, no more than his crew does after both their captains got drafted into the Navy, then only Ed showed back up without his beard, hid in his room for a couple days, started a talent show, before suddenly marooning half the crew, then Stede shows up again in a dinghy sporting a new look. We hit the halfway mark for the season and everyone is confused all of the time.

I’m in love with the composition of the shot when Lucius passes out. To quote tumblr (because I don’t have an education in art), "this looks like a renaissance painting.”

I want to know what happened to the nice hostage Stede was trying to sell in “A Damned Man.” He was so reassuring about Stede breaking the nose jar! He was having so much fun posing in front of the skeleton too! Here’s hoping Ed put him on the Queen Anne’s Revenge and he’ll show up again in season two.

Izzy is a pufferfish. That’s it, that’s the bullet point. He examines one in Ed’s cabin and my brain went, “Ah yes, the tiny character who blows themselves up to look bigger, surrounding themselves with deadly spikes so nothing dangerous gets too close. Noted.”

Jim had a brother :( He was presumably killed alongside their father, but given that Jim apparently blacked out for a time, I wonder if later seasons will reveal that he actually survived.

Playing Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” over Ed’s return is absolutely inspired. “Listen to the wind blow, down comes the night / Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies / Break the silence, damn the dark, damn the light / And if you don’t love me now / You will never love me again / I can still hear you saying / You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)” mmHMM GOOD SHIT.

Red is Ed’s color. The silk swatch (obviously), the robe he wears (even though Stede is more often seen in the yellow one. Yeah, I know this is the “breakup” robe, but there’s a distinct move away from the yellow one, which Ed initially cuddles with in the bath), the library he adores is decked out in reds, it’s the color of the curtains Ed is encased with when he gives into fear and comes clean about his father’s murder… Insert established themes about blood and romance here.

Something I’d recommend for any fan is a re-watch where you focus on whatever the hell Jim is doing in the background. Vico is great. They have this little smile when their nana wonders who the hell would agree to be paid in oranges like, “Yeah, those are my idiots.” Despite being the biggest badass of Stede’s crew they freak the fuck out when Ed has his little smoke performance, pulling out a knife, but then proceeding to run around like a chicken with their head cut off. They are so into the later fuckery, absolutely living for pulling sausages out of some dummy’s body. And their expression when Stede manages to win the duel against Izzy is perfection. Seriously. I can’t recommend it enough.

Sorry, but the fandom is sleeping on Frenchie’s, “Bit of fanfiction, for Captain Bonnet… Yeah, huge fan. Can’t stop imagining him in all kinds of scenarios!”

There might be some foreshadowing/a small twist in how Lucius is constantly in danger and yet always manages to escape (mostly) unscathed… up until he supposedly dies by being thrown overboard at the very end. A dying man smears blood on the front of Lucius’ coat, marking him. Jim swears to kill him for what he’s seen. Frenchie is sure he’s been killed when Lucius is kept inside the trunk. He gets a raging infection from Buttons’ bite, but a quick chop makes it all better. And he’s the only non-Izzy character able to tell Blackbeard off without getting stabbed in the face. For the record, I don’t actually think Lucius is dead this time either (he’s hiding in the walls!), it’s just interesting that the possibility is there for a character who has otherwise made a hobby of shrugging off dangerous situations. And when he does turn up, that’ll continue the pattern.

The black cravat/scarf thing that Mary wears throughout “Wherever You Go, There You Are” seems similar to what Stede wore before Ed stole it for himself (if a tad longer). Idk, I’m just having feelings about loved ones connected through clothing, not just the obvious boyfriend angle that Stede and Ed have going on, but a more generalized connection among family—whether that connection is romantic or not.

There’s some meta-theme of storytelling here that I haven’t unpacked yet. Beyond the fact that Stede’s adventure follows the (non)-logic of a fairy tale, I’m interested in the actual act of record keeping throughout the first season. Stede wants to immortalize his time as a pirate through Lucius’ writing, but does so in an inauthentic way: tearing out the page discussing the mutiny and we have Badminton reading the complete fantasy that was his brother’s death. Stede wants history to remember only the good bits and for those good bits to be especially badass (Badminton begged for mercy! Soiled himself! I stole the sword right out of his hand!) but in the end it’s his most ridiculous “raid” of the fishing boat that saves him, establishing Stede Bonnet as a “proper” pirate in the process. Idk where I’m going with this. Something, something how do you find truth in a fictional story?

Unalphabetized final note: considering that I’ve spent over 30,000 words loving this show with my entire being, I thought I’d end things on the teeny, tinniest criticism. Which is, OFMD should trust its audience a little more. I noticed throughout the rewatch that the show utilizes flashbacks, a lot, most of which show us what Stede is currently thinking about and, more importantly, clue us in to how the present connects to the themes of the story. But like… in a super obvious way and I guarantee that most viewers get it without that level of hand-holding. To provide just one example, Badminton’s speech to Stede before he accidentally shoots himself is peppered with previously established traumas. Badminton says Stede defiled his brother? Flashback to Nigel Badminton with a sword through his face. His family? Flashback to the awkward portrait being painted. Blackbeard? An Ed with no beard. “God’s perfect little rich boy”? Flashback to flowers and blood and his father’s anger. It’s a stylistic choice and, frankly, not one I dislike for this particular scene… if the rest of the season weren’t already peppered with such moments, cropping up every time they’re even remotely relevant. I want to take Jenkins’ face gently in my hands and go, “It’s okay. Your audience is smart. I promise they know the significance of this dialogue without a roadmap to every pertinent scene. And if they don’t? The discovery of that is amazing. That’s analysis. Let your viewers make the connections for themselves… otherwise great job :)”

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Conclusion (AKA When I Finally Rest)

“Conclusion” implies that I have closing arguments to make, but I think I’ve done enough writing for a while lol. I don’t know if I’ll write more OFMD meta in the future (probably), but if I do, I’ll likely use this post as a touchstone for additional thoughts. Like the others, this will live on the “Metas” page of my blog until such a time as tumblr decides to crash for good.

Until then, if you’ve made it this far then you have my heartfelt thanks, my undying love, and my hope that you have the best possible day.

I salute you, dear reader!