#sry to ppl who liked before i added the middle pp dhdhdh

[starrynyx]

i think some folks took the "a shark did this" line the same way lucius did - on the surface, it sounds like a maladaptive coping mechanism. but i think what gives that moment its poignancy, what con in particular brought to izzy as a character and the narrative of this season overall, is that the power of pirate legend. izzy literally spends the episode whittling a shark, he is CREATING the story he wants to circulate about what happened. because he's not some random pirate, he's izzy fucking hands. everyone on the republic of pirates is going to be talking about the fact he's suddenly missing a leg. and instead of letting the legend get ahead of itself, or rehashing all the violence and trauma of what he and ed did to each other (izzy claims responsibility for blackbeard, more than once. this isn't hot discourse) he changes the story.

lucius pushes ed overboard because he thinks making them "even" will somehow make it easier to forgive, but what pete and izzy both argue is that lucius is better off breaking the cycle. "not moving on is worse," because not moving on was izzy's WHOLE PROBLEM last season.

izzy and everyone else on the boat knows a shark didn't really take his leg. he's choosing to move on, and he doesn't owe strangers that explanation. he's self-mythologizing to take control of his own narrative which culminates in him calling ricky "pinocchio" (not "the wooden boy" like everyone else calls him, but the actual name). izzy almost ascends to quasi-narrator in the final eps and it's beautiful and tragic and rich and i'm just in awe of these writers truly