Our Flag Means Death Just Pulled Off An Emotional Season 1 Parallel
This post contains spoilers for season 2 of "Our Flag Means Death."
The crew of the Revenge set sail again this week — with a lot more expectant eyes on them than last time. "Our Flag Means Death," the charming pirate rom-com whose fervent fanbase seemed to grow exponentially during the show's off-season, has finally returned to Max for its second season, and so far, it's delivering on all fronts. The first three episodes include multiple death fake-outs (Lucius is back! Izzy isn't dead!), a few well-executed romantic reshuffles and character introductions, and a whole lot of the show's signature zany, sweet humor.
They also feature a lot of angst. The season 1 finale made it clear that Ed Teach (Taika Waititi), aka Blackbeard, was in a bad headspace post-breakup with Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), but throwing Lucius overboard and feeding Izzy his own toes proved to be just the beginning of his reign of lonely terror. In these opening episodes, Ed slaughters a wedding party, shoots his put-upon first mate Izzy (Con O'Neill), and steers the Revenge recklessly into a storm — all while pounding piles of ground rhino horn, his drug of choice.
The season's third episode, though, slows down Ed's rampage long enough to get introspective, as he finds himself trapped on a purgatorial island with an old boss, Captain Hornigold (Mark Mitchinson). It's here that the show's clever script structure pays off, as the episode's conclusion leans into a meaningful season 1 parallel.
A rhyming structure
The sophomore season of "Our Flag Means Death" rhymes with the first in several key ways, even before episode 3. A small example of this comes in the premiere when Jim (Vico Ortiz) continues telling the Pinocchio story the crew has been listening raptly to for a full season. This moment echoes the show's pilot episode, but it tweaks it too, as the Revenge crew is in a much darker, more brutal place now than they were a season ago. The story is a bit darker this time around too, involving a monkey's paw and a prayer to the Dark Lord to be made flesh.
This silly callback is far from the only moment in the season that rhymes with the show's first act. Most notably so far, season 2 episode 3 ends on a profoundly emotional inversion of season 1 episode 3. The first three episodes of the series focus largely on Stede, with Blackbeard making his grand entrance in the final moments of "A Gentleman Pirate." He appears during the ship's siege, stepping out of a haze of smoke to save Stede from certain death. At the time, Stede's been hung by the neck, and after one of Ed's crewmates cuts him down, the legendary pirate stands over him and asks for an introduction. It's a moment of both danger and instantly palpable chemistry. It also sets the stage for a season-long exploration of love and companionship in all its forms.
Life or death
Similarly, season 2 of the show keeps Ed and Stede apart for the majority of the first 3 episodes, only to reunite them with another life-or-death situation at the end of episode 3. This time, Ed is the one who's gravely injured after a crew mutiny, and we see his perspective as he imagines himself under the water with a boulder tied to his leg — given one last chance to drown or swim to the surface. While Stede saw flashes of his life with his wife Mary during his near-death experience, Ed envisions his and Stede's greatest hits.
Then he pictures Stede himself, appearing in his mind's eye as a mermaid. Both meetings are romanticized: Stede first imagines Ed as a smoldering rock star of a pirate, while Ed views Stede as something one-of-a-kind and beautiful. In the first scene, The Beach Boys' wordless song "Our Prayer" plays while the end credits roll, and in the second, Kate Bush sings "This Woman's Work" ("I know you've got a little life in you left/I know you've got a lotta strength left") as Ed comes up for breath. When Ed's eyes finally open, Stede is the first thing he sees.
The kind of emotional payoff TV was made for
This is the kind of moment television is made for, an emotional payoff that requires a season's worth of patience and an attentive, invested audience to pull off. Series creator David Jenkins and the show's writers (Alyssa Lane and Alex Sherman penned this episode) don't retread familiar territory here, but deliver a complex variation on an already-beloved sequence that encapsulates all the emotional depth and earnestness the show has brought us to over its first 13 episodes.
"Our Flag Means Death" is, at its core, about the vitality of emotions — even negative ones — and no episode demonstrates that better than "The Innkeepers." Ed is suicidal without Stede, convinced he's no better than the monster on his wanted poster and willing to play into that persona until it kills him. But throughout the episode, he finds the will to live. He finds it without Stede, but when he's ready to rise to the surface and rejoin the living, it's Stede who helps him do that. The third episode of both seasons features not just a set of matching life-or-death moments, but twin rebirths — each of them witnessed by the other, and both of them built on love.
New episodes of "Our Flag Means Death" stream on Max Thursdays at 3:01 a.m. ET.