Jonathan Steinberg: The crew’s understanding of Flint’s fate in Treasure Island is that he dies alone in Savannah in an emotionally not good place. How did he get there? We like the idea of a story about how he was put there as an act of mercy. It turns into loneliness later on, presumably when Thomas dies of old age. That made sense as a way to both acknowledge the book and spin it. To take something that seems like a neutral piece of story about where Flint ends up to be an artifact of this emotionally fraught moment between Flint and Silver. Silver is facing the choice of having to kill him or not. There’s this choice made to create a different story.
But is the story true? After the camera cuts away from Flint and Silver, the men see birds fly up from that area as if Silver does shoot that gun.
Steinberg:There are a lot of things they could have been reacting to. It was deliberate to have there be no sound to allow for interpretation.
Robert Levine: There’s a choice on Madi’s part about what Silver’s telling her. We wanted to put the audience in the same place of having to make a choice about believing Silver or not.
Do you believe him?
Steinberg:Do we have a sense of what we imagine is happening? Yes, but if I was someone else, I wouldn’t want to watch it with my interpretation coloring it.
At the end, Jack says about Long John Silver’s story, ‘Those who stood to benefit most from it were eager to leave it behind.’ The camera cuts to Silver, but we know from Treasure Island that he doesn’t leave it behind.
Steinberg:Silver is wrestling with this alter-ego.Part of him is intoxicated by it and part of him knows how destructive it is. Ultimately, he makes a choice that he doesn’t want to wear it. He found a domestic life that felt meaningful that he could leave everything behind for. In that moment, Flint tells him it isn’t going to be enough. Flint’s curse on the treasure isn’t a ghost story curse. It’s a curse for Silver that you can decide to leave that part of you behind, but one day you’ll come back. Treasure Island, in its existence, is some fulfillment of that curse. Flint was right. Whatever happens between Silver and Madi is not enough. He comes back looking for something he feels he left behind that he didn’t think he wanted.The end of his story in this show is the hope that he can get away from it. That made Treasure Island feel like a meaningful sequel about a massive transformation in that character. It was foretold by Flint, but it wasn’t preordained.
Steinberg:The Flint and Silver story has been with us a long time. At the beginning there was a more obvious path: They would become enemies and be antagonists in each other’s story. We made the choice early on that it would be more impactful and tragic if what you’re watching is these two guys who are as close to each other as anyone in the world, and there’s just this one point at which they can’t connect.
