We probably won’t see Mary again but I loved her. I loved how she was angry and bitter. I loved how she was viewed as being perfectly in the right the entire episode and that Stede was being a selfish asshole. I loved how she was so happy once Stede finally opened up to her, that they were able to finally become friends. I loved how they showed her being able to move on and be happy and join possible bi/lesbian cults if she wanted to while having fun and enjoying sex with her new man. I loved how once she realised that Stede wanted to leave again, she swapped her murder plan to a “let’s fake your death” plan.
i love Our Flag’s writing but you gotta admit Jim coming back for the last episode feels like “oops we focused too much on ed/stede and we forgot the parallel western we had going on”. which is understandable. but still, “hey Jim’s back!” is like… ok?
I’m hoping there’s a payoff of some kind in next season? That they came back because they learned a specific thing or whatever that was necessary to secure the ship’s help on or the crew’s help on or whatever. And that will come up when they get reunited with the crew in the next season, and be a driver if the plot. They just were too busy doing their boyfriend to get round to it in the last 5 minutes before everything went to shit. XD
you know how there’s this whole thing in golden age romcom 1999 hit the runaway bride about how the julia roberts character likes her eggs? when she’s with one guy, she likes them over-easy, same as him. when she’s with the next guy, she likes them scrambled, same as him. with the next guy, in an omelette, same as him. and in the end, she can’t marry richard gere because she still doesn’t knowhowshe likes her eggs. it’s not until she’s gone off on her own for a bit and built her own life and discovered how she likes her eggs without anybody else’s influence that she can finally allow richard gere back into her life with hope for a real future.
what i’m saying is this. calico jack takes his eggs scrambled. izzy takes his eggs hard-boiled. stede takes his eggs over-easy.
not canonically of course, what i mean is, each of these men in ed’s life have different views and expectations of who ed is, and ed is so desperate for love and acceptance that he is willing to turn himself inside out to meet this expectations. calico jack wants a party; ed will party. izzy wants fearsome; ed will cut off his toes. stede wants a softie who will talk it through with the crew; ed will talk it through with the crew.
ed leaves with jack because he knows jack does this to him, and he knows jack went too far, and he knows he allowed jack to have enough power and control over him that he allowed jack to go too far. ed concocts terrible plans with izzy in order to try and control the power izzy wields over ed - by keeping up with him, instead of letting him take control. ed allows izzy to duel with stede even though, under command, izzy should have stood down. stede is a gentleman and a silly adventurer, and ed tries to become a gentleman and a silly adventurer.
these are all different theses about who Edward Teach can be. all suggestions. even stede, who we often speak about as being really good for ed and allowing him to be who he wants - it’s impossible to ignore that on some level ed is also trying to form himself around what stede wants him to be. this is imo most obvious in ep 10 where ed virtually hangs himself in front of his own crew by erasing the fear they have and thereby abdicating any power. izzy’s threat is the most upfront demonstration of this, but right after that we hear the crew on deck shouting for eddie to come give them another song. ed has no control. he has no respect. izzy’s a dick throughout, but his threats before were always to leave – now he’s threatening ed himself. ed has put himself in danger trying to be what he thought stede wanted.
so, okay. those are the theses. then we get ep10 dark ed. this is the antithesis. this isn’t who anybody wants. he’s not a fun time. he’s not a fearsome pirate. he’s not soft. he’s not weak, and he will cut any weakness out. he is the kraken.
what we need from the narrative now is the synthesis. the discovery, for ed, of what ed really wants. how does he take his eggs.
ed can’t do this as dark ed. he has to come out of dark ed in order to remember the taste of eggs. he can’t do this as any of the standard theses either, because then he just ends up mirroring whoever has the most power of him at any moment, including stede. he can’t do this as the boy who wanted red silk or who killed his own father. he can’t do this as a king’s privateer. he can’t do this as anybody but himself.
what i’m saying is: i am so fuckin ready for ed to have the pirate version of his eat pray love self-discovery journey off alone with no one who knows him so he can decide for himself how he likes his eggs, and then when he and stede meet again–he’ll be ready.
in conversation about this with the excellent good beans @kai-art and @leilakalomi about how ed really does seem to be the most himself with stede, and i am here to add:
when ed is with stede, stede asks. SO many questions. do you fancy a fine fabric? have you ever considered retirement? everything all right? i couldn’t help but notice. May I?
he doesn’t ask all the time. but he spends a lot of time sort of sussing ed out, trying to put into words what he observes about ed and asking for a confirmation, that sort of thing. and ed is responsive for a lot of it! he has room with stede to be himself - he will threaten, for example, the french officers with no problem, he will be kind of a dick about the treasure hunting and protecting his reputation, he will tell ghost stories, he will let stede see him vulnerable in the bathtub scene.
it’s only after stede leaves that ed really veers hard into the thesis of what he thinks stede wants. it’s only after stede leaves that ed completely abandons his leathers for stede’s clothes and stede’s marmalade and stede’s comfy cushions and blankets. he does his little performance, he asks to be called edward.
stede never rejects blackbeard. blackbeard is, for stede, always a part of ed.
but in the absence of stede, and in the wake of stede’s apparent rejection, ed leans in hard and dramatic to what he believes is stede’s ideal. worth noting that even stede doesn’t live up to stede’s ideals - he never talks it through as a crew! he’s not all soft all the time (in fact stede is kind of an ass lmao) and when stede and ed are together, he doesn’t ask ed to be.
so when i talk about stede’s thesis of what ed can be, there is a divide also between how stede actually treats ed in the show and what ed thinks stede wants in the show, and i think that divide is where stede’s thesis, this ep 10 softie, lives. given the cyclical nature of things, i also think that divide is probably where ed’s final synthesis lives, but without the pressure and expectation of what ed believes stede wants him to be.
in the end i think it comes down to: stede needs to want ed to be ed, just himself, and i don’t think stede is 100% of the way there yet given stede’s upset in ep 9 over his perceived ruin of ed (that’s another post). and ed needs to realize he can’t be anybody other than who he actually is.
and in all that, there has to be synthesis. they’re setting ed up to take bits of everyone he is and everything he can be and to finally decide for himself, instead of for anybody else.
While we like to joke about Izzy being in the wrong genre, I would argue that there are in fact at least five distinct genre universes in the world of Our Flag Means Death, and all of them have different rules.
Stede Bonnet, and his crew when they’re around him, live in a Muppet movie. I didn’t come up with this analogy but it’s so accurate. Insane physical comedy and comedy-action where no one really gets hurt. Mild peril but you know everything is gonna work out. Terrible puns and sight gags, but room for sweet, genuine emotional moments too. The rules of time, space, probability and logic will bend for a good joke.
Izzy Hands is in a grimdark action/drama where if someone gets stabbed in the gut they will behave normally and fucking die. (Probably slowly and painfully, of sepsis.) Crucially I think Izzy also lives in a genre where you can only be subtextually queer, and violence (done for or with or to each other) is the only acceptable form of intimacy between men. This is why being forcibly dragged into Stede’s world, where everyone is busy having silly low-stakes misadventures and being gay and emotionally available all over the main text–and seeing his Subtextual Boyfriend go into this world and love it–sends him round the twist.
The British, Spanish and other imperialist militaries are in a Master and Commander-style naval adventure where they’re the heroes. This is why they all take it completely seriously when Stede (unintentionally) kills Badminton and takes hostages, even though we can see that he bumbled his way into it ass-backwards. This is also why Stede is so shocked to get actually for real stabbed aboard the Spanish ship. (“Did you mean to do that?”) He didn’t realize until that moment that he’d stepped into a different genre. The stabbing is one of the first Surprise Genre Switch moments we get and in retrospect it’s very important for setting up that in this world, the threat of getting hurt or killed is very real–which we need to understand to know that there are real stakes much later, when Stede almost gets executed by the British.
i don’t ship edward and izzy. i just know for a fact that izzy wants to fuck him. i also don’t like izzy hands. he’s not my meow meow. he’s a little freak and i want to study him like a bug. when he’s on screen i am furious and also giggling and kicking my feet. i hate him and i never want him to leave. hope this helps.
I, unfortunately, am burdened with unironically positive feelings towards Izzy Hands
I’m not sure if Izzy wants to fuck Edward or get fucked by Edward, but I’m pretty sure which one *I* think he’s in desperate need of.
But love that feral little fucker with all my heart and soul, and I want him to stick around. And maybe get railed and loosen the fuck up.
*spoilers*
*spoilers*
The little shit sold his own service to the crown, on the terms that when he Also sold out Blackbeard, they would Give him Blackbeard.
And his face!
(I can’t find a gif of his little smile when they tell Ed, But I’m pretty sure this is the moment Ed goes to Stede)
He Absolutely was hoping/expecting Blackbeard would receive this massive betrayal in the disgustingly tender spirit in which it was intended.
Like “that’s fair”, he accepts that Ex is pissed, but he 100% does not perceive that he has crossed any kind of line.
He’s a pirate who doesn’t think signing with the crown and selling out other pirates is crossing a line, not if it’s for his captain. Not if it’s for Blackbeard.
This masochistic little fucker. He is just as weird and fucked as all the rest of the fuckers, just yeah. They’re all in a muppets musical and he’s from like. Repo: the genetic opera or some shit.
