Blackbeard’s seeming unwillingness to intervene during Izzy and Stede’s duel really bothered me. At first, I interpreted it purely as “he doesn’t want Stede to die but he can’t help him because pirate honor or whatever” but now I think its actually more to do with the fact he grew up in abusive household. He tries to stop it but he very quickly disengages when he gets push back from Izzy. He slowly starts edging away as soon as Izzy and Stede start verbally engaging with each other..if you watch he edges all the way to the other side of the boat. Seeing two people he cares about in an argument makes him revert back to his childhood powerlessness. He can’t do anything but watch helplessly because that is the survival strategy he adopted for this situation when he was a kid.
The show does focus a lot on how Stede is still motivated/haunted by his own childhood trauma, so I don’t think its a coincidence that this scene happened right after we learned that Ed grew up in an abusive household.
The way Dave Malloy says “after pouring several glasses mechanically into my large mouth” in The Duel in the original cast recording of Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812… I mean just.. yes
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