The Best Revenge Is Dressing Well: The Izzy Hands vs Lucius Spriggs B-Plot
i have been seeing. some Takes™ (derogatory). about this storyline. about this b-plot in e5. specifically, about how this storyline starts. i have seen people saying that lucius was slacking off. i have seen people saying that lucius is the one to escalates things in that first conversation with izzy. i have seen people saying that lucius deserved to get singled out.
i'm here to say that all those takes are wrong. and in case some of y'all haven't rewatched this scene in a while, i'm gonna do a line-by-line breakdown of that scene to explain why
But First, Let Me Set The Scene
in episode four, the crew is literally being held hostage by blackbeard. which means that blackbeard is in charge of everyone. which means that as blackbeard's first mate, izzy is also charge. in this scene specifically, where izzy is yelling at them for eating, the whole crew of the Revenge all straighten up and lower their heads when he enters the galley. their body language shows that they know they're supposed to be listening to him (not that they actually listen, mind you. but they know they're supposed to).
the thing that a lot of people seem to miss, though, is that by the end of the episode, the situation has changed. in episode five, the crew is not being held hostage by blackbeard.
they're getting job training from blackbeard.
this is different from being held hostage by blackbeard. technically, if you think about it, this situation makes blackbeard and his crew their guests. very honorable guests, of course! it's still blackbeard, obviously the crew don't want to do anything to piss him off. but he's not exactly in charge of everyone the way he was when they were his hostages.
(yes, i know that ed is planning to kill stede, which probably doesn't bode well for stede's crew. but they don't know that, and ed isn't going to act like that. he's just gonna give his masterclass in piracy lessons like nothing's wrong)
what i'm saying is that going into episode five, izzy is no longer in charge of giving the crew of the Revenge orders.
there's another piece to this, though. because presumably everything in this episode takes place over the same day. ed teaches them some pirate skills as they raid the french ship, then after the raid frenchie shows them the invitation to the fancy party that he found on that same french ship, then stede, ed, olu, and frenchie all go to the party, leaving everyone else back on the Revenge.
here's what i want to point out: ed and stede are most likely not around for any of the subplot with izzy and lucius this episode. when ed says they're going to the party, the very next scene is the one i'm going to dive into shortly, the one where lucius and pete get caught hooking up. and the scene right after that is ed, stede, frenchie, and olu all boarding the french party ship. we get four minutes of french party ship before cutting back to our b-plot, where lucius is getting lowered down the side of the ship to scrape off barnacles. if ed and stede are still on the ship when izzy finds lucius and pete, they’re probably busy getting ready for the party.
so, just a recap of the situation before i get into the scene that sets up this episode's b-plot:
blackbeard and his crew are guests on stede's ship
earlier in the morning, ed's crew ran a successful raid as a demonstration for stede's and his crew
after the raid, ed decides he's going to go to a fancy party with stede and two of stede's crew members
and here are some things that we can infer from these facts:
the Revenge isn't going to be sailing around anywhere, since they need to be nearby to pick up ed and the others after the party
the ship is well-stocked after the raid that morning
there's not actually anything that urgently needs doing. both of the captains are off the ship. for everyone left back on the Revenge, it looks like they have some nice downtime.
Breaking Down The "Ooh, Daddy" Scene
(indistinct chatter)
(shushing)
LUCIUS (whispers): Shut the-- Shut up.
PETE: I'm, I'm trying to be quiet.
LUCIUS: You good?
PETE: I'm good.
so, the captains are getting ready for the party. lucius and pete were both present at the raid this morning. and they're hooking up in the galley while wee john takes a nap a few feet away.
"wow," you might be thinking, "i can't believe they would have sex in a public space like that! especially when they're at their job!"
consider this: they also live here. and aside from stede, olu, and jim, nobody on the ship has a room to themselves. if two crew members want to blow off some steam after a productive morning of attending Blackbeard's Pirate Masterclass, they don't have a room with a lock. there's not a ton of privacy. so they found a corner and tried to keep it down (and it really does seem like they probably tried to stay quiet while they were going at it).
another thing that's worth noticing is that pete and lucius are very clearly finishing up. they're standing up and straightening their clothes. and this is when izzy is walking into the room. he probably just walked in when they were finishing up just as a coincidence, but i've seen people suggest that he might've heard them earlier from outside and waited for them to be done. since i can't prove that this didn't happen, i'll be looking at this scene from both angles.
anyway. lucius and pete, having just finished hooking up, stand up and go to rejoin the rest of the crew. lucius turns around and sees this:
izzy, leaning against the door and staring at him intently as he sips a tin of Unidentified Beverage. and then we have this little interaction:
WEE JOHN: Oh, be a dear, and make me one of those, would ya?
IZZY: No, shut up.
...during which Izzy only breaks eye contact for a few seconds. Idk how to make gifs so I'm just gonna describe it for you: Izzy begins to take a long sip from his drink and Wee John shifts, wakes up, and sees Izzy drinking something as Izzy's eyes are trained on Lucius, not moving. Wee John says, "Oh, be a dear, and make me one of those, would ya?" as Izzy drinks, eyes still trained on Lucius. Izzy lowers his drink and says, "No, shut up," and only as he gets to the word "up" does he turn his head to glare at Wee John. After a beat he looks back towards Lucius, and Wee John lays back down.
IZZY: Get back to work now, all of ya.
now, he says "all of ya," but he specifically is looking at lucius and pete when he says this. he's addressing wee john, sure, but john's not the one he's making eye contact with. this feels significant to me.
PETE: we are working... we just took stock of the rations
LUCIUS: of the rations, yeah, and it turns out we are… (knocks) good.
PETE: very good, actually.
interestingly enough, it's pete, not lucius, who first tries to make an excuse. lucius doesn't say anything at first, just adjusts his outfit, making eye contact with izzy as he does so. he agrees with pete's story, making a silly face and knocking on the barrel behind him, and his delivery is less hesitant, less "coming up with a halfhearted excuse in the middle of speaking" than pete. lucius only looks away from izzy when pete flirts very obviously, saying "very good, actually" in a tone and giving lucius's body a once-over. and i didn't get a screenshot of it, but lucius very quickly looks away (somewhere towards wee john's direction) with wide eyes and a shrug.
now. i know i said at the beginning that "all those takes are wrong," but i do actually know that interpretations are subjective. there are other ways to read these few seconds, but i would actually pin pete as the one being more insubordinate up to this point. he's the one who makes the very bad excuse despite how obvious it was what they were doing, and he's the one who blatantly flirts right in front of izzy.
WEE JOHN: Yeah, we all heard you.
LUCIUS: Yeah, we love an audience.
so, as if there were any doubt, wee john confirms yet again that lucius and pete were just hooking up in the corner. both pete and wee john have acknowledged that fact more openly than lucius has. pete by openly flirting and giving lucius a whole once-over, wee john by basically just saying "yeah, you guys were pretty loud just now."
and lucius snaps back to wee john sarcastically, because of course he does. he's a sarcastic gay.
IZZY: Oh, I see. You think you're cute?
this is weird to me. this is incredibly weird to me.
the only thing lucius had said before the "we love an audience" bit was just going along with the lie that pete came up with. he didn't start off trying to make excuses, and he definitely wasn't doing anything to flaunt how cute he is. even his "we love an audience" isn't delivered cutely, he says it sarcastically like he's annoyed.
and yet, izzy puts down his mug and walks towards lucius. he delivers his "you think you're cute?" to lucius and only lucius. by absolutely no means is lucius the only one in the room who was "slacking off." pete was hooking up. wee john is asleep in a corner. nobody is working. but lucius gives one snarky line and izzy is already targeting lucius specifically. and lucius's snarky line wasn't even directed at izzy!!! he was talking to wee john!!!!
in my opinion, izzy singling lucius out at this point in the conversation is what started escalating things. suddenly, instead of izzy speaking to "all of ya," he is only talking to lucius. and for the fucking life of me, i cannot understand why that is.
(i mean, i can, but only from a perspective that is not flattering to izzy)
LUCIUS: Actually, I think I'm just so-so, but I've decided to carry myself like I'm cute.
PETE: (laughs) Worked on me.
IZZY: (chuckles) Ooh.
another iconic line from lucius spriggs, everyone.
this is the first time lucius directs anything that could reasonably considered snark towards izzy. and he says this line in a very joking way, smiling, and it gets pete to laugh (and flirt openly, again).
and then izzy laughs. and at first, lucius and pete keep smiling, like they're all laughing together.
i genuinely feel like up until this point, the vibe in this room was very playful. wee john had asked izzy for a favor and just shrugged and gone back to sleep when told to shut up. pete halfheartedly lied and wholeheartedly flirted with lucius after being told to get back to work. lucius made a little quip about being so-so but having confidence, and when izzy started laughing along, lucius at first acted like izzy was being genuine.
like. i feel like izzy had a chance here to not try and throw his weight around and tell people what to do. he could've laughed it off and walked away, let wee john keep napping and let pete and lucius go do whatever they were gonna go do. but he didn't. maybe he felt like these three were being disrespectful, maybe he thought there were urgent tasks that needed to be done, or maybe he just likes telling people what to do. i dont know.
what i do know (despite how badly i wish i could forget) is what izzy does next:
IZZY: Ooh, ooh, Daddy. Daddy.
he also. doesn't look away from lucius. once he starts saying daddy.
there are. two things that i think this could be about.
the first is if izzy, like us, only caught the tail end of lucius and pete hooking up. that means he's just saying this with no prompting. and the only reason i can think of for him moaning and saying "daddy" is because he thinks that's what lucius and pete's sex sounded like (and the way this came after lucius's "i carry myself like i'm cute!" and the way he made eye contact with lucius the whole time makes me feel like this is what he assumes lucius specifically sounds like during sex). and like, based on how he weirdly chose to single out lucius with his "you think you're cute?" line, this is not a nice imitation of lucius and pete. he's mocking them.
which, if i were pete and lucius, would make me feel very uncomfortable and violated.
the second possibility is if this izzy actually heard all of pete and lucius hooking up, and this was something he heard them actually say. which was not an option i thought of, but i saw someone else saying that this was izzy knowingly imitating the sounds of lucius and pete's sex, instead of just assuming he's imitating those sounds.
and if i were pete and lucius, this would make me feel even more uncomfortable and violated!!! there's no fucking privacy on this ship unless you're jim, olu, or stede, so there's zero doubt in my mind that everyone's kinks get aired out like dirty laundry. but someone making fun of those kinks is something else entirely!!!
either way, izzy makes everyone in the room uncomfortable.
idk, watching this scene, it looks like lucius is vaguely afraid. at the very least, he's uncomfortable and weirded out.
and i've realized that i've run out of images i can add to this post so the rest is just gonna be typed out:
IZZY: Your lot days of lyin' around doing fuck-all, it's through. You're all getting specific duties.
izzy shrugs off the awkwardness, looks at lucius for a moment, then shifts his gaze to pete and delivers his first sentence above. as he does so, he points his finger at lucius and pete, waving it between the two of them. when he gets to "you're all getting specific duties" he raises his voice and turns away, towards wee john's direction but not fully looking at him entirely.
LUCIUS: No thanks, Iggy. I only take orders from my Captain.
and now, twenty-nine images later, we get to where lucius "escalates" this conversation. frankly, i think the conversation was escalated when izzy said to lucius, "you think you're cute?" and it was definitely escalated even more by the "ooh, daddy" bit. lucius now feels very uncomfortable, and he lashes out.
remember: izzy is a guest. he's blackbeard's first mate, and blackbeard has chosen to stay on the ship as a guest and give the crew pirate lessons. like, i'm literally just going to link an old post i made about this line, because from lucius's perspective his bitchiness is so fucking warranted.
IZZY: My name is Mr. Hands, First Mate Hands, or God, as far as you're concerned. And I've got just the job for you... bitch. Follow me.
LUCIUS: Yep, absolutely.
now, the thing with izzy is that he's not very creative and he's very bad at adapting to change or to new, unfamiliar situations. and ed sticking around a ship full of mediocre pirates to give them "job training" while secretly planning to murder their boss and steal his identity, which probably means most of these other pirates are gonna get killed or left for dead somewhere, is probably not a familiar situation for izzy. for him, the "uszh" is capturing ships in battle, making the crew repair the damage, and then executing the crew. so he's not used to a several days of job training with crews of weird misfit pirates.
so from izzy's perspective, i kinda get it. usually when he's hanging out on another ship like this, it's a literal invasion. he's used to barking orders at people and telling them what to do. he's used to hitting the backs of their heads when they're eating and he's used to telling people to get back to work. he's not used to taking other crews on raids like they're job shadowing him, and he's not used to being left behind on some other ship while his boss goes off to a fancy party with the captain of the ship he's stuck on.
i kinda get why his instinct here is "i'm fucking in charge here, who said they could have sex in their down time? why are they having fun, don't they know that blackbeard is planning to kill them all?" he's used to just bossing around the crews of ships they've taken over, not hanging out with them for a week.
i also think he specifically gets so nasty here and screams "bitch" in lucius's face because he tried to make fun of lucius and pete with the "ooh daddy" thing and ended up embarrassing himself. so when lucius called him iggy (justified, imo), izzy escalated that shit even further, stepping into lucius's space and practically spitting in his face when he called him a bitch. in his mind, he just embarrassed himself in front of some shitty pirates who are gonna die soon and don't even know it, and he wants to re-assert his dominance here. because god fucking damn it, he's in charge here. they don't know that technically it's still an invasion, but izzy doesn't know how to interact with a crew outside of that situation.
yeah and then we get izzy walking away without giving any specific duties to pete and wee john, just lucius. and lucius stays behind for a minute to talk to pete, then izzy screams "NOW" with a level of rage that feels really disproportionate to me, and then lucius runs after him and the scene ends.
maybe izzy was going to give “specific duties” to all three of them before lucius called him iggy. i don’t know. but we never see that happen, we only see izzy continue to seek out lucius for punishing tasks. the showrunners chose not to follow up on what pete and wee john did after the “ooh daddy” scene. and like, come up with whatever reasons you want for why that is. but izzy was already singling lucius out even before lucius finally snapped and “talked back” to izzy
in this episode, blackbeard is acting as a guest on the Revenge. he is giving them job training, but he is not functioning as their captor anymore
now that they're guests, izzy is no longer in charge of telling stede's crew what to do outside of "pirate lessons"
at the beginning of the episode they raid a french ship, which means they're all stocked up on supplies
stede and ed (aka the captains) are going to a party, leaving the rest of the crew with some down time
izzy does not know how to deal with down time on a ship that he has technically invaded and is technically still holding hostage, but he can't let them know he's holding them hostage
izzy especially does not know what to do with down time when his captain isn't there. he's in charge with no supervision. nobody is around to tell him to chill out
lucius and pete do not have a private place on the revenge to have sex during their down time
pete is the one to try and come up with an excuse for what they were doing
pete is the one to openly flirt with lucius in front of izzy
when izzy first singles lucius out, both pete and wee john have been more flippant about the sex than lucius
izzy's "ooh daddy" was an attempt to mock lucius, and it made everyone in the room incredibly uncomfortable
calling izzy "iggy" and being rude after the "ooh daddy” thing was incredibly valid from lucius's perspective
we do not see izzy give pete or wee john any tasks
and one more thing about this plotline that doesn't come up in this scene but is very important to understanding the situation:
nothing izzy makes lucius do actually needs to get done.
you don't need to know shit about boats to know this
all you need to know is that lucius doesn’t do any of what izzy told him to do, and we never see anyone else do any of what izzy tries to get him to do, and there are never repercussions for that.
the ship doesn't fall apart. they sail with no problem. everything with the boat is fine.
izzy was just bossing people around because that's all he knows how to do. and he singled lucius out specifically, for reasons i don't feel like arguing about right now.
and just to back myself up, that this is not about izzy making stede's lazy stupid crew do basic chores that need to get done and they're all bad pirates for slacking off, i present to you one of the screenshots from the DMs with alex sherman:
the sentence that gets cut off at the beginning is “These were supposed to show that Izzy is power-hungry but also just not that good with power.”
