Knit Night Studio

The character's name is Zhang Zheng Yi Sao. That's a real historical figure, very very awesome pirate queen. Her name isn't "Susan." That's what she went by when undercover selling soup.

I beg people to use her real name and not a fake one that may be easier for you to spell and pronounce. She doesn't introduce herself or tell anyone to call her Susan after her real identity is revealed and people in the show call her Zheng. Or Queen, I suppose.

So please, as someone from Chinese fandoms who has seen the amount of microagressions fandoms get up to when dealing with "weird and difficult" Chinese names...can we not?

If you're worried about spelling, ZYS would be how Chinese names are typically abbreviated in fandom. And Zheng isn't inherently any harder to type than Susan.

Trying to get ahead of things a little here, as a white American person who has learned things the hard way over the last few years.

I’m finishing up ep.9 of ofmd and I will kill for that painting Mary did. I had to see if anyone was talking about it, and few were, but not on the painting I expected. While her abstract piece is a great insight of how she views Stede, and other character traits of his sprinkled thoughout the season. The second painting and the scene introducing it, has so may juxtaposition too the first! The second painting is all about her. It’s pretty much a repainting

A naked woman standing with her back to us. Bracing the edge of a cliff on a stormy night. You’d think a woman in that position would be terrified. Yet the woman is posed in such a powerful stance. She is secure and staring off at something we cannot see. And clasped firmly in her hand is a lantern. It burns like a red flame, the brightest thing in the painting. But she doesn’t hold it desperately, it’s more like it is apart of her. Her soul, her willpower, to brace any storm. She is a lighthouse.

(I couldn’t find an image online anywhere so I just took a photo from my tv. Sorry the quality is bad)

There are several ways to look at Mary’s art, e.g. why it looks the way it looks, why they used this kind of anachronism, what it means to the narrative and Mary’s character, and lastly, what it tells us about the lighthouse painting.

Strap in, everyone, this is gonna be long.

they rushed into sex and ed regrets it and that doesn't stop it from having been consensual and fun but the fact that it was consensual and fun doesn't mean that it was a good idea

ed feeling like he can't watch stede make the same mistakes he did but also feeling like he can't ask stede to leave piracy for him when stede is just getting started. and ultimately he's too scared to ask stede to leave piracy for him because what if stede says no? what if stede looks him in the eyes and confirms yes, you are unloveable, yes i'm choosing piracy over you, no i don't love you enough, why would you ever think i could love you enough to do this for you?

just the overall turmoil of being at a different life stage to your partner - like the difficulty of when you're at the beginning of your career and they're established in theirs, or when you've had lots of relationships and they've only had you, or when you're ready to settle down and have kids but they're not, and nobody is in the wrong, it's just difficult

making a breakup about a completely unrelated issue bc you can't voice the actual problem. twisting it into 'we're fundamentally incompatible' (fishermen and pirates are completely different) so you can convince yourself it's not because you're not good enough. if you hit self destruct and leave without explaining things maybe it'll be less painful than opening up about what's actually wrong only to have them throw it back at you and leave you anyway. maybe if i pretend it was never going to work out i don't need to think about why it stopped working in the first place

stede still feeling like he's not good enough for ed and trying to change himself to make himself feel more worthy. unable to comprehend that anyone could possibly love someone so soft and inadequate. feeling like he doesn't even want ed to like him for who he is, feeling insecure that ed only likes him bc he's weak, feeling like he needs to toughen up to earn ed's love. the eternal worry of 'my partner is the best person in the world and i am just a worm so why are they here, why are they staying with me, what's their motive, what can i do to change myself so they actually want to stay for me and not for whatever reason they've got going on'

I'm also feeling like talking through some mourning for an amazing character, so follow along if that's you, too 😌

(I should probably clarify the following thoughts are coming from someone who deeply enjoyed this season.)

I first wondered what would be of Izzy around the end of season 1. I expected him to have a heel-face turn – which I object to calling a redemption arc and I'll get into why, because the distinction ties into his death imo. A lot of antagonistic characters' changes of heart end directly in death, but I thought they'd subvert that trope. And they... did, actually, despite Izzy dying. Not an option I had imagined.

What the show avoided is the logic, the set of tropes attached to the deaths of this kind of character. These deaths usually come as a consequence of the character's changed ethics or "redemption". My being against that scenario came from the diverging natures of traditional redemption arcs and OFMD's rhetoric.

A traditional redemption arc functions by a kind of catholic logic, if you will: the villain can become one of the good guys by balancing out his "sins"/bad deeds with enough good deeds to tip a moral scale. This often involves a purifying suffering, which acts as an agent to expiate one's faults. To the viewer, this suffering can serve to activate our empathy and make the character more sympathetic. It can also legitimize his quest: our trust in the character's good intentions comes from seeing that the character is ready to make sacrifices to become better and he isn't deterred by the hardships of doing the right thing.

The death occurring at the end of a traditional redemption arc acts as the ultimate sacrifice and/or purification. A number of ideas might be at play behind it, depending on each story: only in death can the soul become fully pure, or a final sacrifice is "needed" to demonstrate the change once and for all, or change was only possible up to a point after which there is no viable/acceptable future – the character deserves moral points for changing, but not so many that he also deserves a full life, or past crimes make him more expendable, etc.

But these are all ideas that aren't evoked in any of the crew's journey in OFMD. For starters, the show isn't interested in "catholic" redemption; its focus is on reintegration/rehabilitation into the community. Rather than appealing to the more traditional (in Western media) and more christian principle of "purification of the soul through mortification of the body", it plays with notions of restorative justice.

We see it especially this season with Ed and Izzy. Ed's arc is a whole little lab for it. We have the community being made to decide whether he can stay or should leave; catbell!Ed is made to apologize to the people affected – which he initially does abysmally, with what fandom has dubbed his "CEO's/YouTube apology". Later, he's given the opportunity to have a more honest and genuine conversation with Fang where he learns about how he hurt him. He's made to repair some of the material damage his behavior caused. Some members feel repaid by the idea that they did to him the same he did to them (Fang) while others don't (Lucius), and the show touches on what this means for each/legitimizes both feelings. Arguably, Ed using his treasure to throw Calypso's birthday party – a much needed refrain and moment of social (re-)connection within the community – is an additional form of reparation. While Stede's belief in Ed has a clear role in helping Ed change for the better, Izzy's s2 journey focuses even more intensely on the role of social support within an individual's constructive (re-)integration into their community. The show is condensed by choice of format, but the beats are all there.

With that kind of rhetoric set up, I'd never be able to accept Izzy dying in a way that feels like a punishment for his past crimes, nor in a way that should "confirm" his positive change/"purify" him for good. And he doesn't! By the time he dies, we know full well he's deeply changed, it's already established to completion. How it happens has nothing to do with proving himself – he's randomly shot in battle. It's never questioned that the time he got to live surrounded by affection mattered. The speech he gives Ed is only possible because he's changed, accessing a completely different perspective on piracy/life than before, like we see when he talks to Ricky earlier. The reason the whole crew is paying respect and crying is because he became "the new unicorn", a treasured member with a defined role. But his death itself is the show going back to the initial symbolism of Izzy as ultimate pirate. The narrative function of his death is underscoring that the age of piracy has come to an end. It's nothing to do with his change. It's posited as the "natural conclusion" (again, by symbolic function) of a character that represented piracy through-and-through, not the "natural conclusion" of a process of becoming better.

And for me, that difference changes everything. I can see and accept the logic behind it, even as I mourn Izzy as a character. It makes the grief feel like a catharsis I experience within the context of the story I'm watching, rather than a grief I feel from a show "betraying" me.

It's also a difference that completely changes how Izzy's death relates to his queerness. Izzy's change is intertwined with being able to express queer affection openly. Becoming "a unicorn" is this extremely queer imagery already – a magical rainbow creature. His role becomes akin to a mother to the crew (the mother hen!Izzy many headcanoned last season, tapping into his potential), a position that isn't extraneous to older queens, including our honored real-life mean-old-queer men. Last season he threatened another queer man for showing too much delicacy, effeminacy, vulnerability. Now, his change is a process that culminates in him singing a tender love song among the crew in drag. He's given the privilege of playing the soundtrack to our protagonists making love for the first time, which ties him symbolically to the event in a way it does no other crew member. Suffice it to say that insinuating his process of change should end in death would have been disastrous, as far as I'm concerned. Antithetical to the show's supporting ideology.

But that's not how it went. Grief occupies a big role in the queer community, but it's so rare that we get to experience it cathartically. In real life, we often have to contend with the ways queerphobia causes us trauma or even shortens our lives, or the lives of our friends. In fictional narratives, a lot of characters that get to express queerness unabashedly still die for the transgression. They're still usually the only queer character with relevant screen time or at all, at best one of two that formed a tragic couple.

We almost never have the opportunity to just mourn some motherfucker who died because they meant something else as well that was central to their character. To mourn and know we're mourning someone who wasn't ever punished for being queer-as-in-fuck-you and going all out. To mourn and not feel like it's another message of queer doom, because for once the character is surrounded by an entire crew of other queer characters that go on to live and be happy. To know the story is saying something about life, not about being queer. To know this kind of crafting was deliberate, too, because the creator has talked about working to avoid those tropes. I struggle to remember another time I had the opportunity to grieve for a queer character like they're a human being, without the implication that it's queerness itself that's a death sentence.

And honestly? It feels good. It feels like a form of catharsis I do not dislike. That I'm maybe kinda glad for. OFMD is and stays a magical world. Beyond that, in a show full of queers, one of them dies after getting some extraordinarily meaningful happiness, and it's peaceful, and I get to just be sad for the fucker without the gutting of being reminded that if you're gay, better not shoot too high. It feels like a completely different emotion that no other show, for now, would give me, but OFMD. To me, it's yet another thing it's pulled off.

it's that he sees violence as instrumental, as a tool, one that he is very very good at using, and he doesn't have the instinctive inhibitions about using it that he thinks he ought to have. in fact to a great extent it's the fact that he doesn't like knowing he doesn't even need to be angry to do violence of a kind and a quantity that he thinks a normal decent person simply would not be capable of.

when he was a kid ed lived in constant fear that his dad would hurt or kill him or his mom, and he survived like this until his early teens, and one day he realized that there was one way he could put a stop to this and it was if his dad was dead, and he could make that happen. so he did.

i don't think we are meant to think this is something he did in a fit of rage. i'm sure anger was among the emotions he experienced, but not the one that formed his primary motivation - that seems to have been fear - and it certainly doesn't seem to have been uncontrolled anger. it's not like he went berserk when he saw his dad hit his mom; he cowered in a corner while that happened, and then he made a plan and waited for the moment to execute it. he had a goal in his mind and he saw that there was one path to that goal and it involved crossing a moral line that most people consider absolutely inviolable, and he crossed it.

that part is what scares ed about himself - the decision itself and the cold calculated way he was able to go about it, not whatever anger he might have felt. when he says "i'm the kraken" i don't think he means "there is some monstrous and uncontrollable anger inside of me" - and i'm not saying he's not angry, he's a deeply emotional person and he's certainly got lots of reason for anger, but anger is not the thing he doesn't like about himself, it's not what he's talking about when he says he's not a good person. the thing he thinks makes him not a good person is that he knows he is capable of crossing any moral line if he thinks it's what he has to do: he thinks a good person wouldn't be capable of murdering their own father under any circumstances no matter how necessary it was. but he was, and he did.

the part of ed that's the kraken is not his rage, it's the part of him that looks at a situation and says "you know what could solve this problem? violence," and then goes and executes however much violence it takes - no matter how much that is - with creativity and brutal efficiency. he would rather be a person who did not know how to do that. but unfortunately if he was he'd be dead by now: it's a survival tactic he developed in response to abuse and trauma, and it did its job and kept him alive, and now he has to live with it.

now this might sound like a semantic distinction. and to some degree it is! but i think framing it this way does a much better job explaining what the kraken seems to mean to ed and to the narrative. for one thing, it helps explain why his big coping mechanism is not trying to avoid becoming angry or expressing anger, but to develop a weird arbitrary technical rule about what kinds of violence he's willing to enact and adhere to it compulsively. he can lose his temper and do violence and even have fun with violence (turtle vs crab, making a bloke eat his own toes for a laugh) as long as he doesn't cross that line, because the thing he hates about himself is how easy it is for him to cross any line when he has to.

for another, what triggers the big "i'm the kraken" admission is ed trying to force himself to kill stede (yeah the fuckery helped but he does not have a literal phobia of cephalopods, that only set him off because he was in the middle of re-creating the trauma he identifies with the kraken in the first place). but i don't think anyone's ever thought he does that because he's angry with stede! he comes up with the plan to kill stede because he has a goal in mind (retire and live like a rich aristocrat) and killing stede is a step toward that goal. if the kraken represented his rage, it would have made more sense for that reveal to be triggered by any of the several times we see him lose his temper. if it's instead his capacity to simply choose deliberate violence (especially against someone he cares about) when it helps him achieve a goal, the whole framing of episode 6 makes much more sense.

from what we've seen so far the kraken doesn't express much anger at all (though i expect that will change as he starts to process his emotions, and that might be a good sign, actually). he certainly isn't out of control: he is eerily calm and detached, to the point that several people have noted it looks an awful lot like intentional dissociation to cope with the decision to do things he doesn't want to be doing. but he does what he did with his dad all those years ago: he realizes he can't do what he needs to do with lucius there so he removes lucius in the quickest way possible, and he decides most of stede's crew are a threat and a reminder of things he doesn't want to remember so he leaves them to die, and he sees that izzy will be a problem unless ed acts like the blackbeard izzy wants so he figures out what that blackbeard would do to a crewman who talked to him like izzy did and he does that, and he doesn't blink at any of it.

Still thinking about this scene. Ed lights the fire place, puts a blanket on the floor to lay on, and puts the two cake toppers next to each other before rolling over and bursting into tears. You can see that the Stede cake topper is smudged with black kohl, as if he has cried on it or rubbed it against his face.

My beautiful princess with a disorder here is imagining and mourning what he wanted to have with stede--warmth, softness, a roaring fire, romantic candlelight, wedded bliss--as one final indulgence of his love for stede before he dies.

I think it says a lot that Stede is imagining running along the beach into each other's arms and Ed is imagining a full blown marriage. Ed is reacting to the situation as if he was left at the altar because to him, he gave his life to stede the second he signed the act of grace contract and basically expected to elope with him after the kiss.

I think it's a triumph.

One thing we absolutely have to understand: there has never been a time on the show when Ed wasn't killing people. That's true for all characters; this is a show about pirates. Even in s1, Ed was leading successful raids and ordering racists skinned. In a realistic sense, nothing has changed.

The difference is in how Ed does not need to construct intricate ways to distance himself from it anymore.

We know that Ed's first time killing was his abusive dad, an event that deeply traumatized him, and it left him thinking himself an absolute monster. His own capacity for violence disgusts and terrifies him, and even though he's been very successful in a very violent career, he needed to distance himself from killing people ("the fire killed those guys, not me") to avoid confronting this part of himself. He believes that the part of himself that is so capable of violence is irredeemable, a monster, unworthy of love.

Even at the start of the season, when Ed is in a self-destructive spiral, it's debateable if he's directly killing anyone. If Lucius had died, he'd probably have said the sea did it, not him. The guy we see him shoot during the raid sequence already had a knife through his chest - it's a step up, and surely meant to be understood as self-harm more than anything else, but that's still a mercy kill, if anything.

Compare to the finale of season 2. These are direct kills, there is no way to argue that Ed is not responsible. It is not debateable that Ed killed all those British officers.

A lot of the worry I've seen around this concern how Ed is going back to what he's good at (as Pop-Pop told him to), and there's an asusmption that that is killing people/violence. But that's not true, is it? Ed's never been good at killing people, his hangups around directly killing are a known character trait. So...what is Ed good at?

Think about how the scene plays out. Ed sees the Republic burning; he can only assume Stede is either captured, wounded, or dead. He's horrified and dazed, his ears ring - he kills the two British soldiers who happen upon him, he decided to fish up his Blackbeard outfit.

What is Ed actually good at? He's a good pirate, a good captain. He's good at keeping his crew safe, he's good at keeping Stede safe. He has to think he's either going to be embarking on a mission to get revenge or to save his boyfriend.

At first, I was very hesitant about the idea of Ed having to go back to piracy, which he says he hates. But what he was actually trying to do was drown Blackbeard, the part of himself he sees as so unworthy of love. He needed to see that Blackbeard is part of him, that he's not a monster or unloveable, that Blackbeard can help him save his friends and his boyfriend.

It's not a coincidencethat the show goes out of its way to make Ed's killing people in this episode as morally easy to accept as possible. The British officers we see are all racist and mean and unpleasant - like, damn, singing 'we shall never be slaves' while making Black characters serve them? Gross! They got what was coming to them! This is the 'racists deserve to die' show, after all.

And Ed uses this violence as a tool for love, to get him back to his boyfriend, to give them a triumphic reunion. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is when Ed tells Stede he loves him, either - he's come one step closer to accepting he's worthy of love, he's more ready to acknowledge what they have.

Ed says, oh yeah, why's that? enlighten me.

Izzy says, because of your feelings for Stede fucking Bonnet.

Ed shoots him in the leg.

Later, Izzy says Ed shot him just for saying Stede's name. Then he says Ed did it because Izzy told him that he loved him. Maybe he's lying or maybe he really thinks that's what happened, who knows. But it seemed obvious to me that Ed shot him because he blamed the bad vibes on Ed's feelings for Stede.

The vibe is poisonous because they're going on too many pointless raids. Ed is overworking the crew and making everyone uncomfortable. They're going on the raids so that Ed can break Ned Low's record. He says later that he did it because he was bored.

Remember the first time he says he wants to die? making plans and executing plans, it's all so fucking boring. could try dying, haven't tried that yet.

Ed is sad because Stede is gone, yeah, but he wasn't doing any of this until Izzy specifically said he'd rather let Ed die than let him just be Edward. Soft Ed who didn't want to cut people's toes off or even be a pirate. Soft Ed who loves Stede.

Izzy told Ed to stop mooning over Stede, to go back to being the caricature Blackbeard from the book.

And Ed does it. He goes all in, constantly being Blackbeard. He's going above and beyond, raiding weddings, even killing. No more love here.

Like, Izzy still doesn't get it. He's clinging to this idea that he's the only person who knows Ed, because he's seen the darkest parts of Ed and thinks that is who Ed is. He thinks that Stede is an idiot who only loves a projection of Ed, the sweet and open version of him that showed up around Stede on the Revenge in season 1. He doesn't understand that Stede might know about the dark shit and care about Ed anyways, because he doesn't really understand that love is more than just putting up with someone's bullshit.

But Stede KNOWS Ed. He's seen Ed crying in a bathtub about killing his dad, order a man skinned for an insult, and cheerfully fold socks after it seemed like everything important had been taken from him. Unlike Izzy, he can see through the facade to the whole human person underneath - not a myth, not a monster, just a man. He clocks everything Ed is doing as a cry for help, and all he wants is a chance to offer that help.

I feel like roughly half of the analysis I'm reading about OFMD S2 is folks who clearly fixated on a character (it's Izzy, it's always Izzy that inspires this kind of analysis) write analyses that cause the 2nd response of, "Um…did you ever study literary analysis in school."

Now I come at this from a slightly odd place in that I did study literary analysis in school (30+ years ago) where I learned it's possible to interpret anything about any way, because we're all bringing different lenses to the analysis. Which isn't to say that an author can't have an intended interpretation. 

How the Blackbeard theme, Gnossienne No. 5, and Voi Che Sapepte reveal, reinforce and recontextualize the narrative. An in-depth analysis of key scenes throughout seasons 1 and 2.

Much gratitude to pocket friends who were so encouraging and provided valuable feedback while I worked on this.

Meta by these authors (links, below the cut) influenced this video:

@asneakyfox, @asongaboutpirates, @bakasara, @doyoueverstopandthink, @chaotic-neutral-knitter, @forpiratereasons @fresne999 @gaypiratepropaganda, @jaskierx, @medievill, @mxmollusca, @piratecaptainscaptainpirates @veeagainsttheday, @57flagsofdeath

This meta contains a whole heckuva a lot of spoilers for Our Flag Means Death seasons 1 and 2. Thanks to @petrichorca who gave it a read through and left some helpful comments!

When we first get to know Ed in s1e4, the episode concludes with him telling his first mate, Izzy Hands, about his plans to murder Stede Bonnet and steal his identity so Ed can retire from piracy. Ed and Izzy discuss the plan in a casual manner, like this act isn't shocking or deviant from previous conversations and schemes Ed and Izzy have had before. This is consistent with how other characters, especially Black Pete, have described Blackbeard in previous episodes (‘when Blackbeard kills man, woman, or child…’). While Black Pete is (probably) lying, Buttons was with him until the flip. 

As the song ‘The Empty Boat’ by Caetano Veloso plays, Izzy tells Ed, 'You've still got it' and Ed says, 'I know,' turning away to face the empty deck. Only the audience witnesses his true facial expression - the Blackbeard mask falling, a kind of dead-eyed exhaustion (echoed by the lyrics of the song) taking its place. 

In s1e5, we see Ed threaten violence against the French captain, but he doesn't actually hurt the man himself. We also see him act as if he's about to go kill the French partygoers before Stede steps in and 'handles it'. At this point I think we the audience would, if asked, have said that Ed seems to have a casual attitude towards killing that you would expect from 'the legendary Blackbeard'. He's scary ('next one goes through your fucking eyeball') and almost cartoonishly violent ('skin him. And use the snail fork'). So we the audience maybe make some assumptions about where the show stands on violent killing - not only that Blackbeard is familiar with it, but that it's a commonplace act for him.

Then we come to a pivotal moment. In s1e6, Izzy pushes back on Ed for not killing Stede, there’s the conversation about doggy heaven, and Ed promises Izzy that he’ll be the one to do the killing. We see Ed hyping himself up (‘You’re a killer bro. So kill.’) and then holding his knife while standing next to Stede behind the curtain in the captain’s cabin. They’re interrupted by Lucius cutting off his finger. Ed doesn’t go through with it; the moment passes as Stede exits the curtain to announce the entrance of the Kraken. 

At this point, I as an audience member fully believed that Ed couldn’t kill Stede because of his feelings for him. I wasn’t yet sure what those feelings were, but I knew that Ed had a deep affection for Stede, and for a moment I believed that was all that was holding him back. Then, of course, we see Ed have a PTSD/panic attack trigger from the Kraken fuckery that sends him into Stede’s bathtub, hiding underneath Stede’s robe, where he and Stede have what I believe is the most intimate moment of the entire first season (a reading supported by s2e3). Ed tells Stede, ‘The Kraken didn’t kill my dad. I did.’ We are shown the flashbacks to the way Ed’s father abused him and his mother, and the Kraken story he told on deck earlier is shown again with the figure of the beast in the water replaced by himself, as a young teen, on the dock. 

Then Ed tells Stede, ‘If I’m being honest, I haven’t killed another man since.’ Stede tries to comfort him by reminding him how much he loves a good maim, but Ed is still preoccupied with how the fact that he killed his abusive father as a child means that he’s not a good person, and that this is why he doesn’t have any friends, aka, isn’t loveable. Stede tells him, ‘I’m your friend,’ in essence, To me, you are loveable, and Ed reacts by saying, ‘No,’ and banging his head against the tub.

The next important point happens in s1e8, when Jack invites himself to breakfast and regales Stede (very deliberately, as he’s trying to push Stede and Ed apart) with the tale of Ed setting a ship alight and killing many people. (Also note - the show’s first mention of Hornigold! ‘He treated us like dogs! Worse than dogs!’ and ‘Ground us down into nothing!’) While Jack emphasises the horror and brutality of what Ed did, Ed’s demeanour completely changes - ‘No, Stede doesn’t want to hear about that.’ Jack obviously doesn’t listen to Ed; Stede’s face passes from horrified listening to Jack to squinting at Ed like, ‘Is this - true?’ Ed looks thoroughly guilty as the story continues and Stede asks him, clearly doing his best to preserve Ed’s secret in front of Jack, ‘I thought you’d, uh, given up the killing?’ Ed surges forward in his seat and, not making eye contact with Stede, says, ‘Yeah, well, technically the fire killed those guys. Not me.’ The camera then cuts to Jack looking at Stede with a bit of an incredulous expression as if he’s both gauging Stede’s reaction to the entire thing and thinking, ‘Wow BB’s in deep here if he’s making up some weird story about not being the one who lit that fire.’  

I don’t think the show intends for us to believe that Ed was consciously lying to Stede in the bathtub scene in s1e6. Instead, we see the complex way that Ed - who is shown to be both brilliant and possessed of an internal monologue that just cannot shut up - has constructed mental barriers to protect himself from the trauma of killing while still achieving the highest possible status in a very violent profession and existing in a world marred by colonial violence perpetrated specifically against people like him. 

S1e9 shows Ed continuing to posture to everyone but Stede as Blackbeard, seasoned killer (for example, telling Chauncey that he barely remembers killing Nigel because he’s ‘a real “life is cheap” kinda guy’). At the Academy and briefly after, in the beginning of s1e10, Ed seems set to have given up killing and violence for real, but Izzy’s threats in the cabin in s1e10 send Ed reeling back to the Kraken persona he assumed when he killed his dad. The season concludes with him pushing Lucius off the ship and Krakening up to sail, rob, and raise hell forever - but the final shot shows Ed crying alone in his cabin, his Kraken makeup streaking down his face. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s one of my favourite scenes from a character perspective. Imagine if the season had ended with Ed fully transformed into the Kraken, rather than clearly miserable and heartbroken under his mask? 

Season 2 begins with Ed trying to set a record for most consecutive raids, working his crew to death under brutal and traumatic conditions. His list of crimes on his wanted poster certainly suggests a lot of violence and killing, yet the show is careful to show us Ed himself only seeming to kill one person - firing a gun into a man’s back during a raid - and if you look closely, you’ll see that the man was already dying with a dagger through his body. It feels vital to me that the only direct ‘killing’ action we see Ed taking is shooting a man who we presume he can justify as having been already on his way to death. 

In s2e1 and s2e2, Ed can’t kill Izzy, though he does try desperately to get Frenchie to do it for him. He can’t even kill himself, trying to get Izzy to do it instead. When he thinks Izzy has committed suicide with the gun he gave him, he says, ‘I loved you, best I could,’ as if any love Ed could give would by its nature not be good enough. 

Ed wakes in s2e3 in the care of his old captain, Hornigold; of course, he’s really in the gravy basket and Hornigold is serving as a Jacob Marley-esque psychopomp. They key to Ed realising that he’s really [Buttons voice] ‘down in the old gravy basket’ is the conversation that concludes his attempts to be Jeff the Innkeeper. Hornigold tells Ed that he’s not good with people - after all, he did strangle his father. Ed reacts first with disbelief then cold fury, saying he never told anyone that; Hornigold reminds him that he told one person and Ed flashes back to telling Stede in the bathtub in s1e6; then Hornigold reminds him that the one person he told left him, and we see Ed crying under his Kraken makeup at the end of s1e10. Later, when Ed (finally, even Calico Jack would have had it sooner) realises that Hornigold represents himself, he says that he’s unloveable. Here’s the crux of it - he believes that he is fundamentally unloveable because he killed his father, because he is the Kraken, the monstrous beast capable of lethal violence. That’s why Stede left, his brain is telling him even as he’s dying. 

Then Stede actually proves him wrong by returning, saving him from death, and telling him that he ‘love[s] everything about [him]’ in rapid succession. Whether or not Ed fully accepts this information, we do see him very quickly, yes, melt back into Stede’s arms. Which brings us to s2e6, and Stede’s killing of Ned Low. 

Quick digression into killing and Stede: Stede accidentally kills a man in s1e1, is haunted by his ghost in s1e2. He’s so haunted by dead Nigel that he spends a lot of s1e2 asking first Oluwande and Jim for advice on being a ‘mur-der-er’, and then asking Black Pete how his former employer, Blackbeard (!!!) handled killing. (How Pete says, ‘When Blackbeard kills man, woman, or child-’ lives in my head at all times, Matt Maher with the line deliveries of all time.) Finally in s1e2, during his court-mandated therapy with the tribal elder, Stede admits that he doesn’t feel bad about killing Nigel - he was a horrible person even when he was a child! Stede's guilt is coming from somewhere else. We see this again in s1e9, when Stede says it is time for him to face the consequences for what he’s done - it might seem like he means for killing Nigel, since that’s why he’s about to face the firing squad, but we know that Stede’s guilt is about abandoning his family (the people he’s hurt!). Similarly, when Stede kills Ned in s2e6, he seems to get over it very quickly. Ned is clearly a bad guy, and although the act of killing him was traumatic for Stede (much like the act of killing Nigel), Stede presumably reconciles it by knowing that he was protecting Ed and his crew (and avenging Calypso’s birthday). Stede as a character is shown to have a tremendous amount of natural resilience. We later see him immolate a guy and dispatch a number of British soldiers without hesitation. Stede is also one of the two main protagonists of the show, and his attitude towards killing seems to reflect the attitude of the show itself - killing colonisers and torturers to protect your loved ones is ok, actually. 

(Side note but I found this idea about how zero tolerance policies actually hurt victims very informative on the topic of why it's ok that Stede killed his childhood bully; I got that link from this very interesting post where several people are in conversation about how Ed is not Izzy's abuser.)

Back to Ed in s2e6. He asks Stede not to kill Ned; when Stede does anyway, Ed is visibly saddened and ignores Izzy telling him to give Stede a moment; instead he goes immediately to check in on Stede in his cabin. He knocks on the door and in that soft voice that he only ever uses with Stede, he starts to say, ‘Hey. You okay? Look, I was a wreck after my first kill as well.’ Then he pauses, before rambling, ‘I mean, well, it was my dad, so there's that,’ which feels like a little moment of self-reflection. Like. Yeah. Ed. Baby. You might be super fucked up about the act of killing because the first guy you killed was your dad, when you were a literal child! Also, Ed has never been to (as far as we know) court-mandated tribal elder therapy, so of course his decision to kill his father fucked Ed up for decades! Also as a very clever friend pointed out, we don’t know anything about what the consequences of that were for Ed - how did his mother react, is that why he ran away to sea, etc.

There's another important thing here that the audience knows, but that Ed has never told Stede (or, we have to assume, anyone) which is that the catalyst for Ed becoming the Kraken to kill his father was abuse. The audience is shown through his panic-attack-induced flashback that Ed's father physically and verbally abused his mother and presumably him too. All Ed has ever said to Stede or anyone about it, as far as we know, was his joke to the crew during scary story hour that his dad was a dick. Stede can probably infer roughly why Ed killed his dad, but he doesn't know the details, and he loves everything about Ed anyway, and now Ed knows that Stede does too. 

So Ed and Stede have sex, and as many metas have pointed out (like this one!), it's so meaningful that Ed feels safe enough to give up his Blackbeard/Kraken identity the very next morning. He attempts to get Stede to see that it might be nice to not be pirates anymore due to the high chance of death but Stede manages to completely misread it and laughs it off. (To be fair to Stede, they're both horrible at communicating and Ed is not saying what he wants in any direct manner.) Ed proceeds to have his big beautiful brain start to spiral out of control as Jackie points out how popular Stede is becoming as a pirate; Ed panics, tells Stede he doesn’t even know who he is, and leaves to become a fisherman before he can get left (again!). 

As Ed rows away from his failed career as a fisherman in s2e8, his boss Pop-Pop (who he has managed to recreate a fucked up father-son dynamic with that like so many things in his show is played for laughs but has pretty dark undertones) yells after him, 'If you were ever good at anything, go and do that, you bum.' Ed rows back into the port of the Republic of Pirates and sees the destruction Prince Ricky has wrought upon the pirate community. Ed's first thought is, Stede, and then he imagines Stede calling for help before straight up murdering two British soldiers. He remembers Pop-Pop's words and says, 'Have it your way,' before diving into the sea, retrieving his leather, putting it on underwater, and emerging from the waves fully dressed. It's fantastically hot and the exact level of drama I expect from this man. The Kraken musical cue is playing as it happens. 

We now see Ed murdering British soldiers in the coolest ways possible, demonstrating his skill at fighting in hand to hand combat. One way to read him taking Pop-Pop's advice is that this is what he's good at - killing and violence. 

Editing and cinematography breakdown of the purgatory and mermaid scene in The Innkeeper.

I haven't talked much about editing in all of my previous breakdowns of this season, but I want to start talking about that, and I'm starting with this scene. The whole of 2x3 contains exceptional editing between what is happening in Ed's gravy basket purgatory and the real world.

We start with Stede on the stairs, quiet, only a deep inhale of despair is heard, the heartbreak already evident on his face. He holds up a lamp, one of the only sources of light in the "reality" scenes. Lighthouses and golden lighting in general have been used in both seasons to symbolism the love between Ed and Stede. Stede is literally carrying this light with him, and he sets it down next to Ed's head shining the light onto him. Stede is the one who puts the glow on Ed's face.

The editing then cuts to Ed in Purgatory as he hits the water, a giant light behind him, but he starts to sink away from it, becomes surrounded by water, recalling back to 1x4 when he talks about how he feels like he is just treading. Water shows Ed's mental state: he's expressed in the past that he feels like he's drowning, he wants to stay at sea forever, be the bird who doesn't touch ground, etc.

We end this shot with Ed's bare feet the most visible in the dark blue abyss of the ocean. And in a direct parallel, the next edit is to Stede's feet - which are wrapped in BLUE-dyed fabric, with RED lining - walking into the waterlogged cabin. This immediate cut between their two feet in water shows how Stede is meeting Ed in both worlds. They are together in the water, in the deep blue depth, their connection only picks up from there.

While talking to Hornigold, Ed professed that he didn't think anyone was waiting for him. And he still has that mindset as he starts to sink.

Stede sits quietly down next to Ed, lovingly calls him a nut, and debates about taking the cloth off of Ed's face. We know Stede to be a boisterous man, not afraid to talk, but his voice is quiet here, the sentences short. He covers his face with his hands, hiding and comforting himself. Stede is rendered speechless when he's faced with earth-shattering grief and this all encompassing sorrow tells the audience just how much pain Stede is in.

Stede pulls off the cloth from Ed's face, once again taking a shaky inhale of breath to prepare himself, and the show cuts to Ed's eyes opening in the water as he starts to fight, pulling on the rope tugging him down.

The editing takes us back and forth between Ed struggling with the rope in Purgatory to his fingers and hand twitching as he fights in the real world, all voiced over by Stede's mournful apologies to Ed. When Stede's voice comes through to Ed, it sounds muffled, like it has to travel through a tube to get to him - through the water and Ed's coma-induced brain.

As soon as Stede touches Ed's hand in the real world, squeezing it, Ed stops sinking further into the watery depths, and instead his focus is before him where a large light has appeared. This editing shows how Ed feels Stede's presence, not only his voice but how the touch grounds him, or at least prevents him from further sinking.

Stede's voice changes here, getting louder as he yells at Ed to come back to him. The quiet grief is replaced by twinges of hope, the deep sobs escape in raspy pains of anguish.

The light first appears to Ed in Purgatory when Stede holds his hand, and as Stede starts to hammer on his chest, to try and bring some life into him, the scene cuts to Ed seeing movement in the light as Stede in mermaid form starts to swim closer.

The scene then goes from both POVs to just Ed's. We see the rope come off as he decides to live. We can hear the muffled cries of Stede breaking in from the real world, and we see a sequence of scenes from the first season of Ed and Stede as Ed remembers all of their moments together.

Right when Stede pounds his chest for the last time and says he will never leave again, that's when the mermaid version of him comes into full focus. And we again spend time in just purgatory, in Ed's POV.

Mermaid Stede swims up to Ed and stops right in front of him, not touching, not pulling him to the surface. Instead he just stays there with him, smiling, and letting him know he's there. It is Ed who decides to live, and I think that's an important distinction. Stede doesn't save him, he just exists in Ed’s space, floating in the water, and ushering in light and hope.

The last moments are Ed waking up as Stede cries, their hands gripping onto each other in a symbolic meaning of them choosing each other, Ed choosing life. The last shot is no longer the fantastical purgatory place with bright white lights and blue water that symbolize the all encompassing pressure around Ed. Now it's the real world, where Stede is wearing blue and red, his feet are in water, and his lamp shining the light onto Ed. Their hands are clasped together as Ed takes a large breath of air - coming to life. Reborn not on the seas or water, but the boat that they fell in love with each other on.

We see continued symbolism throughout this scene. The red representing their love, the lamp set next to Ed by Stede and the bright light in the ocean that mermaid Stede brings in, showing the light and hope in Ed's mind now. And the blue colors that Stede wears, and Stede stepping into the water-logged cabin, showing how he is joining Ed in his world. And when Ed chooses life, all of those things are there to greet him but not in the bright fantasy colors of his mind, but rather the muted colors of the real world.

The cinematography of purgatory is lighter in tones. The ocean is dark until Stede brings in the white blinding light, which then surrounds them, turning the water around them to a soft blue. On the other hand, the lighting on the ship is darker. The brown wood of the cabin are just shapes in the background. The only light is from the deep orange lantern glow. The contrast in colors representing the fantasy from reality.

Every single cut in the editing has a purpose. Each action that happens in the real world is immediately reflected in the purgatory mindset. Not a single shot wasted. This scene is beautiful out together in all aspects of the filmmaking.

Those translated covers you hear on TikTok take their lyrics from a Louis Armstrong cover of the original French version sung by Edith Piaf. The English lyrics are beautiful but there are some things lost in translation, which is why I love that they had Izzy sing the original French version while Stede and Ed are making love.

Edith Piaf's version of the song is all about the intensity of love and finding love after a trying time. Her vocals are incredible and bleed all the different emotions she feels while singing. Izzy starts with the English translation of the song, which goes:

But a closer translation to the original French would be:

"Quand il me prend dans ses bras; When he takes me into his arms/ Il me parle l'a tout bas; He speaks to me softly/ Je vois la vie en rose; And I see life through rose-colored glasses."

Obviously this is fine and dandy, but it's the translation of the original French lyrics used later in the episode that really get me. Izzy sings this:

Which translates to this:

"He speaks words of love to me/ They are every day words/ And they do something to me.

"He has entered into my heart/ A bit of happiness/ That I know the cause of.

"It's only him for me/ And me for him, for life/ He told me, he swore to me, for life."

It's that last verse that the English version just wouldn't be able to capture. The translated version of that verse is about angels and love songs and mentions nothing of a vow to love one another for life.

That's what's so special to me about the French version of the song being used in that moment. Edith Piaf sings as a person who has lived through so much pain and suffering (which she definitely did as a French woman living through World War II) and finally finds comfort and peace in the arms of her beloved.

That is ultimately what Ed and Stede are for one another. Safe harbors, calm waters, peaceful days and nights in each other's presence. They bicker and argue and hurt one another, but they always come back together so easily. Stede was hurt and needed reassurance, needed to prove to himself that he wasn't a whim, needed to feel the security of Ed in his arms. And perhaps they shouldn't have gone all the way that night, but they're both impulsive and obsessed with each other and they needed something.

It's that song that lets me know they're gonna be okay. They're intense and impulsive but they compliment each other. They fit together perfectly, and they find comfort in one another no matter what's happened to them in the past. They need their harbors, their anchors, each other. They'd never leave each other behind. They make each other's lives la vie en rose.