Stede tied this man up and he was very deeply abnormal about it. Stockholm syndrome speed run.

Doug was way too quick to forgive whatever this was. Poster boy for being weirdly into it

I have the least amount of evidence for him but you know

“I’m the Kraken,” means something like “I’ve had to kill before and that scares me.”

“I am still Blackbeard,” means “I am still worthy of respect.”

“Do you wanna do something weird?” means “I think I can be myself with you.”

“We didn’t come all this way to not dig something up,” means “I’m in love with you.”

“Never left,” means “I’m in love with you.”

“Yeah. I know I don’t,” means “I’m in love with you.”

“What makes Ed happy is you” means two things. It means “I love you.”

I don’t think I can possibly pick a favorite costume from OFMD, but when it comes to visual storytelling, I deeply love the white outfit. That stupid fucking white fit gets to blaze through so many layers of joke/symbolism/subtext in its brief one (1) episode lifespan.

It starts out as a sight gag. We see this rough, grubby environment where people are vomiting blood and getting in fights in the mud and then we see Stede and Lucius step off the ship in these pristine white outfits. (Stede has even dressed his hostage to match!) And you’re just waiting for the payoff. Which we get immediately with Lucius getting some dude’s bloody hands smeared all over his jacket, which is funny and also a sort of visual foreshadowing of what will happen to Stede at the end of the episode, although we don’t know it yet.

So at first the white outfit is a joke waiting to happen. It’s a symbol of how out of touch with the rules of the pirate world Stede is, insulated as he has been by his privilege (both his wealth and his literal whiteness). And they keep the gag going by having two people in white outfits that Stede chose, and having Stede repeatedly dodge the payoff. Lucius gets the bloody handprints on his jacket; Lucius is the one who gets splattered with what we think is wine but find out is blood, again (foreshadowing #2).

So there’s this running joke of Stede being able to sidestep the negative consequences of a bad decision, at least for himself. And this continues with Stede being (delightfully) rude to Izzy, out of obliviousness. And not only does Stede not get immediately stabbed for it, but Geraldo overhearing this conversation is what gets Stede out of his involuntary nose job with Jackie! And all of this serves to make the payoff of Stede very much not being able to avoid the consequences of his naivete at the end of the episode work even better.

Me seeing any form of Stede & Edward

like I’m obsessed with it

they dress up in each other’s clothes and pretend to be the other, and teach each other to sword fight, and play act. these two middle-aged men who people expect this serious and/or evil facade from

and it’s just two people who have killed themselves trying to be what other people expected them to be, being young together. and finding joy and love in their lives at an age most people have given up making any major changes to their lives

Look. Look at this.

Stede, by and large, is not a Toucher. (That’s a whole separate essay.) He’s hesitant as fuck about it, and tends to initiate contact, if at all, through some intermediary: clothing, air, etc. Later, with Ed, he’ll do incidental touches, little things that could be explained away like the brush of arms together, etc.

(THIS IS NOT THAT ESSAY.)

But look at this shit. “May I?” Stede asks, and he gives it a moment but Ed doesn’t actually hand it over. He doesn’t even answer.

And Stede just reaches out, takes an end of the silk, and

slowly

drags it

through Ed’s fingers as Ed fucking tilts his eyes upwards in complete silence, his gaze clicking from spot to spot as his heart gets unwound from his lax – but not relaxed – grip.

And while I like the meta where Stede has NO FUCKING CLUE ABOUT HOW SEDUCTIVE HE’S BEING, I also like the idea that for the first time in his life, because this is a Queer Situation, Stede has the glimmerings of Game. Because, my god, the forwardness of it. He didn’t wait for Ed to give it to him. He just reached out and took, but in such a syrup-slow manner that Ed could’ve said no, could’ve just tightened his fingers if he didn’t want to let Stede take this precious thing– and Stede’s giving him that time while simultaneously also making some pretty great allusions, intentional or not, to how exactly he’d make his move, if a move he ever made.

Like, “May I?“ Stede would ask, and Ed (Blackbeard) wouldn’t move, wouldn’t say a word, but he wouldn’t step away either, would just watch Stede with a clicking gaze as Stede stepped forward, raised his hands, and drew Ed syrup-slow toward him, every moment one where Ed could turn away and every moment clear that Stede was here, wanting this, wanting him, and deliberate in his want.

So my god, the pure queer seduction of this scene: the intermediary object as a stand-in for themselves; the plausible deniability; the silent consent (a subgenre of plausible deniability); coded language; “innocent” touch as protective camouflage…

(It’s a little distressing to consider how much queer romantic context comes from trying to be both Open to a possibility while simultaneously trying not to get the shit beaten out of us for being wrong. It’s a powerful language. It’s a tragic one. It’s what makes it feel so special if it goes right.)

Anyway. Stede may have no idea the levels he’s playing at here, but he’s a man who was explicitly and in canon abused for displaying a particular flavor of non-masculine behavior. Even if he doesn’t know he’s queer, he knows the need for the language of safety; he’s been learning it since childhood. So he speaks it– and Ed, who engages in at least “when at sea” levels of queer living, picks up on it like the Stede-radio he’s been tuning for ages now to find a signal that explains him has suddenly gone from static to the crystal-clear notes of Gnossienne No. 5.

Is it any wonder that Ed’s oh no moment is fucking palpable here? Is it any wonder that Stede comes away from this scene a little more certain of himself around Ed, able to argue him into staying, pull him into a treasure hunt, touch his bare arm against Ed’s when they become co-captains?

Ok, by popular Twitter demand here is my extremely nerdy write up on breathing and breathwork in Our Flag Means Death, specifically looking at Ed and Stede’s “Your Wear Fine Things Well” scene. I’m a professional theater person and coming at this from a live performance lens, and this is film/TV acting, so take some of this with a grain of salt, but most of our best actors come from a theater background (I know Taika studied theater in college ). So fuck in, let’s dive in and overanalyze the hell of out something. 

what Ed struggles with is the ability to find a landing zone where he can stop code switching. sure, Ed is a social chameleon and changes things up depending on who he's with, but this is a common strategy for people of color in survival mode - managing expectations, experiences, and presentation are essential for not just surviving but thriving in a white world, and that's what we see with Ed -

he's Blackbeard the charismatic celebrity pirate when he first meets the crew because he's putting on the job. he's Jeff the Accountant when he's trying out finer things and high society. he's Blackie with Calico Jack, his oldest living tie to the past, a man who went through hell with him in their youth and a man who clearly thrives on high adrenaline high aggression masculinity. at the end of season 1, he's the Kraken for Izzy, pouring on the danger to keep a known liability at bay (Izzy has betrayed him twice, now. Izzy is a liability) and this isn't a sign of fractured identity, this is a sign of a man who has never been able to show all of himself to anyone and be accepted, and a man who knows he must be in community with others to survive.

no pirate stands alone. you're in a crew, you're a captain, you're a first mate, you're something to someone at all times. Ed can't be on his own if he wants to survive as a pirate, which is all he knows, but he also can't find peace as a pirate, because he isn't known. its not that he doesn't know who he is. he's all of these identities.

it's that it isn't until he meets Stede that he finds a place where he can show all of himself. That's why they bond so closely - they're able to connect because they have common interests. Because Stede isn't scared of Ed, and when he learns more about him he's curious, he asks questions, he shares. Ed is able to relax and share more of himself, to the point that when he panics, he shares too much. He gets nervous. That's why he wants to leave in episode 7 - he has shown too much and they haven't talked about and Ed hasn't been that vulnerable with anyone in a long time.

But then Lucius helps him see that Stede likes him, that Stede is doing this whole outing for him, that everything is good, and he's settled again. And then in episode 8, he's nervous again, because he codeswitched to hang out with Calico Jack, to enjoy some of the old bygone times, and without the context of the conversation Stede and Calico Jack had and the context of Stede's background, he's left to assume that Stede has seen that Ed isn't classy and doesn't like him anymore. So he backs off.

But he comes back, and knowing himself and what he wants is why Ed can walk away from his whole life to be with Stede. Because he knows himself and what he wants. He starts the season knowing himself and what he wants and how he feels - Ed's arc in the first season is not about finding himself but about opening up, settling into his skin, and understanding where he wants to go next. Stede's arc is coming to terms with what he's done, and then finally gaining base knowledge of himself. Stede and Ed are on totally different levels throughout the season, because Ed knows who he is. He just doesn't know how to navigate to where and who he wants to be next.

So all of this said? At the end of the finale, Ed loses sight of who he is. He regresses and falls back because it's easier to be feared than laughed at, and because Stede has broken his heart and Izzy has made it clear that no one will ever stand by all of him, so he might as well be the self that still has people.

But Stede didn't reject Ed. Stede ran for his own reasons. Which means when he comes back to Ed, when he fights his way back to Ed, he's not going to be all, oh darling I can help you sort out your identity. He'll be like oh my fearsome darling, you really are beautiful as he looks at Ed's frankly terrifying visage (or exhausted visage, who knows how long it will have been since this man took a nap) and he's going to be fully accepting of who Ed is. Because Stede knows and loves Ed for who he is. He's seen him violent. He's seen him aggressive. He's seen him vulnerable, soft, sweet, sorrowful, overjoyed. He knows Ed.

Gnossienne No. 5, composed by Erik Satie in 1889, is Ed and Stede’s theme. It’s played at each of their important moments throughout Our Flag Means Death. When you listen to the piece in full, it’s like someone keeps starting the piece and messing up a little so they start all over again, and each scene experiments with a different instrument during a different segment of the piece, like flute or harpsichord. It remains tentative but each time it’s a little more hopeful, a little more determined, a little more wistful. Ed and Stede are revealing little bits of themselves to each other, checking in and reaching out towards each other’s vulnerabilities and offering safety, exploring what they mean to each other. But the base notes, their connection and chemistry, always stay a steady anchor. The whole piece is a bit sloppy and giddy and all over the place yet always comes back to the same notes and the same progression. They can’t quite place their finger on what's happening so the music can’t resolve in a satisfying way, but each time it becomes clearer and more complete until the end of the song which is played during the scene where they kiss and they’ve finally figured out how to play all the notes and it’s beautiful. It’s like this culmination of everything the performer has been trying to communicate and finally gets right- but it’s still cut a bit short.

I've talked before about how often the show is in conversation with creative works that signal shifts towards modernism, which is apt for a show that famously and hilariously plays with time periods and shifting 1717 up with anachronistic modernisms. It's true in its references to literature and painting, and it's true of music as well. Satie was experimental for his time, taking inspiration from impressionist painters like Monet who endeavoured to create reflections of the ordinary and the real that were non-static and moving, in both senses of the word. He's sometimes described as the spiritual father of minimalism, whose compositions @unadulteratedkr calls "subversive in its relative simplicity." While giving me some context for Satie, she told me that while his notations indicate that performers should leave room for poetry in their expressions of the music, he insisted the tempo remain modéré, meant at the tempo of the human heart. The bohemian was a truly hopeless romantic who proposed to the painter Suzanne Valadon on their very first night together. He wrote her songs and she painted his portraits, and when she left him after 5 months, he was so devastated that he wrote of being left with “nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness.” She was supposedly his only ever known love affair.