Blue heron & waves

MYCOFFEE BLACK

AND MY

BED.

AT THREE

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guys i think this might be The Thing that broke the show?

BECAUSE OMG THEY THINK ED KILLED BUTTONS hey remember in s1 when karl the seagull was killed and there was an INSTANT mood shift?

suddenly, after all the slapstick funny pirate shenanigans, the crew had lost a member('s pet).

and there was this TENSION and You Need To Leave Now Mister Calico Jack. it was one of the big 'oh! these people care about each other' moments, and also one of the big 'stede cares about these people!' moments, when we actually saw him behaving like a CAPTAIN for the first time. he takes charge. he recognizes how serious this is. he makes the guy who killed Karl leave. it's one of the best scenes in the show.

AND NOW THE CREW THINKS ED KILLED BUTTONS.

BUTTONS!

THEIR ACTUAL HUMAN CREW MATE.

ED'S BEEN TRYING TO KILL THEM FOR MONTHS AND NOW. NOW HE HAS. BUTTONS IS DEAD.

the INSTANT ed stepped back onto that ship with stede and informed them that buttons turned into a bird and flew away it was so cool guys :), Jim should have jumped on him and stabbed him 70 times.

they make this whole huge deal out of 'here's this group of shellshocked people who just narrowly survived ed's abuse and all-but-murdered him in revenge'. how could their reaction to his FINALLY SUCCESSFULLY KILLING A CREW MATE be anything less than brutal?

and instead, they're just kinda..... annoyed. not happy about it. lucius flips him off. meh.

it's a really bad mistake, writing-wise, because it makes it feel like these people don't care much about each other. is it surprising they don't really mourn izzy when they didn't really mourn buttons?

That episode feels like it was fundamentally confused about what it wanted to do or say.

They open with a long (why was it so long?) sequence that positions Edward running away to be a fisherman as the dumbest thing he's ever done in his life. Not for BlackBonnet reasons, either. Like he's explicitly a moron because he has no fucking idea what he's doing or how to live this impulsive normal guy life.

(It's not even really that funny once they start doing the "Pop Pop" dinner scene tbh - it's kind of uncomfortable.)

He gets sent back to the Republic to reclaim being Blackbeard, and idk if the episode itself even knows if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Like the "welp, the one thing I'm good at is murder" vibe in his little rowboat and the Kraken rising out the waves feel bad, but reuniting with Stede and then proceeding to brag about and compliment murder techniques with Zheng is... not that.

And then his (passably) happy ending is... retiring with Stede into a different fantasy impulsive normal guy life that he has no fucking idea what he's doing in. Only that's good this time? Or obviously a monumental fuckup setting up S3 but we're supposed to pretend it's good since we don't want the season ending on a sad note?

We get Izzy making a great speech on how piracy is belonging to a found family of outcasts, and then his dying speech to Edward is about how he encouraged a "darkness" in him to keep him in piracy with Izzy. Izzy's dying sentiment to Edward is that Izzy is not his only family, he's surrounded by a crew who loves him (unclear when that happened), and then Edward moves into an abandoned shack with his boyfriend and Izzy's grave out front while the crew sails away into the sunset very much not surrounding Edward with love.

Stede is seeking pirate validation all episode but also he's done with piracy in the last scene - again: happy ending or disaster we're pretending to be happy about if they cancel? Wow isn't it funny how the realistic hardships of this BlackBonnet ending (moving into a shack together with nothing but unaddressed trauma baggage) will become funny obstacles because muppet logic. Don't think to hard about the guy who died from an accidental bullet to the side with no important organs because this is a pirate story and we needed to symbolically kill piracy in the episode about the pirates surviving to symbolically carry on the inherent goodness of piracy.

Like fuck I am SO confused and not even in a "time to rewatch and suss out the themes way."

It's that the ending was so rushed it felt like none of the characters cared.

There was more shock and sadness and mourning shown for Karl's death than there was for Izzy's. We got a deathbed scene. Cut to funeral. Cut to wedding, sailing off into the sunset, and starting an inn.

Immediately. No pause. No reflection. No shot of Fang needing to be comforted or Lucius picking up his wooden shark or Jim being held by Archie and Olu or Frenchie staring steadfastly at the horizon while he boxes this up in his mind. No Ed, absently asking Izzy to do something and then remembering.

There was just no reaction. That's what's so devastating.

And yes, time constraints, limited budget, packing a hell of a lot into barely any screentime, all of that. But they could have done it. They could have shaved 30s off from Ed's foray into fishing. They could have skimmed seconds from other scenes.

And then Ed's like, "yeah actually it is. wait. Hang on. It's on the left. He was shot on the left! He's gonna be fine! Guys he was shot on the left there's nothing important in there, he's gonna be ok!!!!"

And that way we get all the same emotional bits, but then they doubly tie it back to season one; both with Ed retiring and Izzy being the new captain, just like was discussed, AND a re-feature of the whole empty-left-side thing.

THAT would have been good.