#bs 1x07

eleanor guthrie memorial week

In addition to helping Flint understand Silver’s view of the world, I can’t help thinking that Flint and Silver’s conversation about backstories was exactly what Flint needed to hear if he’s ever going to be able to move on from the fight that’s been defining him for the past ten years of his life. It’s exactly what he needed to hear if he’s ever going to try to find some peace.

It would be one thing if Flint were simply being influenced by his past. Everyone is. But it’s more than that for Flint: he’s not just being influenced by his past, he’s being consumed and destroyed by it. It goes back to the Flint/McGraw split—he’s letting “Flint” consume McGraw and it’s destroying his ability to have an actual life in the present. “What does it matter what happened then if we have no life now?” Miranda asked him once upon a time and, in that scene, you can pretty much see Flint’s brain short-circuiting as he tries and fails to comprehend what she’s trying to tell him. “There is no life here!” Miranda insists, and he’s so eaten up by the past that he can’t hear her.

(Gah, that scene with Miranda. I swear, sometimes it feels like that one scene foreshadows every single thing in the rest of the show :DD)

A little while ago I was listening to the Fathoms Deep podcast on episode 2x05, and one of the hosts was saying that the flashback of Flint holding Miranda after Thomas is taken away is the moment that Flint “calcified.” I think I agree—I mean, it’s not as if he hasn’t changed and grown at all since then, because of course he has, but a huge part of him—the part of him that becomes “Captain Flint”—is still stuck in that moment. He hasn’t been able to move past it. Almost his whole life since then has been about that moment. He’s accepted that fact and it’s become normal to him. “You know my story,” he says to Silver. “Thomas, Miranda, all of it. You know the role they played in motivating me to do the things that I’ve done. The things I will do.” That day was the “inciting incident” of his life and everything since then has been propelling him towards what seems to him to be the inevitable concluding battle.

And Silver responds by, basically, repeating what Miranda said. “What does the past matter?” No wonder Flint can’t understand him at first.

Flint: No one’s past is that unremarkable. Silver: Not unremarkable, just without relevance. Some time ago, I absolved myself from the obligation of finding any. No need to account for all my life’s events in the context of a story that somehow defines me.

I think Flint’s brain is probably short-circuiting again :p Because Flint completely understands himself, and the world around him too, in the context of a story.

And also—this whole show, from the ground up, is built upon the concept of stories and storytelling! If I had a penny for every time stories are talked about in Black Sails… “Let me tell you a story about a Spaniard named Vasquez.” Flint’s concern over being perceived as “the villain of this story.” Rogers’ willingness to play the role of villain himself. Flint and Silver as storytellers, able to create and shape reality through the stories they tell. All the comparisons to characters from literature. And on and on and on. The whole show, from the beginning.

For someone, at this pivotal moment, to totally subvert that theme by saying, “No—I don’t hold by that; I don’t conceive of my life in that way; there is no story of my life that permanently shapes me and directs me towards one inevitable destination,” is shocking. Silver is breaking the rules of his own show, here, heh. I know my brain was breaking a little! But then, this is the guy who’s always maintaining that “nothing is inevitable here.”

I’ve seen some complaints about the question of Silver’s backstory being given a non-answer and I can see why that would be unsatisfying… but it seems to me that the non-answer was the answer, and for me that was what made it such a good, refreshing surprise.

But back to Flint. Silver tells him that he doesn’t conceive of his own past as being “important.” He says that he has experienced “horrors” but that he attributes no meaning, coherence, or sense to them. He says that he has no story. And then he says, “You know of me all I can bear to be known. All that is relevant to be known. That is to say, you know my genuine friendship and loyalty. Can that be enough and there still be trust between us?” In other words, Flint knows Silver’s present life and his present self. Can the present be enough for a man who’s spent the last decade trapped in the past?

Silver is the only one of the bunch who never asks Flint to apologize. He never does have to do that, in the end.

And Silver is the only one of the bunch who is successful in “unmaking” Flint. It’s for a few reasons—and it goes without saying that the reunion with Thomas is the key—but I really think this is one of the factors in play. Out of all the people who plan to be “the end” of Flint, Silver is the only one whose plan doesn’t require Flint to roll over and declare that England was right to do what it did to him. He’s the only one whose plan doesn’t hinge upon Flint capitulating to the thing he’s been fighting against all these years.

The conflict is baked into the premise. Silver already said it, didn’t he? “Wouldn’t you trade it all to have Thomas Hamilton back again?” It seems obvious that he would—Thomas’ loss is what set him on this path in the first place—but… would he? Could he?

Eleanor couldn’t, as she talks says later in the episode. Max was literally down on her knees, begging Eleanor to run away with her, and Eleanor wanted to say yes—was picturing herself saying yes—and instead she chose Nassau. She chose her lifelong struggle to make Nassau a better place. (I rewatched that episode a couple of months ago, watched Flint watching Max and Eleanor, and I had the vague sense that Flint himself might have to make a similar choice one day. As if he’s standing there, unknowingly watching his own future. Little did I know… )

Max couldn’t do it either, when it came down to a choice between Nassau and a life with Anne. After everything she sacrificed for her own place in Nassau, Max couldn’t bring herself to jeopardize it for anything, even that.

And the entire existence of his “Captain Flint” persona is built around Nassau and his fight for it. The war is the reason “Captain Flint” currently exists and “James McGraw” doesn’t. Just like Eleanor and Max, he’s put every part of himself into this struggle. Into this island. “That fucking island,” says Anne. “Makes you do shit you don’t wanna do. How is it we haven’t figured that out by now? What the hell are we doing back here, Jack?” Who is “Captain Flint” without this war? For the last ten years—or is it closer to eleven, now?—it’s been his whole world. Could he separate himself from it even if he desperately wanted to?

With Thomas quote unquote “safely” dead, Flint didn’t have to think about it. Much. Except, for instance, when Miranda brought it up in 1x07: “What does it matter what happened then if we have no life now? There is no life here. There is no joy here. There is no love here… If he were here, he’d agree with me!” (If he were here… ahahahaha omg. This was always the plan. I can’t.) And the very idea that Thomas could disapprove of his actions sent Flint off to pretty much drink himself into a miserable, self-doubting stupor. And yet he didn’t stop. He didn’t give up. He didn’t change course. Of course he didn’t, because no matter what Miranda said, Thomas wasn’t really there in that moment, and Flint didn’t have to truly address it.

So of course the next logical step is to (it looks like???) bring Thomas back into play as a living human being with his own motivations and desires and agency. Talk about upping the stakes.

It’s like Jack and Blackbeard discussing what Vane would have thought of their conflict with Eleanor. It’s one thing to make the claim that you’re carrying out an action in the name of a dead man. It’s another thing altogether to grapple with that person’s own perspective on the matter. “There are moments… I wonder if I will ever be able to truly rest again until I know that Eleanor Guthrie has paid for what she took from me. And then there are other moments when I wonder if it would actually please him to see her dead… I wonder if he were here now, watching us battle with the choice to kill her in his name or defeat the governor and perhaps therein win the war we all together started, if he might call us fools.”

Flint is thinking about similar things with regards to Thomas: “I think if he knew how close we were to the victory he gave his life to achieve, he wouldn’t want me to [abandon the war].” “That wasn’t really what I asked, was it?” responds Silver. Because if Thomas is alive, that’s not going to be the issue anymore. The issue is going to be so much more complicated than that.

Trading “one irreplaceable thing for another,” Silver says…

Thomas was irreplaceable for James McGraw. But the war, the fight for Nassau, is irreplaceable for Captain Flint. So who is he going to be, in the end? Flint or McGraw?

In 2x05, Miranda says, “There is no other way [than peace] to achieve what you want to achieve… once you're willing to tell the truth about your intentions here. You say you fight for the sake of Nassau, for the sake of your men, for the sake of Thomas and his memory. But the truth of the matter is, it isn't for any of those things… I think you’re fighting for the sake of fighting. Because it's the only state in which you can function, the only way to keep that voice in your head from driving you mad. The one telling you to be ashamed of yourself for having loved him.”

She needs him to acknowledge what she views as his true motivations: and of course it all comes down to shame. That’s one of the biggest themes of the show and it always has been. And again, with Thomas “safely” dead, Flint doesn’t have to deal with it—can’t deal with it—is prevented from dealing with it—in any other way than just continuing the fight. Continuing on in the same holding pattern he’s been stuck in for the last decade.

When it comes down to it, as far as I can see, the writers could have let things stand or they could have forced him to deal with the issue. The only ways to force him to deal with the issue were (a) by having him fall in love with another man or (b) by bringing Thomas back into the story. I had been assuming that (a) might happen because I thought (b) was too unlikely. Shows what I know. But the trouble is that there aren’t really any other options that can address Flint’s issues as well as Thomas himself would. In the “Are you going to choose to live happily ever after with this guy or are you going to continue dashing yourself on the rocks of your unwinnable war with the entire British Empire over this island?” stakes, Thomas himself is the ultimate test case, really… it needs to be somebody we know Flint has a real chance of living a peaceful life with in the long term, should he allow himself that.

“You were told that it was shameful,” says Miranda, “and part of you believed it. Thomas was my husband. I loved him and he loved me. But what he shared with you? It was entirely something else. It's time you allowed yourself to accept that.”

Accepting that means that he’d have no need for the constant violence that he’s been using to drown out the voices of his own inner demons. Can he do that? Can he put aside his own inner shame over the idea of loving Thomas and being with him? Can he put aside his war, and go live a peaceful life somewhere? Can he let “Captain Flint,” and Captain Flint’s war, go?

I don’t know. As I say, similar choices have been difficult for other characters.