#mutany

Previously, I talked about how we initially view Flint mainly through the eyes of the crew in season one and it’s absolutely most applicable in the series premiere. We don’t even get a glimpse of “James” until he collapses inside Miranda’s door at the end of the second episode. Up until then, we are deliberately fed not lies, exactly, but deliberate misdirection. Twice during the first season, we are tossed into the story through the eyes of a newcomer like a cat tossed into a bathtub.

First, we see the story from Silver’s perspective. Granted, we have NO idea what his history is, but as brand new baby viewers, ourselves, (on our first watch, that is, because who the hell stops at a single viewing?) Silver is the perfect cypher to dress up in our own naïveté. So that bathtub that our Silver kitten gets tossed into is INSTANT unrest and a failing captaincy with no real power left, grasping at control like sheafs of paper caught and scattered on the wind. The second time, we see it through Dufresne’s first boarding. Both times, we are wrong about the character of the cat in the tub.

In this first instance, we are meant to doubt Flint’s cunning and even more, we’re meant to doubt his strength. We’re all familiar with the Gregory MaGuire effect (even if you don’t think you are). MaGuire wrote Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Son of a Witch and many more. Basically, he flips well known stories on their heads and repaints the protagonists in slightly less flattering lights, giving deeper, more human motivations to the stories antagonists.

We’re meant to expect that here. Jumping on the Oz example, we’re meant to find that the legendary Flint, casting such long shadows over the story of Treasure Island, is in essence, a little old snake oil salesman behind a curtain.

That’s our setup going into this duel. We’re supposed to think this elaborate facade of smoke and mirrors is finally going to collapse, revealing Flint to be incompetent.

So let’s take a look at the fight Flint “barely” won.

We see him flipping tables in his cabin just prior to the fight. He’s just learned he doesn’t have the votes, due to Vane’s murderous intervention. He’s frustrated because he doesn’t yet have a plan.

I’ve seen speculation about him finding the feather in the wreckage and this proves that he notices every little thing out of place. Sure, Flint is fastidious and detail oriented, but we also, if you recall, saw him carefully placing that feather with the log book in the drawer. It’s a security measure to know if someone comes snooping. So he finds the feather and knows that someone who was onboard the Walrus knows about the page, so he immediately formulates a plan. He’s gonna frame Singleton for the theft of the page. He decides right then.

*edited to add: I’m 100% sure he knows Singleton is NOT the one with the page. It’s likely Singleton can’t read, which Flint would be well aware of, perhaps not just as a member of his crew, but as someone who is challenging him for the captaincy. He knows whoever DID steal the page can read, because they came back to look at the log to read it for context clues. He gets all this from that feather. Flint is openly declaring Singleton to be a thief in front of the whole crew to force the hand of the real thief, hoping the fear of retaliation would press him to more quickly try to move on it or, as Silver does, attempt to get the hell outta Dodge.

So, stepping out on deck, he’s had zero contact with Singleton, which means the blank page is folded up somewhere on his person. At the end of the fight, we see him take the page out of Singleton’s pocket. He doesn’t search him, hoping to find something, he goes right for it.

He wasn’t “losing the fight”, he was allowing Singleton to get in close enough that he could plant the page in his coat pocket while still managing to not die, so stealthily, that the entire crew, watching the fight, wouldn’t see it happen.

Flint wasn’t a weaker fighter than Singleton. We see clearly his technique is far superior from the very first parry, he just needed time to plant the page. I’ve seen a lot of commentary on this fight and no one seems to really get this. It wasn’t just a fight, it was a deliberate misdirect, one choreographed to the audience in Flint’s interaction with Billy.

Flint: “The men think I’m . . .”

Billy: “Too weak?”

Flint: “I was gonna say unlucky.”