Our Flag Means Death recaps: It’s Calypso’s birthday, and romance is in the air

From the moment Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach met, they’ve been on opposite paths—Stede hungry to make a name for himself as a fearsome pirate, and the already infamous Blackbeard looking for a way out of the freebooting life. That they met at the beginning of their respective journeys—and immediately fell for each other—established their star-crossed dynamic from the word go.

Now, in the back third of season two, Stede has finally achieved his goal: After offing big-name pirate Ned Low, he becomes a celebrity in the Republic of Pirates, returning as an honored guest to the bar where he was last bussing tables. It’s a steady, propulsive arc for the Gentleman Pirate that David Jenkins & Co. paced out beautifully.

Then there’s Blackbeard. His journey was always going to be trickier to dramatize, considering his is an inward one while Stede’s is all outward action. And unfortunately, existential struggle doesn’t always make for compelling television. In the aftermath of he and Stede finally doing the deed at the end of episode seven (and, can I just say on behalf of all of us, yay!), Ed returned to the same wistful brooding that’s been his MO ever since he came back from the dead four episodes ago. And though Taika Waititi does a hell of a job conveying his character’s inner turmoil, it brings his arc to something of a standstill.

But first, we’ve got a new villain to meet. It’s a dark, cloudy night on the coast, and a man is strung from his ankles in the lantern room of a lighthouse. He’s the captive of Ned Low, a well-heeled, sadistic pirate played by Bronson Pinchot (quite the heel turn for Balki Bartokomous!). Like Stede, Low is an aesthete; he’s a violinist who never made it in the music world and has found a new passion in appreciating the tunefulness of a well-pitched scream of pain. He’s grilling—literally, with a hot poker—the lighthouse keeper for information on the whereabouts of Blackbeard, whom he’s hellbent on murdering for the crime of beating out Low’s legacy for most pirate raids.

The crew of the Revenge are blithely unaware of the shitstorm that’s coming. Ed and Stede are continuing to play out their slow-mo romance as Stede surprises his boo by stockpiling all his accumulated treasure in one room. “Ah, a reminder of all my guilt. A guilt room,” Blackbeard mutters. But Stede is all sunshine, suggesting that Ed gives away his wealth, turning “poison into positivity.”

GRADE FOR SEASON 2, EPISODE 7, “MAN ON FIRE”: B-

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Elsewhere below decks, the crew is discussing how things have grown a little dull aboard the ship ever since everyone self-actualized. That’s when Frenchie delivers the good news: It’s Calypso’s birthday, a high holy day in which pirates celebrate the sea goddess with an all-out rager. Archie guesses it’s a holiday they made up so they could throw a party, and she’s absolutely correct. But, hey, isn’t that all holidays? Stede suggests Ed use his booty to fund the celebration, and the gang heads to the nearest island to pick up party supplies.

Ned Low isn’t the only one who wants to take revenge on the Revenge. Last seen getting his nose hacked off by Spanish Jackie, Prince Ricky Banes (and his fancy prosthetic schnoz) has joined the Royal Navy, determined to wipe out modern piracy. (Talk about a sore loser.) He finds an unlikely ally in Zheng Yi Sao (so glad you’re back, girl!), who has a proposition for Ricky: He could essentially put an end to all the raiding by convincing the British crown to pay all pirates a living wage so they’ll “stop stealing all your shit.” The rest of the corsairs trawling the seas are adult children out to sew chaos; Zheng is here to get shit done.

The party is in full swing on the deck of the Revenge, and it looks so freakin’ fun. The gang has strung multicolored lanterns across the rigging, and they’re decked out to the nines. But no one’s lewk holds a candle to Wee John’s, because he’s decked himself out in full, fabulous drag as Calypso herself—and he looks incredible. “Raise your motherfucking glasses,” he declares, “or feel my absolute wrath.” Honestly, forget Stede or Blackbeard—Wee John is the captain now.

But he’s not even the most delightful entertainment of the night. That would be Izzy Hands, wearing drag makeup, his hair slicked back in a high pompadour, singing—yes—“La Vie En Rose” while Frenchie accompanies him on the loot. Con O’Neill’s voice is soft and lovely—no surprise, considering he’s a Tony-nominated musical theater actor. (Sure, Louiguy and Édith Piaf didn’t write the iconic torch song until 1945; but Our Flag was designed to delight in anachronisms.) The crew slow-dances to Izzy’s croon as Stede and Ed share a fond moment, but the mood is killed dead when cannonballs begin raining down on the deck.

“Ned Low. Fucking perfect,” Blackbeard grouses as Ned makes his dramatic entrance, fiddle and bow in hand. And, man, is anything more embarrassing than when your nemesis doesn’t nemesis you back? Ned has a private parlay with a trussed-up Ed and Stede belowdecks. They’re adorably protective of each other as the other captain hurls insults and stabs in the chests them with his beloved hot poker. “You torture like a bitch,” Ed says, in an effort to prove he’s still anything remotely resembling a badass.

In case you didn’t notice, two of the crew are notably MIA. That would be our freshly affianced Lucius and Black Pete, who have been locked in their quarters engaging in “24 hours of freaky, uninterrupted love.” When they hear the screams from above, they realize the ship is under attack, and it’s up to them to save their shipmates—which, good luck with that, guys!

The torture is manifold up on the deck—Blackbeard having his limbs stretched on a makeshift rack; Stede getting his wound poked; and poor, sweet Oluwande’s head being squeezed tight in a vice. It’s time for the Gentleman Pirate to engage his superpower: empathy and charm. Immediately clocking that Ned is a terrible boss and his whole crew hates him, Stede appeals to Hellkat Maggie (a wonderfully dry Josie Whittlesey), who tells her captain that they’re all “demoralized by your constant fucking criticism.” “You’re mercenaries. You don’t have feelings!” he shoots back, to which Maggie replies, “How about you stop telling me who I am?”

Lucius and Pete burst onto the scene carrying a ludicrous amount of swords, but Blackbeard assures them that Stede’s got this—Ned’s crew has already turned on him. They leave with hearty thanks, and Maggie proudly announces that going forward, the crew will be profit sharing. Three cheers for pirate labor unions and unions in general!

Which leaves Ned alone aboard the Revenge, ready for Blackbeard to kill him; but that’s not his bag anymore. It is, however, Stede’s; and after Ned insults his true love, he orders him to walk the plank. Ed warns him that there’s no coming back from killing in cold blood, but Stede is finally ready to level up. Flashbacks to the horrors he witnessed in his childhood playing behind his eyes, the captain picks up Ned’s fancy white fiddle and hurls it at his head, knocking him into the drink. It’s simultaneously a moment of triumph and tragedy, and Stede retires to his quarters, Blackbeard following close behind.

He’s ready to deal with a stricken Stede, but instead he gets a horned-up Stede. Taking things slow be damned, the Gentlemen Pirate shoves Ed against a wall and kisses him soundly. Stede pulls the curtain closed as Ed stretches out on the bed, while on the deck, Izzy resumes singing “La Vie en Rose” and, in an unexpected homage to Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief, Roach sets off fireworks into the night sky. It’s Calypso’s birthday, and romance is in the air.

The next episode, “Man On Fire,” begins the morning after—and the first order of business is for Ed to engage in some heavy-handed symbolism. Dressed in a loose robe and looking serene, he ties up his iconic Road Warrior duds in a fishing net with a cannonball and drowns them full fathom five.

Then it’s time for cuteness as he surprises a shirtless Stede with breakfast in bed, complete with marmalade, half-eaten toast, and a piece of twine “to add flourish.” Stede is, of course, smitten, and Ed takes the opportunity to spill about his brink-of-death merman vision. “How’d I look?” “Fantastic.” Izzy bursts in, grinning from ear to ear, to announce that they’ve docked at the Republic of Pirates, giving him the opportunity to deliver the line of the year: “It’s good to see that it’s not just the ship that has been well and truly…docked.”

The Revenge isn’t the only ship that’s made landfall, because Zheng is in town to do some serious recruiting. She and Auntie also find an odd gift from Ricky in her stateroom—an elaborate grandfather clock that is so not her style. He’s given one to every ship in her fleet, in fact; and I don’t think a ruse to plant a whole bunch of time bombs could be more clearly telegraphed. This is the first of several stumbles in “Man On Fire.” Zheng and Auntie are way too smart to fall for Ricky’s half-assed ploy, but the plot dictates that they’re too blinkered to figure it out.

In town, Zheng is immediately spotted by the Jim-Oluwande-Archie polycule. Olu is terrified to talk to his crush after abandoning her to return to the Revenge, but Jim and Archie are already playing wingmen, calling out to the Pirate Queen. When Olu gives her a feeble wave, she slinks away. These cuties!

Farther inland, Stede and Ed are sharing an afterglow brunch at a chill little fish shack, the former giving full romance-novel-cover in a billowy black shirt, the latter dressed in loose pauper’s rags. Their meal—and their tender flirting—is quickly interrupted by the arrival of three tough-looking brigands. Blackbeard assumes they’re his fans, but they’re actually here to meet the BAMF who iced Ned Low. Proud of his man, Ed suggests they head over to Spanish Jackie’s so Stede can soak up his newfound fame.

Stede and his crew are hailed as heroes the moment they roll up at the bar—including by Jackie herself. Turns out everyone really hated the shit out Ned Low! And, thank god, the Swede is here! And he’s positively thriving, slinging his signature cocktail that’s “sweet and spicy, just like my wife.” Lucius speaks for all of us when he remarks how hot their former shipmate has become. Jackie and Blackbeard share a drink as they watch Stede from across the bar, positively glowing among a mob of admirers. When Jackie asks why Ed is dressed “like a dirty-ass orphan,” he admits that he’s considering giving up the pirate life. And Jackie, as is her wont, says the quiet part loud: “Does he know that? Because your boy just became the motherfucking man.”

While poor Olu pines at the bar, Jim and Archie are off pleading his case to Zheng. Jim says he came along because the pair of them are like family, to which Archie adds: “Family who fucked.” Zheng agrees to talk to Olu, and the two meet in a romantic corner later that evening. She accepts his apology, and the two tentatively hold hands like nervous freshmen at a homecoming dance.

As one couple comes together, another falls apart. After sticking a pole in the water for about ten seconds with Fang a few episodes back, Ed decides he’s going to quit the pirating life and go work on a fishing boat. Stede is, understandably, shocked; but his almost-boyfriend says that they failed to take it slow, and last night was a mistake. Ouch. As he walks away, Stede calls him a coward.

And look—is this decision in keeping with what we know of Blackbeard as a character? Of course. In accusing Stede of making their relationship move too fast, he’s ironically racing full-tilt into a whole other situation, too scared to lose a good thing and too disillusioned to stay on the Revenge. But it’s a beat we’ve seen from Ed before, and it doesn’t hit with the impact the writers intended. It’s a classic trap for a series centered on a will-they-won’t-they to fall into: Once they do, the show doesn’t know what to do with them, so they break them up. Since there’s only one more episode left in the season, I assume this decision will get reversed quickly; but at least for now, the pacing here feels both too fast and too slow.

A heartbroken Stede returns to Spanish Jackie’s to bask in his newfound posse’s compliments and make terrible decisions. It’s Izzy (proving once more how much he’s grown this season) who offers him words of comfort. They’ve both loved Blackbeard for a long time, but he’s a complicated man. “For the record,” the former first mate says, “I think you’re good for him. You balance each other out.”

But Stede isn’t in a place to hear it; he’s in a place to stir shit up. He spies Olu, Jim, and Archie chatting with Zheng across the room and accuses her of trying to poach his crew. The trio tell him they’re decamping to the Red Flag of their own volition, which of course only makes Stede sadder—and stupider. Like a fool, he draws his sword on Zheng after she kills his new beefcake bestie (named, hilariously, Steak Knife) and calls Ed a serial killer—which, unfortunately, is kind of accurate.

Stede’s lucky his infinitely more skillful opponent toys with him instead of killing him outright—though she practically does murder him with this devastating line: “I’ve killed mediocre men. I’ve killed exceptional men. But you’re the worst kind: a mediocre man who thinks he’s exceptional.”

Just as Zheng is about to bash him over the head with a plank, that grandfather clock on the Red Flag ticks up to midnight, and the thing we all knew was going to happen happens: Her entire fleet, docked offshore, explodes like it’s the Battle of Blackwater Bay as she looks on in horror. I really hope we get to see her waste Ricky next week.

Stray observations

• Historical Trivia Corner:
  1.) Ned Low was a real pirate who operated a few years later than Blackbeard and Bonnet. He was a petty thief in London before he moved to Boston, working on a ship bound for Honduras, where he led a failed mutiny. Low turned to a life of piracy, declaring that he would “make a black flag and declare war against all the world.” As far as I can find, there’s no record of him being a violinist; but he was indeed notorious for the gruesome torture he enacted against his victims.
  2.) Hellkat Maggie (a.k.a. Hell-Cat Maggie) was also a real person; but not only did she live a century after the events of the show—she wasn’t even a pirate. She was, however, an infamous criminal who was a member of the Dead Rabbits, a notorious street gang in New York City’s Five Points neighborhood. But like her portrayal in Our Flag, she did file her teeth to sharp points. Cara Seymour played Maggie in Scorsese’s Gangs Of New York, which centers on the Dead Rabbits.
  3.) As you might have guessed from the fact that “getting Calypso’d” is a classic pirate prank in the world of the show, Calypso wasn’t actually the goddess of the sea. She’s a figure from Greek myth—a nymph who, in The Odyssey, trapped Odysseus on an island for seven years. Calypso’s association with pirate lore probably comes from the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise, in which she was an ocean goddess (played by Naomi Harris) who fell in love with the mortal sailor Davy Jones.
• Needle drops: The only major one in these two episodes (aside from, of course, Izzy’s legendary “La Vie En Rose” rendition) is Harry Mosco and the Funkees’ 1978 funk track “Wasting My Time.”
• Archie goes full Tormund Giantsbane when she regales the crew with a tall tale about the time she was swallowed by a snake, saving herself by “stabbing the fucker” and crawling free. It was, of course, a surprise from her old crew in honor of her birthday.
• Blackbeard tries his hand at Robin Hooding by giving a pair of wide-eyed street urchins 50,000 doubloons and a pair of wicked knives. Not the best idea, sure, but our boy means well. Those kids, by the way? They’re Waititi’s real-life daughter and son, Te Hinekāhu and Matewa Kiritapu. Matewa also had a cameo in Thor: Love And Thunder, which Waititi directed and co-wrote.
• Perhaps the reason why Wee John is so instantly fabulous as Calypso is because Kristian Nairn dabbled in drag early in his career under the moniker Revvlon.
• This exchange between Pete and Lucius is couple goals:
  “We really have to, like, do something.”
  “Maybe we just, like, tell their stories. And in some ways, isn’t that the best revenge?”
  “But we’re not really at the revenge step. We’re in the, like, pre-revenge window.”
• Stede gets a fantastic Indiana Jones moment when an extremely dramatic pirate in a floppy hat calls him out to fight and breaks a bottle of rum over his head. Not missing a beat, the good captain flicks the stogie he’s smoking directly at the his challenger, setting him alight.
• If I were Zheng, no way would I let things be when I spotted the crew who betrayed me. Those boys got off easy.
• Perhaps Our Flag’s best dumb joke yet: Blackbeard warning Stede that, now that he’s famous, he needs to keep an eye out for the “paperazzi”—people who hide in dark corners and do drawings of you without your permission.
• “You know that saying, ‘Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, I need to end your life’?”