our flag means death

“You know there’s a bird that never touches ground? It’s horn in the air. Never once lands. Spends its entire existence in the sky.”  How do you cope with a break up? Is it the bucket of ice-cream? A new hairstyle? Maybe you let your beard grow out?  Well, Stede and Ed are currently going through an (unofficial) break-up (on a break, if we ask Stede) and these two go through it quite differently.  We got Edward, who fully embraces his fearsome Blackbeard persona. Bloody, gory. Decapitating heads? Okay. Massacre at a wedding? Who fucking cares about love anyway! Ed doesn’t. He’s so over Stede. Or is he?  Stede, on the other hand, is so certain that once he sees Ed, all will go back to how it is supposed to be. Running into each other’s arms. Them finally being happily in love – therefore he must find his old ship, the Revenge, again to finally talk to Edward. It’s just that the road to that state is a little shaky.  With the Second season of David Jenkins’ Our Flag Means Death, we follow Stede (Rhys Darby) and Ed (Taika Waititi) as they navigate their lives after the sudden break-up. The new season premiered on October 5th with 3 Episodes.  The first episode depicts how the two characters are holding up after the events of the season 1 finale. Stede and the former crew of ‘The Revenge’ are, more or less, forced to work for Spanish Jackie and try to make enough money to get back to the sea (most importantly for Stede) to find Ed. They get rescued by Susan (Ruibo Qian), the Pirate Queen. Meanwhile Blackbeard is one of the most wanted pirates on the sea as he commits one insane crime after another to get over his break up. His crew isn’t even allowed to mention Stedes name. Once the crew mentions the toxic relationship Eds first mate Izzy (Con O’Neill) has to the pirate, he dares to speak up. With consequences.  The second episode starts off very emotional as we see both pirates struggle with their grief. Stede and his crew discover that Susan has conquered China and adjust to their new lifestyle on the ship. That’s when we get a big surprise: Lucius is alive!!! Since Izzy was supposed to get killed (but luckily didn’t), Frenchie replaces him as first mate, but Ed is suspicious or maybe he knows that nothing really can kill Izzy Hands. The remaining members of The Revenge plan mutiny against Ed, because they can no longer handle his leadership antics and seemingly succeed in taking him down after he suffers a mental break.  After finding ‘The Revenge’, the crew reunites and Stede desperately tries to find a way to get Ed to wake up.     So far, we are really, really enjoying season 2 – Our Flag Means Death, and their incredible writers, once again show that good representation isn’t a hard thing to do, gender and sexual identities are completely naturally and organically represented on our screens, which is the way it should be. The introduction of new characters on the show is absolutely awesome. Susan is a great addition to the characters we came to love. With flashback montages, an amazing soundtrack (I mean, Wuthering Heights, come on!) and outstanding acting – the beginning of the season prepared us for an emotional rollercoaster. New Episodes of ‘Our Flag Means Death’s second season drop every Thursday and we can already tell they won’t leave us fans down. Quite the contrary actually, its premiere caused a huge uproar of excitement and joy for the rest of the season. The writers must really appreciate the fans – after the premiere of the episode, we recognized cheesy fan-fiction-esque tropes and some artists even saw their fanart ideas come to life on the screen. It was magical and completely surreal, that a team worked to honor their audience. The show truly is made with a lot of love.