Once upon a time, there were three broken men. One was trapped on land but longed to go to sea; the other cut a bloody swathe across the Caribbean but took little pleasure in it; and the third hid his capacity for love behind armor so thick, he thought nothing could ever penetrate it.
When the men crossed paths, they took turns breaking each other even more—until one day, they started to fix what was broken, bit by bit, using whatever was at hand. The first two transformed into mermen, their fishtails intertwining as they straddled the line between earth and ocean. And the third? Well, he became a unicorn.
Calypso willing, we’ll get a third season of Our Flag Means Death. But on the off chance we don’t, “Mermen” is a beautiful, bittersweet note for the series to go out on. At long last, Stede and Ed find themselves looking in the same direction; the crew of the Revenge casts out over the waves with three new shipmates (plus one prodigal son); and Israel Hands dies—too soon, yes, but on his own terms: on the open ocean, in the arms of the man he loves, surrounded by the pack of Muppets who have, against all odds, become his family.
Before we bawl our eyes out, though, it’s time to laugh at how terrible Blackbeard is at doing an honest day’s work. He’s in his Eat Pray Love phase, gazing out to sea as his inner monologue whispers about being a “humble wanderer” who’s “no better than a heron or a blade of grass. Or some sand. Or, like…like a wave or something.”
But he’s not doing his literal one job: catching fish. The actual fisherman and his teenage son immediately regret hiring this handsome, navel-gazing buffoon who keeps going on about their “simple lives” and “simple ways.” So they shove him out to sea in a rowboat, the fisherman shouting, “If you were ever good at anything, go and do that, you bum!”
Meanwhile, things in the Republic of Pirates are going about as well as you’d expect. The smoldering wrecks of Zheng Ye Sao’s ships are foundering in the bay, and the British Navy are blithely strolling past the bodies of pirates littering the streets. They’ve also taken over Spanish Jackie’s bar, drunkenly belting “Rule, Britannia,” and Jackie has that “I’m going to kill all of you so hard” look on her face. While Roach and Black Pete have been conscripted into service as drink runners (and the Swede as a poison taster), the rest of the crew are in lockup, slated for the noose. At the center of it all is Prince Ricky Banes, who has become so smarmy in victory that it’s a wonder his own men haven’t offed him yet.
Stede and Zheng did manage to escape, but Zheng is feeling anything but lucky—and not just because Stede is bugging the crap out of her. She’s mourning the loss of her entire fleet, her crew, and, most of all, Auntie. “I’ve been a failure my whole life,” the Gentleman Pirate tells her, in a feeble attempt at comfort. “It’s not so bad once you get used to it.” Read the room, my guy!
When Ed returns to the Republic of Pirates and sees the chaos that’s engulfed the island, all he can think of is Stede. The fisherman’s advice rings in his ears as a pair of British officers approach, and he does what he’s good at: murder. He retrieves his old leathers from where he sunk them (don’t worry about how he figured out where they were) and becomes Blackbeard once more.
Wallowing in hubris, Ricky fetches Izzy from his cell so he can “have a drink with a legend.” The Prince tries to appeal to his ego by telling him he’s the real brains behind Blackbeard’s operation, but oh, boy, does Izzy have a speech to speak. It’s such a good summation of the series’ mission statement—and such a perfect demonstration of how far he’s come as a character—that I just have to drop the whole thing right here:
“You don’t know the first thing about piracy, do you? It’s not about glory; it’s not about getting what you want. It’s about belonging to something when the world has told you you are nothing. It’s about finding the family to kill for when yours are long dead. It’s about letting go of your ego for something larger: the crew.”
Our Flag is a show that’s queer down to its skull and crossbones, and it doesn’t get much queerer than the idea of found family. The reason all these folks sail under the Jolly Roger is because the world has rejected them for being other in some way—gay, female, nonbinary, nonwhite, orphaned, penniless, tenderhearted, insane, or just straight-up weirdos. The ocean is a third space where all these mermen, unicorns, and impossible birds can live outside societal restrictions, free to be themselves and take care of each other so they can blossom into pirate queens, sea witches, or, as Roach declares newlyweds Lucius and Pete, “mateys.”
And now I’ve made myself cry. Where were we? Oh, yes: Ed and Stede getting the romance-novel reunion of their dreams. On the same beach where basically every beach scene is filmed, two British officers come across one of the message-in-a-bottles Stede tossed into the drink at the start of the season. Blackbeard snatches the letter from one’s hand and reads it as he chokes the other to death. It’s earnest as hell, of course, which gives Taika Waititi the chance to deliver the best line reading on this show since “M’noses!”: “You wrote me a lovely letter!”
Narrative economy being the name of the game, Stede and Zheng run onto the beach pursued by a pack of Navy men just as Ed is squaring off against a dozen officers. The boys immediately spot each other, and even Zheng is rooting for them. The pair run to each other, stabbing and/or shooting anyone who gets in their way, echoing Stede’s vision from the season premiere when they fall into each other’s arms and share a tender kiss. “Sorry I was such a dick,” Ed says, right before declaring his unequivocal love. These crazy kids!
Back in the brig at Jackie’s, Oluwande goes to check on Auntie, who is alive! As Jim pulls shrapnel from a wound in her shoulder, Auntie tells Olu that she was wrong—he’s a good match for Zheng after all. “She needed more soft in her life, and I see that now.”
Upstairs, Izzy is still enduring the torture of drinks with Ricky, who claims that destroying the Republic of Pirates makes him the ultimate pirate. Then several things happen at once: Stede, Blackbeard, and Zheng rush in, swords blazing, just as all of Ricky’s men fall over dead thanks to Jackie’s “special” brandy, and the crew emerges, fresh from a jailbreak.
The Revenge gang reunited and Zheng and Auntie back together (aww), Stede hatches a plan—and everyone agrees it’s a suicide mission. “It’s only suicide if we die,” says our sweet dummy. Cue our heroes, disguised in the dead men’s uniforms, swaggering through the forest until they find a clearing crawling with Navy men. With Izzy holding a knife to his back, Ricky tells his men that they’re all good here and should head back to their ships. But the ruse only lasts for a moment before the Prince whirls around and shoots Izzy in the gut. Despite this setback, the ambush goes off without a hitch.
There’s only one casualty on the pirates’ side, though; and it’s a doozy.
Safely back aboard the Revenge—with Zheng, Auntie, Jackie, and the Swede in tow—the gang watches silently as Blackbeard kneels at the side of his dying first mate. But he’s not Blackbeard right now; he’s “Eddie.” Con O’Neill gives a barn burner of a performance as Izzy apologizes to his beloved captain for “feeding his darkness.” Ed tearfully tells his friend that he’s his only family, and Izzy’s last words encapsulate both the man he was and the man he’s become: “Fuck off, you twat. Eddie’s surrounded by family. They love you.”
Contrary to tradition, the gang doesn’t bury him at sea. They dig him a grave near the water’s edge, marking it with a cross made from driftwood and that beautiful golden unicorn leg. Blackbeard’s eulogy is brief and to the point: “He was a fucking nightmare. What a guy.”
Because life goes on, the funeral is followed by a wedding. On the deck of the Revenge, Pete and Lucius tie the knot, vowing to avenge each other and “keep each other’s ship afloat.” As they kiss and the crowd cheers, we get a view of all the couples who have found hard-won love over the course of the series: Olu and Zheng, Archie and Jim, Jackie and the Swede—and, of course, Ed and Stede.
So what’s next for our softboy (and, now, hardgirl) shipmates? Zheng proposes that she and the two captains join forces, starting with hunting down the man who murdered Izzy. But that’s not really Ed’s thing anymore, which also makes it not Stede’s thing, because Stede’s thing is now Ed.
In the creamy light of sunset, to the strains of Nina Simone’s cover of “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” the Revenge rides the trade winds across a calm sea. Fang is at the wheel, and Frenchie calls out orders, while Zheng and Olu pore over navigation charts, and Jackie and the Swede canoodle at the bow.
Notably absent, however, are Ed and Stede, who have stayed behind to set up shop in the barely standing ruin of a cabin, a little ways inland from Izzy’s grave. They watch the ship they’ve each captained in turn sail off toward the horizon from the porch, ready to have a go at Ed’s pipe dream of running an inn. Ed points out that it’s a bit of a shithole, but Stede, ever the optimist, insists that the house has “good bones.” (To quote Maggie Smith’s poem of the same name: “This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.”)
As the sun goes down on the final resting place of the man who became a unicorn, a man who became a seagull alights on his grave. There’s really no better button for the season than the return of, well…Buttons.
Stray observations
- Ed’s insistence on calling the fisherman “Pop-Pop” proves to be his undoing. Daddy issues strike again!
- Needle drops: We get two Nina Simone ballads: “I Love My Baby,” which originally played over Stede’s dream sequence in episode one; and her cover of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” as the Revenge sails into the sunset. Al Stewart’s epic war ballad “Roads To Moscow” plays as the gang gears up for their big ambush.
- Historical Trivia Corner: When Ricky tells the pirates that at least he won’t be hanging them by their thumbs “like that deranged Captain Kidd,” Izzy calls bullshit. William Kidd was one of the most infamous figures of the Golden Age of Piracy who, in fact, began his career as a pirate hunter. The only mention I could find of Kidd’s association with thumb-hanging is in John Abbott’s 1874 novel Captain William Kidd And The Pirates And Buccaneers Who Ravaged The Seas. But it wasn’t Kidd who did the thumb-hanging; it was Captain Henry Morgan—yup, the guy on the rum bottle. Abbott wrote that, when Morgan and his men were torturing a captive, “they hung him up by the thumbs and scourged him.” You were right as always, Izzy.
- Taking a cue from another popular pirate, Jackie “poison-trains” all her husbands—which explains why the laced brandy doesn’t kill the Swede alongside Ricky’s men.
- It didn’t occur to me until Stede introduced them that Blackbeard and Zheng hadn’t met until this episode. After their beach battle with the Navy officers, the two vibe and compliment each other’s swordplay while Stede holds back a serious case of FOMO.
- The gang escapes from lockup by using Lucius’ pee-soaked shirt to bend the bars of their cell just enough to allow the willowy Frenchie to squeeze through. (Gross, but it worked!) He nearly blows up their spot, however, when he shouts, “Go, Frenchie!” in triumph.
- Ricky tells his captives, “All your stories will be lost for the ages—which is a shame, because I do love a good pirate’s tale.” I like to think the writers are nodding to A General History Of The Robberies And Murders Of The Most Notorious Pyrates, a 1724 book that chronicles the adventures of many of the real-life figures in Our Flag, including Bonnet and Teach. It’s almost certainly riddled with inaccuracies and exaggerations, but it’s the closest thing we have to reliable source material about the era; and it’s safe to say that their stories stood the test of time.