About three weeks ago I fell in love hard with Our Flag Means Death. If you’re not familiar, it’s a romantic comedy series on HBO starring Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet the Gentleman Pirate, and Taika Waititi as Blackbeard, along with a fantastic supporting cast.
This week it got canceled. But that’s not what this is about.
(This will probably have some mild /moderate spoilers starting in the next paragraph so you may as well go watch the entire series and come back when you’re done, if you care about that sort of thing. It’s just 2 seasons. Go.)
In case you haven’t watched it let me give you a little context. Stede, a wealthy landowner, is unsatisfied with life as an aristocrat. He has a wife, kids, beautiful home, and by all accounts should be perfectly happy. A midlife crisis sends him out to meet his destiny and find some excitement as a pirate — a thing he is absolutely terrible at being.
Blackbeard, on the other hand, is super great at being a pirate. So great that he doesn’t really need to do anything anymore. His name is enough to strike terror into the hearts of his enemies. His whole enterprise pretty much runs itself at this point. To casual observers it seems he has it all pirate-wise, but like Stede, he’s bored as fuck with his life.
After secretly tailing this mysterious “Gentleman Pirate” who managed to best Blackbeard’s first mate Izzy Hands, Blackbeard boards a ship to find Stede gasping at the end of a noose and gut-stabbed, surrounded by mayhem. Classic meet-cute.
They fall in love more or less instantly, though it takes them a while to actually figure that out.
Nobody would ever describe me as a rom-com fan. Not in a billion years. But this one did me in on account of how it’s gay as the day is long, and not just because of who’s making time with whom. (Plus, it’s really funny and well acted and I mean, Taika Waititi is a devastatingly hot Blackbeard, and Vico Ortiz is cold smokin’ as Jim, so there’s also that wrecking my brains. But I digress.)
It’s not news that being queer is being “other.” By definition, it’s being different, even if you try with everything you have not to be. Whether you’re someone who’s trying hard to fit in or someone who’s said fuck it, you need to develop some pretty powerful skills to survive. You need to be brave. You need to trust yourself. You need to embrace the uncomfortable. None of it is easy.
Broadly speaking, Blackbeard wants desperately to fit in. Stede does not give a single shit.
This is a story about the heavy business of navigating all of that and the possibilities that present themselves when you finally let go of fear and let yourself be open to those possibilities, especially when they present themselves in completely unexpected ways. To me, that’s the queerest thing about this show, and that’s why it did me in. The sexuality of it is almost the least remarkable thing about it, (though don’t get me wrong, I definitely love that about the show too). That it’s gay love isn’t the part of the romance that’s complicated. Literally nobody in the show cares who’s boning who as far as gender goes. What complicates the romances on this show is characters grappling with various degrees of self-acceptance and authenticity, and finding joy in a world that rejects them. Pirates are outside of society, after all.
Blackbeard, aka Ed Teach, going through it trying to figure all of that out still at his age — as absolutely Grade-A corny as this is — was fucking validating as hell.
And man, did that guy go through it.
To achieve success as a pirate, Ed as Blackbeard had to be what most people would call brave. Lots of fighting, taking risks, being in life-or-death situations, that sort of thing. He’s cultivated an image, looking all cool in his leather get-up, and more or less set the standard for what a pirate is supposed to be. All of a sudden here comes Stede Bonnet in his preposterous outfits and ridiculous ship, doing none of it, and it blows Ed’s mind.
Stede is objectively a strange — or queer — version of a pirate. He does things differently, like treating his crew well and having a distaste for bloodshed. This, plus his inexperience, makes him a pretty shitty pirate. Still, he managed to break free from what society expects out of him and is trying to do his own thing. He’s rejecting rules that don’t fit with his sense of who he is, whether he’s doing it consciously or not.
Opting out of systems or structures that are so ingrained in the way we live and work — to say “I’m not doing it that way anymore” and creating a different way of being — is brave. It can be as lonely and terrifying as it is liberating, but it’s the liberation and community you build with fellow outcasts that make it worth it.
It’s something that requires an act of shapeshifting. Once you figure out how to do it and live in a new, different way, you find a way to be free. Marginalized people do it all the time. It’s why queer, and particularly trans, joy is so threatening to people who depend on a rigid set of norms to feel safe. It’s unfathomable to them that it’s possible to live happily in unconventional ways. And if people can thrive outside of their rules, does that mean their way is maybe not all it’s cracked up to be? In the show, when the British navy is out on a mission to obliterate all of piratedom it’s not because they’re mad about the stealing and looting and violence. They do it all the time themselves! No, they’re pissed that they don’t have control over these weirdos.
Shapeshifting is not easy. Ed tries his version of it and retreats back to being a volatile, destructive asshole the moment someone challenges him. Being a dick is what he knows, and what he thinks can’t ever be changed about who he is, and why he sees himself as unlovable. It nearly gets him killed.
He eventually winds up between life and death in a place called the Gravy Basket, “the nether realm of the inevitable yet the impossible,” according to the old man waiting for him there. Confused and scared, Ed asks if he’s being held hostage. Turns out he’s asking the question of himself, and not just himself, but the part of himself he hates the most.
I know. Oof, right?
Ed wants a life with Stede, but as long as he’s holding himself hostage to who he thinks he’s supposed to be, he can’t have it. It doesn’t seem possible to him. But what’s inevitable? What’s impossible? Who decides?
He has to figure out how to let go of the sad, angry, lonely life he thought was inevitable to get what he thought was impossible — a life filled with love. He has to figure out how to be brave in a new way, and lucky for him, Stede can show him how.
This goddamn gem of a show is so funny and heartbreaking and subversive and queer down to its marrow. It’s about embracing the power that comes with being unconventional. It’s about saying yes to who you are and what makes your life worth living in whatever way makes sense to you. It’s about so many more things on top of that. I love it so, so much.
And it’s all done using the framework of a regular old rom-com.
Shape. Fucking. Shifted.
I will talk about this show forever with pretty much anyone, clearly. Thanks for reading.
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