Our Flag Means Death Season-Premiere Recap: Soup Bitches and Gravy Baskets
The opening scene of Our Flag Means Death’s second season was obviously a fantasy. Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), gentleman pirate and all-around soft-handed pushover, acting violently — and more importantly, decisively? He could never. Would never. And if he tried, he’d almost certainly run away in terror after committing the deed and would never forgive himself for it.
And indeed, the sequence where Stede gets his revenge on Izzy Hands, Blackbeard’s second-in-command and Stede’s mostly unacknowledged romantic rival, does turn out to be a dream. Having relinquished his fortune at the end of season one, Stede is now just like any other sailor forced to risk their life for a few gold coins and a hammock in a farty room. (What must that room have smelled like? Nothing good.) I refer, of course, to food service, which is a dangerous and volatile world even when your clients aren’t literal pirates.
The season-two opener takes us back to the Republic of Pirates, where Stede and the crew of the Revenge are forced to beg Spanish Jackie for shelter after Stede spectacularly fucked everything up at the end of season one. In return, they give Jackie — who must have some kind of shared Google Calendar going, because 20 husbands? Sheesh! — the Swede, who stays behind when the gang returns to the seas. Which is fine — he seems happy and was always kind of a background character anyway.
The Swede’s departure from the narrative is the most definitive ending in this first batch of Our Flag Means Death episodes, in which a bunch of characters talk about killing each other, fight as if they’re going to kill each other, snap each other’s necks, shoot themselves in the head, and travel to the realm between life and death (a.k.a. “the gravy basket”) while never actually, y’know, dying. This does kill the dramatic tension of the season a bit — as in a late-period slasher sequel (looking at you, Scream VI), you can assume that any implied death, whether it be a throwaway joke or a thrilling cliffhanger, is not going to stick. But Our Flag Means Death isn’t really about violence and plunder, anyway. It’s about love.
In this way, Our Flag Means Death is the inverse of another popular TV comedy to emerge from the Taika Waititi–verse, What We Do in the Shadows. The joke on that series is that while the show’s vampires appear to be bumbling fools, they’re actually dangerous predators. The joke here is that while the pirates look and act tough, they’re actually gentle and sensitive underneath.
This thread runs throughout the first three episodes: First, we see the psychological effects Blackbeard’s post-Stede rampage has on Jim, Fang, and the rest of his crew. Then, we see Blackbeard himself buckling under the weight of everything he’s lost. (I’d say that everyone grieves differently, and that’s okay, but forcing your pirate horde to murder innocent people for gold and then throw that gold in the ocean is definitely on the “not okay” list.) Finally, Blackbeard has to go within his own mind and face his demons — in this case, Ben Hornigold, who was Blackbeard’s actual pirate mentor in real life — before he can truly receive Stede’s love in a tender Shape of Water moment. There’s a lot of trauma being processed here, folks, even if the show doesn’t use that term.
It’s an enjoyable, warmhearted journey regardless, thanks in part to the civilizing influence of “soup bitch” (actually pirate queen) Zheng Yi Sao (Ruibo Qian). Against the wishes of her tough-minded first mate, Zheng welcomes Stede and his men onto her ship, the Red Flag, a place where “men have a harder time fitting in” than other types of people. Not this lot! They’re delicate and pliable and more than ready for nice-smelling towels, charcuterie boards, and a soup that is never named but is delicious and served with rice noodles.
As soon as Black Pete is reunited with Lucius, now known as “Rat Boy” — so named because he was forced to eat a rat terrier on one of the ships on which he served during his disappearance from the narrative — the romance extends beyond Stede and Ed’s mutual longing. In this environment, Oluwande’s steady presence and considerate nature make him the most eligible pirate around, and it looks like we’re in for a heated (if not necessarily deadly) love triangle now that Jim is back in the picture.
The show is heating up, too, delivering more laugh-out-loud moments in the third episode than in the first and second ones combined. (For some reason, Taika Waititi throwing the stick on the beach in “The Innkeeper” really ticked me.) Our sweet pirate boys (and Jim, don’t forget Jim) are healing, and it’s making them hungry. And horny. Even Izzy Hands putting his pistol to Blackbeard’s forehead was kind of sexy: On a show with this much ambient homoeroticism floating around, a gun is never just a gun. A sword isn’t just a sword, either. The soup, though? That might just be soup.
Davy Jones’s Locker
• According to the New Zealand tourism board, the beach scenes for Our Flag Means Death season two were filmed on Piha Beach, west of Auckland — also featured in Jane Campion’s The Piano!
• Like Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet, and Izzy Hands, Chinese pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao was a real person. Described as “the most successful pirate in history,” she was a former sex worker who married the fearsome pirate captain Zheng Yi in 1801 and took over his fleet when he fell overboard and died seven years later. (Oops.) She was famed for her negotiation skills and mind for business, and in 1809, an employee of the East India Company estimated that she commanded 80,000 men across more than 100 ships.
• If Ruibo Qian, the actress who plays Zheng Yi Sao, also seems familiar, that’s because she appeared in the Black Mirror season-five episode “Smithereens” and in guest roles on Broad City, Orange Is the New Black, Jessica Jones, Servant, and a bunch of other stuff.
• Indigo has been used to dye fabrics blue for thousands of years (the plant it’s made from is native to India, thus the name) and was referred to as “blue gold” due to its value. Artificial indigo wasn’t synthesized until 1860, meaning that the chestful of natural indigo powder Zheng Yi Sao buys from Spanish Jackie would indeed have been worth a fortune.
• “You got a spot just for thinking?” “Fuck yeah!”
• Okay, but what was up with that “sea witch” thing? We all know Buttons can talk to seagulls and is probably a cannibal, but a witch? (Actually, you know what? It’s not that weird when you put it in context.)
• “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” is so last summer. It’s all about “This Woman’s Work” now.