Review: Our Flag Means Death, "Impossible Birds," "Red Flags," & "The Innkeeper" | Season 2, Episodes 1, 2, & 3

Max's beloved pirate rom-com returns to sail the choppy waters of a #BlackStede breakup

Image: Max

Welcome to Episodic Medium’s weekly coverage of Our Flag Means Death season two, which debuted its first three episodes this week on Max. As always, the first review is available to all, but subsequent reviews will only be available to paid subscribers. You can check out our full Fall schedule here (along with information about our yearly subscription deal good through 10/7), and learn more about the site and its mission on our About page.

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There’s a moment towards the end of “The Innkeeper,” the third episode of Our Flag Means Death’s season, that perfectly encapsulates the tone of the series. Ed “Blackbeard” Teach is in a dream sequence, having been thrown off a cliff tied to a rock by his former captain (who is also him, if you get truly metaphysical). He struggles and then seems to give up, until he hears the voice of his co-captain and romantic interest Stede Bonnet begging him to wake up. Opening his eyes, Ed sees Stede coming towards him, and as Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” plays they move closer to each other, and Ed jolts wide awake to grip Stede’s hand. It’s a beautifully rendered sequence, one that almost had me at tears—that gave way to laughter the instant I saw dream Stede appear as a glittery merman.

It’s a ridiculous detail that somehow doesn’t undermine the sincerity at all, an incredibly hard balance to strike and one that Our Flag Means Death does in nearly all of its episodes. Season one was an unexpected hit for Max (nee HBO Max), flailing in the wake of a post-Warner Bros. identity crisis, launching with minimal promotion to become a grassroots online success story. In exploring a historical footnote of piracy, David Jenkins and company found the roots of a gay romantic comedy and a dysfunctional found family sitcom, cycling through all manner of tones and plot twists and somehow finding a way to make it work in concert (as I explored in my reviews of season one over the past few weeks). 

Season two premieres in the midst of another complicated time for the network, one strike resolved and another still ongoing and possibly as a consequence is getting compressed into a one-month window. Like our fearless captain Myles, I’m incredibly frustrated that Max’s release schedule “means nonsense” and that these episodes are being compressed into a one-month release window rather than letting the conversation and hype build from week to week. However, if this must be the format we’re getting our content, “Impossible Birds,” “Red Flags,” and “The Innkeeper” make for an effective trio, as by the end of it status quo is largely restored. The crew’s all together back on Revenge, Stede and Blackbeard are reunited, and we’re poised for more pirate high jinks. 

And there’s a lot of restoration that needs to happen to the status quo, given the upending of OFMD’s world at the end of season one. Stede and Ed acknowledged their feelings for each other, only to be split by the former’s panicked decision to return to his old life, and the latter responded by fully embracing his Blackbeard persona. Picking up the action an indeterminate amount of time later, they remain separated as “Impossible Birds” begins, and neither are doing very well for themselves. Stede has reunited with most of his former crew and they’ve taken up residence at the Republic of Pirates, working a variety of odd jobs at Spanish Jackie’z and sleeping in the back room. On the Revenge, meanwhile, Blackbeard has embraced the “vampire pirate clown” extremes he once derided, raiding ships on a daily basis and spending his off-hours in a mournful stupor. 

There’s a definite feeling of newness to the second season, and not just because of changed circumstances. OFMD moved production to New Zealand for season two—largely driven by Taika Waititi’s loyalty to his homeland—and the scope has improved to the benefit of all. There’s grand moments such as the opening dream sequence where a bearded Stede duels Izzy Hands on a vast beach, only to run into the arms of Blackbeard, and smaller scenes as the crew tries to survive the unforgiving Republic and gets pushed out to live under a bridge like common trolls. The “vibe” has changed, and the world feels much more lived in as a result. But it’s not just an arbitrary production shift: without his fancy dress and fortune, Stede’s been dragged down to the same level as his crew, and the new aesthetic matches the more grounded conditions he’s in compared to first season’s image of ragtag pirates living out a dilettante’s fantasy.

Image: Max

While the collapse of hierarchy leads to Stede taking a lot more verbal abuse and unsolicited advice, it also leads to some more focused scheming than last season. A fellow former aristocrat Richard Banes (Erroll Shand), inspired by Stede’s freedom, attempts to enlist him for a heist against Spanish Jackie, a heist that he’s quick to bring everyone in on after Jackie taxes away their savings. It’s a more cunning and ruthless Stede on display here: quick to use the Swede’s position as Jackie’s newest husband, quick to abandon Banes when he tries to leave a calling card and loses his nose for his trouble, and quick to identify just how much money they’re able to take Spanish Jackie for. True, it takes a deus ex machina of a mysterious soup seller buying out their contracts to survive Jackie’s wrath, but it’s still an improvement on Stede’s track record of schemes to date. 

Back on the Revenge, things are much darker both literally and figuratively. Blackbeard’s crew has followed their captain from a sartorial perspective, and Jim, Frenchie, and Fang’s outfits have taken on a feral scavenger tone (excellently designed by Gypsy Taylor). Stede’s quarters, already emptied, now have the look and feel of a drug den, a feeling exacerbated by Blackbeard snorting rhinoceros horn in between raids. So much of season one of OFMD was bright and cheerful—even the first version of the Republic of Pirates had a real Pirates of the Caribbean energy—that things feel downright catatonic in comparison, even before Mark Mothersbaugh’s score goes to some tragic operatic places.

The extremity of this darkness is devastating Blackbeard’s crew to near catatonic levels, so much so that even Izzy has to take notice. Izzy’s season one arc was all about trying to get Ed back to his Blackbeard roots, but now that he’s running out of toes to toe the line, he’s realizing he may have pushed his captain too hard. If it was easy to hate Izzy back then, Con O’Neill does an exceptional job of making you feel for him: stumbling over his previous edicts, barely avoiding a breakdown in Fang’s arms, and then trying to talk down Blackbeard from his extremes. 

It’s a process that almost works, until he suggests that they could “talk it through…” and Blackbeard finishes the sentence with a mad look in his eyes. Any question of where his behavior is coming from is made clear as he calls the crew out—it’s the performance I was expecting out of Taika Waititi when he was first cast, that Jojo Rabbit spark of madness as he threatens the crew and then himself. And then it pivots back to the performance I wasn’t expecting as he puts a round in Izzy’s knee, speaks to a dumbfounded Frenchie of a never-ending flight, and stares with an inscrutable look at a wedding cake topper that bears more than a little resemblance to a Gentleman Pirate.  If there’s a glimmer of hope for Stede’s faction, there’s a decided absence of one for Blackbeard’s. 

Said glimmer of hope comes through in the next episode “Red Flags,” where Stede and company’s mysterious benefactor turns out to be the pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao. OFMD continues to mine the real world of piracy for plot points, and Zheng’s career is one of its greatest success stories—even if in reality she never got within 9,000 miles of the Caribbean. In a world of damaged pirates, Zheng (Ruibo Qian) gives off a different sort of energy, one of supreme competency and a non-psychopathic enjoyment of her work. She isn’t shy about expressing her opinions: she clearly regards Stede’s crew as a hapless bunch, but she also sees their potential and what duties they’re best assigned to. (At least when she’s not blinded by a bit of a crush—she dispatches Oluwande to file her scrolls despite his not understanding the concept, and talks sweetly about how his visits to the soup stand were a highlight of her day.)

Image: Max

“Red Flags” also promptly addresses the biggest unanswered question of the first season finale, as we learn that Lucius survived his fall and is now part of the Red Flag crew. (An unanswered question David Jenkins and company neatly hang the lampshade on. Black Pete: “I thought you died!” Lucius: “I know, I think a lot of people did.”) It’s a sense of relief that gives way to a sense of wrongness, as we see time at sea has changed Lucius. He’s grown a beard, picked up a smoking habit, and his commentary has gone from basic cattiness to outright nastiness, especially whenever his former captain tries to enter the conversation. Nathan Foad was one of the highlights of the first season, and he drives up Lucius’s energy to new levels here, managing to be scary even when he’s pushing the character’s camp factor.

That darkness is necessary to wake up Stede, who’s still going off his impressions of Ed and ignoring the new (old) version of Blackbeard that’s been inspiring wanted posters since their separation. Lucius hides how he wound up off the ship to the rest of the crew, but he tells Stede the truth, as well as calling attention to just how long that wanted poster is. It's a valuable way to remind both Stede and the audience that as much as everyone wants Ed and Stede reunited, it’s not going to be nearly as simple as an apology from Stede. Things have changed, both men aren’t the same as they were on that beach, and there’s the ugly possibility they may never get back to that point. 

No such wakeup call is needed for the audience or the crew of the Revenge, as Blackbeard’s reign of terror has reduced Izzy to a broken shell of a man, and Jim and Frenchie are trying to get through it in one piece. Vico Ortiz and Joel Fry were similar crew standouts last season, and both do solid work in these new circumstances. Frenchie is opting for bluffing and trying to thread the needle, while Jim approaches circumstances with the same grim determination they bring to every setback. And said determination isn’t without its fans, as Archie (Madeleine Sami) is drawn to Jim’s energy, and they share a kiss after sharing the unpleasant duty of removing Izzy’s infected leg. 

It’s a loss of leg but not loss of life for Izzy, even as Blackbeard sees through whatever twisted loyalty exists there—”He’s our dick,” Jim wearily puts it—and confronts his former first mate. The scenes between Waititi and O’Neill are some of the most powerful moments in “Red Flags” given the combination of one trying to goad the other to kill them and the remnants of the love they had for each other. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of love Ed and Stede had, but it was something deeper than basic loyalty that drove them to stay together, and we’re seeing it rotting away in real time.

Image: Max

Small wonder that from there Blackbeard takes the wheel of the ship and steers it directly into a storm, and goes to an even more unhinged place as he tears the wheel apart and threatens to blow the mast clean off. It’s among the show’s most thrilling sequences, the raging storm equal to the raging heart of Blackbeard, and a crew finally pushed to the limits by his madness. Waititi’s relieved cackle as the crew seems willing to end him—Izzy’s stubbornness finally leading him to put a round in his captain, Jim’s near-feral scream—is the farthest from comedy we’ve been on this journey—as near-impossible it feels that they’d kill off Blackbeard before a reunion, in that moment it feels like the only natural outcome.

There’s a calm after the storm as we enter “The Innkeeper,” and Red Fang’s crusade to bring additional pirate ships into its service soon locates a new potential vessel in its wake. I’ve joked about the convenience of characters getting wherever they need to on the open seas with only a rowboat, and it’s even more laughably convenient that Red Fang and Revenge are crossing paths at this exact moment. However, I vastly prefer this to OFMD coming up with any number of contrivances to keep the two ships apart until the end of the season, particularly when so much of the show’s strength comes from the interplay of its crew. 

Said interplay gets off to a bit of a rocky start, as Stede is the first to board the Revenge, and finds the surviving crew members looking like feral animals. Most of the interactions are guarded ones, though thankfully Oluwande and Jim make their reunion almost as joyous to witness as Black Pete and Lucius. We’ve seen both Oluwande and Jim entertain other relationships during their time apart, and there was a worry things could go south as a result, but we see the trust they formed over the last season hasn’t fully frayed in their absence. It’s also refreshing to see Jim be more open without pushing, sharing a few too many details about their tryst with Archie. Lucius’s line “we don’t own each other” about his relationship with Black Pete rings true here, and casual “boat-mance” attitudes are in keeping with OFMD energy.

The reunion between Stede and Izzy is more loaded, as the two former rivals for Blackbeard’s affections are now left in an uneasy place. The sniping over Blackbeard is devoid of any of their usual fire, a mutual sympathy about how much they put into that complicated man and how much or little feeling they still have about it. Where they find a place of agreement—and possible connection—is the awareness that Zhang’s pragmatic yet ruthless attitude may not nearly be as forgiving to a pack of strays that’s coming fresh off a mutiny. 

What follows from there is more great caper energy, and a sign of unity from both crews as they move to take back their old ship. OFMD is truly at its best when the whole crew is working towards an unlikely goal, as the Mothersbaugh score picks up and everyone’s moving with a sense of purpose. There’s highlights from other crew members who’ve been less active in heists: Black Pete gets called on his bullshit in a terrific moment where he admits he’s never even seen a crossbow, Wee John rips the steering wheel from the ship (Kristian Nairn channeling some Hodor energy), and there’s a genuine moment of doubt if Oluwande will choose Jim and the crew over whatever’s growing between him and Zhang. Not a huge doubt, mind, but enough hesitation to add some further emotional stakes to the journey. 

Image: Max

Blackbeard might be an inciting element to this crisis, but he’s also managing a crisis of his own from deep within his subconscious—or rather from a remote beach, as it’s first presented. Evidently washing up on shore, he’s recovered by his former captain Benjamin Hornigold (Mark Mitchinson), a man he and Calico Jack previously voiced no small amount of distaste for. Being a solitary outing for Blackbeard, these scenes are probably the weakest part of the episode, as Hornigold tries to get through to Blackbeard and we get mostly matter-of-fact acceptance that Blackbeard’s a pretty fucked up individual. The highlights are as Blackbeard realizes this is all in his min—something the audience was already tipped off to by the coincidental timing and the blue color filter—and as he tries to kill Hornigold multiple times to fail decisively each time. It’s only at the end, as he acknowledges he’d rather be doing this to himself, that things lead to the beautiful moment of grace where mer-Stede comes to pull him from the depths. 

As beautiful a note as “The Innkeeper” ends on, it’s a moment that comes at the end of three particularly dark episodes, and we have reason to believe this moment of grace may be as short-lived as Ed and Stede face the terms of their Act of Grace. Yes, Blackbeard might be awake, but he hasn’t yet proven that he can go back to being Ed, or that he’ll forgive Stede for leaving him alone on the dock. And the crew, already not the most stable lot, has been downgraded from misfit toys to broken ones after the events of these last few episodes. Can any of this be put back together? Maybe not, but if these first three episodes of season two are any indication, it’s going to be one hell of a voyage. 

Stray observations

• Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Our Flag Means Death season two! Greetings to those of you just joining us, and welcome back to everyone who’s followed along with our season one coverage over the last few weeks. I’m very excited to discuss in real-time, though as mentioned above I’m annoyed our discussion is being compressed into four weeks. But I know we’ll make the most of it.

• Opening title creativity continues. “Impossible Birds”: A full lower-back tattoo on one of the crew. “Red Flags”: Auntie’s carefully plotted naval map. “The Innkeeper”: The various courses Zheng uses to wine and dine her potential rivals.

• Most Valuable Crewmember for “Impossible Birds”: Jim for their incredible character redesign, and the game way they attempt to take on Stede’s role as storyteller. They also show that while hiding their identity they missed a few chapters: “I pray to you, Dark Lord, to make me real flesh” doesn’t sound like a sentence Carlo Collodi ever wrote.

• MVC for “Red Flags”: Lucius for successfully reuniting with the crew and using his survival instincts to a horrifying degree. “There was this game called Human Puppet. Stede, the hand went where you’d think!”

• MVC for “The Innkeeper”: Archie for becoming a member of Stede’s crew, throwing some shade at their new captain’s unassuming appearance, and showing a welcome level of competence (by Revenge standards) by nailing the crossbow zipline.

• Some turnover in the crew over these episodes: the Swede remains on the Republic of Pirates as Jackie’s latest plaything, we learn that Ivan was killed in one of the many raids (Guz Khan not returning for the second season), and Archie the only new member of Blackbeard’s crew to survive the storm and accompany Jim and Frenchie back to Stede. It’s a robust enough ensemble that I have little doubt it’ll survive the shifts.

• Rather potent metaphor that the head of the unicorn figurehead remains missing, giving Revenge even more of an impression that no one’s steering her in the right direction. 

• Giving Buttons (or the sea witch, as Auntie calls him) the power to turn into animals would break the world of the show. That doesn’t mean I don’t desperately want to see it.

• “I know the odds of this finding you are slim. But so were the odds of us finding each other in the first place.”

• “I also killed someone and stole their kiosk. Sometimes action is better than vision.”

• ‘It’s okay, sexy Dutchman. Double cross is kind of hot.”

• “You have hope. It’s cute. Plus I really like that story you told about the wooden demon boy that thirsted for life.”

• “And then I had to catch the rats with my teeth. They were weirdly finicky about that.”

• “There are a few beheadings here, and it looks like he got back into arson and just being a bit of a dick.”

• “I didn’t conquer China by letting people go on about their feelings.”

• “Sucks you guys are probably gonna be executed tomorrow.” “Actually, we’ve been living second-to-second for a while now. It’s kind of nice to have a deadline.”

• “Orgasms. Not just intercourse. It’s gotta end with the good shit.”

• “I hate myself.” “Bullseye! Finally.”

• Closing track for “Impossible Birds”: “Pygmy Love Song” by Francis Bebey. 

• Closing track for “Red Flags”: “Run From Me” by Timber Timbre.

• Closing track for “The Innkeeper”: “This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush. (Enjoying a renaissance this year between this and its use in Netflix’s The Mother. Maybe not at “Running Up The Hill” in Stranger Things levels yet, but we’ll see what further boost OFMD gives it.)