Season one spoilers ahead, but when last we left the crew at the heart of Our Flag Means Death, everyone was scattered and recovering from the consequences of Stede Bonnet’s (Rhys Darby) decision to return to his fancy life ashore. This includes Stede, who quickly realized his place was back at sea.
From Stede in his row boat to poor drowned Lucious, the members of the crew who had been marooned to the point of near-cannibalism, and those who were suddenly being held captive by a version of Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) hellbent on proving that hurt people hurt people, the fallout from his and Stede’s breakup was wide and deep. It’s also pretty long-lasting, from what we can tell from the freshly released season two teaser trailer above.
Clearly, Stede and Blackbeard (or Ed) are in different places post-breakup, with one longing for those quiet moments of togetherness that sparked their love and the other violently crashing weddings and unleashing all manner of violent piracy and chaos on the high seas. When will they get back together? That’s anyone’s guess but also probably everyone’s wish. When we spoke with Darby in between seasons, he spoke about the magic of the mundane between he and Waititi’s character.
“We like the mundane, just hanging out and having conversations and going back and forth and having less action. I think that will definitely happen. But I think there’ll also be the idea of trying to find that buddyship again.”
Oh yeah, we’re far away from “buddyship” right now, but when the show comes back it’ll be a delight to see Stede eventually get to Blackbeard and try and get through to him. If anyone can. It’ll also fun to check in with the rest of the crew and see how they react to being put in the middle of what’s either a great love story or a killer breakup story.
The eight-episode second season of Our Flag Means Death returns to MAX on October 5 with two episodes dropping each week.