Our Flag Means Death Was a Love Story From the Beginning
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The post Our Flag Means Death Was a Love Story From the Beginning appeared first on Consequence.
From the first time he looked at the Wikipedia entry for the real-life pirate Stede Bonnet, Our Flag Means Death creator David Jenkins knew that the story of Stede and Blackbeard would end up being a romance.
“It was baked into the pitch of it. And to me, it was the only reason to make the show,” he tells Consequence. “The workplace of it is great, but when you look at Stede Bonnet’s Wikipedia, it’s like, wait, Blackbeard took him under his wing. Why? And then Blackbeard commanded his ship, but people would see Stede on the deck of the ship in his dressing gown, reading books. And then Blackbeard abandoned his crew and burned his ship. And you’re like, why?”
To Jenkins, the answer was an obvious one: “Why are we dancing around this? Clearly these guys were fucking. These guys were in love. And to me, those are the most interesting blanks to fill in: What is this relationship about? Why did the best pirate become enthralled with the worst, silliest pirate? Why did these two people need each other? That’s a great love story.”
Our Flag Means Death Season 1 introduced Rhys Darby as the aforementioned “worst, silliest pirate,” whose early adventures on the open sea eventually led to a collision with the fearsome Blackbeard (Taika Waititi)… whose softer side (aka “Ed”) soon emerged.
The ups and downs of Stede and Ed’s relationship have driven much of the action since Waititi’s debut in Season 1, though telling a love story in a serialized medium like television has its perils, largely because it’s tough to know how much you can draw out any unresolved tension. “I think we take it episode by episode and we try to not piss people off in taking too long and doing double beats and triple beats,” Jenkins says. “You can only do Will They or Won’t They for so long. Then you have to deepen it.”
It helps that in Jenkins’ eyes, the Will They/Won’t They trope goes deeper than that first kiss. “Will we kiss? Will we have sex? Will we fall in love? Will we move in together? Will we get married? The question of every relationship that we have is ‘Will we last?’ And those questions are more interesting to me than how long can we keep them separate? How many contrivances can we do to pull them apart and put them back together again? You can only do that so much before everyone’s like, okay, I gotta get outta here.”
Jenkins adds that “sometimes I feel bad when I see things where it’s only about falling in love, and then once you find love, it’s like perfect. You have to continue to work on yourself. The person has to work on themselves. I like to see a little bit of that mixed in with my hopeless love and romance.”
This comes out in the show’s depiction of Ed’s journey over the course of this season, as Jenkins explains. “These are two very damaged people. Blackbeard’s essentially in a form of recovery, when he comes back. And it’s maybe not so great to jump headlong into a very serious relationship when you’re trying to recover from being a homicidal maniac. It is like watching somebody try to have a healthy relationship who has never had a healthy relationship before, and start to get some language around it.”
As the show has progressed, of course, Stede and Ed are no longer the only romantic pairing amongst the characters, something Jenkins says he likes because “there are all these different kinds of relationships and friendships. The big thing is just making sure that we’re not replicating relationship beats in other relationships, or if we’re doing that, it’s a counterpoint.”
The emphasis on relationships also fits into the show’s high-seas setting, which Jenkins finds similar to post-apocalyptic narratives. “It is a little bit like you’re doing Mad Max, except there’s relationships,” he says. “Stuff’s shitty, so you gotta try to find some joy. Of course, people are going to have a need for each other in these extreme circumstances, and I like the idea of these characters finding some level of a healthy relationship in these extreme circumstances.”
Our Flag Means Death (Max)
This proves especially important in moments when things might not be going so well for the show’s central couple. “If it is all dire and dour for Ed and Stede, there’s gotta be some joy in life. And I think that’s what I really like about the Jim and Archie relationship, to see Jim grow in a way where they’re like, ‘We used to value life on this ship’ — carrying forward some of the kindness that Stede brought into this world and that being very attractive to Archie, because Archie’s never seen that before. I like those things. It makes a world where you can let something very violent happen, like Izzy getting his legs shot off, because then something very beautiful is happening around it too — two people are finding each other and taking care of him.”
Jenkins says that in his eyes, Our Flag Means Death is a three-season show, if HBO “were kind enough to give us three seasons.” For one thing, Jenkins notes that “I like things in threes,” and that he also has to contend with the fact that one of his stars is pretty in demand due to his other job as a writer and director.
“When I talked to Taika about doing [the first season], I was like, ‘You know, it’s not a limited show. We need you for more than one season. Can we get you for three?’ He was like, [pretty decent Waititi impression] ‘Yeah, man, let’s do three.’ So if he still feels that way, yeah, I’d love to go back for one last season. I feel like that’s about as long as you can hang on to somebody who’s directing 50 things at once.”
Plus, says Jenkins, “you can tell the story in three seasons and get a full sense of a relationship: A couple first understanding love in the first season, then to a relationship that’s a little more mature, and they’re learning what to do with that love.” And Season 3, continues Jenkins, would focus on Stede and Edward “learning how to keep and hang onto that love as it gets more mature.” Because it never comes easy.
The Season 2 finale of Our Flag Means Death premieres Thursday, October 26th on Max.
Our Flag Means Death Was a Love Story From the Beginning
Liz Shannon Miller
Popular Posts
