‘Our Flag Means Death’ Charts a Course for an Incredible Season 2

You could make a compelling argument that the first season of Our Flag Means Death was the surprise sensation of 2022. You could also make the argument that it was the best show of 2022. I, personally, would even go so far as to say OFMD is about as close to a perfect show as humans are capable of producing. It’s funny; it’s sincere and heartfelt; the writing is fantastic; the cast is amazing; it’s about pirates. Its creators’ care and enthusiasm was self-evident, and OFMD exploded into one of the most heart-warming and wholesome fan cultures on the internet, complete with cast members gushing over fan art and sharing recipes, seemingly overnight.

That fandom was left hanging for months last year, as HBO, subject to a merger from hell, took its sweet time to renew its new cult classic. Fans online actively petitioned HBO to bring the show back, keeping #RenewOurFlagMeansDeath trending weeks after the finale. Finally, months after the first season’s tantalizing cliff-hanger, OFMD was renewed in June 2022. And ahead of its Oct. 5 premiere on Max, I’m ecstatic and relieved to report that Season 2 does not disappoint.

Our Flag Means Death is creator/showrunner/co-writer David Jenkins’ endeavor to fill in the gaps of the real-life “Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet’s story. Played impeccably by Rhys Darby, Bonnet left his family and gave up his life as an aristocrat to become a pirate, in both actual history and the show. Though he was not a particularly good one at first, he struck an unlikely alliance with the notorious Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard (equally impeccably played by Taika Waititi), and the two captains sailed the seas together for quite some time.

The show offers a hypothesis to the unexplained historical mystery of why the Blackbeard would attach himself to this impulsive former aristocrat: love. What begins as “just” a quirky comedy about pirates evolves into one of the most tender romances I have ever seen unfold on my television. OFMD is special because it is so unabashedly earnest. It is able to balance its quirkiness, its romance, and its darker themes— in Season 2, the question of ”am I worthy of love?” comes up a lot—while never feeling either too frivolous or too heavy-handed.

But as it opens, the season appears to lean darker than last time. Then again, Season 1 ended with the promise of hardship ahead. The action very much picks up where Season 1 left off, and it doesn’t waste time trying to recap the audience on who everyone is and where we left them. Heartbreakingly for the characters and the audience alike, we left off on Stede panicking and abandoning Ed on the eve of their elopement.

When we check back in, Stede and his crew have reunited and are trying to rebuild from nothing. Meanwhile, Ed has Stede’s ship and is very much self-destructing—and doing his damnedest to take his crew down with him. If last season was about Stede and Ed’s blossoming romance, this one is about how to build back from heartbreak. Because Ed doesn’t know how to deal with heartbreak, it also becomes a season about how to recover from trauma or get out from under its inflicted patterns. Ed becomes the monster that everyone else—and, pointedly, he himself—perceives him to be. This is reflected by the Medusa-like illustration on Blackbeard’s wanted poster, which Stede reacts to with incredulity.

It’s hard to watch characters you love deeply suffering and hurting each other, physically and emotionally. The first three episodes, which all drop on Oct. 5, live in this space. But as someone who has seen through Episode 5, you can have faith that this is still Our Flag Means Death; it’s a show that is not going to stick the knife into its passionate fanbase for the hell of it. The ways in which OFMD explores the messy, uneven undulations of trauma and healing is what distinguishes it in the first place. That sensibility is very much still intact. The season starts in a downswing in the cycle, but, at risk of revealing spoilers, characters get the chance to work back upwards.

In the midst of these events, the show introduces some new characters, most notably the Pirate Queen Zheng Yi Sao (Ruibo Qian). Sure, Zheng Yi Sao was born nearly a century after Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard, and there’s no historical evidence to suggest she came to the Caribbean, but the fudging led to an excellent end. Qian is absolutely magnetic in the role, and watching the Pirate Queen in action is a goddamn delight. Relatedly, I will never again be able to be in the presence of champagne without hearing Rhys Darby ask, “Champies?”

Zheng Yi Sao commands the scene as, elsewhere in Episodes 1-3, characters are in the height of a traumatic experience. There are events which will make fans gasp or put them on the edge of their seat. The cliffhanger at the end of Episode 3 is particularly cruel; for the first time in ages, I threw a little temper tantrum because I couldn’t immediately watch the next one. All of which goes to show how engaging OFMD is, how well-written its narrative is, and how deeply viewers come to care about its characters.

It’s also worth noting that, for the second time in recent memory, a popular show has elevated an emotional, climactic sequence by playing a Kate Bush song. To its infinite credit, OFMD picks a lesser-known song than Stranger Things did, going with “This Woman’s Work”. I love this for Kate Bush, a Prince-type figure who hasn’t gotten nearly the amount of attention she deserves, and for all of us.

From its music cues to its heartbreaking (and heartwarming) characters, the follow-up to Our Flag Means Death’s sensational first season retains the reasons legions of fans fell as hard for the show as Stede and Ed fell for each other, all while moving the narrative along. Things change, but Our Flag Means Death’s position as one of the best shows on television has not. I dare say that begs the question—champies?