If you haven’t seen or at least heard of Our Flag Means Death yet, you either don’t use social media or you need to expand your sphere - seriously. The pirate romcom, with Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi in the lead, has quickly become one of the latest hypes on Twitter, Tumblr, and the like. It’s easy to see why: The show is funny, charming, and deeply emotional in all the right places, and the latest addition in media with well-rounded queer representation.
There will be some spoilers below, though I will try to keep them to a minimum.
The crew of Stede’s ship, The Revenge
Aaron Epstein/HBO Max
Our Flag Means Death is a very loose retelling of the Gentleman Pirate Stede Bonnet (played by Rhys Darby), an 18th Century aristocrat who left his family to become a pirate. In the show, he fails miserably at pirating along with his ragtag crew, until they meet Ed Teach, better known as the famous pirate Blackbeard (played by Taika Waititi). Although Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard really existed, along with several other characters, and they really met and sailed together, historical accuracy is not the first point on showrunner David Jenkins’s list (it might even be the last). He merely uses real people merely as a basis to tell a story about life and love. The characters just happen to be pirates because, well, who doesn’t love pirates?
The show’s pacing starts slow, but it’s not much of an issue. David Jenkins understands that to make an exciting story, you fare better if your audience cares about your characters. Our Flag Means Death is structured in acts (as pointed out by Jenkins), and the first one focuses on Stede and his crew. It introduces him as a character and the group of people he has assembled as his crew. Nothing much happens at first, because he doesn’t do dramatic things, until pushed to do so by the threat of mutiny from his crew. Despite upending his entire life to become a pirate, Stede plays everything safe. It’s a facet of his character and one that informs his development over the show. The pace picks up after the first couple of episodes, giving the audience plenty of exciting moments and fight scenes, while not losing its emotional core. Overall, the show strikes an almost perfect balance of humour, action, and emotional moments.
Despite primarily being a comedy, the show touches on a variety of serious topics, without being heavy-handed or ridiculing. Underlying themes of masculinity, identity, and love give this show the emotional core it needs to make it a substantial piece of media that will stick with the audience. And, although these are fictional versions of 18th Century pirates, they’re relatable to the audience. The idea of ‘being a real man’ by bottling up your emotions and boasting about strength and violence is still prevalent today, and tied into the show’s core themes. It plays this out on many levels - whether it’s Stede struggling to fit into societal pressures of manhood, or the character of Jim finding their own version of gender that’s neither here nor there. Even Ed, hailed by many as the epitome of piracy and manliness as Blackbeard, struggles. Only upon meeting Stede does he find the opportunity to let himself be free of the expectations of society and other people. The exploration of masculinity came as a pleasant surprise to me, and a relevant as ever topic in our society - you just have to look at the Oscars this year - and it affects people of all gender identities. It’s refreshing to see a show explore masculinity and define it not by clear-cut parameters, but by finding love for yourself and with others.
Samson Kayo as Oluwande and Vico Ortiz as Jim
Photo: Aaron Epstein/HBO Max
The show gained popularity for many reasons, but one that people have been talking about the most is its LGBTQ+ representation. If you are, like me, in your mid-20s, you grew up with queerbaiting and tropes like ‘Bury Your Gays’. We got used to it and eventually grew content with representation that was only marginally better, but in recent years we’ve seen a variety of diverse queer representation in popular mainstream media. Whether it’s Rue and Jules in Euphoria’ or Robin in Stranger Things, queer people have slowly, but surely, gained an existence in media. Still, much is left to be desired, and Our Flag Means Death fills one of these gaps. It’s a romantic comedy with its leads being two male pirates in their midlife crises (that alone is rare in media, as most romcoms and LGBTQ+ stories focus on younger people). It circumvents the plots of long identity exploration and coming outs - valid in their own right - and simply goes straight for the romance. This is intentional, as David Jenkins deliberately wanted to create a romance, not a coming out story. The few coming out moments are brief and simple, and quickly accepted by the other characters.
Ed, Stede, and Jim are not the only LGBTQ+ characters - far from it. Instead of tokenizing minorities (and this goes for people of colour, too), they make up a large part of the characters. The show is truly diverse, because it doesn’t set itself arbitrary limits and instead embraces people in the varieties in which they come. This representation extends behind the screen as well. Vico Ortiz (who plays Jim) wasn’t left to fend for themselves, as trans people in film so often are, but supported by the fact that there were three non-binary writers in the writer’s room.
The core of this show is the characters, a cast of wonderfully complicated, funny, heartfelt, kind, vengeful, and loveable pirates. They’re each unique, with their own stories and personalities, and it’s hard to not fall a little bit in love with all of them, even antagonists like Con O’Neill’s Izzy Hands. What makes them so compelling and wonderful is that they’re complex people - they’re neither good nor bad, they’re just people.
Take, for example, Stede, the main protagonist. He’s not a good person, having left his wife Mary and their two children with little to no explanation and no regard for their feelings. While his wife tried to make the best of their arranged marriage and reached out to him, he was preoccupied with his own desires. And the show doesn’t go easy on him, doesn’t let him off the hook just because he’s the protagonist. But Stede is also not a bad person. He leaves because he feels trapped and feels like he isn’t what his family deserves, he leaves because he needs to find himself and have the space to do that. He struggles with death and killing people, even in his newly chosen profession. He struggles with guilt and regret. Stede, in the end, is just a person, with good and bad traits, as is everyone else on the show. They exist as fully formed people, rather than tropes.
The core relationship and backbone of Our Flag Means Death is between Stede and Ed, and it carries the heart of the show. The characters start off as narrative foils, both stuck in a kind of midlife crisis and bored with their lives, wanting to try something new. For Stede, this is leaving his family to become a pirate. For Ed, it’s spending time with Stede and letting himself be in touch with his own emotions and other people. They complement each other and, over the course of the show, become much closer. There are other relationships unfolding too, each as delightful as the next.
Taika Waititi as Ed/Blackbeard and Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet
Photo: Aaron Epstein/HBO Max
And while the plot and characters are enough reason to watch Our Flag Means Death, it also stood out to me because it looks good aesthetically. In recent years, I have found myself feeling let down by the design of TV and movies, too often aiming for a sort of gritty realism that does very little for me, except force me to squint at the screen so I can see what’s going on. In contrast to this, the design of Our Flag Means Death gives the show a dreamy and surreal quality. Whether it is the clear, bright colours of the open seas or the warm glow of the setting sun and candlelight for the more emotional scenes, the show aesthetically creates an atmosphere which supports the story. It’s not realistic, but it’s cohesive, and perfectly fits the tone of the show: It’s a romcom, not a historical action show.
This attention to detail also extends to the costumes. They evoke a sense of accuracy - there are somewhat period-accurate cuts and designs, the shapes fitting what we might imagine the 18th Century to have looked like - but always giving another layer of depth to the character. Certainly the historical Blackbeard did not run around in leather jackets and crop tops, but it works here, because he’s a pirate with a reputation of being ruthless and dangerous, and the use of style and fabrics (really, Taika Waititi in leather is something we all needed) supports an aspect of his character. Ed is putting on the image of the fearsome Blackbeard, because that’s what he knows, and only meeting Stede means branching out in his style (don’t worry, they do a clothes swap almost immediately upon meeting, and it’s great.) Stede, on the other hand, is always impeccably dressed as the aristocrat he spent his life being. His clothes are made of the finest fabrics, with bright colours and fashionable cuts. As he says, they are a part of status and power play - dress up so other people feel underdressed in your presence. When Stede feels insecure, he dresses up. But more than that, his clothes are a part of his former life and self that he, perhaps unaware, is holding on to. It’s almost a manifestation of his guilt about his leaving and his reluctance to fully let go of his lifestyle. There are many more interesting details about the costume design (in particular Stede’s wife, Mary, in later episodes), far too many for me to elaborate on, but it’s another facet that gives the show an edge above many other pieces of media.
Our Flag Means Death has become the latest hype on the internet, but for very good reason. It seemed to have very little promotion, with not even so much as its own twitter account until recently, which makes its popularity all the more impressive. Granted, it stars Taika Waititi, which will draw in any fan of his (like myself), but many people weren’t even aware he was in it. What drew people in was word of mouth about this pirate show that was funny and emotional and really, very gay. I went in expecting about as much, but this show pulled more than a few surprises on me. It’s evident that a lot of thought and love have gone into all aspects of the show, ensuring that at no point it feels disjointed or lifeless. It makes this one of the best pieces of media I have seen in a while, and very well deserved of its quick popularity. In the end, Our Flag Means Death is a show about finding love: For yourself, for others, for life. And yes, it may not be very realistic to the 18th Century pirate’s life, but sometimes people don’t want realism. Sometimes we want a gay pirate romcom.