Behind the scenes of 'Our Flag Means Death': Creator David Jenkins unpacks the show's central love triangle and that unforgettable merman scene
- Warning: Major spoilers for the first three episodes of "Our Flag Means Death" season two.
- The Max comedy series follows the adventures of pirates Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard, who fall in love.
"Our Flag Means Death" ended its first season on a distressing note, with not much hope for the fan-favorite couple at the heart of the series.
After 10 episodes spent trying to prove his worth as a swashbuckler — and unexpectedly falling in love with Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) along the way — the finale saw Gentleman Pirate Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) get cold feet over his new lifestyle choice, ditching Blackbeard and the found-family rag-tag crew on his ship, The Revenge. Though Stede quickly realizes his mistake and tries to find his crew and Blackbeard, it's too late. Blackbeard (aka Ed), heartbroken from the apparent rejection, reverts to his prior ways, leaning into self-destruction and villainy.
Season two, which premiered its first three episodes on Thursday, picks up in a similarly dark vein. But there's still plenty of room for the joyful moments of absurdity that made the series such an unexpected hit (with a particularly passionate fandom) when it first premiered in 2022. Case in point: Stede as a merman.
In an interview with Insider ahead of the season two premiere, series creator and showrunner David Jenkins broke down key moments from the first three episodes (yes, including that merman scene) and shared exclusive behind-the-scenes images from the set.
The Stede/Ed/Izzy dynamic is indeed a love triangle, Jenkins confirms
Season two opens with Stede dreaming of fighting Izzy Hands (Con O'Neill), Ed's first mate who tries to persuade the captain to go back to his former vicious persona. In the sequence, Stede needs to go through Izzy in order to get to Ed, symbolizing how Izzy has been the stumbling block between the two lovers.
In a way, even though Izzy and Ed never appeared to have a necessarily romantic or sexual relationship, one could describe the three characters' dynamic as a love triangle with Ed in the center and the other two fighting for his affection.
Jenkins agrees with this sentiment and says he wanted to open the season with a moment that directly addresses that triangle, which he calls key to season two.
"I think Izzy, in a certain way, got the worst deal in the first season," the showrunner tells Insider. "He gets jilted and then he still is in spurned spouse territory at the beginning of the second season."
Blackbeard is still in his villain era at the start of season 2, but it's not what Izzy expected
Izzy suffers the most of the crew, having his toes cut off whenever he disappoints his boss. When Izzy finally stands up to Ed in the first episode of the new season, the heartbroken pirate captain shoots him and replaces him with Frenchie (Joel Fry).
Jenkins, who praises O'Neill's performance as Izzy this season, tells Insider that Izzy is an important character to watch because of how he grows in season two, after his attempts to get Blackbeard back into his villainous era backfire on him.
"Izzy is really feeding this poison, and then gets the poison turned back on him," Jenkins says. "I wanted to see that character go on a journey. I guess it's a journey of redemption, but I think it's more a journey of finding out, who is he to Blackbeard?"
According to Jenkins, Izzy is "more than a spurned, jilted lover."
"What is that relationship about? And I think by the end of the season it kind of becomes a little unexpected of who they are to each other and what they mean to each other," he teases.
Jenkins tells Insider that season two had to start in this way because of how dark the end of season one was. "You have to pick up in that place and keep it pretty dark," he says.
Season 2 introduces more real pirates from history, like Zheng Yi Sao
"Our Flag Means Death" is loosely based on history – both Stede and Blackbeard are real and really did have a brief friendship (though there's no evidence they were ever romantically involved). Across the two seasons, characters based on other pirates from that time period have also made brief appearances.
Zheng Yi Sao (Ruibo Qian) is one significant new character based on a real-life pirate.
Sao was the chief of a giant pirate confederation in the South China Sea who defeated the Chinese navy on numerous occasions. When she finally retired, she demanded a pardon and got it.
"She's basically the most successful pirate ever," Jenkins says, reflecting on the real Sao. "And we don't know her name in the West, but she's way more successful than Blackbeard and any of these folks."
When we first meet Qian's Sao in season two episode one, she poses as a soup shop owner. However, when the gentlemen pirates are brought to her pirate ship and almost all-female crew, the audience discovers that everything is so much more organized on this vessel than on the other, more male ships we've seen so far.
"The guys are on that ship and they're like 'This is good. This is way better than what we were doing. The soup's good,'" Jenkins says. "'They sleep outside, there's a bell that rings in the morning. But other than that Zheng Yi Sao's got it together, man, this is way more functional.'" He likens Sao's way of pirating to a successful tech startup, compared with the garage sale vibe Stede had going on the Revenge.
Jenkins says that Sao's pirating method also is focused on success rather than enacting violence for the sake of it, or simply trying to look cool.
"It's less about being a badass and acting out, although she has to be a badass for what she does," Jenkins tells Insider. "She does it to create a more functional way of doing things as opposed to acting out or wish fulfillment like Stede, who's just playing pirate.
"She's actually about something bigger. And it makes her more formidable."
That merman sequence was inspired by Jenkins' desire to see Rhys Darby as a merman
Yes, Jenkins was fully aware that the Stede-as-a-merman sequence would be a fan-favorite moment as soon as he came up with it.
In episode three, Stede and Sao finally catch up to Blackbeard's pirates, but Blackbeard is nowhere to be seen. We eventually discover that the crew nearly killed him, and now he is on the brink of death.
As he's dying, Blackbeard is guided on his journey through purgatory by his former pirate captain Benjamin Hornigold (Mark Mitchinson), another actual pirate from Blackbeard's time.
Jenkins tells Insider that this particular character was chosen as Blackbeard's guide because of Ed's issues with father figures in his life.
"I thought Hornigold was the most obvious because he was the person who made Blackbeard what he is. And Blackbeard has a father complex, so it's natural that he's going to bring his former captain back," the show creator said. "It's a struggle with him because he and dad figures don't historically do well."
After Blackbeard gives in to death, he is saved by Stede, who comes to him in purgatory as a merman. The scene, set to "This Woman's Work" by Kate Bush, is both hilarious and tear-jerking.
Jenkins tells Insider that this was something he envisioned for season two very early in the planning process simply because he wanted to see Darby as a mermaid.
"I wanted 'This Woman's Work' for that sequence and made sure that I'd cleared it and then we scripted that to time code and just really spent a lot of time on that sequence," Jenkins says, adding that it was "joyous" to see Stede as a mermaid.
"I feel joy when I see Rhys come out of the darkness underwater as a merperson," he jokes. At the same time, Jenkins knows the scene holds emotional weight even though it's humorous.
"I think to be dying and in purgatory and hear the voice of the person who loves you and have them pull you back and appear as a mythical creature — when we talked about it in the room, we just all loved it immediately," he says.
As for Darby, Jenkins says the actor ultimately loved shooting the scene, even though he wasn't so sure about the merman garb at first.
"He was a little bit like, 'Guys. um, I don't.' And then he got it on and he was like, 'Ah I look pretty good in this, don't I?'" Jenkins recalled. "And then shooting it underwater. That was a long day of shooting."
Season 2 of "Our Flag Means Death" is now streaming on Max: