Black Sails Review

I know I am a decade behind the times when it comes to Black Sails, a four-season Starz show that premiered in 2014, but I think it resonated with me even more strongly today than it would have then, and I have some thoughts I simply need to get out of my brain, especially in this day and age of “woke” complaints and the DEI conversation that is ongoing. Beware, thematic spoilers abound because I want to talk about queer belonging and the full arc of John Silver and Captain Flint requires that the ending be discussed.

Black Sails is inherently fan-fiction about the decades before the events of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. It was on Starz, so it’s violent and sexy, for all that every single character is constantly in need of a bath and first aid materials. In other words, it’s a tragedy already told, where you know some people won’t make it out of the narrative, and others necessarily must because they appear in Treasure Island later on. Nevertheless, I was hanging on every season, waiting to see how the pieces would eventually line up. I was compelled by the incredible power of the Flint/Silver combination, played incomparably by Toby Stephens and Luke Arnold, respectively.

Flint’s queer identity is central to the narrative, in a way I found profound and important. Keep in mind, this was two-thousand-and-fourteen, and the leading man was canonically queer. The first season keeps this information subtextual, but clearly present in his construction. My surprise, then, that season two whole-heartedly committed to this identity through flashback scenes, was profound. That complicated relationship shared between Flint, who once was a man simply named James McGraw, the idealist Lord Thomas Hamilton, with whom he falls in love, and Lady Miranda Hamilton, Thomas’s wife who, at times, is also Flint’s lover—is deep, complex, nuanced, and defies the boundaries of definition. Is Flint/McGraw gay? No, he wouldn’t have understood himself that way, but neither do I think he’d have understood himself as bi/pan—instead, he loves passionately those that can stand with him as intellectual equals, who understand the importance of duty and sacrifice, and who use love to fuel that duty.

The final season culminates in an overarching question: would you give it all up for the one you love? In this context, Silver is asking Flint, if he’d go back for a chance with Thomas, presumed dead this past decade. But, this question is also reflected back at Silver, through both the text’s presentation of his relationship with Madi, a distortion itself of the McGraw/Thomas/Miranda and even the Flint/Silver/Miranda triangle, as well as his treatment of Flint, whom he has been encouraged to replace by nearly every other character.

Flint has confided in Silver wholly, and Silver has embodied Long John Silver, a creation of himself and his need to be close to Flint. First, he remains close to Flint for his own survival, but that stops being the case fairly early on. It leaves open the question of Silver’s feelings for Flint—has he grown close to the Captain for power, for security, for love? Or, perhaps as in the case of Flint’s complicated relationship with love and desire, maybe it’s a bit of all of it, and Silver himself cannot even separate where one ends and the other begins.

Silver became someone Flint could rely on, to stand as an intellectual equal and who understands the driving force behind the pirate war. Long John Silver is a creation every bit as much as Captain Flint is to James McGraw, imperfect creatures born of desperation and longing.

Ultimately, Silver does give up the war, and the framing of this choice centers on the rescue of Madi, a woman who seemingly will not forgive him for placing feelings above duty. And yet, how he gives up the pirate war centers on Flint’s removal from the narrative, a removal always implied to be death at Silver’s hands.

So, Silver takes Flint to Skeleton Island, leaving Madi behind on a ship aptly named the Eurydice, and he never looks back, fixated instead on Flint’s face. That he offers Flint, not a choice, but time, I think is vital to understanding Silver, as well. He says something to the effect of “I’ll stand here an hour, a day, a week, etc” until Flint understands what is being offered to him. He says the same thing to Madi later, seeking her understanding in his choices surrounding both Flint and the dissolution of the pirate war.

For a show with themes of rage and grief, of discovery in the dark places England’s imperialism cannot reach, love also plays an integral role in the narrative. But, at the end of the story, the framing places the story not in Silver’s hands, but in Jack Rackham’s—a man who had spent the show obsessed with legacy and what will be left behind. It is Jack who tells Silver and Flint’s story to his newest recruit, Jack, who emphasizes the importance of love and acceptance. Take his relationship with Anne, for example. Toxic by modern standards, of course, and toxic in the show, but he never asks her to stop exploring her sexuality, and he never leaves her. Jack, who supported Blackbeard despite their differences because “Charles Vane was a brother to us [him and Anne],” and Blackbeard was a father to him, so even though that doesn’t make him and Anne related to Blackbeard necessarily, it does make them something, and he does his best to honor that.

It’s a show about family and belonging, and about love, and it’s all told via fan fiction surrounding a 100+ year-old novel. It’s dark and heavy, and imperfect in its execution at times, but it told a story of queer love and desire in a way that resonates so strongly with me. It tells of this queer identity in a way more intense and important to me than much of today’s media villainized for being “too woke,” and I’m not sure how I’m supposed to sit with that. I’m also writing about Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which is being alternatively lauded/villainized for allowing a gay romance option with the player character’s best friend (and liege lord) from both games, but I think that was executed in a…if not harmful or queer-baiting way, at least in a “we had better character development a decade ago” kind of way.

Because, here’s the thing; despite the way my heart drops whenever I hear the (verifiably untrue) commentary surrounding how much easier it is to be LGBT in Hollywood these days, or how everything is being ruined by the need to be woke…I just don’t see it?

How much media have I had to sit through for a single queer character? And just the presence of a queer character is not the same as representation, after all. Nearly every film, television show, and top 100 novel has elements of hetero-normative romance and identity baked into them, but the second a character defies that expectation it’s a DEI inclusion? Or, almost worse in a different way, you get films that cause more harm than good because of their creation, a cishet view of what queer lives might look like (I can’t even get into Emilia Pérez, it makes me so upset). This is a different conversation for a different day, so let me return to the joy that I found in Black Sails, despite its violence and the tears I shed over the ending.

I loved Black Sails. I loved the journey of John Silver, who had to become Long John in order to unmake Captain Flint. Who couldn’t live without Flint, truly, and left the pirate life behind when Flint was gone. Who will spend the interim years between now and Treasure Island with a wife (implied to be Madi) and a parrot named Captain Flint. Who takes on the young Jim Hawkins, in whom he must have seen so much of his friend, whom he loved whether or not that love could be understood as romantic, whether or not it was physically sexual—it was intimate either way. They shared things together they could share with no one else, and what is love if not that intimate closeness?

Finally, reading the closing sequences of the show in the context of Muppet Treasure Island (worth it, I promise!) juxtaposes Silver and Flint’s final stand-off, which no one knows the full truth of, with Tim Curry’s Long John Silver finding the gold once again as Kermit and Miss Piggy sing  “Love Led Us Here.” Of course love led you there, love put the gold there in the first place, and love drove Silver to become who he was.