“Ed didn’t intend for Izzy to lose his leg”
*horrified side eye* TAPTAPTAP
No….. he just intended for him to die.
And he certainly intended to cut his toes off, you think he was sterilizing his instruments? Like there’s Stan behavior and then there’s making a whole new character up. As an Ed Enjoyer (and a Stede Enjoyer and an Izzy Enjoyer) he was so far out of line with everything we saw at the end of last season and the beginning of this one that had the crew succeeded in killing him… it would have been their right to do so. I don’t believe in taking the first shot, but if someone tries to kill you, you have a right to fight back, up to and including killing them back if it gets to that point.
And Ed was very much trying to kill them all. The fact that this was a byproduct of trying to kill himself doesn’t negate that. A murder-suicide is a murder-suicide, and that’s what he was going for. There were funny beats happening because it’s still a dramedy and comedy is an important half of that, so some things were framed in a funny manner, but what actually happened was all so desperately unfunny.
No one on that ship is or was an innocent, but that does not make it less horrible. Ed being almost completely untethered while remaining in a position of authority almost got them all killed. Izzy propped up that authority, and in doing so was almost the instrument of his own demise. Ed is probably not actually capable of maintaining a crew for very long without Izzy’s interference, and the crew of the Revenge would likely have turned on him or abandoned him long before were it not for Izzy’s management, so it’s fair to say that Izzy and Ed were locked in a death spiral until Izzy pulled out first.
And I think the main reason Izzy did break out of it is that he was simultaneously taking the brunt of Ed’s direct violence, while also receiving care from the crew. It was just enough for him to wake the fuck up. That early scene of Jim talking to him and Fang hugging him and Frenchie holding his hand was crucial because this type of connection was one he hadn’t had before, one he resisted, but one that ultimately saved his life and broke him out of the death spiral. He and Ed were a hateful Thelma and Louise about to drive over the cliff together, only the car is a bus full of other people. Izzy gave Ed the keys and put his hand on the shifter. He protected Ed’s power for too long. He’s not blameless. But he also pulled the emergency brake at the last possible second.
No one deserves the kind of torture Ed put Izzy and the crew through. Misery loves company and he was trying to drive them to put him out of his. “Judgement free zone” if he had chosen not to live after all, that’s ultimately his decision and his right, but he had no right to try and take people with him. Izzy was complicit in this, I just don’t think he fully realized how bad things could get until they got there. He thought he was comfortable with pain and misery until it got bad enough for him to accept comfort and that helped him stop. Still didn’t deserve it.
And it doesn’t really matter what else Ed did or did not intend or was or wasn’t cognizant of when he still very much tried to kill them all. That’s ultimately on him. Stede may blame himself for hurting Ed, and Izzy may blame himself for allowing the situation to deteriorate so much, and they both blame each other and themselves for “doing this to him” but the ultimate responsibility does and always will lie with Ed. He’s not actually a wild dog, he’s an adult person capable of making choices including bad ones.
