I’m still thinking about how casually Ed invites Frenchie to join them on the boat party in 1x05. We know that Ed has been keeping to himself for who-knows-how-long, holing up in his cabin on the Queen Anne’s Revenge with Izzy acting as a go-between with his crew. He’s been getting more and more bored, lonely, and depressed, and when he tries to engage with Izzy, we see that he tends to get shut down or scolded.
And obviously, meeting Stede is revolutionary for him, someone whose playfulness matches his, someone he can be weird with, someone whose mind hums at a similar frequency. From the moment they meet, he gets to be Ed: he can open up about his feelings on piracy, savor fine fabrics, and explore wardrobes in secret passages.
But I think it’s important that we see Ed finding some level of community on the Revenge too. So even beyond the delight of the pyramid scheme subplot, I really like that it’s not just Stede and Ed who go to the party, and that Ed is the one to invite Frenchie. For a guy who’s spent too long sitting alone in his cabin, it means a lot to me that he takes pretty much the first chance he gets to ask someone else to hang out.
When Ed is in front of the whole crew, he tends to be in performance mode a lot. He is interacting/socializing with them, more so than he has with his own crew—“This is the most open and available I’ve ever seen him,” according to Ivan—but it’s largely as Blackbeard rather than Ed. The friendly but still slightly untouchable celebrity. Admiring the “wild characters on the high seas,” goofing around while keeping his hands on his weapons. Prefacing his ghost story with the detail that he “doesn’t feel fear.” Getting up to the sort of raucous, violent pirate fun he has with Calico Jack. And so on.
So his first steps of showing Ed to the crew come in smaller, more individual interactions. We get Frenchie and Oluwande at the boat party (though Ed and Olu don’t really interact much with each other,) which gives us such gems as, “I like the name Jeff, and accounting sounds fancy as fuck,” "They're such dicks about spoons!", and my beloved, “What’d they do to you, man?” We get Lucius on the treasure hunt, which gives us his great, “You don’t have to be a dick about it,” speech, and he speaks his mind when he drops off the box of Ed’s stuff after Ed leaves with Jack.
It’s the individual connections with these two characters that offer Ed the stepping stones to really drop his Blackbeard persona in front of the whole crew. When he comes back from the Academy, Izzy tries to hide Ed’s heartbreak from the crew, but Ed asks to see Lucius. Not to talk about his feelings, mind you! Just so Lucius can write down his lyrics…about sorrow and despair. But the song’s just about a fictional character…who, Lucius guesses, is struggling.
With Lucius’s gentle encouragement, and Frenchie’s accompaniment on the lute, Ed lets the crew see him as a vulnerable wreck. No “very cool” leather, no posturing, no calculated friendliness. Just a shambles of a man in Stede’s robe singing his heart out about hard life and sad death, in need of love and support. And the crew gives it. They’re a little weirded out and confused, but they’re there for Ed when he needs them. There to help him weather the storm in Stede’s absence.
All of that means so, so much to me. Stede changes Ed’s life in countless critical ways, but it’s better for them both if Stede isn’t Ed’s everything, and vice versa. They both need more than just each other. It makes me sad that things broke between Ed and many of the crew in season 2, even if I understand why, and while I adore Fang’s sweetness and caring throughout their fishing trip, I do wish we’d been able to see more of Ed’s relationships with the crew being mended. I hope they all have such good times together whenever the crew drops by the inn!
