Tw: suicide mention, mental health, toxic relationships
Ok I get it, the first season was all fun and games and silly little gay pirates, so it's obvious and easy to point Izzy out as the antagonist -ahem, the English and Spanish navy, ahem-. So yeah, we have this little and agry fella, trying to bring our lovers appart, trying to boss around The Revenge as if he's the Captain and being mean to everyone around. Of course we thought he's the bad guy. But have we stopped and cared about what are Izzy's drives? HAVE WE??
Izzy Hands is Blackbeard's first mate. Not Ed's, as he says later on. The good functioning of the ship and the relationships between his Captain and the crew is his duty. And all of a sudden, his Captain turns mad and in love with someone who is weak and has nothing to do with piracy. Izzy is absolutely stressed, like a stray cat taking a bath for the first time. The time Ed and Stede spend together is lost time: not pillaging well enough, not hiding properly from the Army... So he blames it all on Stede, ignoring completely his boss' state of mind. Izzy's job is to make everything work and it's just not happening anytime soon. He's so desperate that he even takes a deal with the English army. He even forgives Ed when he punches him in the face, because he's convinced he deserved it. What else could he do?
And in the second season, Izzy has regained power as first mate. But he's utterly destroyed, both physically and emotionally. He has sacrificed his integrity for this ship, and it's not paying back. Ed treats him like a dog and the crew is so profoundly mentally devastated that he cannot make it work anymore. And again, in desperation, Izzy keeps searching for solutions. It's his job, at the end of the day. He's too emotionally attached that he needs to stay, to make it work again like it used to. He's once again against the wall, he even asks to talk it through. Anything is working, so even Stede's ways were given a try. And this gets him shot in the leg, leading to losing it in a 50-50% chance to die.
So dying is the last frontier. He's not sacrificing his life to a suicidal boss that doesn't care who goes down with him. He almost gives up, but luckily he fails his shot. When the storm comes, he gets his revenge on all the damage that he has taken over the months, over the years; and yet again he's doing his job: he's protecting the crew from what's now the enemy, their current Captain.
When Izzy sees Stede again, he asks him to insult him, to unburden all his hate on him -but that's Izzy's coping mechanism, not Stede's-, he needs punishment, for he hasn't been able to complete his duty and to save Blackbeard from insanity to it's last consecuences. All he gets back is just nothing, and it hurts more than anything because he's left alone with guilt. No bad words, not even a side eye. He's broken and ignored.
Later on, when Stede's crew escape, they take Izzy with them -he would probably be killed or used to track them back- and he tries, for the first time, to thank Stede. Ignored again. He's not worth a thought. So he first falls in booze and then progressively into absolute madness, guiltyness and grieve.
He's not been loved once. Not even when he gave all his life to the one he loved. It was never returned back and now he's disabled for life, alone and aboard a ship where everyone hates him -or so he thinks.
I was so happy to see that the crew ended up understanding his pain and situation, taking care of him and making him a new leg all together. So fuck yeah. FOR THE NEW UNICORN. For the new and crafty Izzy, for the new and sensitive man how's yet to come to terms with some things. To Izzy Hands.
So what I really want to say is: stop hating Izzy. He's been through a lot of shit, has done questionable things to maintain his crew safe and he's a baby girl and I'm too emotional to end this with something that makes sense.
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