Today, on the anniversary of OMFD (our mean fag's death), I'm thinking about Ed and Izzy and closure.
In s2e2, when Ed tells Frenchie that he's grateful for the opportunity to get closure with Izzy right before he sails the ship into the storm, I do not think he's lying or joking. From Ed's perspective, what has just happened is he's gone to the man who triggered the kraken spiral in the first place, without whom they would not be in this position, and said "I cannot do this anymore. I would rather die than be Blackbeard any longer, and you have already told me that I'm better off dead than being Ed. I'm asking you to finish what you started."
And Izzy laughs at him, mocks him for being scared, tells him he's not "cleaning up [Ed's] mess." It's shockingly cruel, even coming from Izzy. And when Ed leaves, he thinks he hears Izzy shoot himself. "I loved you, best I could - " Ed could never, ever satisy Izzy.
In the gravy basket, Ed remembers Izzy one time. He remembers Izzy laughing at him after Ed asks him to kill him. Izzy tells him he "has love" for him; Ed remembers him as proof that he's unlovable.
I don't think Ed was lying when he said he found that conversation with Izzy to be some kind of closure. I think it felt like proof to him that he was making the correct decision in choosing this method of suicide, that Ed is fundamentally broken and unlovable.
The actual closure, of course, comes when Izzy actually dies, and it refutes what Ed had so firmly believed was true at the start of the season.
Because Izzy, so far from calling Ed's extreme suicidal ideation "[Ed's] mess" and mocking him for being scared to do it himself, so far from talking about him like a wild dog, an insane animal that needed to be put down...Izzy finally takes some responsibility. He tells Ed that he was terrible to him for years, and was terrible to him knowingly, selfishly, fully aware that was deeply hurting Ed.
And that's the closure Ed needed from Izzy. There's no way, now, that he can think back to the kraken spiral and those awful dark months and be afraid it was all his fault or proof he's broken. Izzy got better throughout this season, but I do think that the only way this apology ever would've hit right if it was a deathbed confession, a literary trope that we know is always associated with honesty and closure and clarity. This closure allows Ed to finally, finally, just be himself, and set out for his new life with Stede knowing that he's a person, not a monster, and he's going to be okay.