OFMD sure loves its layers and its parallels, and I appreciate that, four years in, I’m still discovering new ones. Today, I’m looking at Stede in 1x10 compared to Ed during the Kraken era.
In both cases, our guys are again trapped in the suffocating lives they tried to escape. Their return is prefaced by a violent threat that cuts to the heart of their worst beliefs about themselves: Chauncey’s “you defile beautiful things” and Izzy’s “this is Blackbeard!” These threats try to strip them of the growth they’ve experienced, the new possibilities they found for themselves. They say, You’re wrong about everything. This is all you are, and all you can ever be.
Ironically, Stede returns to his old life in an attempt to break the cycle of what Chauncey says he is, what he believes himself to be. He goes back to Barbados with the hope of making things right with his family, but he discovers that his presence just makes everything worse. Meanwhile, Ed isn’t trying to fix anything—he has no hope of anything getting better. As he sinks further than ever into the endless repetitive grind of being Blackbeard, it’s an expression of despair. He feels there’s nothing left for him, nothing else he can be.
For both of them, it’s going back to a life that was crushing them. “You ever feel trapped? Like you’re just treading water, waiting to drown?” Only now, it’s even worse than it was before, because they just got to taste the possibility of something different, something better, and had it snatched away. For Stede, it’s become a prison with a life sentence. For Ed, it’s a living grave until he can arrange a more permanent one.
What really strikes me about this is that both Stede and Ed’s personal prisons wind up dragging in those around them. I don’t think it’s wholly intentional on either of their parts, but they’re depressed and lonely, and those moods spread like a stain. Stede is miserable, having given up the man he loves to “do the right thing” and put his family back together, so why shouldn’t Mary be miserable too? Give up the "Widow Bonnet” title, give up Doug? I think Stede (mostly) unconsciously resents her happiness and fulfillment, not because she found it without him, but because he misses his own recent happiness and fulfillment so bitterly. So he winds up taking it out on her, throwing his weight around as the white male patriarch, trapping her just as much as he is. But Mary isn’t prepared to give up her new life, and when she resorts to attempted skewering to prevent it, it’s the jolt both she and Stede need to break out of the destructiveness of their marriage. Both of them realize the only way ahead is to choose freedom, and Stede’s “death” to facilitate that is only an elaborate fuckery.
With Ed, it’s the monotony of being Blackbeard that was killing him at the start of season 1, and so that’s the prison the Kraken crew gets caught in, the grave they're pulled into. Constant raids to break Ned Low’s record, every day the same as the one before. There’s “no drama, no fucking life”—no reward even, not when Ed tells them to throw the treasure overboard to reduce the weight on the ship. And amid all the neverending drudgery, devoid of any meaning or interest, Ed’s depression also pervades the ship. Jim feels numb after the wedding raid. Fang can’t stop crying. Izzy, the man who'd wanted the “real” Blackbeard back to begin with, breaks down in front of the crew. Frenchie’s been locking his bad memories away in a box, but after being made first mate, he starts to feel the strain too. Ed can’t get the death he wants until he threatens to take the crew down with him. They mutiny to save their own lives, and once Ed reaches the gravy basket, he realizes he wants to survive too.
Our pain can hurt more than just ourselves, but here’s to choosing freedom, to choosing life.
