I was thinking about when Miranda said how great men are made great by the relentless pursuit of a better world and the ending of black sails, how James actually stops the war to be with Thomas (it depends on how you see the after canon but still) and I wanted to know your thoughts about this (if u have any). Sorry for the bad english
Oof okay...so. Uh. This is actually something I feel really strongly about! Please don’t take any of this as like, a negative/takedown thing, but I disagree with the basic premise you’re working from. Nothing personal! Just, that’s not how I see the finale.
So the basic premise of “Flint chose-” in regards to the finale is not true to me.
Flint didn’t ‘choose’ anything. His ‘choices’ were death, or giving in. At the point which Silver leads him into the forest, the war is already over.
Without Silver, and especially with his active opposition, the war has no chance. We see that Silver is able to convince the maroons and the pirates(presumably over Madi’s objections) that the war is not worth fighting. We also know that Silver holds a lot more sway with the men at this point than Flint. And, Silver has a gun pointed at him and very clearly says “If you don’t accept this outcome I’m going to shoot you. I will stand here for however long it takes you, but your options are giving in to this, or a bullet between the eyes.”
Because Silver knows that what Miranda said is absolutely true. Flint is not ever going to give up the fight. He has internalized this relentless pursuit of a better world as a way to memorialize Thomas, yes, but he also truly believes in it. It’s why I assume Silver didn’t just have Thomas brought to Nassau. If he truly thought that all it would take to calm Flint’s ire was to have his love back, why not just set Thomas up somewhere with a house and a cow and give Flint a map and say ‘go find your husband’ ?
It’s because he knew that wouldn’t work. He knew that Flint, for all that he would dither about it, would not choose Thomas over the war; just as he expected Silver to choose the war over Madi. This becomes doubly true if it wasn’t an active choice of ‘the war or Thomas’ death.’
People give a lot of credence to when Flint says ‘I don’t know that I wouldn’t have done what you did’ as a support for him actively giving up the war, but that’s not comparable to his choice in the finale, because Thomas is not in active danger from him continuing the war. Madi’s survival depended on the surrender of the chest in Silver’s mind - and Flint still expected him to choose the war.
And remember he already knows Thomas is alive.
If at that point, again, Silver truly thought that Thomas would be enough to stop Flint, why not tell Flint Thomas was alive, watch him leave, and then surrender the chest to secure Madi’s freedom?
Because he knows that’s not a choice Flint would make:
I think if he knew how close we were to winning this war he gave his life for, he wouldn’t want me to.
(And oh, what a nice parallel we have there for Madi and Thomas!)
What Flint might do, though, is choose Thomas over death.
Silver doesn’t want to kill Flint. We can argue from dusk until dawn over the reasons, but that much is undeniably true. Some would say it’s because he loves him, I argue it’s because he doesn’t, as Max says when she tells him about the plantation “want to live with it.”
Silver has always insisted that guilt goes away, that one’s past has no prescience, but he knows that is not true, and he also knows that if he kills Flint, Madi will absolutely never speak to him again. (I hope she never does anyway but it’s a surety if he kills her partner.)
So anyway, Flint knows this when Silver points the gun at him.
“So, what decisions have you made, about what our tomorrows will be?”
He knows he’s been outmatched. He knows that Silver has outgunned him. He knows that the war he and Madi have given so much for is dead because of Silver’s lack of faith and ability to see something through to the end. There is no fight, after this.
And it is into this context that Silver has given him the choice - one in which Silver expects him to choose death unless he presents James with an alternative.
Silver knows about Thomas. He knows about Miranda, about how suicidal Flint has been the entire time Silver has known him. He knows that death does not scare Flint. You point a gun at the man and he just shrug emojis like ‘well if there’s nothing I can do you might as well, both the people I love are dead.’
And that’s why he tells Flint about Thomas. Thomas is his ace in being able to convince Flint he maybe doesn’t want to die. To convince him there is a second option.
But again, the war is already over. Flint was not given the choice of
Go to the plantation and be imprisoned there with Thomas
(This is also why I have a huge problem with Silver’s story to Madi, because he is seeing this as a choice - just as he sees his staying on the island as a choice for Madi. He ignores the fact that a) ‘reorienting’ to the daylight is literally him forcing Flint to reassimilate into British society and b) there IS no returning to who Flint was before ‘the nightmare started’. For him, he might think that’s possible. Hell! HE might even wish it. I think he truly does. But for Flint? Who defines himself by his history? This is not a victory, or a happy ending, or a gentle waking. And for Silver(and fandom) to assume it is, erases everything we know about James Flint and again takes any sort of responsibility to atone off of Silver. Which, I suppose, is the point, as in order to paint him as the kind of villain we know in treasure island, you have to.)
