Black sails is telling us that sometimes, love isn't enough. It's a story about loneliness too
Let’s start with the most obvious example : Silver. Silver loves Flint, and he loves Madi. ANd both of them love him. Yet he knows he is not enough for any of them. Neither Flint nor Madi would stop the war for him and they would not be satisfied with just him. He knows that. That’s why he forces their hands by ending the war, because even though he knows he’s not enough for them to be fully happy, he cannot stand the idea of them being destroyed by that war. And on Skeleton Island, when he tells Flint that he’ll wait a day, a month, a year until Flint accepts the outcome and they can leave together, it’s Flint’s last chance of telling him he is enough. But Flint can’t, because he cannot give up on the war. So Silver has to go with the other option, the one he did not want (and that is NOT killing Flint, because he could never even consider it, it’s sending Flint to Savannah and to Thomas, it’s losing him because he would rather lose him but know he’s safe than having the war take him and Madi from him).
And here, as Flint refuses to go with Silver, he tells him that one day Madi will not be enough for Silver either, that one day he will regret it.
And that is part of Silver’s tragedy. He was not enough for the people he loved, but in the end the people he loved weren’t enough for him either. There just was no winning.
Now, when Flint found Thomas again, of course he was happy and it was great. Yet I wonder if Thomas was ever enough for him in the end. Flint has gone through so much, the war and rage and anger is now part of him, it’s tough to know where flint ends and when james starts. And Thomas, for all his love and all that, never knew Flint. He only knew James. Even if he tells him, shares what happened, it will always be different. But Silver knew him whole. Loved him whole. And so, sometimes in the dead of the night, Flint misses him, misses the piracy years and what could have been. And on those days, his love for Thomas and Thomas’ love are not enough to keep him happy.
MOVING ON to how self love also isn’t enough. Cue Eleanor. Eleanor is a selfish character, she puts herself first and will do anything to protect herself. Her self love and will to survive is stronger than her love for anyone else. She rejects leaving with Max because she thought she would be more powerful and safer by staying in Nassau. Max’s love was not enough to overpower that. She betrays anyone she needs to. And when sent to England, she even betrays herself and becomes whoever she needs to be to survive. She follows Rogers. And turning on her beliefs and on who she used to be (besides being incredibly privileged) is wrong. It’s wrong and the show tells us that with the parallel made between the scene where she’s in the cell and agrees to work with Rogers, and the scene where Charles is in the cell and refuses to sign the plea. Eleanor was completely in the dark when she did a 180 on herself, while when Vane decides to die for what he believes in, there is a ray of light coming through the window and onto him.
But Eleanor doing what she thought she had to do to protect herself eventually gets her killed anyway. And not only that, it gets her killed the exact same way her mother died. Eleanor loved herself, prioritized her survival over anything else, and it still wasn’t enough. She lost herself, changed her clothes, married a man who never knew her (her ghost was knitting, like really??) and in the end it did not even save her.
MOVING ON AGAIN. To Miranda. Miranda loved Thomas, and she loved James, and James loved her. But in Nassau, she and James were not enough. She was unhappy there, she craved more, she needed more, she needed to fit, but James couldn’t see it. And James wasn’t happy either, obviously. Miranda’s story is tragic too, because she cared so much, she loved so much and no one gave her back. No one was there to listen to her ranting, to her feelings, to how not being able to fit was killing her. And the one time she finally spoke out, when she finally let her feelings out, she was brutally killed before she could even finish her fucking line. Miranda tried to shut her feelings down to prioritize others, to help Thomas, to help Flint, because she loved them, but it wasn’t enough to make her not feel empty; and how could it?
BILLY also loved his war, his beliefs and his story too much. He believed in the legend he was creating, he believed in the cause, it all started because he loved piracy and wanted to fight for it. But in the end he lost himself, lost parts of his sanity, lost everything.
Even blackbeard was defeated by his love. He loved Charles like a son, came back for him. Yet it wasn't enough for Charles to choose to stay with him. And after his death, Teach once again chose love and chose to fight in Charles' name but it wasn't enough to win.
So yeah, Black Sails is a show about love, but it’s also about how sometimes, love isn’t enough. Just because people love each other, or themselves, it doesn’t mean they’ll make it and get a happy ending. Love wasn’t enough to save Silver, or Flint, or Eleanor, or Miranda. They all ended up half empty, before they died.
