‘Our Flag Means Death’: David Jenkins on Showcasing Stede & Blackbeard’s ‘Mythic’ Mermaid Love

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Our Flag Means Death, Season 2, Episodes 1-3.]

Our Flag Means Death‘s second season has kicked off with much to unpack. Thankfully, showrunner David Jenkins is answering some of our biggest questions about Stede (Rhys Darby), Ed, a.k.a. Blackbeard (Taika Waititi), and more fan-favorite characters.

Dropping three full episodes, Max set the stage for the season as Stede and Ed followed different paths before crashing back together in a moving final sequence of the third installment.

After working on the Republic of Pirates at Spanish Jackie’s, Stede and his remaining crew are pawned off onto pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao (Ruibo Qian), who they sail with on the Red Flag until they bump into a ghost-like Revenge, which an unraveling Blackbeard captains until his crew mutinied.

(Credit: Max)

Discovering a seemingly dead Ed below deck on the Revenge, Stede tries to break the imprisoned crewmates out of Zheng’s jail aboard the Red Flag, now taking the Revenge back for himself and his full crew. Once they leave the Red Flag abandoned with no wheel, Stede turns his attention to Blackbeard, lamenting his love, and blaming himself for the predicament. Meanwhile, in Ed’s version of purgatory, he’s pushed off a tall cliff by a vision of his own former captain, Hornigold (Mark Mitchinson).

As the end looms, Ed finds himself being saved by a mermaid version of Stede, ultimately waking up just seconds before the episode’s final credits roll. In terms of creating the fantasy sequence, Jenkins tells TV Insider, “I wanted there to be real size in Stede and Blackbeard coming back together again. And I think that their love is very big and it’s very beautiful.”

In order to “give it its due,” he says he really wanted to utilize Kate Bush‘s “This Woman’s Work” for the sequence. “I think that the need that they have for each other is mythic. If we’re lucky in our life, we find somebody that we love and care about, and our need for them feels like it has that size and that immediacy.” Ultimately, the music was one of the ways to capture that epic size.

(Credit: Max)

But Jenkins also notes, “I think where a mermaid wouldn’t really exist in the real world of the show, I think in their love for each other and in their imaginations for each other, it’s titanic, the things they do for each other. And then you get to dress Rhys Darby up like a merperson. So come on. How could you say no to that?”

While the idea was exciting on paper, Jenkins admits, “When I saw what you have to do to actually make it work, you need core strength. And I was like, ‘Oh no, we’re going to kill Rhys. You’re going to kill Rhys.’ And then he was like, ‘Yeah, I had a bad experience on another thing underwater.’ I was like, ‘It’s going to be fine.'”

After Darby put on the tail, Jenkins says the actor got excited, “Suddenly, he was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be good.'”When it was time to film in the massive tank, it was “no joke,” reveals Jenkins. “Taika, he’s got that hair. We had to make a wig stay on him underwater, and it’s a whole day in that tank.” Still, Jenkins says Waititi and Darby “were both wonderful about it.”

(Credit: Nicola Dove/Max )

He credits thorough storyboarding and preparation for “making them feel safe.” Jenkins also acknowledges that when you tell the stars, “‘Hey, you’re going to look so cool, people are going to get this tattooed on their body,'” that’s certainly a motivating factor. “Pretty quickly, they were like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll do it.’ It was just a good day. We planned it meticulously, and they were incredible, and it was surprisingly easy to shoot for as hard as it was to plan.”

Jenkins also credits the stars for being fans of the show and characters themselves, saying, “When it’s going to be good. You’ll put up with a lot more. Everybody kind of pulls together, and you can see beauty going into the camera on the monitor and it already is beautiful, and it’s already making you feel things those days. Everyone’s just like, ‘Yeah, man, let’s do it!'”

While Stede and Blackbeard are back together by the end of Episode 3, teasers for the upcoming installments hint at some tensions in paradise as the duo have some things to sort through. Along with their baggage and trauma is Season 2’s other big reveal: Stede’s former right-hand man Lucius (Nathan Foad) survived being pushed off the Revenge by Blackbeard in Season 1’s finale.

(Credit: Nicola Dove/Max )

“I like Rebel Without a Cause on Nathan Foad,” Jenkins says of the character’s attitude which was on display when he resurfaced as a member of the Red Flag’s crew. “I like that he’s an angry young man. He comes back, and he’s seen some s**t, and he’s smoking, and he’s going through some weird, awkward, late teen phase or something.”

While Lucius finally tells Stede what happened to him aboard the Revenge because of Blackbeard, it’s clear he’s still harboring some anger, so only time will tell how that trauma is going to manifest. “Nathan’s such an interesting actor,” Jenkins gushes. “I think that Lucius in Season 1, he’s got the right thing to say at every moment, and things happen to him, but he can usually kind of handle it. I like seeing him a little more outwardly angry and trying to deal with this stuff that happens and coming through the other side of it.”

Beyond just Lucius, Jenkins acknowledges that many of the characters this season “have a level of trauma, and then the trauma doesn’t just magically go away. They have to work through it.”

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One character who doesn’t seem to deal with too much trauma his season? Swede (Nat Faxon) who is willingly pawned off onto Spanish Jackie (Leslie Jones), joining her fleet of husbands. “I just love the idea of Nat Faxon and Leslie Jones as a couple, just love it,” Jenkins says gleefully. “And I like the idea that he’s offered up, but then also he’s not like, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He’s into it. They actually have a really healthy, wonderful [relationship].”

Perhaps some of the other characters can take a page from Swede and Spanish Jackie’s healthy relationship book as Season 2’s characters continue to grow and improve themselves. Stay tuned to find out and let us know what you thought of Our Flag Means Death‘s first Season 2 episodes in the comments section, below.

Our Flag Means Death, New Episodes, Thursdays, Max