Our Flag Means Death Season 2 is an Unapologetic Celebration of Queer Joy on TV
“Some men look for treasures. Some find treasures in other men. It’s that simple.” — Max’s Description of Our Flag Means Death
On October 5, 2023, the highly anticipated season two of Our Flag Means Death premiered, and the rest of the season would continue to air over the course of the rest of the month, culminating in the season finale on the 26th. The second installment of the Max comedy series was met with favorable reviews — attaining a 91% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
I want to discuss the new season, as well as some of my thoughts about the show as a whole — and explore how it points to a relatively new shift in the way we think about “representation” of the queer community.
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It would be mistaken to call this romantic-comedy a faithful adaptation of history, and it relishes in this aspect. The show, created by David Jenkins, loosely draws on the lives of real-life pirates — “The Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) and Ed “Blackbeard” Teach (Taika Waititi) — but the similarities to historical accuracy start and end with the names of the characters. The reliance on anachronistic humor feels more like approximation than a genuine need for accuracy, and it never takes itself too seriously to merit a faithful retelling of truth. In this, the series is a history that becomes intentionally overwritten with a queer narrative, and inverts the longstanding tradition of history books erasing queer stories.
Our Flag Means Death differs from other TV shows concerned with representing queer characters in that it does not pick and choose one “right” way to be queer, it represents multiple ways of identifying. It celebrates queerness of all forms, and relishes in the fact that LGBTQ identity is not a monolith. Almost every pirate aboard the ship has some form of queer identity. Each member is vastly different from one another, with their own quirks and flaws; they are not sanitized of their imperfections in order to be merely “good representation.”
This isn’t to say, though, that the show depicts the world of 18th-century piracy as a utopia devoid of homophobia and heterosexuality. Any queer person can attest to the marked difference in lived experience, and the series never pretends that there is absolutely no difference between the two groups. On the contrary, it features a clear divide between “queer” culture and “straight” culture, as seen by the marked difference between the lively, deviant, colorful cast aboard The Revenge — each with their unique costuming and personalities — as compared to the sterile, uniformed environment of the British Navy, a group repeatedly featured as the oppressive antagonists of the story. In this, the pirate ship itself becomes a place for the outcasts, the misfits among “proper” society: a place where specified identity labels do not matter as much as the experience of being queer, and finding community within others.
Additionally, other instances of representation almost completely stop at the canonization of one character, or one relationship. It settles into this sort of picking-and-choosing of representation, as if fans should be satisfied with a limitation on solely one experience to represent such a diverse community.
It was why, originally, viewers were skeptical of the show as “queerbaiting” their audience — the retrospectively blatant romance between the fictionalized Stede Bonnet and Edward “Blackbeard” Teach was met with doubt, as there had already been a gay romance among two of the crew members in the supporting cast. Before Season 1, Episode 9 aired — and audiences could see the last-ditch love confession and on-screen kiss for themselves — many had believed that the show’s use of cemented romantic tropes was simply to cause speculation, rather than to meaningfully deliver any sort of story.
Of course, with the full release of both seasons so far, we see just how untrue this sentiment was. However, it’s not hard to understand why so many would feel that way, with the way creators of shows such as Supernatural and Sherlock would vehemently dissuade any attempts to speculate on the characters’ sexualities. On the contrary to this precedent, much of the promotion for Our Flag Means Death’s second season subverts the queerbait in favor of doubling down on the gay romance: blatantly romantic songs play over wistful admissions of love, and melodramatic romantic dream-sequences launch us into this season.
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The second installment is by no means perfect, but it is highly commendable in the way it approaches portraying queer joy. Uniquely, this season leaves us with a hopeful conclusion for most of the characters, rather than resorting to another cliffhanger; a choice, as stated by show creator David Jenkins, that would leave the fans with enough satisfaction in case the series is not renewed for a third (and final) season.
The buildup to such an ending, too, was possible because of the ways queer joy was expressed throughout this new season as a follow-up to the cliffhanger of the last. In many ways, this season took the over-the-top fantastical elements of the previous season, and made it real, showing a much more realistically paced and nuanced development of the main relationship. Additionally, many of the more bitter pirates — primarily Izzy Hands, played by Con O’Neil — are given redemptive arcs, facilitated through being included into a community. And of course, so much of the season’s celebrations of queer joy comes to a head in Episode 6, where the crew comes together for a party that includes a drag show.
This season is also not one to shy away from the realities of death, whether that be of specific characters, or of practicing piracy as a whole. Though we know that this “Golden Age of Piracy” — a synecdoche for all bygone eras of blissful, free expression in queer history — had to come to an inevitable end, it does not eliminate the lessons learned from such places in time. There is still an array of hope for the future, that in the words of the season’s finale, “the spirit of piracy will live on.”
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The popularity of a show like Our Flag Means Death points to a new type of LGBTQ story audiences are looking for – one that focuses on queer joy, and on uplifting a multi-faceted view of queer identity, rather than attempting
The show never tries to explain the quirks and struggles to a heterosexual audience, but celebrates the experiences from within. It feels like it was made specifically for queer people, in the language and visual expressions they are familiar with.
Despite LGBTQ media only breaking through the mainstream in the past decade or so, there are already specific structures narratives must adhere to when telling these stories. Tradition lends itself to “coming out” stories or the initial discovery of this new identity. So much of it centers around young people, as well, with a lot of these stories taking place during high school. Recently, we’ve also been seeing the rise of “incidental” queer characters, who appear as side characters in an ensemble among straight characters, with varying degrees of thought and attention put into their stories. And of course, so many queer romances end tragically, with “bury your gays” being a long-established trope at this point.
Which is why it is interesting to take a show like Our Flag Means Death, which features middle-aged main characters, who have already been in heterosexual marriages or decades of work before, but find community and love later in life. It is a show where the representation is not incidental, but intentional. It is a show with such an innate focus on joy and self-expression, in finding a community that operates in antithesis to the dominant culture, and celebrates these differences. A series like this goes against much of the formulas that have defined queer representation of the past and creates an optimistic view for LGBTQ media for the future.
It’s not to say that previous forms of representation, especially “simplistic” representation geared towards teenagers, is not valid. Rather, the opposite is true: with the next decade, it is important to make sure we can continue to diversify the portrayals of queer experiences, and raise alternatives, to uplift different types of stories, that reflect different types of individuals. In total, we need queer media made for queer people; representation is not a token of one singular experience, and through uplifting stories that continue to break from the formula, only then can we achieve multi-faceted representation of such a multi-faceted community.
