I've got a theory
Nov. 29th, 2016 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenak...not least because every time I see another bit of the news, I want to scream, so I need to put my brain into ye peaceful olde time of pirates and slaughter of the 18th century in order not to yell at everyone.
So, Black Sails is heading towards its last season. Of the still surviving characters, some have their fates predetermined by history, some by literature, and some are OCs unique to this show. Of course, both historical and Treasure Island origined characters have some wriggle room; two historical characters on this show have already been killed years ahead of schedule, after all, and as with fiction, there's always the popular "faked their death" trope. However, this is a show good about characterisation and continuity, and thus with characters and their developments the wriggle room is limited by how likely their actions are as well.
Flint: according to Treasure Island, ends up drinking himself to death, yelling for someone named "McGraw", after hiding a certain treasure and killing everyone who helped him hide it.
Wriggle room: Black Sails established that James McGraw was Flint's original name, and that he hates being Flint, even though he excels at it. Also, none of the Treasure Island characters was actually with Flint when he died, they only heard about it, with the exception of Billy Bones, who to my recollection does not explicitly say he was there at the moment of death. But he was there close enough to said moment to get the map everyone is after in TI. So yes, for fanfiction, I completley buy scenarios where Flint fakes his death, with or without the help of other characters, which is also metaphorically true in that he stops being Flint the pirate. Do I think this will happen in canon? Nah. For evidence: the last three seasons. Does this look to you like a man who can do the sane thing and quit? Yes, he came close to giving up twice, once near the end of s2 when he was ready to submit himself to judgment in London before Miranda deduced the truth about Peter Ashe, and once mid s3 when he was nearly ready to die on the Maroon Island before Silver talked him out of it. Note the common factor here? He'd have ended up dead if he'd gone through with either possibility. A retirement into happy anonymity and life strikes me as very unlikely for this man. But I'm ready to be surprised.
Silver: goes on to be a main character in a literature classic, thus there is no wriggle room at all. He survives to manipulate and disarm another day. What is ambiguous is in which circumstances he and Flint will part ways. But given all the set up, they're not likely to be happy ones.
Billy Bones: survives to die memorably early on in Treasure Island, of rum and fear. In a way, Billy's TI-predestined fate is the saddest of all, because as opposed to Flint, there's not even the tiny "maybe he faked his death?" possibility; Jim Hawkins is there when he dies, and his corpse is around long enough to make it clear it's really a corpse. (Doctor Livesey is qualified enough to know, one assumes.) Even worse are the canonical circumstances of his death and last weeks of life. A character who in his Black Sais introduction emphasizes repeatedly how he sees his crew as his brothers is hiding from them, there's nothing left but hate and fear between the remaining crew and him. He's completely alone. That the third season reveals Billy invented the "Black Spot" business of condemming a crewman to death and letting him live the remainder of his time in fear was such a mean, great twist.
Ben Gunn: enjoy those days in Nassau, buddy, you'll be marrooned on another island soon enough. But you'll live.
Madi: likely will survive and become Mrs. Silver, with one question mark. I suppose it's still possible that the show pulls a switcheroo and has Madi die or disappear with whoever will remain of her peope, and has Max go into strictly business partnership with Silver to open a tavern together as pretend man and wife, but I doubt it. For starters, the two scenes per season Max and Silver have gotten in s1 and 2 - and none in s3 - aren't nearly enough set up for this, and secondly, s3 went to great lengths to establish a connection and start a relationship between Silver and Madi.
Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny: Sorry, Jack. Getting hanged in public it will be. It's pretty hard to fake that, though I suppose not impossible, there are fictional precedents. The one tiny bit of hope I see here is that the show went to greath lengths to establish that Black Sails!Jack and Anne have a partnership "till they put is into the fucking ground", and I can't see the show's version of Anne Bonny let Jack die in any circumstances. Otoh historical Anne survived, and nobody knows what became of her then. So in terms of fanfiction-y possibilities, wriggle room: maybe Jack survives with the superspecial neck trick and a dose of Friar Laurence's death faking potion, and Max helps him and Anne to flee elsewhere.
...though no, I don't think they'll do that on the show. More likely they'll kill Anne off as well, and give them a Butch and Sundance type of last scene, i.e. we won't see them die, we'll see them go out together and the seconds before it happens.
Max: currently looks unlikely to become Mrs. Silver and thus has her fate up in the air as a Black Sails OC. But I really doubt the show will kill her, not least because so many other characters are doomed, and they need some bits of happiness at the end. Also, Max is a proven survivor and a really good businesswoman. She'll live.
Idelle and Featherstone: I think he'll be one of the pirates Flint will kill when burying the treasure, to bring home to the audience (again) that Flint, no matter how tragic his background, keeps destroying other people in pursuit of his goals. He's the last minor pirate who was there from the start of the show whom the audience knows and likes. As for Idelle: her chances are 50/50. So far, Max hasn't told Eleanor it was Idelle who betrayed them, after all.
Woode Rogers: will survive and win a Pyrrhic victory, because history.
Eleanor Guthrie: on the one hand, Jack (and therefore Anne) as well as Blackbeard are dead set on her demise now because of Charles Vane. And she's cheated death once already. Otoh, Eleanor's a proven survivor as well, and s3 established both her new connection to Rogers and her now with 100% more equality changed relationship with Max. So my current guess is: Eleanor will survive to see her goal through several seasons - civilisation in Nassau - achieved, but will also see the price, to wit, her own existence as a woman can no longer be the one she had in pirate Nassau, and she'll lose Rogers (see: Phyrric victory, look it up at wiki).
Blackbeard: is dead, but might not die on screen, since it's another governor who kills him. Maybe he'll just sail away in disgust at some point.
..., you know, the show could end with giving Flint & Co. a temporary victory at Nassau and let them sail off to Treasure Island, thus avoiding showing any fallout or doom for anyone, but: I doubt it.
Now I can see all these developments already set in motion... except for Billy's eventual fate. The trailer shows Billy in a stand-off of sorts against Flint. While this is anything but unexpected, it doesn't explain why the entire remaining Walrus crew then turns against him, for so far what Randall said ("we like him, too") still holds true. Also, Billy as he currently is would not wait in fear for Silver to show up and kill him one day. Now, what I can see reducing Black Sails! Billy Bones to the sad haunted human wreck at the start of Treasure Island is guilt. Evidently not guilt over having been a pirate (Billy to my knowledge hasn't displayed any regret ther), and I very much doubt it's going to be guilt over Flint's fate. (I would, since I don't ship them. If of course you believe Billy's deep down in love with Flint, then there's your explanation.) So my current speculation is that Billy is going to betray the pirates to the English, presumably when seeing no other way to finally rid the world of Flint, and that this is what he won't be able to live with, what drives him to drink himself to death, and what makes him afraid of the remaining Walrus crew. It's the one thing he told Dufresne he sees as the ultimate betrayal, the unforgivable sin, and the season trailer assures us that there "are no more good man" left. And of course it explains how Billy would go from most popular Walrus crew member (even if he now shares that spot with Silver) to loathed-by-all, in addition to good old treasure greed. What do you think?
So, Black Sails is heading towards its last season. Of the still surviving characters, some have their fates predetermined by history, some by literature, and some are OCs unique to this show. Of course, both historical and Treasure Island origined characters have some wriggle room; two historical characters on this show have already been killed years ahead of schedule, after all, and as with fiction, there's always the popular "faked their death" trope. However, this is a show good about characterisation and continuity, and thus with characters and their developments the wriggle room is limited by how likely their actions are as well.
Flint: according to Treasure Island, ends up drinking himself to death, yelling for someone named "McGraw", after hiding a certain treasure and killing everyone who helped him hide it.
Wriggle room: Black Sails established that James McGraw was Flint's original name, and that he hates being Flint, even though he excels at it. Also, none of the Treasure Island characters was actually with Flint when he died, they only heard about it, with the exception of Billy Bones, who to my recollection does not explicitly say he was there at the moment of death. But he was there close enough to said moment to get the map everyone is after in TI. So yes, for fanfiction, I completley buy scenarios where Flint fakes his death, with or without the help of other characters, which is also metaphorically true in that he stops being Flint the pirate. Do I think this will happen in canon? Nah. For evidence: the last three seasons. Does this look to you like a man who can do the sane thing and quit? Yes, he came close to giving up twice, once near the end of s2 when he was ready to submit himself to judgment in London before Miranda deduced the truth about Peter Ashe, and once mid s3 when he was nearly ready to die on the Maroon Island before Silver talked him out of it. Note the common factor here? He'd have ended up dead if he'd gone through with either possibility. A retirement into happy anonymity and life strikes me as very unlikely for this man. But I'm ready to be surprised.
Silver: goes on to be a main character in a literature classic, thus there is no wriggle room at all. He survives to manipulate and disarm another day. What is ambiguous is in which circumstances he and Flint will part ways. But given all the set up, they're not likely to be happy ones.
Billy Bones: survives to die memorably early on in Treasure Island, of rum and fear. In a way, Billy's TI-predestined fate is the saddest of all, because as opposed to Flint, there's not even the tiny "maybe he faked his death?" possibility; Jim Hawkins is there when he dies, and his corpse is around long enough to make it clear it's really a corpse. (Doctor Livesey is qualified enough to know, one assumes.) Even worse are the canonical circumstances of his death and last weeks of life. A character who in his Black Sais introduction emphasizes repeatedly how he sees his crew as his brothers is hiding from them, there's nothing left but hate and fear between the remaining crew and him. He's completely alone. That the third season reveals Billy invented the "Black Spot" business of condemming a crewman to death and letting him live the remainder of his time in fear was such a mean, great twist.
Ben Gunn: enjoy those days in Nassau, buddy, you'll be marrooned on another island soon enough. But you'll live.
Madi: likely will survive and become Mrs. Silver, with one question mark. I suppose it's still possible that the show pulls a switcheroo and has Madi die or disappear with whoever will remain of her peope, and has Max go into strictly business partnership with Silver to open a tavern together as pretend man and wife, but I doubt it. For starters, the two scenes per season Max and Silver have gotten in s1 and 2 - and none in s3 - aren't nearly enough set up for this, and secondly, s3 went to great lengths to establish a connection and start a relationship between Silver and Madi.
Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny: Sorry, Jack. Getting hanged in public it will be. It's pretty hard to fake that, though I suppose not impossible, there are fictional precedents. The one tiny bit of hope I see here is that the show went to greath lengths to establish that Black Sails!Jack and Anne have a partnership "till they put is into the fucking ground", and I can't see the show's version of Anne Bonny let Jack die in any circumstances. Otoh historical Anne survived, and nobody knows what became of her then. So in terms of fanfiction-y possibilities, wriggle room: maybe Jack survives with the superspecial neck trick and a dose of Friar Laurence's death faking potion, and Max helps him and Anne to flee elsewhere.
...though no, I don't think they'll do that on the show. More likely they'll kill Anne off as well, and give them a Butch and Sundance type of last scene, i.e. we won't see them die, we'll see them go out together and the seconds before it happens.
Max: currently looks unlikely to become Mrs. Silver and thus has her fate up in the air as a Black Sails OC. But I really doubt the show will kill her, not least because so many other characters are doomed, and they need some bits of happiness at the end. Also, Max is a proven survivor and a really good businesswoman. She'll live.
Idelle and Featherstone: I think he'll be one of the pirates Flint will kill when burying the treasure, to bring home to the audience (again) that Flint, no matter how tragic his background, keeps destroying other people in pursuit of his goals. He's the last minor pirate who was there from the start of the show whom the audience knows and likes. As for Idelle: her chances are 50/50. So far, Max hasn't told Eleanor it was Idelle who betrayed them, after all.
Woode Rogers: will survive and win a Pyrrhic victory, because history.
Eleanor Guthrie: on the one hand, Jack (and therefore Anne) as well as Blackbeard are dead set on her demise now because of Charles Vane. And she's cheated death once already. Otoh, Eleanor's a proven survivor as well, and s3 established both her new connection to Rogers and her now with 100% more equality changed relationship with Max. So my current guess is: Eleanor will survive to see her goal through several seasons - civilisation in Nassau - achieved, but will also see the price, to wit, her own existence as a woman can no longer be the one she had in pirate Nassau, and she'll lose Rogers (see: Phyrric victory, look it up at wiki).
Blackbeard: is dead, but might not die on screen, since it's another governor who kills him. Maybe he'll just sail away in disgust at some point.
..., you know, the show could end with giving Flint & Co. a temporary victory at Nassau and let them sail off to Treasure Island, thus avoiding showing any fallout or doom for anyone, but: I doubt it.
Now I can see all these developments already set in motion... except for Billy's eventual fate. The trailer shows Billy in a stand-off of sorts against Flint. While this is anything but unexpected, it doesn't explain why the entire remaining Walrus crew then turns against him, for so far what Randall said ("we like him, too") still holds true. Also, Billy as he currently is would not wait in fear for Silver to show up and kill him one day. Now, what I can see reducing Black Sails! Billy Bones to the sad haunted human wreck at the start of Treasure Island is guilt. Evidently not guilt over having been a pirate (Billy to my knowledge hasn't displayed any regret ther), and I very much doubt it's going to be guilt over Flint's fate. (I would, since I don't ship them. If of course you believe Billy's deep down in love with Flint, then there's your explanation.) So my current speculation is that Billy is going to betray the pirates to the English, presumably when seeing no other way to finally rid the world of Flint, and that this is what he won't be able to live with, what drives him to drink himself to death, and what makes him afraid of the remaining Walrus crew. It's the one thing he told Dufresne he sees as the ultimate betrayal, the unforgivable sin, and the season trailer assures us that there "are no more good man" left. And of course it explains how Billy would go from most popular Walrus crew member (even if he now shares that spot with Silver) to loathed-by-all, in addition to good old treasure greed. What do you think?
no subject
Date: 2016-12-02 06:02 pm (UTC)But thanks for this detailed, thoughtful post. It's been decades since I've read Treasure Island, and I was thinking I might wait 'til the end of season 4 to reread it. We also missed much of season 1, though we've been buying the DVDs with the notion of a massive rewatch once the show is finished.
Anyway, bookmarking this for later thought!
no subject
Date: 2017-11-04 08:26 pm (UTC)I got here from rydra_wong's journal, because I'm currently at the end of s3, like her, and she asked for meta, and you were linked.
I've been largely watching alone and reading fic, and maybe looking at the occasional tumblr artwork, but haven't had the pleasure of discussing Black Sails with anyone.
Is it okay if I add you? More local fangirls, yay!
no subject
Date: 2017-11-05 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 09:20 pm (UTC)Ha, yeah, those two shows have a similar intensity, and so much heartbreak, too. No wonder we like them both. :D