As we stand just one day before new Our Flag Means Death episodes—which are bound to be something, considering the teaser trailer that has been circulating around the fandom for the past week—I can’t help but think about what life at sea has in store for one of my favorite babygirls aboard the Revenge. And I’m not talking about Taika Waititi’s Ed Teach.
**The following article contains spoilers for Our Flag Means Death up until episode 5 of season 2. Be warned.**
Izzy Hands, played by Con O’Neill, has always been one of the most interesting characters of the show—and I would add “at least to me,” but I know that the fandom at large would like nothing more than to lock him in a jar they can keep on their collective desk at all times.
In season one, he acts as the opposite of Rhys Darby’s Stede Bonnet—whom he absolutely can’t stand, and because of that he just can’t wrap his head around the reason the fearsome Blackbeard seems so keen about him. As the episodes go on and Ed lets go of his Kraken persona to turn more and more into himself, Izzy seems determined to not let Blackbeard fade away.
Except that when Blackbeard returns, embracing the Kraken and all its destructiveness, the relationship between the two reveals itself for the incredibly complex and toxic thing it always was. While there’s clearly affection there, it’s buried and twisted by layers and layers of misguidedness and violence and terrible communication.
Everyone aboard the Revenge is very aware of it in the first episodes of season 2, where we see Ed diving headfirst for rock bottom. They stage an intervention for Izzy, which eventually results in Izzy losing his leg and a mutiny against Ed that leaves him almost dead. And that’s when Stede’s path finally crosses that of his former ship and things start to slowly but surely move upwards, with Ed making amends with the crew—with his cat-like bell to make sure he doesn’t throw anyone overboard again—and Izzy starting on what has the potential to be the most beautiful character arc of this season.
In episode 4, “Fun and Games,” helping Izzy, who is clearly on a downward spiral, becomes the thing that helps the crew resolve tensions between those who stayed with Ed and those who were marooned at the end of season one. They’re literally at each other’s throats, but the second it’s evident that Izzy is not well—dealing with the aftermath of losing his leg, sawing off the legs of the unicorn that is the Revenge’s figurehead, actively trying to drown himself in alcohol—they band together to fashion him a new prosthesis from one of those unicorn legs.
The moment Izzy receives his new prosthesis is probably the most powerful of the entire episode and it will undoubtedly be one of the most powerful of the season—because the note written by the crew that comes together with the prosthesis says “For the new unicorn.” And there are so many layers to a dedication like this, each one more emotional than the other.
First of all, there’s the fact that the unicorn was the figurehead of the ship. The fact that Izzy now has a body part of that unicorn makes him the new figurehead of the ship, in a way. It signifies how he’s a fundamental part of the crew—which was evident when he stepped in to shield it from Ed’s spiraling and got shot in the leg for it. It’s also clear-as-day proof of how much Izzy means to the others aboard the Revenge, how much they care for him and want to help him. And this realization clearly strikes him, which very much echoes Ed’s own journey of understanding he’s not at all unlovable as he thinks he is. Izzy tears up immediately when he reads the note from the crew, silent for the first time in the entire episode.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that the unicorn is such a recognized and accepted queer symbol. The crew banding together to create a new prosthesis for him means they accept him into their community, sure, but it also signifies how Izzy is welcome inside their queer community, their queer family—how he has a place among them when for the longest time Izzy felt almost like a character out of place, as the only one out of everybody on screen who acted like this was a Black Sails-like pirate story rather than an Our Flag Means Death one.
In episode 5, we can see how this new acceptance from the crew helped Izzy gain a newfound serenity and how this serenity mellows him out somewhat. And how he’s very much taking on this role of being the figurehead of the ship and the crew. He still snaps and calls everybody names, sure, because that’s just Izzy—but he also agrees to help give Stede pirating lessons, something that he never even would have dreamed of back in season one.
So I can’t help but hope this trend continues for Izzy and that he ends the season in a much, much better place compared to where he was when he started—and considering what the teaser trailer showed us, he’s clearly on track to do just that.
(featured image: Max)
