that’s just my face

Just me thinking about the fact that, other than the headbutt (which I'm not convinced was entirely deliberate, and also dude had just died and his brain was maybe couscous), Ed never tries to hurt Stede. He'll smash everything in sight, including himself, but he won't hurt Stede.

I think Ed only headbutts Stede there because it's literally the only way he has to communicate "fuck off." Stede is like "I thought I lost you," to which the only appropriate response is "YOU DID ASSHOLE," but since he can't say that he expresses it the only way available: childish violence.

Te more I think about it, the more I'm really impressed with how the show handled the intersection of violence with these relationships. Piracy is inherently violent, and many of the romantic relationships do have violent moments like stabbings and headbutts. Walking the line between healthy and *very* unhealthy, without undermining the basic believability of the violent pirate world--must have been a hard balance, and they pulled it off really, really well

Actually I'm just gonna seize this excuse to rant about how interesting a balance the show struck with Ed's violence and the breakup in season 2!

Then possibility that Ed will be violent towards Stede when they meet again is so obvious that the teaser straight edits things to look like there's an attempted murder. It's not actually a stretch on the surface: Ed's an unstable person with an earned reputation for violence, last season he threatened to shoot Stede so believably that Stede stabbed him, and he actually did almost stab Stede in the back. And Stede really fucked him over, he's very justifiably hurt.

It's as obvious to everyone that Ed will try to murder Stede as it is to Auntie in the first ep that Ed must have been the one who dumped Stede. Which is to say: it's a fair inference, and you'd think that if you hadn't, for example, heard Ed's terrible song (like Olu did). But it's also completely grabbing the wrong end of the stick.

That's just not who Ed is, with Stede--and actually with most people. Ed's violence is a threat, but what we see onscreen is that he actually almost never hurts people he knows (directly, at least, and Izzy is the main exception, but Izzy is a special case because he all but demanded violence, which just fucks Ed up). Threats, explicit and implied? Yeah, sure. But he has a reputation for indiscriminate violence because his normal violence is just that: random and turned on people he doesn't actually know.

Ed's reputation and reality don't match up, especially when it comes to violence. Stede knows that better than anyone, which is why he gets so annoyed about the headbutt. But the violence there wasn't the point. Ed needed to externalize his pain, the disconnect in experiences of hurt at that moment was outrageously wrong, so he fixed it. Beginning and end of violence.

I also think it's another "this show doesn't waste space".

They took the time to have Roach say "the man can't speak". That wasn't essential to anything later -- Ed does speak the next time we see him, even if it's mumbley and vaguely incoherent. That wouldn't have seemed completely out of place without Roach telling us that he wasn't able to speak at all earlier, it would make sense as a purely emotional response to the situation as well as being inferable that he's still suffering from the aftereffects of a severe concussion between 1) knowing that he nearly died from a blow to the head and 2) Buttons talking about how he's been in the Gravy Basket and now is having trouble fully discerning and engaging with reality.

The one thing that including that line provides is a reason for the headbutt that isn't just violence out of anger. That line reframes it from "he's mad and lashed out with physical violence and is also refusing to talk to Stede" to "he woke up unable to speak and only able to communicate at all through physicality and he's mad at Stede and also just got dragged out of what had turned into a very nice dream actually and he's in a lot of pain between having been shot in the arm and a raging headache (having been concussed badly enough to briefly lose consciousness before, I can tell ya, the headache afterward is truly a bitch) and Stede is talking at him and he just wants to be left alone for fuck's sake he definitely doesn't want to be babysitting the feelings of the guy who as far as he knows abandoned him on a whim".

Okay, this is 1600 words of (positive!) meta regarding the OFMD finale. Included is character analysis and a treatise on why a certain trope people keep throwing around does not apply here.

This is of course just my take, and I'm sure people will disagree, but I needed to get this out. Apologies if it comes off disjointed, I've had like no sleep.

Spoilers within, obviously. You have been warned. Heed the tags. I didn't tag any characters because I consider it a spoiler, but you know who this is about.

In a universe where piracy is coming to its natural end, where the theme that the leads' lives revolves around is looking like a past they'll think fondly of, someone like Izzy hands - who is the motif of that theme, THE pirate incarnate - he doesn't fit. He's done his job, he kept piracy alive for his entire life, he kept the man he loves alive as best as he could, he came full circle to realising that there was joy and beauty to be found. But he doesn't want to fish, he fucking hates fishing, an inn sounds even worse. He is piracy, it's all of him. He was done. Izzy Hands' death is a call to everyone that the days of piracy are over, that they should remember him as someone who kept it going, who did his best with the resources he had, who died a pirate's death exactly as he wanted.

Now I dunno about the history of Judaism in the 18th century, but it's important to acknowledge Taika as Jewish too since that's also an identity close to him as his Maoriness, so wouldn't it be cool to see Hanukkah once and/or a Jewish wedding for blackbonnet?

Jew here! extremely awesome of you to bring this up at all but we have to make sure we’re separating Taika from Ed—i think it is very safe to say Ed is not just indigenous, but specifically Māori (or some kind of South Pacific indigenous) because the actors playing his mother (Simone Kessell) and (I believe, but I can’t find the citation again) his younger self (Mateo Gallegos) are both Māori. there’s no reference at all to Ed being Jewish and as delightful as it would be to get that representation in a fictional character (and it would! there are brown Jews! Black Jews! Indigenous Jews! African Jews! east/south/west/central Asian Jews! so many Jews of color!) there’s nothing in text (that I have seen) that points at this Ed Teach as being Jewish.

Thank you for your insight!

Another Jew here lol

Thank you for bringing it up!! It's honestly been a bit frustrating to see people say we need to consider Taika's own heritage as Māori and Jewish when interpreting Ed and then never actually talk about Jewishness!

That said, the giant-ass cross tattoo leads me to think Ed certainly isn't a religiously observant Jew and likely isn't Jewish at all 😔 But I would 100% buy his mom having been forced to convert to Christianity

It's a shame, cuz it'd probably be kinda funny to see a kosher sukkah on a ship I think, especially if everyone participated. The irony of them sleeping under more shelter than most of them usually do lol and could you imagine the decorations? 🥺 or if they all got involved in a Purim spiel!! The sheer mayhem 😂

Instead of the usual bedtime story, Stede reads the Megillah and Black Pete is booing the loudest every time Haman’s name is mentioned