i feel like we talk a lot about our introduction to characters like flint, silver, eleanor and vane. but we do not talk about when we first see miranda.
picture this. blackbeard is the legendary pirate captain, you knew about blackbeard’s terror even before going into black sails. and then you hear about another pirate, captain flint, who is more terrifying than blackbeard. to be more terrifying than a legend, it takes some skill.
you have a pirate captain who’s more feared than blackbeard himself. good. and as the natural order of things goes, his influence is starting to dwindle. his men are questioning his motives, his actions, his every move. at this point, you feel for the captain, losing the support of his crew, those he has protected for years. then comes along singleton, and we know how that ended.
the famous captain flint won that fight, but he still came out bruised, he did not escape it unscathed. he’s now in a place of inner turmoil - losing his crew, killing one of them in front of everyone else in a bloody fight. it’s not easy to cope with it. even after trying to fix things, it’s not enough, the situation is still broken. and where does he go? he doesn’t go to drink or to have sex or whatever actions you’d attribute to a pirate.
he gets on his horse and goes inland, searching for the comfort of this mystery woman. and this is why miranda’s introduction is so good, because flint is presented as the pirate to be afraid of, and yet he submits to a woman we don’t know. but that woman must be powerful, that woman knows flint, and therefore we want to get to know that woman.
