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“Black Sails” recap (3.01): Mo’ money, mo’ problems

Previously on Black Sails, Eleanor and Max fell in love but broke apart and hardly ever spoke again, everyone was on the hunt for the Urca gold, including the new trio that consists of Max and Anne (who are partners in the biblical sense) and Jack (who is Anne’s partner in a slightly more complicated sense). Eleanor betrayed Vane to rescue a young girl who Flint then took back to her father; then HE killed Miranda instead of working out some kind of peace between England, Nassau, and the pirates. Vane helped Flint escape his execution, John Silver found out that someone sold the location of the gold to Jack, Anne and Max’s new crew, and Hornigold and Dufresne kidnapped Eleanor (!!).

We open on a ship in Bath, Carolina. Three men board a ship, its quartermaster looking nervous but not doing much to stop them. They barge into the captain’s chambers and growl at a man they call Drummond. They accuse him of abandoning his wife, Mary, who also happens to be their sister. Drummond doesn’t turn around while he tells the men about the lies he was told to get them here; like, for one, his name is Teach, not Drummond. He turns around to display his large black beard before killing them all.

Somewhere else in this vast ocean, a village is invaded and destroyed by a bunch of men with their faces covered. One man moves swiftly past bodies that have been hanged in the square and into the room of an older couple. He pulls off his mask and it’s Captain Flint, now with a shaved head. He’s attacking anyone who punishes pirates, something this Magistrate knew but risked anyway in hopes of having a discussion with Flint. But that’s not Flint’s way, so he shoots the man and his wife in the face. The body of the wife reminds Flint of why he’s doing this; the late Miranda Barlow.

When Flint gets back to the ship, John Silver tells him it was a good haul, but as soon as he’s out of earshot, Silver and Billy Bones fight about whether he’s completely lost his mind or not. Though it’s arguable that ship sailed two seasons ago.

On another boat, Vane is approaching a ship he was meant to pillage when he realizes two things that upset him. 1) The ship is dumping its cargo overboard to avoid Vane taking it. 2) That cargo is human people. Furious he was sent after a slaver, after everything he’s been through, he boards the ship and sends the captain overboard with an anchor tied around his ankles.

Back on Nassau, the Trial of Eleanor Guthrie is being held, but a parody of one. The drunks laugh as the woman who once stood tall and in charge is made into a mockery. Mr. Scott is watching in disgust, and Max apologizes to him for it being in poor taste.

She probably doesn’t like it either, to be honest, but she needed news of the trial, and the men needed a distraction. Max says Eleanor might receive mercy if she begs, and I wonder if she means more than just in court. Mr. Scott tells Max the fort is still unprotected, despite Jack saying he was going to take care of it. Anne, who had sidled up next to Max during their conversation, chimes in now and says Jack just needs more time. After Mr. Scott leaves, Max loses a bit of her composure and asks what the hell is going on with Mustachio. Anne tells Max she’ll find out.

But when Anne finds Jack, he doesn’t look much like he’s working on anything. He’s using the bathroom while reading the paper and having a woman play music for him. The life of the wealthy, I guess. Anne kicks the musician out and confronts Jack about the fort. He tells her to lay off, but Anne insists she needs to know. Jack asks if her husband sent her, which is apparently what he calls Max, mostly because it bothers Anne.

Anne sticks up for Max and says their gold is in that fort and just wants to know the plan. As if on cue, Vane storms into the brothel then, furious, and Jack says his plan is about to unfurl.

He’s SO PISSED at Jack for not telling him the ship he was going after was a slaver, but Jack goes into a panic-rant about all the things he’s done to try to get men to work on the fort, to no avail. Slaves were the only way, and if he told Vane what kind of ship it was, he never would have gone, and he doesn’t want to let Vane down. Refuses to, in fact. Vane looks surprisingly compassionate.

Anne looks bored.

On Flint’s ship, Silver goes to tell his captain that it might be time to retire from the Vanguard, aka the masked marauders who do all the dirty work when they get to a town that hangs pirates. Flint is way too much of a control freak and a risk taker for that, and that Silver might be in charge of the crew, but Flint is still in charge of Silver.

Flint’s ship sees another ship doing something weird nearby. Silver wants to grab it, but Flint doesn’t want to waste time. But it’s just a power play, and Flint puts the decision in Silver’s hands. Who decides to do it his way, of course.

The ship they found is unharmed, unarmed, and abandoned; except for the mice. Flint finds the captain in his chambers, looking hella dead. He was chained to his chair, given only seawater to drink and the book in front of him has, “We die alone” written over and over and over until it trails off.

The pirates are all very confused, but Flint smells something fishy (well, fishier than the ocean) and tells them all to GTFO. Sure enough, Silver sees sails. They fell for a trap; a very elaborate trap set in the middle of the ocean.

Back in the brothel, Max is bathing to the relaxing ambient sounds of people having loud sex.

Anne walks in and sits beside the tub, joking that they’re rich and living in a whorehouse. Max says that everyone comes to her now, for anything they need or want or fear. For all intents and purposes, she’s the queen of Nassau. And she built it all-and herself-up from nothing. Max says none of it is real.

Anne doesn’t understand what that means, so Max elaborates. She says this empire she has build was built on things she can’t control or predict. It’s built on a sandy shore near a wild ocean. When everything falls out from beneath her, she’ll be back to being a whore; and worse than just a prostitute; she says they’ll call her the whore who didn’t know her place, the whore who lost everything. That’s why Max likes her old room; it reminds her that not everything has changed, she still has a grip on some part of her life. Anne looks at her and asks if she meant it when she said it isn’t real, really asking if what they have isn’t real.

But Max says it’s real, they’re real. But maybe she’s starting to realize why Eleanor pulled away from her all those months ago. Max tells Anne that everything is dependent on their gold being safe, and since Jack can’t secure the fort, they need to move it. Anne begs her not to make her choose between Max and Jack, and besides, there’s nowhere safe to put all that gold. But Max just says she has an idea for moving the gold, not in its current form.

The ship that has cornered Flint’s ship is lead by Hornigold, who shouts over that they’ll be pardoned if they’ll surrender. But “surrender” isn’t in Flint’s vocabulary, so they run away into the storm.

In a dungeon somewhere, a prison door is opened to reveal Eleanor Guthrie. Wild and angry and vaguely reminiscent of Grounder!Clarke from The 100.

A well-dressed man enters her cell and calls her notorious-and warns her that being notorious means everyone will want to be part of her story. And he, Rogers, wants to be the man that set Eleanor Guthrie free. He declares himself the next governor of New Providence and wants her knowledge. She asks what she’d have to do, and he starts assuring her that he knows it will be hard on her delicate feminine sensitivities, and she’s like, “No, asshole, just literally tell me what to do so I can do it.”

He asks for a list of names of people on Nassau, of potential allies and certain enemies. Eleanor writes one name down and says that if Rogers wants to civilize Nassau, this one man is going to have to die.

Then the camera cuts directly to Charles Vane.

He’s watching the slaves grumpily and goes to find Jack to report that progress is being made. Jack assures him that he doesn’t love using slaves, and he made the people in charge promise they’d be treated fairly, but he just wants to be a legend. He wanted the name Jack Rackham to live on long after he died, he wanted to be in history books, maybe be featured on a television show on Starz someday. But he thinks that dream is a joke now.

Vane points out that being “treated fairly” as a slave is an oxymoron and slavery is still slavery. He says the hardest part of being a slave, to him, wasn’t the pain or the hunger or the exhaustion, but it was not knowing. Not knowing what was coming next, minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. But Vane kind of feels that fear now, too. They stole Spanish gold off English territory. He’s worried about the retaliation because they don’t know what it will be. He says they don’t know what face it will wear. But we do.

And while Eleanor is taken to a fleet of ships by Rogers, that Teach fella and his beard that happens to be black arrives on Nassau looking for an “old friend” named Charles Vane…

What did you think of “XIX?” Do you think Eleanor and Max will ever be on the same island again? Or are you here for MaxAnne? Tell me everything, you filthy pirates you. And don’t forget to use both #AhoyLezzy and #BlackSails when tweeting about the show!

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