Previously on Black Sails, Eleanor and Max broke up because Eleanor couldn’t leave the island she worked so hard to gain control of, causing Max to run off but get captured and raped. Eleanor stopped the attack, but Max wasn’t all that grateful and decided to stick with Vane’s crew until she made up for all the pearls that ended up at the bottom of the ocean. Also, Eleanor ostracized Vane and made sure most of his crew joined Flint’s mission to raid the Spanish treasure ship.
Now that Vane is no longer captaining his own ship, Gates is going to be in charge of a crew after all. So Flint’s ship needs a new quartermaster, and Gates puts Billy up to the job, which the crew seems quite pleased about.
Billy’s first order of duty is to look for a suitable beach to land on for a pit stop – a little spit finish to gain a few extra knots per hour. Their options are to either stop at a beach nearby and risk calamity (I don’t know if calamity is a sailing term or just an awesome choice of words on that pirate’s part) or they could sail a few weeks out of the way to find a more suitable beach. Flint, highly fixated on his goal, obviously chooses the closer beach. Billy agrees with him and shuts down the men’s demands for a “fuck tent” saying they won’t have time. (Seriously Billy’s either a virgin or gay, he wants nothing to do with ladybits, and I don’t think it’s because of his impeccable work ethic.)
Billy pulls Gates aside and tells him that he’s starting to worry that he’s following Flint off the plank of sanity, and tells him about when the anti-Flint pirate, Wally, talked about a voyage they went on just before Billy joined the crew. They were after a certain trip, promised a huge haul – Flint always knows what to say to get people to follow him like the Pied Piper – and when they finally reached the ship, it was way less than they were promised. Wally overheard two people whimpering for their lives, promising their treasures if only they could be spared. Then he heard them be killed. And who should exit the room but a bloody Captain Flint. When they got back to shore, Wally saw a woman waiting for them on shore, and heard Flint tell her simply, “They’re dead.” It wasn’t a treasure hunt they had been on, it was a vendetta for Mrs. Barlow.
Speaking of Mrs. Barlow, she and Flint are having utterly unenthusiastic sex while Mr. Guthrie is forced to listen from the next room.
Afterward, they have a conversation befitting a couple of teenagers. Mrs. Barlow asks him if she’s mad at him, and he just pouts. She asks if it had anything to do with the fact that she was reading erotic poetry from the Marcus Aurelius book to Mr. Guthrie and he is like EROTIC POETRY IS OUR THING. She informs him that it’s actually something she did with her husband, and that she missed the life she used to have and didn’t want to forget.
Across the island, Mustachio Jack finds Vane barely conscious and looking worse for wear. He’s been picking fights and doing opium – when he lost Eleanor, he lost so much more, including his crew with the exception of eight men. Now, Mustachio Jack says this, so I don’t know if he’s including himself or LadyPirate in this count, but it’s still a far cry from what they had before. Vane lets out a half-hearted insult before seeing a large, burly man over Mustachio Jack’s shoulder that may or may not be a hallucination.
A random captain approaches Mr. Scott and tells him that the other captains are worried that Eleanor is going to lose her cool again and randomly embargo other crews. They call her Queen Eleanor, they call her a tyrant, and they tell Mr. Scott to “get control of her.” For some reason, despite seeming like a smart guy, Mr. Scott does not respond, “Don’t rape anyone, and things will be business as usual.” Instead he lets the captain walk away thinking Eleanor’s freakout was unprovoked.
Mr. Scott tells Eleanor this but she’s unconcerned. She doesn’t regret what she did, she’d stop the attack again if she could. Mr. Scott tells her to be careful, especially since they’ll be meeting with the man with the plethora of guns later (let’s call him Gunman). Scott makes her promise him that even she will not use force, even if he says no. Over on the side of the island where Vane is hiding out, Max…er…services someone. He goes back to the other men telling them how she can unlock pleasures they never knew existed, and Max’s rapist goes to her tent to see what all the fuss is about. She tries to be seductive, telling him that the other men have been rewarded for their “gentle obedience” but she still looks a little scared.
She tries to reason with him, but he just smacks her right in her pretty face. He rapes her again, and LadyPirate overhears. And she. Is. PISSED. Eleanor approaches Gunman, and tells him that he needs their help to capture the treasure ship, and that her father will be at her tavern to talk business with him later that evening. Which will be a neat trick since he’s being held captive.
An ever-shirtless Billy tells two of his men that they tied the ship to the wrong tree, but they ignore him and don’t fix it. Probably because as soon as he walked away, the only memory of the conversation they were left with was the image of Billy’s razor-sharp abs.
Silver, roasting his second pig of the day, tells Flint that he thinks Billy is cracking under the pressure of being quartermaster, but Flint says he trusts Billy and to drop it.
The Wrong Tree starts to give, which is probably symbolic of this whole damn operation.
Mustachio Jack and LadyPirate try to convince another pirate to help them, and when that fails, LadyPirate suggests ditching Vane. Mustachio Jack looks at her like she’s losing her mind and says that staying with Vane is their only shot to not having to wash piss buckets for the rest of their lives. Their bonding session is interrupted by Mr. Noonan, who is none too pleased that they took Max from him. Surely Eleanor was paying a pretty penny to keep her all to herself, and Mr. Noonan is feeling the financial hit. LadyPirate grumbles at them, and suddenly it dawns on Mustachio Jack doesn’t like that they’ve been holding Max hostage. Mr. Guthrie, all gussied up and wearing that would make Cher nauseous, approaches the Gunman to chat about his weapons. He asks to speak to him alone, but Eleanor doesn’t mind, because she has men standing by in case this deal doesn’t go her way. Mr. Scott is mad – she lied to him, probably for the first time ever.
But Eleanor seems to have lost her spark. Her candle was snuffed out by the very person who lit it in the first place. So she needs this plan to work. She needs to do everything in her power to make sure Flint gets the treasure, to make sure she can get the island to flourish. Otherwise she threw away a life with Max for no reason; otherwise she made the ultimate sacrifice in vain. Thankfully, when the man emerges, he tells her that the guns are hers, so she doesn’t have to do anything rash.
Mr. Guthrie pulls Mr. Scott aside and tells him that he has a plan for the island. He says that a place run by a woman and a black man weren’t meant to last, and that she needs to be saved from herself. He’s awfully cocky for someone being held hostage by a pirate but I guess he’s still technically in charge. I hope Eleanor feeds him to the sharks.
Eleanor visits Flint to tell him that she’s secured the guns and they drink to this endeavor. Flint is still spinning his web of dreams and everyone is all tangled up in it. While they’re toasting to relentless optimism, a strong wind blows and uproots the Wrong Tree, and everyone runs to try to get out from under the falling ship. The Crazy Cook sees a kitty and runs back to save him, but gets squished under the boat himself. (Don’t worry the cat was okay.)
Flint and Wally try to dig him out quickly, the ship still having a little more squishing to do, but Eleanor points out it’s taking too long. Silver drops a machete at their feet and Flint, his eyes even wilder than usual, hacks the man’s leg right off.
They get the Crazy Cook out just in time, fine but missing a leg. Wally, however, wasn’t so lucky. That Flint-hater got squashed like a bug, so the secrets he knew live only with Billy and Gates.
Billy wonders out loud to Gates why he’s so willing to lie for and blindly follow Flint. Gates suggests it’s because he knows Flint’s right. Billy suggests it’s because he’s afraid of Flint. I suggest it’s because he has a big lesbian crush on him.
After being called a witch by a little boy throwing stones, Mrs. Barlow decides to play the piano for a bit. Mr. Guthrie returns, and takes this opportunity – feeling braver in his nice clothes (though thankfully he removes the terrifying wig) – to tell Mrs. Barlow everything he knows about her history. I believe, in literature, this is called an “infodump.” In real life, surely Mrs. Barlow would have cut him off at some point and been like, “Yeah, I know, I was there,” but for our sake, she lets him continue.
Mrs. Barlow’s husband, Thomas, was the son of a lord proprietor of the Bahamas Islands. She had a torrid affair with her husband’s best friend, which led him to go mad with grief. He eventually took his own life in an asylum.
Mr. Guthrie has concluded that this lover was none other than Captain Flint, and claims he wants to help her. He basically wants to take her into Witness Protection. He says they’ll go to Boston, where they can both find absolution, if only she will set him free.
Back in his cesspool, Vane wakes up mid-opium high from a light touch of Eleanor’s hand. She’s speaking softly and kindly to him, which is the first sign that this is not the real Eleanor, but an echo of her. She tells him that she left him because when they were together, she looked weak. When it was the two of them, it was a captain and his girl. She said that he knew she would never settle for that, for being less than. He claimed that’s why he loved her, but then he destroyed him. Hallucination Eleanor then tells him that he could take the island from her, and Vane snaps awake. He sees the Burly Man again, just for an instant.
Inspired, Vane stumbles out of his tent, but is almost instantly attacked by Mr. Noonan and his crew, who are still demanding Max’s return. Vane responds by vomiting all over him. Noonan gives the order to kill Vane, but in a series of unfortunate events, the gun backfires, and Vane kills them all instead.
Meanwhile, Mr. Scott is overseeing the gun hand-off…by knocking out one of Eleanor’s men. When Eleanor and Flint watch the boat take off much too quickly and riding far too low, they realize that the guns must still be on board. Flint, his eyes wild, say they must get them back.
What did you think of “IV”? Is anyone else ready for the women of this show to start castrating people left and right?
