Black Sails: Penultimate

The high point of the next-to-last ever episode of Black Sails last night was when Flint shoots the guy who was about to shoot Long John, who was in the process of demanding that Flint give him the treasure, or fight with Flint to the death over it.

As in many decisive acts in this rich, multi-layered tapestry of a story, there is more than one interpretation or explanation for what Flint did.

Maybe it was out of love and admiration for Long John, which certainly had to have been a part of it.

And/or maybe it was Flint, ever quick and incisive in his calculation, knowing that Long John was of much greater value in the fight that loomed ahead, against the British and the Spanish, in Flint's attempt to create a new civilization of freedom.

In any case, it's the British attack on the pirate ship that causes Flint and Long John to halt in their duel, with an eye towards the common enemy.   This creates the right backdrop for the final episode next week.

Of course, as I've been saying all season and earlier, history and Robert Louis Stevenson dictate who will survive and not survive this last battle we'll see in Black Sails.  But I'm very much looking forward to seeing it, anyway.

See also: Black Sails 4.1: "True Friends and Mortal Enemies" ... Black Sails 4.2: Bones vs. Flint ... Black Sails 4.3: Decisive Victories and Losses - On Both Sides ... Black Sails 4.4: Chess Game ... Black Sails 4.5: Bold Moves ...Black Sails 4.6: Spanish Horsemen with Lances ... Black Sails 4.7: Jack Rackham and Fake News ... Black Sails 4.9: Flynt vs. Long John

See also Black Sails 3.1: Restored ... Black Sails 3.2: Flint vs. Sea ... Black Sails 3.3: Gone Fishin' ... Black Sails 3.4: Mr. Scott's People ... Black Sails 3.5: Alliance ... Black Sails 3.6: The Duel ... Black Sails 3.7: The Blackening of John Silver ... Black Sails 3.8: Whether Vane? ... Black Sails 3.10: Wither Vane ... Black Sails Season 3 Finale: Throckmorton

And see also Black Sails 2.1: Good Combo, Back Story, New Blood ... Black Sails 2.2: A Fine Lesson in Captaining ... Black Sails 2.3: "I Angered Charles Vane" ... Black Sails 2.4: "Fire!" ... Black Sails 2.5: Twist! ... Black Sails 2.6: Weighty Alternatives, and the Medium is the Message on the High Seas ...Black Sails 2.7: The Governor's Daughter and the Gold ... Black Sails 2.9: The Unlikely Hero ... Black Sails Season 2 Finale: Satisfying Literate and Vulgar

And see also Black Sails: Literate and Raunchy Piracy ... Black Sails 1.3: John Milton and Marcus Aurelius ... Black Sails 1.4: The Masts of Wall Street ...Black Sails 1.6: Rising Up ... Black Sails 1.7: Fictions and History ... Black Sails 1.8: Money

 

pirates of the mind in The Plot to Save Socrates