Welcome to the Legion!

A line in the sand is being drawn, and the results are not pretty. Flint, Madi, and Billy’s plan to liberate slaves goes awry, there’s a new pirate in town, and Woodes and Eleanor leave Nassau to shore up more support.

At the moment, both sides are hurting. The pirate insurgents need more men, food, and guns to overtake Governor Woodes’ remaining forces in Nassau. Woodes needs a little bit of everything, but money most of all. He can’t exactly get any more right now with the major debt he’s already in with the Spanish, et al. His ex-wife back in England moving up the time table on when he needs to pay all of it back isn’t helping his situation either. Desperate, Eleanor suggests reaching out to her grandfather in Philadelphia. It would take some convincing due to the fact that she and her father ran the good Guthrie name through the mud by associating it with piracy and scandal; however, having Woodes Rogers, still a man of repute in England, in the family (did I mention he and Eleanor are now married?) should entice Grandfather Guthrie enough to ease the financial burden so Rogers’ can continue his campaign on Nassau.

There’s just one immediate problem they have to deal with first: Blackbeard. He’s still super pissed at Eleanor, holding her responsible for Charles Vane’s death. He and his crew survived the pursuing ship and sent back a message in the form of a ship full of Woodes’ men strung up like morbid holiday ornaments. And now he’s holding the bay hostage until Woodes gives up Eleanor. Both sides know it won’t be that easy, so alternate plans are being made respectively.

On Woodes’ side, Eleanor will leave for Philadelphia under the cover of night on a small boat while Woodes heads for Port Royal to distract Blackbeard.

On Blackbeard’s side, Anne Bonny suggests that she leads a vanguard to kidnap Eleanor (and maybe more supplies to recoup their dwindling stores). Later, however, Anne isn’t quite so keen on going back into Nassau. She and Jack have lost a great deal, all in the name of taking back an island. Losing Vane and almost losing Jack forced her to rethink her stake in this war. While there’s still fight in her heart, there doesn’t seem to be any room for vengeance against Eleanor. And besides, going after her only distracts from their true goal, which is to take back Nassau. Their true objective should be to chase after Rogers. If they can catch him before he reaches his destination, then they could finally win.

Jack, who is the more eloquent one in the duo, relays Anne’s sentiments back to Blackbeard. But he does so in a way that invokes their mutual fondness of the late Charles Vane. What would Charles Vane do? While a lot of Vane’s actions in the past have almost always been about getting back at Eleanor Guthrie, he still always took into consideration their ultimate goal. The end game and the best move to get them there.

Go after Woodes Rogers it is.

On another part of Nassau, Flint and company raid one of the seven plantations on the island to liberate its slaves and stores. They’re successful in annihilating the opposition, but a new development throws a huge kink in their plans. A house slave reveals to Madi and Flint that the seven plantations caught wind of the possibility of a revolt. To keep their assets in line, they each separated all of the slaves with families and spread them out over each plantation. If any one of them revolted, their families would surely suffer. If our pirates have any hope of adding to their numbers, they would have to raid all seven plantations at once.

Flint and Madi opt for a tactical retreat, but an angered Billy refuses. Usually Billy has every right to question and challenge Flint’s cold and ruthless decisions. His hatred for the captain is understandable, but he’s so fed up with Flint at this point that he can’t bring himself to accept the fact that retreating is the right choice. To him, retreating now would mean that his men died for nothing.

Before we know it, the raiding party is split in half and a fight breaks out. In the end, Billy and his remaining men are forced to retreat anyway because a militia, which had been on its way since the start of the raid, was getting too close for comfort.

Elsewhere, John Silver wakes up in one of the more secluded parts of Nassau with his hands bound. The man who kidnapped him is Israel Hands, a disgraced member of Blackbeard’s crew and former Number Two man before Charles Vane became the heir apparent. At first, he wanted to collect the bounty on John’s head, but John was able to use him silver tongue (see what I did there?) and talk Hands into turning him in to someone else who would pay considerably more than 500 pieces: Max.

Silver tries to make a deal with Max — back down and stay out of the way when Flint, Blackbeard, and he come to take back Nassau from the English. Max has no desire to see things go back to the way it was, and shuts down Silver’s offer of a truce. She orders her men to kill Hands and arrest Silver, but Hands single-handedly kills her men. Max manages to get away, but something tells me she’s leaving with a new impression of Silver.

Even though Silver starts out as someone not at his most intimidating in this scene, having Hands around to dispatch four armed men on his own somehow reinforces the “Long John Silver” persona. The fear on Max’s face tells me that she’s now buying into those stories. And she’s known him since Day One!

FINAL THOUGHTS:

  • With Woodes and Eleanor gone, Max is at the mercy of Mr. Berringer. Berringer suspects that one of Max’s spies have been feeding the rebel pirates sensitive information. He’s not wrong. Max does have double agents in her ranks. She even intercepted the correspondence that would have warned Billy of the obstructions hidden along the bay. But she also knows that exposing her agents now would only cause unrest and infighting at a crucial time. So she makes sure that Woodes guarantees that she spies are protected currently, and she deals with the problems herself. But Berringer doesn’t agree with this arrangement and will is determined to find any excuse to make things harder for her.
  • I was given the opportunity to watch this episode and episode 403 ahead of time. Guys….guys. Guys… I’m not even allowed to say because of the embargo. Just…..AAAAAAHHHHHH! THINGS!

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Christina E. Janke

Christina is the co-host of “Intro to Geek” on Shauncastic and Editor-in-Chief at Agents of Geek. Her love of all things Mass Effect knows no bounds. She also carries an obsession with comic books, video games, and quirky television shows. Her heroes are Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Gail Simone. She hopes to be just like them when she grows up.