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Black Sails Ep. 407 Recap & Review - 'XXXV'

Black Sails Ep. 407 Recap & Review – ‘XXXV’

Flint urges caution on an enraged Silver. Max leads Rackham and Bonny up river. Billy finds a survivor. Rogers learns the truth.

The scope of this little revolution Flint started just got bigger. More pirates and former slaves have joined the cause and are seeking not only to unite the Bahamas, but to take the fight as far as Massachusetts. Pretty damn ambitious considering the only sure footing they have at the moment is Maroon Island.

Julius offers a his brand of pessimistic realism. So far, he’s been finishing battles that the pirates have begun and failed to finish. His confidence in Flint is understandably low given the string of failures the pirate have encountered against the superior forces of the British and Spanish empires. After all that, Flint still wants to bring a revolution to the mainland? If the battle to claim Nassau and all of New Providence was hard before, what Flint aims to do now is going to be damn near impossible. And who do you think would likely suffer more? The pirates, or the former slaves? Before Julius (Tony Kgoroge) finishes his point, Silver interrupts and tells him to “F**k off” if he no longer wishes to join in their cause.

Silver is still reeling from the news of Madi’s death, much like Flint did when Miranda (Louise Barnes) died. He’s ready to salt the earth with whomever doesn’t align with his and Flint’s plan. Flint, now on the other side of this rage, offers to lift burden of leadership from Silver’s co-leadership until he’s got a clear mind again. That doesn’t last long, however, when the enemy finally has a way to shove a wedge between the dynamic duo.

Back at Nassau, Rogers is grieving over Eleanor. He’s devastated and angry, and looking to blame someone for this turn of events. We discover that Spain had pretty much gotten over the lost Spanish gold. Not because Rogers was absolved of this particular debt to them after their brief alliance, but because they rich AF and don’t even care anymore. That’s not what bothered him, though. What bothered him was the fact that Mrs. Hudson (Anna-Louise Plowman), who had acted as a Spanish liaison/spy last season, not only lied about the Spanish still wanting their gold back, but also because she added another lie on top of that: to catch Jack Rackham alive. I don’t remember the conclusion he came to for her adding this since her life hardly depended upon Jack’s survival. What does matter, is that he is super pissed and is about to go positively medieval on her. Then the coroner arrives with some stressing news about Eleanor’s condition: she’s pregnant.

It’s a very somber moment when he’s left alone with Eleanor. He realizes his mistakes and the guilt is weighing down on him hard. Like Flint after the death of Miranda, he sees the dead Eleanor staring back at him from the table, crying. It’s absolutely haunting, this scene. The part where he begins to apologize to her while she’s staring at him will easily make you think you’re suddenly in an Edgar Allen Poe story.

Rogers comes back to reality when he’s called downstairs to meet a visitor. This isn’t just any person, mind you. This is Billy. He let himself get captured by the Redcoats so he can have an audience with Rogers. Billy is pissed, he wants revenge, and he knows exactly how to get it done now. You see…when he was in lock up (off screen), Billy discovered something of an ace in the hole that will stick a wedge between Silver and Flint. Yes, he still wants those two apart, but not so he can join Silver without Flint anywhere in the picture. He wants to drive them apart now because he knows leadership over the resistance, over the entire war that’s a-brewin’ will break down quickly. The ace? Madi. She’s alive, and Rogers already has her.

With Madi in their clutches, Rogers (with Billy’s help) is now in a position where they can pit Silver and Flint against each other. The deal: trade Madi for the cache. Silver is all for it. If Flint was so ready to broker a deal with Eleanor for the cache, why can’t he? As Flint points out, however, the situation has changed.

Before, trading the cache would have meant getting all of the redcoats off of the island. Nassau would be theirs again. But trading one person for all that money, which they plan to use to resume their pirate enterprise once the war is over? Not only is that foolish, but Madi herself would be against such an idea. Even the Maroon Queen (Moshidi Motshegwa) thinks Silver’s plan to just roll over is dumb. In his current emotional state, Silver is only able to see the two options in laid out in front of him: pay the ransom and get Madi back, or refuse and let Madi die. A third option doesn’t even occur to him until Flint spells it out for him: infiltrate the fort under the cover of night and rescue Madi themselves. This seems to placate Silver for now.

Toward the end of the episode, however, we see that a wedge has already been successfully placed between Silver and Flint. While both men are confident that Flint’s plan will work, Silver doesn’t trust the situation enough not to sneak the cache on board anyway…. If the sh*t hits the fan, he’ll already be prepared to betray Flint.

Waaaay up north in Philadelphia, Jack pays a visit to Eleanor’s grandfather to break the news of his granddaughter’s death, but to entice him into waging his own campaign against Woodes Rogers. He tries to appeal to Joseph Guthrie’s business side, saying that he’d be able to buy New Providence for a song after he chases the British off the island. If he wanted to. His real proposal is that the Guthries would have a significant stake in Nassau’s legitimate trading operations for as long as they want if they help retake the island from the Rogers. However, he says all of this in the company of Guthrie’s fellow business partners and investors.

If you remember from the start of last season, both Eleanor and her father were condemned by the British government for aiding and abetting piracy, and therefore traitors to the crown. This put great shame to the Guthrie name and Eleanor’s grandfather took necessary steps to distance himself from his son and granddaughter for the sake of continuing his own enterprise. So of course, in front of all of his investors, rejects Jack’s offer and shows him out the door.

Despondent, Jack almost leaves a failure until he is intercepted by Eleanor’s grandmother. She’s the real brains behind the Guthrie business in the Americas (not at all surprised). She listens to the same proposal Jack presented to her husband. Before she can make a final decision, she asks to discuss the details of even more, to see if they can even be trusted to manage Nassau in the event of Rogers’ removal. Jack decides to bring in Max to prove their merit for she has been the true businesswoman on Nassau since Eleanor’s removal, and a shrewd one at that. As expected, Max wins over Mrs. Guthrie with her good business sense.

This particular scene between Max and Mrs. Guthrie is a great one, and further backs up my claim that the women should just be in charge. They all have good sense because they mostly operate with little to no ego, a flaw in men that is most definitely addressed by Mrs. Guthrie. Because of male pride, Nassau has been in a never-ending loop of violence where no one is the winner. Out of everyone, Eleanor has been the only person to come close to breaking that loop. Her fatal error was not knowing Rogers well enough to know he might try something reckless and stupid due to his immense pride and anger.

You know who is listening to a woman’s sage advice? Julius (so far). His main concern is that his people could ultimately be put back in chains and used up for labor. He doesn’t trust the pirates to hold up their end of the bargain if they win, and he doesn’t trust that they could prevail against a force that will put them in chains again. But for all his talk, it seems his only plan is just to step away and wait and see who wins. The Maroon Queen takes Julius aside and explains to him the bigger picture from her point of view. Maybe it’s because he trusts her judgement more, but he continues to cooperate in this still tenuous alliance with the pirates for now.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

  • Yay! I’m so happy Madi’s not really dead. I had an inkling that she might have escaped the fire on her own. I freaked out some of our Twitter followers when I flat out said in a recent post for an exclusive clip that she died. Aren’t you glad, she really didn’t?
  • Max and Anne stay behind in Philadelphia while Jack heads back to Nassau. A final deal hasn’t been struck between Jack and Mrs. Guthrie, yet. It seems that Mrs. Guthrie wants Flint dead. If and when Jack kills him, only then will she lend her support. Jack is stuck between a rock and a hard place, and he won’t have Anne with him to guide his decision-making this time.
  • DAMN IT, BILLY! I — USED TO LOVE YOU.

About author View all posts

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.

1 CommentLeave a comment

  • The men on the show may act from ego and aggression, but the women are often clouded by their emotions, desires, and are motivated by things that fly in the face of sense or their previous bonds and commitments.

    All people have their weaknesses, regardless of gender, and every one of these characters in inherently flawed. I would certainly not trust any one of the women on this show with my life, liberty or livelihood. With the possible exception of Mr. Scott, I doubt there’s anyone truly trustworthy in the entire cast of characters. Even he lied to those closest to him to protect what he held dear.

    The women on this show, including the newly-introduced Mrs. Guthrie, are conniving and just as unsavoury as the men, although they are admittedly often better at concealing their motives.
    The point is that nobody in this series (or, for that matter, in our society) acts solely for the Greater Good – either ego, emotion, conflicted interests or obligation mitigate altruism.