#i dont want a fight i just want to kvetch

[diamondcitydarlin]

i got unreasonably frustrated with a post last night advocating for Lucius' death to be permanent for story reasons lol and the urge to counter this person's points are too great for me to ignore but I didn't want to just randomly go after someone entitled to their opinion I just wanted to argue with the opinion that it would be better writing if he stayed dead because I absolutely could not disagree more so I'm just putting this here to get it off my chest...and, mostly, to defend Lucius' right to say alive at this point (if you know which post this is addressing pls don't share it with the OP they don't deserve to see some random old lady whining about something they posted for fun)

The thesis statement of their argument that I will try to sum up as objectively as possible and as close to what was actually said without creating a strawman:

"Lucius should stay dead in season 2 because the moment where Ed pushed him off the side of the ship was a very shocking scene that I believe would be diminished if it turned out Lucius had survived. Ed shouldn't get a bandaid solution like that when he's a bad person who makes bad decisions. I feel like this show already shows us that not everyone is immortal and there are consequences for violence and having Lucius be alive would also diminish that. Basically I loved Lucius dying and I hope he stays that way." (and then also some frankly condescending suggestions that anyone who thinks otherwise maybe doesn't understand how television writing works)

Well. As someone who has had to write, edit, and make up concepts for professional scripts, I absolutely disagree that Lucius staying dead would be a natural fulfillment of anything the writing has planted beforehand. To a point, I'm not even really sure we were watching the same TV show because this stuff you're saying about how no one is immortal and there are always consequences for violence...uhm.

1) Stede and Ed casually get impaled, all the time, and yet are somehow completely fine by the next day even without modern medicine.

2) Both Roach and the Swede have jumped off the ship without lasting consequences.

3) Like literally anything else that happens on the show unless you're a Badminton in which case everything is permanent lol

But okay, let's humor the idea for a moment that OFMD pulled a game of thrones and decided to just perma-murder Lucius via a method that has yet to kill anyone else. What kind of significant effect do we think that will have on the plot? How will that move the story forward? Because Ed is the only one who knows what happened, and the revelation of what he did to Lucius wouldn't come out or be important until he and Stede crossed paths again and it (potentially) came out. I suppose it could give Black Pete some sort of motivation to do a revenge thing? But then he isn't a difficult character to give motivation to, he hardly needs someone PERMANENTLY dead to do an impulsive thing- in fact, even in this context it makes a lot more sense for Pete to just THINK he's dead. Beyond this I don't see how Lucius being permanently dead is supposed to have a more profound effect on the narrative than him actually being alive, I don't see why him being permanently dead is even a necessity for the aforementioned things to happen anyway. Because at least from how I understand this trope and how it works in scripted TV narratives is that the death has to be shocking, but it also has to contribute to the plot. A princess let's say being suddenly murdered without warning shocks the audience and brings about the potential of a war plot between the opposing kingdoms, etc. Stede and Ed also already have more than enough reasons to be at odds with each other and have drama (Stede left him, Ed marooned his crew and took his ship) and I'm not sure Lucius and Stede are close enough for his dismissive attitude about Lucius' possible death before to have changed all that much.

The main thing for me is that it's just too vague. All we really know for sure is that Ed pushed Lucius off the side of the ship and that he was still alive after hitting the water. Technically he did not die on screen and any assumptions that he might be dead are just that, because falling overboard gives a rather wide range of possibilities of survival and it's kind of missing the point of the show to go 'well it's not realistic that Lucius could find a piece of driftwood or get rescued by another ship or turn into a mermaid or just hold on to a piece of the ship or find a way to sneak back in etc' because uhm...yes, in terms of the rules of 'realism' that this show has established for its own universe, any of those things are absolutely plausible. I'm pretty sure getting impaled multiple times without significant health issues isn't 'realistic' either but that's not really the point, is it? Like these characters might as well be made of rubber I'm not really sure where the idea that consequential realism is a huge part of this show (maybe they were watching Black Sails instead or at the same time and got the wires crossed? idk, I'm confused)

also in my experience with Taika's works and works he is involved in, this is exactly the kind of chekov's gun that will come back in a big way later and the only way Lucius' 'death' as it is is going to have that kind of an effect is if he is in fact not dead at all, and yet FULLY aware of what Ed tried to do to him. It may take a couple episodes for him to pop back up but it's what makes the most sense to me. Really the only person that can give a quality, dramatic reaction with profound effects on the narrative as a result of what happened to Lucius is...Lucius himself lol. See, that's the problem. There aren't many preexsiting parties that could bring about much of a consequence to this action outside of him.

also ofc I take issue with the assertion that Ed is a 'bad person who does bad things' because, again, missing the point. If the show were trying to make a point about how irredeemably bad Ed is and how irrevocable Lucius 'death' at his hands was, why not have Ed strangle him before pushing him in? Stab him? Why not have Ed make some kind of effort to insure the job is done instead of falling back on that old pattern of 'outsourcing the job'? No it doesn't make what he did, as it was, fine and okay and undeserving of recourse, but the entire point of Ed and Stede's stories are that they flawed, nuanced characters, neither of whom are entirely 'good' or entirely 'bad'. The point is not and never has been to prove why one of them is completely irredeemable and always has been, otherwise those moments like the one in the tub were pointless and might as well have been cut. hell I'll even go so far as to say killing Lucius wasn't Ed's main priority, it was just getting him the hell off the ship so he could revert into Blackbeard without being called out on it by someone who knows better.

So, that all essentially gives Lucius access to knowledge that no one else has. Why would they plant all that with a character that couldn't bring all the dirty laundry back and make it everyone's problem?

Anyway, my basic point is that it's 100% okay to personally prefer that Lucius stays dead for your own reasons, but I don't think it's at all accurate to say that this has been the sort of thing the show has been leading up to all this time.