#izzy hands meta

[follows-the-bees]

Izzy taking the blame for Stede's painting being ruined is leading to some deep character study.

Let's look at the painting first.

Not only are the eyes crossed out, but the dark marks around the eyes and mouth are exactly the greasepaint makeup that Blackbeard and the whole crew use.

There is a bloody handprint over Stede's hand holding a sword and there is a knife stabbed into the left side of Stede's abdomen - the side without the important bits.

All three of these suggest that it was Blackbeard who mutilated the painting. He used the makeup to bring Stede down to his level of darkness, the bloody handprint to show the violence happening, and while the knife is violent, it is on the left side. It shows the warring emotions Ed is feeling about Stede right now, no matter how much he's drowning, trying to become a flightless bird, he ultimately can't truly stop loving Stede.

Now let's move on to Izzy.

Stede asks about the painting (oh, Stede I love your insecure yet vain ass) and Izzy responds right away.

He automatically steps in to say it's him with that smarmy smile he uses around Stede. Izzy choosing to say this can be due to two things. 1) He is taking the blame for/ covering up for Blackbeard, or 2) He is trying to protect the crew from getting caught from mutiny. Which still means that he is taking the blame off of Blackbeard, so there isn't any evidence of why they would mutiny. (There is the third option that Izzy DID do it, but I think that is highly unlikely and you can tell in Con's performance.)

Stede reacts to this response by rolling his eyes, sighing, and then walking away. Izzy looks surprised by this, he was clearly expecting to be yelled at. Or be called an asshole like Stede has done in the past. But instead he is met by quiet despondence, which happens once again this episode.

When the crew are jailed for mutiny and Stede comes to the jail, Izzy tries to provoke him once again. "Go on, Bonnet. Give me your worst."

But once again, Stede is quiet, shakes the bars, and walks away. We see Izzy make the same face as last time: he has tears in his eyes, visibly upset and slightly confused. He isn't getting yelled at, he is getting disappointment and silence.

Besides showing exactly how Stede responds when he is completely heartbroken, we see how Izzy responds when he expects violence and gets the opposite.

It is heartbreaking and Con's performance is superb.

Gif source!! Give them the love.

[tizzyizzy]

Seen some talk around the interwebs about how Izzy is a totally different, or his arc happened too fast, whatever. He is my argument to the contrary.

There are three major factors driving the change in Izzy's behavior.

Default Pirate Culture → Gentleman Pirate Culture

Izzy spent his entire pirate career before Stede acting like, well, a pirate. There wasn't room for softness. Being tough was expected. Blackbeard's crew's culture in particular discouraged weakness to such an extent crew were expected to kill their pets before joining.

In S1, Izzy's relationship to the crews and captains was ambiguous. Was he training the Revenge crew to be proper pirates? Was he in charge when the captains weren't on board? Was Ed planning on killing Stede and everyone aboard, or not? So it's unsurprising Izzy held himself away from Stede's crew instead of becoming part of it, and tried without success to make the Revenge crew follow his lead.

In S2, Izzy ends up in Stede's crew, and Izzy isn't in a place emotionally or socially to try to push to change the culture of the ship. He's outnumbered. Izzy has to adapt. At the very least, all of the expectations he has been living up to his entire pirating career are gone.

Taking Care of Ed → No More Ed

Izzy said he'd been cleaning up Ed's messes his whole life. Scenes from S1 and S2 suggest that is the case. In S1, Izzy is dealing with Ed making strange choices on his search for meaning, which requires him to manage restless crew members and deal with the risky spots Ed puts them all in. Once Stede arrives on the scene, Ed is contradictory and non-communitive, leaving Izzy to wonder if the plan to kill Stede and the promised captaincy were bullshit (they were).

And because Izzy has no emotional intelligence, he thinks that Stede is seducing Ed into losing everything, and he desperately tries to pry the pair ppart.

I mean, we all know what happened in the early S2 episodes. Emotional, off-the-rails Ed trying to himself and everyone else while Izzy desperately tried to protect Ed and the crew, until he was forced to give up on Ed.

After breaking up with Ed via bullet, though, Ed is officially Not Izzy's Problem. Ed isn't a threat to the crew. Stede is incompetent, but was clever and brave enough to escape Zheng's ship and rescue them. Izzy is free to have a drunken breakdown. After, well, he gets to do whatever he wants.

What does Izzy want? Well, he's finding out.

No Trust → Trust

The major reason pirates put on such a tough facade is to protect themselves. Being tough keeps enemies from messing with you. It keeps your crew too afraid to mutiny. It's easy to recognize that Ed puts on a persona of Blackbeard, but Izzy put on a persona too. A weak link can be targeted and broken.

Just look at the scene where Izzy finally breaks down and is comforted by the crew. Izzy doesn't make the choice to be emotionally vulnerable. He is behaving the same way he always with crew who question his orders. He yells, he curses, he commands. It is only the level of his emotional distress and the crew's acknowledgement of it that make him incapable of hiding his pain.

I think it's safe to say that has been hiding grief, frustration, confusion, sadness, etc. behind the "Get back to work!" facade for years. It only crumbled under extreme pressure.

But when Izzy breaks, and is at his most pathetic and vulnerable, the crew have his back. Under Blackbeard, they comfort him, hide him away, and treat his injuries at the risk of the captain's wrath. Under Stede, when he's at his most pathetic, the crew make him a new leg and accept him into the crew without judgement.

There's almost nothing Izzy could do in front of the crew now that would make him look more weak than he was when he was crawling across the floor drunk and repeating "You're born alone, you die alone" over and over. He hit rock bottom and there was a pillow there to catch him.

So, Izzy is in the "talk it through" culture of Stede's Revenge. He is free from obsessing about Ed as a man and as a captain. He is surrounded by people who saw him at his worst and showed him compassion.

Izzy's worst behaviors in S1 were motivated by fear. Fear of the new, fear Ed was losing it, fear of what would happen if he showed weakness. In a "safe space", where he has nothing to worry about? Of course Izzy calms way down. This is the Izzy that swaggered up to Stede on the island and at Spanish Jackie's in S1. Dry, sarcastic, sassy. Some flair for the dramatic with the swordplay.

It is because Izzy feels so safe that he can put on that makeup and perform. Wee John is doing it, and Wee John wouldn't let him do anything embarrassing. He's clearly got confidence in his ability to sing.

He's still Izzy. He says fuck constantly. He's kind of a dick. He offers good advice. He's a dramatic, whether he's cutting his name into someone's shirt or singing in French from a balcony. He's just an Izzy that can be whatever he wants without fear.

[wistfulcynic]

a non-izzy-centric reading of the events of season two

i didn't really want to get into this because it's so, so tiresome and i'd rather talk about the things i loved about this season. Poison, positivity, etc. But.

reading this post about people doubting their own judgement due to the overwhelming noise from Izzy stans along with a rewatch of season two from start to finish made me realise that i too had been influenced by a year and a half of being intensely frustrated by people insisting so loudly that OFMD was in fact the Izzy Hands Show. My initial issues with S2 mostly stemmed from overcompensating for that by resenting any development of Izzy on the screen because i did not want it to feed those people. Which meant that i also was centring Izzy in a way that he should not be centred! i was letting their noise lead me to read him as far more important than he actually is.

So i looked back at several points from the season that had me feeling uncomfortable and which, from a cursory browse through the Izzy tag i've concluded his stans see as a contradiction or a betrayal or something and re-evaluated them from the perspective of Izzy not being a main fucking character.

point one: "He's our dick."

When Archie (a newcomer and therefore a fairly effective audience stand-in for anyone not balls deep in fandom bullshit) asks Jim why they're going to so much trouble for Izzy, who she has immediately clocked as "kind of a dick", Jim gives this response. Which, if you think Izzy is important, may read as an expression of reluctant fondness. But then, Jim continues: "There was a time when life meant something on this ship. When we lived for each other, not just to survive." These lines are punctuated by a flashback to the famous Revenge crew found-family Renaissance-painting moment. Jim is nostalgic for the "good old days" of the Revenge under Stede's people-positive management style. It is out of respect for that (seemingly) lost way of life that they take the trouble for Izzy, not for Izzy himself. They'd have done the same for anyone, because they desperately want life to matter again. Izzy, as the person whose gamy leg is a direct result of his threatening Ed and bringing the kraken era down on all of them, is simply the one whose life happens to be on the line.

(honestly, i love this from Jim, who was one of Stede's boldest detractors in season one and still the crew member most likely to call him out on his bullshit. That's your "reluctant fondness" moment right there.)

point two: the new unicorn

apparently Izzy stans see the gift of the unicorn leg prosthetic as a symbol of deep love and respect from the crew to Izzy. Which is an absolutely wild reading when you look at what led up to it.

There's tension on the ship. Divisions. Lucius is chain-smoking and jump-scared by his own shadow. Jim, Archie, Frenchie, and Fang are overcome by guilt over their mutiny and frantically scrubbing nonexistent blood from the deck in what is a fantastically darkly funny Lady Macbeth moment for them. Izzy is sloppy drunk and yelling nonsensical abuse at the unicorn masthead. Roach, Pete, Oluwande, and Wee John make a well-intentioned but ill-conceived attempt to bring everyone back together (i say "everyone" but Izzy, significantly, is not included) which leads to them all being at each other's throats in the sort of mutually-assured-destruction configuration that starts world wars. It's a great scene. Izzy is not a part of it.

until he interrupts them, throws the unicorn legs at them and in his drunken clumsiness breaks his prosthetic. He then pointedly refuses their offers of assistance and drags himself away along the floor by his arms.

my friends. This is peak pathos. The crew do not respect Izzy in this moment, they feel sorry for him. They realise that he's worse off than any of the rest of them and that knowledge brings them back together. Making the unicorn prosthetic is barely about Izzy at all. It's about the crew coming together, repairing the rifts in their found family and as a bonus helping out their grumpy second cousin who doesn't really want to be there but has nowhere else to go. It's also a very generous offer of a new place on the ship--as the new unicorn--and a fresh start. Because that's what life on the Revenge is. For everyone.

point three: la vie en rose

much has been made of Izzy putting on drag makeup and singing at the Calypso birthday party, and fair enough. That's a big character development point for him. i don't hate it, though i wish there'd been more build-up to it, a longer conversation between Izzy and Wee John at least (insert obligatory "fuck Max" here) but regardless, if we accept Izzy's amputated leg as cutting off his old self and replacing it with the unicorn then we can arrive at a place where he's able to participate in a drag performance without too much cognitive gymnastics.

i've written before about the curious choice to have Izzy sing La Vie En Rose in French (after he initially sang it in English) at the very moment when Ed and Stede are having sex for the first time. On first watch i felt viscerally troubled by it, it felt like a validation of the obsessive psychosexual reading of Izzy's feelings for Ed. Looking at the season as a whole, it feels more like a (cringy, creepy, waaaay over the line) attempt on his part to signal approval for Ed and Stede's relationship. Especially when taken in conjunction with his (super creepy, like wtf who greenlit this) interruption of their breakfast in bed the next morning to make a ham-fisted innuendo. Weird but okay i guess, it's not like Izzy and social niceties have ever gone hand in hand.

many people point to the drag scene as the crew embracing Izzy and welcoming him as one of them. Again, i don't disagree. But, also again, this is not specific to Izzy. This is just what they do. They also embraced Archie with her snake-cult stories, they re-embraced Ed (who yes, they do love, refutations of arguments that they don't love Ed are a whole other essay though) and later they embrace Zheng and Auntie and also Jackie who once stole their savings jar and threatened to cut off their noses. That's what they do! They embrace people! That's what the show is about!

point four: the death scene

i have to be honest, i still hate this. i don't hate that Izzy died, i hate that he died in Ed's arms with Ed calling him his only family. That still feels unearned to me, and alas was probably another victim of the shortened season. But even with this extremely kind and forgiving death scene, the stans are not satisfied! They feel that the entire crew should have been gathered round, assuring Izzy of their profound love for him. There should have been weeping at the funeral, wailing and gnashing of teeth, rending of garments etc. It's what he deserves as such a beloved member of the crew!

except he wasn't beloved. He was accepted, yes. Welcomed, even. But acceptance is a far cry from love. Cheering as someone sings a song at a party does not mean you feel ready to weep at their deathbed or proclaim your undying affection for them.

yet even so, the crew are visibly distraught at his death scene. There are tears in many eyes! But effusive declarations of feeling from any one of them other than Ed would have felt (to anyone not convinced Izzy is the main character) completely wrong and very weird. You can headcanon what you like to fill the gaps in canon but on screen we have seen very few meaningful interactions between Izzy and any of the existing crew aside from Fang and Lucius and to a lesser extent Wee John. Izzy's primary relationship with another character is with Ed and so, as much as i still don't like it, Ed is the only one who has any real reason to be at Izzy's side as he dies.

as for the brevity of the funeral and the fact that they went straight from it to Pete and Lucius's wedding instead of having, idk, a prolonged wake at which everyone speaks at length about how important Izzy was to them, i mean. Obviously that wasn't going to happen. More than enough screen time had already been given to a side character who spent most of it either being miserable himself or making others so. It was time for the rest of them to find some moments of joy. As Izzy himself said, not moving on is worse.

in conclusion, i'd like to address the people saying that Izzy should have lived so he could continue his arc of self-discovery and sure, that would have been great--on the Izzy Hands Show. But OFMD is about Ed and Stede and Izzy had served his purpose in their story. i feel certain there will be copious fanfics to soothe anyone who feels Izzy was shortchanged.

on the show, though, he was treated in a very logical and foreseeable way as the antagonist who was able to see the light at the end but not necessarily to thrive in such a well-lit environment. Literature (by which i mean also films and tv) abounds with examples of this sort of character. They see the error of their ways but they are too stuck in them, shaped by them, to exist comfortably in any other way. They help bring about change to benefit others and not for themselves, that is the bittersweet beauty of their endings.

Izzy let Ed go. He embraced the softer parts of himself. He died surrounded by people who may not have loved him but at least accepted him as one of their own and felt genuine sorrow about his passing. That is a satisfying narrative end for a reformed antagonist! If you truly feel that he was shortchanged by it then you have forgotten what show you're watching and what sort of character he was.

Izzy Hands: not the main character, still an interesting one, absolute nightmare, what a guy.

[dementian]

I think I realized why that scene hurt so badly.

To his very last breath, the whole focus was on making Ed feel better.

Izzy is laying in this man's arms, dying. He's tired, he's in pain, he's losing blood quickly. He's going to be dizzy, confused, maybe even frightened. He knows he's dying. He asks Ed just to sit with him. To just be with him in his last moments.

This is the time when Ed should comfort Izzy, not the other way around. This is the moment where Ed should be able to tell him how loved he is by his crew. Izzy put his life on the line for Frenchie, Fang, Archie, and Jim. Twice the camera cuts over Ed's shoulder and focuses directly on Jim's face. Why couldn't Jim have been able to approach, and kneel with Izzy. To whisper that everyone's going to be alright? That all is well, and that he's loved?

On February 17th, 2018, I was put in the very difficult situation of having to console a stranger while they died. A seven year old named Armani, who wore a pink tracksuit. She'd been traveling with her family to go get her mother's glasses perscription refilled when her father's minivan had struck a car crossing the interstate. She'd been ejected from the car, and shattered upon impact.

I type all this to say that I have held a dying person in my arms, so I speak with some small authority (Though not much) when I say that, if someone is dying, that's really not the time to focus on yourself. That's the moment to focus on them, comfort them, and love them as they go on to the next life. Izzy deserved to have the spotlight. To be told he was loved. Instead, his death (much like his life) was all about Ed.

Even his burial was about Ed. No thought for how he might have wanted to be buried (with his ring no doubt). Every day of his life, he wore that ring. Now, it hangs out in the open for easy pickings from grave robbers and animals alike. The crew gifted him that leg. It was his second chance. Can't he have one small thing that's his? Can't he be allowed to die with some modicum of self, detatched from Ed as a persona?

If Ed doesn't want to love him that's fine, but why can't he let him be?

[doctor-mccoys-sanity]

What if the bottle Stede sent doesn’t reach Ed first. What if it reaches Izzy.

Theres a fan theory that Izzy can read that’s been around since season 1 aired, so what if he gets the letter first. What if he reads it and he realises if Ed saw Stede he would kill him before he thinks. He would try and hurt Stede before he immediately regrets it and self destructs even more. Izzy can’t deal with Ed self destructing, Izzy wants Ed to stop, he realises it was a mistake for him to push the Kraken.

So he finds Stede, he helps train him. Just enough so that he can survive long enough for Ed to see reason, to realise that he’s trying to hurt/kill Stede and stop. Just enough for *something* to happen, to calm Ed down.

Izzy just wants Ed back because wanting the Kraken was a mistake.

[achillesangst]

Ok, I’ve been through the sobbing and incoherent rage portion of the evening and I’m now into “connecting two dots” territory. Bear with me, I am Sad.

Massive spoilers ahead!

So much of the finale made no sense to me. Izzy’s death being such a fucking throwaway, the complete 180 on Stede and Ed and their relationship dilemma. I’ve seen people say Stede didn’t really love piracy he just liked belonging but I disagree, I think Stede genuinely loves the ship and his crew. He’s a huge nerd about it! So I was deeply, deeply baffled by the Inn thing, especially since Ed’s foray inti fishing also failed so badly, and ESPECIALLY because I actually thought this season would end in a temporary mutual breakup. “We’re going to different places at different speeds” to “inn ownership!” Was a bit of a shock, to say the least.

And I was RAGINGLY pissed about Izzy being buried on land. He’s a sailor down to his bones, I thought the very fucking least they could do would be a full sea burial. And I thought using his leg and kerchief as grave markers was disrespectful and tacky.

And then I started actually thinking. Why WOULD you bury Izzy on land, something he would vehemently hate, and then choose to stay there right next to the grave miles from any potential inn customers? Why would you leave his most symbolic, precious items out to be damaged by the elements, unless you really wanted them to be easily found? And who fucking finds them? Buttons, who is apparently an actual honest to god sea witch. I thought the whole crew were handling his death freakishly (offensively) well, but I actually don’t think any of them believe he’s really gone. I think Ed and Stede are mostly there to wait for an angry, angry man to climb out of a shallow grave, calling them raging cunts for burying him on land.

And I think it’s really interesting that when discussing curses, Izzy says that if the crew believe in a curse enough, it’s effectively true. That even if you don’t believe in magic, other people can believe in it for you and have the same effect.

[gaypirateslife4me]

My contribution to the Izzy Hands meta drama:

Izzy Hands is an asshole. Izzy Hands is not a bad human.

Absolutist thinking is dangerous and is turning this world into an impossible-to-navigate minefield.

[sixstepsaway]

maybe the reason izzy's leg is a lot less traumatic for him than everything else was so far is because he doesn't blame ed for the leg, not really, not in the way you'd expect

his first toe was anger, the other two (three?) were surely either quiet anger ("take off your boot") or angry violent rage and definitely traumatic, right down to his responses to it when he was with the crew later

but the leg?

ed shot him in anger and gave him a gunshot, and that was bad and traumatic, but the gunshot is gone. he doesn't have a lingering festering hole in his leg or anything like that.

no, the leg? the loss of his whole leg? wasn't ed.

that was jim and archie and, by association, frenchie

and that - as traumatic as having his leg sawn off must have been - wasn't done in anger or even in violence, it was done out of some kind of love

they wanted to save his life. they wanted to make it better. they were desperate to fix what ed did, to the point they risked all their own lives and toes and limbs to tuck izzy into a secret passageway and hack off his leg so he might live

the same lot that might've wanted him to eat shit not long ago now wanted to save him

i find it hard to believe he doesn't see that in his leg, a little, even before the unicorn leg

that's probably why he felt so useless, too. he probably thought, at first, they saved him because he was a defense against ed, because he'd been trying to look out for them, because he was ed's favorite punching bag, not because they wanted him, izzy hands, to live

it was only later when everything had gone back to 'normal', where the thread of ed's wrath was removed and izzy no longer had any true place among the crew (it's not like stede was going to take out anger on him?) that they gave him a new leg

they thought about him long and hard enough to whittle and paint and bolt a new leg together and leave it for him: we want you to live, with us

maybe that's why it's been less traumatizing than it could've been

hell, all jokes about "jim did it actually 🤔" aside, maybe that's also why izzy doesn't say ed took my leg

because he didn't.

[phoenixduelist]

❗Beware the OFMD spoilers❗

The fact that (I fucking knew the knee shot will be when the show will be 💯 historically accurate.) Izzy's new leg is literally made from the Revenge itself, by the crew to him is the firmest metaphor I've ever seen for acceptance and family. The Revenge has literally sailed through a storm which should've sunken, destroyed it completely but it pulled through, damaged, torn but still afloat. I saw people comparing it to Ed's and Stede's relationship status, that they have something physical to rebuild and mend besides their love. Which is totally valid and I support that theory wholeheartedly! But I also like to compare the state of the Revenge to Izzy's. He lost toes, then a leg, then almost died via suicide. After all this, he still got up and saved the crew, probably also the one directing them out of the storm. So the image of a battered (and stabbed) Revenge I think can also apply to Izzy.

Okay, back to the leg. The crew made it for him after everything they had witnessed, experienced. I reckon he never had a group of people or even one to support him, to protect him; he wouldn't even have allowed it before. But now he has what he thought impossible and weakness in pirate life. The knowledge that they not only accepted him, but actively looking out for him even when the danger has passed: they aren't sailing in a storm and Edward isn't on the ship so technically, they don't need him anymore for protection or life saving orders. Yet they are still there for him and made a...relatively functioning mobility aid for him. From the ship that survived a storm thought impossible. For the indestructible little fucker. As soon as he realizes he isn't alone, the unhealthy coping mechanisms stop and he -so far- seems to be healing from everything that had happened & this wouldn't be possible without the crew's support.

Izzy both figuratively and literally became part of the ship.

[lunar-system]

first mate israel hands

izzy so achingly alone is e4, separate from the crew, separate from the captain(s). the emotional distance is huge.

In e5 he is part of the group and part of the ship again. Emotionally he is there. But there is still a physical distance between him and the crew. When Stede talks to the crew about how the curse can be seen as real, Izzy is far away from the group, leaning on a doorway in the background.

The separation comes partly from his experience. He knows pirating and he knows crews. But even if he is separate, it's not a cold distance. This level of separation is what he chooses, and it comes with his chosen role as a first mate. Has he been made Stede's first mate officially? Probably not, but he is certainly acting like one. He speaks on behalf of the crew: "You know you gotta burn that right? Crew thinks it's cursed". He is the only one who orders the captain around and to some extend expects to be heard: "Bonnet, we gotta go, this place reeks of dead priests."

The other half of the equation would be him giving orders to the crew on behalf of Stede. This we haven't seen him do yet. Maybe there just hasn't been a need for it, or maybe he is still figuring out how to be the first mate the crew deserves. It certainly will be different from how he ordered everyone around in s1.

A first mate is a caretaker's role, to both directions. He takes care of the crew by making sure the captain hears their concern. He also takes care of the captain by helping them become the best captain he thinks they can be. With Blackbeard this backfired horribly. With Stede this means actual training and advising.

And this is the role he feels at home in: slightly separate from both the crew and the captain, but looking out for them both. First mate Israel Hands is what links the crew and the captain together. And he likes it that way.

(a topic for another post: izzy asks ed "who am i to you" when ed makes it impossible for izzy to fulfill his duties as his first mate, when izzy fails to make the crew's voice heard. who am i to you, captain, if you don't allow me to be your first mate anymore?)

[ineffable-piracy]

I’m going to go ahead and put forward my take on Izzy and the ‘boyfriend’ scene because I’ll admit, on my first watch through, I interpreted it as Izzy being homophobic, simple as that.

However the more I think about it, the more I start to see it in a different way, especially with the added context of Izzy’s attitude towards ‘pets’. I believe Izzy’s issue is with Ed having feelings towards another person, regardless of that persons gender. This is a show that deals a lot with the concept of toxic masculinity so it would track that Izzy would see Ed’s feelings as a weakness.

Essentially Izzy doesn’t have an issue with Ed’s attraction towards men, but more specially with him having more emotional feelings for Stede. He sees emotions as a weakness. 

Remember, it’s heavily implied that Ed has a history with Jack and Izzy isn’t shown to have any problems with him! 

[follows-the-bees]

Let's talk about "doggy heaven" and "he was either gonna watch the world burn or die trying."

This is the moment that Izzy realizes that he doesn't know Ed the best. That Ed and Stede talked about everything, that Ed trusted Stede beyond Izzy's imagination. He always felt like he knew Ed the best. He fell in love with Blackbeard, with the persona of Blackbeard, with being first mate to Blackbeard. He was above the crew and always by Ed's side no matter what. Even when he calls Ed crazy and when he turns toxic. He fed Blackbeard.

But Izzy realized that Ed as the Kraken was too much. That his love for Ed was not returned the way he wanted, that the man he loved was no longer there. And the crew come to him, comfort him. And Izzy switches sides, he is now on the side of the crew. (And possibly first mate to Stede in the future.)

This moment when Izzy and Stede talk for the first time one-on-one is when the illusion drops again. And Con conveys it so well. The realization, the heartbreak, the bafflement.

Izzy tried to explain to Stede how far gone Ed was, but Stede replies with wisdom. "He was either gonna watch the world burn or die trying." And Izzy stops trying to explain, switches tones and tactics. He realizes that Stede (to a certain extent) does understand.

Then when Izzy finally tells him the partial truth of what happened, he doesn't get yelled at; instead Stede responds with "you sent him to doggy heaven."

To Stede, this is an innocent statement. It's him using what he thinks is a pirate term, but to Izzy. To Izzy, it's the fucking world crashing. And Con's performance is beautiful.

Because this can mean two things. One, Izzy realizing and semi dealing with what happened. That they supposedly put Ed down. But he knows he can't do that, says it aloud. Two, that Stede understands what and why it happened.

But it also is the moment Izzy realizes that Stede actually knows Ed. That Ed talked to Stede, trusted him, even more than he trusted Izzy. Stede knows the term, so he knows the plan to kill him.

There is the underlying story of the truth of the kraken, that Izzy doesn't know, but the audience does and makes that connection.

Izzy has to reassess everything that he's thought, that happened not only over the past months but years, decades.

And then in the jail cell, he still provokes Stede. Probably from his own guilt and this realization of how well Stede knew Ed & how he (Izzy) ultimately didn't know as much. Wasn't allowed to those recesses of Ed's mind and feelings.

But instead of anger, or Stede talking a lot, he gets silence, and a look of heartbreak. Izzy can't hold back tears.

Then Stede comes back, with a plan to save the crew. Unlike Ed, Stede is holding it together, he is putting the crew first. A thing that Izzy just learned to do in many ways. And Stede's plan works, the crew escapes, and that includes Izzy.

He sees the real Stede now, not the threat to his way of life, to the person he loves, but the Stede that Ed and the crew have defended, saved, trust. Stede changed all of them into better people. People that talked to Izzy, hugged him, comforted him, didn't kill him but kept him hidden and alive.

And Izzy tries to thank Stede (at the worst time of course) but season one Izzy would have never done that.

Izzy is part of the crew now with Stede as the captain.

He had to learn so much in such a short conversation.

Izzy couldn't save Ed, not alone, Izzy's love was based on a facade, and that fed toxicity.

But Stede will save Ed. Can save Ed. Because Stede was privy to the real Ed coming out from the Blackbeard facade. To sides of him Izzy could never see.

[tizzyizzy]

When it comes to intimacy, physical touch is generally reserved for people we are closer to. You don't hug someone you've just met.

After losing his leg, Izzy was forced to rely on others for support-literally. Most often it's Fang, but we also see him being supported by Jim and Lucius. Odds are when he was recovering and getting used to the leg, he needed help more often. I'm sure any nearby crew member rushed over to help if he lost balance or got his hoof stuck somewhere.

I think that's another reason he got close to the rest of the crew so fast. It's hard to be standoffish to people you've clung to to stay upright.

[tallowfallow]

I have been an Izzy Girlie day one. I saw the old man and I knew just I knew I was going to be weird about him.

But I've been expecting his death since season 1. I had believed, along with the tweets about the Revenge burning, that Izzy was going to die, he would offer himself as a sacrifice, wearing Ed's leathers and the ship would burn. The Crown would think he was Blackbeard, mirroring Ed's plan in s1. The legendary Blackbeard dies and Blackbeard was Izzy and Ed.

Notably there were only 8 episodes, instead of ten. The crew of OFMD have talked about how they had a smaller budget so I think this may have been the original plan but when it was realized they didn't have the budget for it, Izzy's death was moved from episode 10 to episode 8 as a hasty fix.

At the end of the day, I am okay with Izzy's death. He was one of my favourites and I'm weirdly glad to see so many people mourning him like I am.

[shiplessoceans]

So you know how I have thoughts? Well I have thoughts about OFMD S2 and where things might be going in regards to a certain characters arc.

Izzy.

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SPOILERS NATURALLY

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Izzy's turnaround is so complete it's dazzling. Like he not only suffered at Blackbeards hands, he acknowledged the reason he was putting up with it was because he loves Edward. And he acknowledged it was a toxic flawed love that it no longer served either of them.

Izzy's attempts to protect Stede from the truth of Blackbeards cruelty and his supposed death were uncharacteristically compassionate and kind. I think it's because he now sees in Stede what he realised was within Izzy himself all along.

They are both in love with someone who doesn't love themselves and hurts himself and others as a result of it. Izzy wanted to spare Bonnet that pain. Because its painful to love when that person can't accept it understand it, much less return it.

Now what does this mean for the rest of the season?

Ed is alive. Ed and Stede are now going to have to talk. And I suspect that conversation is going to be extremely fraught.

Izzy is potentially going to be integral to that relationship as the show continues.

Because I think when it comes down to it, Izzy is going to end up on Stede's side in the 'divorce'. Not only taking his side because of Ed's abuse, but I think he may even feel an instinctive urge to protect Stede from Ed's worst impulses. Partially because he feels responsible, and partly because he doesn't want Stede to suffer like he has.

I think if Stede were to take Ed on as he is now with no acknowledgement of the things he's done, Izzy would feel obliged to step between them to protect Stede.

Even if it meant Ed would try to kill him.

At the moment I don't see this adding up to Izzy developing feelings for Stede, but I'm not saying it's impossible. Not sure how Stede would feel about that though as he's unshakeable head over heels for Ed and it seems cruel to have Izzy fall for yet another person who doesn't feel the same.

I think Izzy will continue to lean into this change of heart, rejecting the toxic masculinity he depended on to define his moral code and maybe meet someone he can form an attachment to outside of that.

What that looks like yet I don't know but I think Izzy Hands needs someone to take care of him for a change. He'd pretend to hate it while secretly loving every minute of it.

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

I think sometimes people undersell the depth of Izzy’s betrayal of Ed.

Like, this is a show where people regularly forgive someone for trying to kill them. Jim locks Lucius in a box (for like a day? more than a day?) and they’re good friends. Two minutes after Mary tries to stab Stede they’re hugging and sorting out all their shit. The crew openly talks about how they were going to kill Stede, but decided not to. The prisoner that Stede takes back from Izzy is weirdly fond of him. Izzy stabs Stede, clearly trying to kill him, and Stede’s like “Cool, now that I’ve won you have to leave! Have a nice life!”

Now, this doesn’t match up with the real world, where it’s quite bad to try to kill people (seriously, don’t do it), but in the moral universe built by the show it all makes perfect sense. Trying to kill someone just isn’t a big deal, not really. Everyone does it. They’re pirates! There’s a set of rules they’ve all agreed to, and people trying to kill you is just part of it.

The way that Izzy hurts Ed is so different. He breaks the rules. He takes everything that he knows about Ed, everything from their shared history, their years spent together, his unique position as the one person Ed was even a little bit vulnerable around before Stede, turns it into a knife, and slips that knife right between Ed’s ribs when he’s least expecting it.

Turning someone’s vulnerability against them? That’s bad bad. That’s just about the cruelest thing you can do to someone without laying a finger on them. But Izzy doesn’t know the difference between love and ownership.

He sends Calico Jack in to break apart Stede and Ed and lead them into a trap. He works with the British to capture them all and sentence Stede to death. He tries to have Stede shot in front of Ed, and the whole time he’s telling Ed, “This is good for you, I’m doing this for you, you asked me to be loyal and this is what loyalty is.”

All this because he felt replaced? Fuck off, Izzy.

And then he does it all over again in episode ten, sliding into Ed’s space when he’s vulnerable and hurting and using his past as a cudgel to beat him into the shape he wants.

Love him or hate him, Izzy is a villain. He embodies the suffocating, toxic traits the narrative is trying to deconstruct. He’s not the cartoonish evil of the Badmintons, sure, or the cheerful dickhead evil of Calico Jack. He’s the ex boyfriend that you want a restraining order against because he’s a fucking stalker and he won’t leave you alone.

And the show may find a way to redeem him, but it’s going to be a long uphill climb, that’s all I’m saying. He has a lot of shit he needs to figure out.