#kissing david jenkins on the mouth

[obsidianbit]

My favourite part of this scene, is there is no (?) reason for Izzy to be shirtless. He could have trained in his usual get up. Actually I would argue it makes more sense for him to be in his normal clothes, given that is presumably what he will be fighting in. Sure he could be warm, but like. He has spent the rest of the show in head-to-toe black leather in the Caribbean. I think we can discard heat as something that affects Izzy Hands.

The only reason that Izzy was shirtless... was for Izzy to be shirtless.

So thanks djenks. You're truly for the people (and for the tizzies)

[serpentarius]

will never get over Frenchie canonically making up the excuse that Stede’s journal is a “bit of fanfiction” about him and that he “can’t stop imagining him in all different scenarios. All totally made up” LIKE. HE IS JUST LIKE US FR

[deaderthandoubledead]

Honestly sometimes I can't believe the cast&crew of OFMD is real.

Vico publicly begging for Jim/Oluwande/Spanish Jackie to become canon while cosplaying as Izzy?

Con publicly sharing steddy hands and horny bondage Izzy fanarts in between his anti-conservatives rants?

Alex Sherman (one of the writers) liking tweets about Stede and Ed having sex in S2?

Rhys liking nsfw Stede art?

Samba not only creating and sharing a recipe for the 40 orange glaze cake but also keeping track of and cataloguing each and every fan made cake? All 700+ of them?

David Jenkins going feral over medieval cat paintings on twitter from time to time?

I don't know what we did to deserve these people but I love them with all my heart.

[l0vecrim3]

it’s happening again…

[unidentifiedprimate]

[depressedgremlinbitch]

THIS SHOW REALLY IS HIGH BUDGET FANFICTION

I read *so many* fics that had "Ed steering the ship into a storm just to feel something" as a plot point

and it just HAPPENED

it's CANON

(((o(*°▽°*)o)))

[iwillbestronger]

david jenkins I am kissing you on the mouth

[lizluzz]

The fandom: We can't believe they are showing the love story in the promo!! They are together in the trailer! They are visibility pining for each other! THEY SAID THE WORD LOVE ON SCREEN!!!

David 'I didn't even know there was queerbaiting happening' Jenkins: .....but this is a love story? They kissed on the mouth?? We did a whole montage???

[zombee]

I feel like the luckiest Our Flag Means Death fan in the world after the season 2 finale. By a series of incredible circumstances - including a significant metatextual realization that came in at the 11th hour - it was close to perfect for me.

This essay has everything. Completely normal behavior over a television series. Steven Universe references. The David Jenkins School of Whatever is Best for the Bit. Humbling catharsis.

First: this piece does not exist with the central thesis of “it’s okay to not like something but that’s not the same thing as it being bad.” I feel like thousands of words have already been written on this since Thursday, so I’m going to try to not get too in depth on that.

Second, cards on the table, because it’s relevant and I don’t want to waste your time if this is going to sour your ability to hear me out: I’m an Izzy Canyon hater. For MANY reasons, but from way before the concept of the Canyon existed, (some) Izzy fans pinged me in the same way as Snape/Kylo Ren fans did, and before May 2022 was over I went from genuinely enjoying Izzy’s character and place in the narrative to hating him because his fans made it impossible for me to enjoy him anymore.

(SOME! of his fans. Please don’t keep making me say this, although I’m not going to talk about the Canyon directly anymore after this. I know there are a ton of normal Izzy Enjoyers and even Canyonites, I am literally friends with many of them, please take this all in the good faith it’s intended and if you’re not One Of The Bad Ones then you’re fine! I very carefully don’t go anti-Izzy on main, and when I stopped enjoying his character, I stopped writing him into fics. I’m not trying to be a dick, I just want to be honest. Anyway.)

The season 2 finale made me weep over Izzy Goddamn hands.

ALL season long, I was disgruntled. All season long. I really, truly, DEEPLY appreciated what they were doing with his character and arc, I thought it was wildly on brand for the themes of community/queerness in the show, I saw the vision, I liked it!!! But. I wanted a fucking apology, yall. I needed three seconds of “sorry I called you a slur, Ed :/” and that would have been enough. But I had to let it go. It was poisoning my enjoyment of the whole season, which I loved with very little exception (not none!) and I just had to let it go. I wasn’t getting an apology. That didn’t negate what they were doing with his character.

Yall. They withheld the apology on purpose.

THIS FUCKING SHOW!!!

Let’s go back a bit. I was at the episode 6 + 7 screening, and the breakup shook me. Probably a LOT more than if I had watched it alone in bed at 3am on my laptop - five days of no sleep after NYCC, lots of emotions, seeing it on a big screen with a hundred other intense fans, etc etc - but I did see other folks reacting in parallel ways to me when the episodes aired to the regular public, so maybe I would have felt the same way. Regardless, I was mad at Stede and to a lesser extent Ed. I NEEDED AN APOLOGY FOR THAT FISH LINE. I needed it! “Whativah” autocorrects to “WHATIVAH” in my phone. I was going through it.

(When I rewatched the episode when it aired it was not nearly as bad as I remember, lol)

So now the episode 8 screeners go out and the reviews drop and I think I catch one half-glimpse of a “What a heartbreaking ending!” kind of snippet, and some of my friends who are spoiler fiends unintentionally drop little hints about similar ideas (devastating/heartbreaking/split the fandom) type shit.

And I was a fucking WRECK! about it.

I do love this whole show with my whole chest. I do!!! But I’m not rotted because this is an excellent television show, I’m rotted because two old men kiss each other! On the MOUTH!!! in an excellent television show. You get it, right? I’ve written 700,000 words across almost 100 fics and 98% of them are dedicated to those two men falling in love in different universes. 

So it just did not even occur to me the “heartbreak/devastation/fandom split” would be about anything but Gentlebeard.

Another piece of this that was fucking me up - David Jenkins and his “satisfactory” ending biz. My brain was reacting like this show was ENDING ending, even if I knew logically! that this is just season 2!!! And I wasn’t ready for that, because what if it wasn’t personally satisfying, and I’m a mess about it? Why was I so worried about not liking it? I’d liked the whole season! Even if they didn’t nail the landing I wasn’t going to stop writing fic or hanging out with my pirate community & friends. 

…is what I kept trying to tell myself, but the way anxiety disorders work is funny like that lol. What if I did stop writing fic and hanging out in pirate spaces? That would hurt much more than a show I like disappointing me. And for anyone who’s having that experience with ofmd s2, I’m so very, very sorry. It sucks and that’s where my epiphany came from on Wednesday before the finale.

Because it has happened to me before.

I flit from hyperfocus to hyperfocus, as ya do when you’re spicy, but the last thing to get its hooks in me PROPERLY like pirates was Steven Universe. And I did NOT like the way the regular season ended!!! (I actually really did like most of Future; that’s not what I mean. I mean season 5). I don’t like how they handled the Diamonds, tldr; I think the scope of their villainy got too out of hand, and I was left grieving the thing that had meant enough to me I ran a fan convention for four years based around it. 

Side note: imagine if I had channeled the hyperfocus of almost a million words of fanfiction into an American OFMD con instead. We could have made magic :( I did consult with Our Con Means Death though so I am at least a teeny tiny bit of that one!

I did not like the way Steven ended… but I do respect the story they were telling and think they told it well.

I’m still sad about it. Steven is still one of my most beloved, it will always be beautiful and great to me, but that experience did and does sully my memories. There is so, so, so, SO much more good than bad from being in that fandom, and I cherish it. And I hope, if you’re having this experience with OFMD right now, that you’ll find similar comfort.

But, like I said at the top, “it’s okay to not like something but that’s not the same thing as it being bad” has been belabored already by people better at writing about it than me. I just had the incredible privilege to remember my brush with lower case T trauma and having that experience in my last REALLY big deal fandom. That’s why I had been so extra anxious about being disappointed. Because it happened to me before. It helped so much to connect those two.

So the finale happens, and it’s actually about twelve hours of me going from “eh, rushed but fun, whole season was great” to “THIS MAYBE IS THE BEST SHOW OF ALL TIME, ACTUALLY!”

BECAUSE THIS SHOW MADE ME CRY OVER IZZY FUCKING HANDS!!!!

They literally told me this was the story they were telling this season. “Men can change” “The end  of piracy” “Ed leaving Blackbeard behind (ish).”

As for me? I didn’t get an apology for the fish. Instead, I got “Sorry I was a dick.” “You weren’t a dick. Life’s a dick.”

Just… fuckity BAM. THREE FUCKING SENTENCES resolving that fight. Saying so much in so little.

In real life, should these two men have an actual conversation about this shit? Sure!!! But that’s not how OFMD tells its stories!

It works in symbolism. It works in vibes. It works in an hour’s worth of content into each half-hour episode, and for how much lamenting I have done about the pacing, I would prefer that 100x to having to stretch it out too much.

I have said since March 24, 2022 that OFMD wields anachronism as a weapon. First and foremost, it’s fucking funny, but in addition to that, it’s stating clearly: “This is a fantasy world. This is not real history. This show is about romance (and so much more than that), and the rest is just VIBES!!!”

Sometimes vibes can be historical accuracy. Sometimes vibes can be true emotional poignancy. Sometimes vibes can be Ed finding his sunken leathers in the sea, changing underwater somehow, and coming out of the ocean like the Birth of Fucking Venus, because water and rebirth and mermaids and shit is all very prominent this season. And ALSO, and this is very important! BECAUSE IT LOOKS FUCKING COOL!

I don’t want to do much real Izzy meta here. It’s been said by others, and better than me. But it was telegraphed and it was symbolic – he was the paragon of Traditional Piracy in season 1, for goodness’ sake, and Traditional Piracy is Toxic Masculinity, and he was a part of Blackbeard and Ed had to leave Blackbeard behind (yknow, ish), and he got this ABSOLUTLEY FUCKING LOVELY! storyline about appreciating what a (queer) community can do, and god fucking shit fucking dammit… most of all, best of all (for me), was Buttons landing on Izzy’s grave at the end. Men can change. And Izzy DID!!! He did it for Ed. For love. For community. I am puzzled by “it’s fucked up to use Izzy to further Ed’s storyline” because… this was Ed’s season, in the way that season 1 was Stede’s. And Ed cannot be removed from piracy as a whole (neither can Stede!) so to have this old, set in his ways, coded-queerphobic character blossom to the point he can give this gift to Ed and to piracy… idk man. I just find it so fucking beautiful.

It is okay not to like what they did. It’s okay!!! It’s okay, and it’s okay to mourn, and while it’s not okay to do [insert vile behavior here], it’s okay to carefully examine what you think is “bad writing” vs “what you would have preferred to happen” and give good-faith, textually-based criticism on that.

But I want to remind you over and over and over again, this show works on vibes. It tells its stories leaving many, many, many gaps. There are many things I would have liked to see, and y’know what? I would have told the Izzy story differently. I would have personally done it differently. But it’s not my show! It’s not my show, and I am humbled and delighted to remember that, and to appreciate Our Flag Means Death for what it is and not what it isn’t.

Other words have been written better than I could about the 18 months between seasons 1 and 2 and what that does to us as rabid fans with expectations of how things will go. Millions and millions and millions of words have been written about OFMD, fictional and non, and that is going to color our expectations and experience. We had built it up SO MUCH in our minds and along the way I think some of us forgot (INCLUDING ME!!!) that it is first and foremost about Vibes.

The vibes of Izzy’s death are about rebirth and forgiveness and leaving traditional piracy behind. And he got to die in Ed’s arms, knowing (HAPPILY!) that he had been wrong, and giving Ed the gift of letting him know he is loved, and being a part of something. We had a funeral but we also had a wedding. The only constant is change. Men, piracy, Blackbeard; it all changes. And Izzy found peace in that.

Before my last point, I want to @ myself on things I felt versus realizing in the end it is (I will say it until I’m blue in the face) about vibes.

· I was convinced they left Buttons’ transformation ambiguous because they wanted to leave room for it not having been real. NO!!! It is real, until they decided it isn’t. Magic in the OFMD universe? Fucking why not!!! IT’S SYMBOLIC!!! IT’S IMPORTANT TO ED’S STORYLINE AND THE CENTRAL THESES OF THE SHOW!

· I was unhappy, and still am a little, about the Polycule Situation, but now that I realize Oluwande is Zheng’s Stede… I am less so. The Zheng : Auntie :: Ed : Izzy vibes, btw? Fuckin immaculate.

·        Obviously they touched on Stede/Ed’s “killing people trauma” but I’d reallyyyy like Stede to address it, and even though I think Ed’s is left on a very satisfying note, I’d like him to dip a bit more into it as well. But if they don’t, oh well! It’s not like they ignored it, they just didn’t have a Deep Dive like I Wanted Them To!

· They didn’t deal with Ed throwing Stede’s shit away. They just ignored it! Stede started to collect new trinkets, and I believe that was as much about giving the audience back the old feeling of the Revenge as it was anything important (not to say it wasn’t also important thematically!!!). Just like Ed going back to his leathers is both Extremely Important thematically and about putting Taika back in the leathers because that’s what Blackbeard should be wearing for the epic final scenes for the sake of visually keeping the show consistent. That’s Blackbeard’s uniform.

· Stede’s frilly little outfits my beloved. God I hope they give him back some of his frippery in season 3. I think they will re: cursed suit BUT his journey this season was about something else, so!

· Ed’s stupid little non-profit non-apology, oh my god. It was so funny. And there is a transition from eps 5 to 6 where Ed is back in his leathers and the crew is more comfortable around him. They didn’t have to have him do a Real Apology, it’s implied it was all settled. What was the timeline? A day? DOESN’T MATTER, BABY, VIBES!!!

· Lots more, I’m sure, but now that I’ve tried to let it all go, I’m remembering less of what I wanted and appreciating what I got!

And, last point here, I think it is also very very very important to remember that a lot of people are normal about this show. In fact, WAY more people are normal about this show than aren’t. And that is EXTREMELY! IMPORTANT!!! because otherwise it wouldn’t be profitable and we all know what would happen then. We are the core of it, to be sure. Without word of mouth that stems from our intensity, this show would not be NEARLY as successful as it is. I truly, truly believe that.

But.

Do normies need deeply emotional discussions dissecting the central relationships? No. What normies need is Ed and Stede running dramatically toward each other on the beach and kissing. And I am happy, so fucking happy, to realize that’s what I need too. I’ve got fanworks for the rest.

I love this fucking show and this fucking fandom and its fucking creators so much. Fuck.

[chuplayswithfire]

ed and stede are too sappy and gay to not use pet names for each other but i think they're going to be really, really into different kinds of pet names that nonetheless destroy them.

like, david jenkins tossed out "babe, lover, hun, my sweetness" and look. look.

i think ed's the sort who calls stede babe, hun, luv, and stede's the sort who goes my sweetness, my love, my lover, and they're both going to be destroyed by it.

stede testing out all kinds of pet names by seeing which ones wreck ed the most, from my love to my sweet to darling to dearest to kitten to sweetness and ed just fucking dies for it, he melts for it, he's in the ground for it okay, he's ruined for anything less.

ed doesn't test them out, the words just fall out of his mouth, he's going "stede, love, catch a look at that -" and stede is crying because ed called him love and ed is going oh shit oh fuck what did i do and then getting kissed within an inch of his life.

they are going to be insufferable and i love it.

[xoxoemynn]

I just started thinking about all the different ways Ed and Stede might kiss next season and vibrated into an entirely different plane of existence.

Desperate kisses. Tender kisses. Passionate kisses. Quick kisses goodbye. Kisses that never seem to end.

Mouth kisses. Forehead kisses. Nose kisses. Hand kisses. Neck kisses.

Seriously just knowing #1 Gentlebeardie David Jenkins had an entire off-season playing with his Ed and Stede dolls and saying NOW KISS and then he got to write them into a script and make it come to life and it's going to be on our TV screens soon I am LOSING MY EVER-LOVING MIND.

Anyway.

[our-flag-means-love]

david jenkins, who had the main couple kiss two irl weeks after introducing one of them: i'm sorry the slowburn romance took so long, we just wanted to make it evolve naturally, but i understand if people were frustrated with it.

the gays, who are used to multi-season queerbaiting that never pans out at all: shut the fuck up mr. jenkins, you're doing amazing and i will kiss you on the mouth.

[pearwaldorf]

THAT GODDAMN VOICEOVER. DAVID JENKINS I AM GOING TO KISS YOU ON THE FUCKING MOUTH. (But in a non-creepy totally consensual way, not like that horrible Spanish soccer guy.)

I love, love the narrative dissonance between what Stede thinks he's coming back to and Ed's reality.

BLACKBEARD'S CREW AND THEIR MATCHING EMO FROM HOT TOPIC OUTFITS!! Somebody posted a cap of Frenchie's Wolverine claws but I need to get one of Jim's badass new 'fit.

The little figurines! Stede's stripped-down new look but he still has to accessorize! With a red bandanna!

IS IT OCTOBER YET??

[gaypudding]

I love OFMD so much I actually can’t put it into words. The writing. The shot composition. The set design. The absolute disregard of historical language. “Doing it for the lolz” are you FUCKING KIDDING. Wee John’s drag. Izzy’s look. Blackbeard’s obvious neurodivergencies. Stede being the cuntiest queen to grace the high seas. I want to kiss David Jenkins on the mouth for creating this show that has brought me so much joy.

[bisexualshitwholovesshakespeare]

David Jenkins I want to kiss you on the mouth

[londonspirit]

When Our Flag Means Death first premiered, the pirate comedy series — a novel genre mashup in and of itself — didn't necessarily make a big splash in the streaming landscape. It didn't take long, however, for positive word of mouth and a slowly growing fanbase to lead to impressive viewing numbers, with the first season becoming the biggest new series in the U.S. across all platforms — and its popularity has only grown since. Now, on the precipice of the series' return, over a year after it was finally renewed for a second season, viewers are eagerly preparing to tune in to find out what will happen to Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), Edward Teach/Blackbeard (Taika Waititi), and the rest of the Revenge's crew now that everyone has been divided into two separated groups.

Ahead of the Season 2 premiere, Collider had the opportunity to speak to creator David Jenkins for a spoiler-free conversation (if you've checked out some of those trailers already, that is!) about what fans can expect. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Jenkins discusses when he found out the show would be renewed, the unprecedented response to Season 1, and why he enjoys engaging with the OFMD fandom online. He also digs into discussing why Season 2 takes a somewhat darker tone, the importance of adding more female characters to the cast, his envisioned story for the show's planned three seasons, and more.

COLLIDER: You made a whole season between now and the last time we spoke!

DAVID JENKINS: It was a long time ago. Here we are!

And I know it was a bit before we even knew that Season 2 was going to be a possibility. How long was that wait on your end?

JENKINS: Yeah, I blocked it out, if I'm honest. [Laughs] It was a minute. We're really lucky that they picked us up, and they've been really wonderful to us at Max. They're just very fun to make this show with. There was a minute where I would call it kind of a slow-burn fandom, and the show just seemed to grow and grow and grow. I think we became more and more viable as the weeks went by after the finale, and thank god we got to do it again.

With the response to Season 1, it felt like week after week, even once the whole season was out, there was just this exponential growth. What was your reaction to that? Has that ever happened to you before, in your experience?

JENKINS: Oh, it’s never happened to me. I don't know if it's happened to other shows. Somehow, I feel like the streaming of it makes this unusual, and then the fact that it is actually a romantic relationship between these two characters. Audiences didn't want to get burned again, and then saw that they weren't going to be, and celebrated it. It just really moved me, actually. I thought that they'd kiss, and people would be like, “Oh, cool, cool!” I kind of thought people would know a little bit more [about] where we were going, but then in hindsight, no, people have been hurt and burned on so many other shows and then made to feel silly. So it was very gratifying to see the show embraced — to see every element of the creative embraced, every element of the production design, every department get their due in attention, was just overwhelming. It's the honor of my professional life. I don't think this happens very often, so I'm just savoring it.

You don't always see creators who are willing to engage with the fandom online, or they try to keep a distance, but it feels like you're getting in there occasionally and interacting with fans. How do you feel about that particular response, the fandom and their passion?

JENKINS: It's an honor. If it were a different circumstance or a different property or something else that maybe had a different tone that brought in a more dyspeptic, less gracious [fandom]... Everyone's been lovely. When people are being nice and normal, easy to be around, yeah, I wanna be at that party. Are you kidding me? And then you're gonna celebrate all the work that we did when we didn't know if the show would be good? Because when you're making these things, you're like, “Well, I know this is just my weird thing. Maybe people like it, maybe they won't.” When people are this gracious and effusive and not weird about it, it's like, “Yeah, let's talk. This is great. You're a fan of the stuff that we were a fan of. We're not different.” So that's really rare.

In terms of the overall tone of Season 2, there's definitely a darkness that it starts with. Was it more of a conscious decision to embrace that side, or did it really inherently come from picking up with these characters after where we left off with them in Season 1?

JENKINS: It's picking up with where the arc is in the story. We're post-breakup, and they're trying to fix it. One of these characters is very, very damaged and has never made himself vulnerable in this way before, and I don't think [he] would react very well to having his heart broken in this way. I don't think it would be cute, and I don't think it would be funny. I think it would be scary as hell to watch a very damaged guy that we've established in Ed, who killed his dad and thinks he's not capable of being loved, deal with rejection and see that Stede really hurt him. It's important to do that, to give him stakes because Rhys [Darby] is adorable, and Taika [Waititi] can be adorable, and sometimes when they're being adorable, they become invulnerable. I want to see a love story between two people who are very vulnerable, for better and for worse. So you have to pick up in a place where there's been damage done and there's a price to pay, and then it's like, “Can they come back from it?”

That's not to say that there aren't moments of levity and comedy. Stede, from his perspective, is this more pining figure writing letters, but he's definitely not in the same mental or emotional space as Ed is at this point because he doesn't realize how hurt Ed is.

JENKINS: The lovely thing about Rhys and about Stede is Stede’s cluelessness. He eventually does the right thing, but he doesn't know his own strength, and that's his problem. Then he does damage, and then he has to repair that damage, and that's the growth of that character. Ed is a guy where you're like, “Wait a minute, you're invulnerable. You’re Blackbeard,” but then you see he's hurt, he's not getting up. To me, those are the natural journeys for those two characters. Then you see Ed come back, and he has to wear a bell around his neck, and he's gonna fix a lock on this door, and he's gonna learn to fish and just be a three-dimensional human as opposed to just a scary drawing. Those are the tensions of those guys, and that's why Rhys has dog energy, and Taika has cat, and that seems to go along with both of those arcs.

I wanted to ask you about one of the things that feels like a really nice addition to Season 2, which is just the number of female characters that we get for the crew to bounce off of.

JENKINS: Good, I’m glad you feel that way.

Leslie [Jones] is back, we get Minnie Driver, and there's a new female pirate captain who shifts the power dynamic, among others. Did that feel like a natural way to expand the cast, or was that a change that you really wanted to make after Season 1?

JENKINS: It felt like both. Watching Season 1 is like, “Oof, there’s a lot of dudes.” We do go into Jim's experience as a non-binary crew member and Jim's relationship with their mentor and mother figure. In Season 2, it felt important and also the most logical way to build the world out. So it was fun to add these characters, even one-offs like Hell-Cat Maggie, and be like, “There are so many different perspectives to bring into this show.” It just felt natural to do that.

What's your favorite needle drop that the show has used so far in Season 1, and which one are you excited for fans to get to in Season 2?

JENKINS: Season 2 is built around [Kate Bush's] “This Woman's Work,” and that was very early on. That was a little bit like [Fleetwood Mac's] “The Chain.” I knew I wanted to use that, clear it, script where it should go in the season. There's a couple of those where it takes a minute to get that song, and there's a lot of back and forth, and if you don't get it, there's not a real good replacement for it. In that first season, “The Chain” really worked. We could have found a different song, but “The Chain,” that really works there. Also, [Cat Stevens'] “Miles from Nowhere” at the end of the first season felt like the Stede Bonnet song with that version of “Miles from Nowhere.”

Season 2, Nina Simone makes a couple of appearances, and I just love the size and grandeur of what she's doing. She seems to fit with a really large fantasy show — obviously, she's Nina Simone — and what she's talking about and how she's expressing it up against this world is really exciting to me. I don't know why it works for me as much as it does, but it really moves me. She comes back at the end of the season with a different track, and I just love having her music up against these pictures.

I've seen quotes from you recently where you talked about how—fingers crossed—if there's a renewal, Season 3 would be the planned final ending for this show. Was that something that you always envisioned, that it would be three-and-done?

JENKINS: I think so. When Taika expressed interest in doing it, I was surprised. “Are you sure?” He was like, “Yeah, man. Yeah, I wanna do it.” I was like, “Okay, but it’s not limited. Can you do it for three seasons?” “Yeah.” “Really? Really, you'll do it for three seasons?” “Yeah, man. Yeah.” So my expectation was we're only gonna get Taika for three seasons. But beyond that, three is good for this show. The first season is about two emotionally underdeveloped men who are at about 14, 15, 16, emotionally. Season 2 is about them getting older and maybe, in terms of the relationship, being around 25 to maybe 30 by the end of the season. And then I think there's one more story to tell, and it's how does a relationship evolve? Where do we find them again in the third season? What are they dealing with? That's very interesting to me, and there is a big story that I'd like to tell there.

Our Flag Means Death Season 2 premieres with its first three episodes October 5 on Max, with two episodes dropping weekly thereafter leading up to the season finale on October 26.