“Our Flag Means Death” is an LGBTQ+ pirate rom-com, filled with action and entertainingly fun characters. Created by David Jenkins and produced by Todd King and Allen Marshall Palmer. With many positive reviews on the first season, there was much excitement for the second season to start its release on Oct. 5, 2023, ending with the season finale on Oct. 26, 2023, on Max. If you’re asking if it’s worth the watch, “Our Flag Means Death” gets a 7.8/10 on IMDb, 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and 4/5 on Vulture.
The characters bring light to a different kind of LGBTQ+ story, with action and adventure but also the inclusion of important themes such as safe spaces, healing from trauma, the need for escape, rebellion against a stifling society, fluidity of gender and the desire for meaningful intimacy makes it an all-around electrifying story.
“One it sort of does the modern conversations in a historical context. It’s got a lot of different types of very sweet relationships in it,” David Heinke, FHS math teacher said. “It’s not like ‘hey gay couple here’ it’s like incredibly normal, like that part of it is very normal.”
The normalcy of the LGBTQ+ characters gives an interesting perspective on the mix of the early 18th century with modern themes.
“So all these weird things aren’t making fun of the different relationships, they’re making fun of the characters and that part is very nice to see, but also it’s hilarious and in that same sort of cadence that Taika and Rhys Darby have,” Heinke said.
The relationships and characters make it fun for “Our Flag Means Death” to use humor to further the story, the dry humor and well-timed jokes gives the audience the needed comedic relief from the more heavy themes such as trauma, healing and escapism.
“Our Flag Means Death” touches on these modern topics with the characters and emotions. The world is set in the early 18th century but shows how safe spaces for emotions to be validated are very important. The main character, Stede, runs away on a pirate ship and creates, for himself, his crew and any pirate that ends up joining them, a safe space.
“They still sort of have modern conversations, like you know creating safe spaces and all that stuff obviously not [in] modern times,” Heinke said. “It’s not as obvious as a car driving around in the background, it’s just like verbal modernism in there,” Heinke said.
The sort of stark contrast with the verbal modernism and not modern times brings the viewer in. The themes are also made very noticeable with thing like Stede running away to find and create a safe place.
