Stede And Ed's Pirate Love Affair Gets Messy In The Our Flag Means Death Season 2 Teaser

I've never been on a boat long enough to develop cabin fever. Still, I imagine it feels a little like having to wait several months for Warner Bros. Discovery to finally renew its surprise-hit queer pirate comedy series "Our Flag Means Death" (which it did at the start of Pride Month 2022, a move that was definitely not an act of performative allyship by CEO David Zaslav), and then having to wait another 14 months for hard evidence that season 2 is actually a thing that exists.

Thankfully, we can leave the passive aggression to 18th-century aristocratic high society for now, and instead take joy in knowing "Our Flag Means Death" is not only coming back for more hijinks and romance on the high seas, it's coming back soon. Picking up where season 1 left things, this new season will continue the love story of everyone's favorite pirate dads, Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) and Edward "Ed" Teach/Blackbeard (Taika Waititi), as they — hopefully! — find their way back to one another after a series of unfortunate events led to a heartbroken Ed seizing control of Stede's vessel, the Revenge, and stranding most of its crew on a small island to be eventually rescued by Stede.

Did Stede's poor faithful scribe Lucius (Nathan Foad) survive getting thrown overboard by Ed's sadistic first mate "Izzy" Hands (Con O'Neill) in the season 1 finale? And what can our beloved knife-chucking, non-binary fighter Jim (Vico Ortiz) do to help Stede and the gang, including their friend-turned-lover Oluwande (Samson Kayo), now that they're trapped on the Revenge with Izzy and a (sort of) re-bearded Ed? The answers are coming, but in the meantime, check out the season 2 trailer below!

Seeing as streaming series are often canceled before they even have a chance to find their potential audience (assuming they're not merely scrapped as a cost-cutting measure during post-production), there's something heartening about the way David Jenkins' occasionally historically accurate Max show managed to accrue a fiercely loyal fanbase through sheer word of mouth. And on top of being a wholly charming series about oddballs forming a family and discovering love in unexpected places, "Our Flag Means Death" is that all-too-rare show to avoid queer-baiting viewers or dragging out a kiss between its leads for the sake of drama. It's the type of tenderqueer storytelling corporations love to promise LGBTQIA+ audiences without ever actually giving it to them.

Thankfully, "Our Flag Means Death" season 2 is both real and just on the horizon. In addition to the returning cast from season 1 (which also includes Ewen Bremner, Joel Fry, Matthew Maher, Kristian Nairn, Samba Schutte, and Leslie Jones), season 2 features the likes of Minnie Driver as famed real-life buccaneer Anne Bonny and Ruibo Qian as a merchant who looks to play a key role in the storylines to come. With this new batch of episodes having a much larger scope and scale than season 1 (as many as 50 different sets and real-world locations around New Zealand, where season 2 was shot), it seems Stede and Ed's epic romance is only just getting warmed up.

"Our Flag Means Death" sets sail on Max on October 5, 2023.