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“Black Sails” recap (1.06): “Who run the world? Girls!”

Previously on Black Sails, Eleanor betrayed Max, then saved Max, then got abandoned by Max, and has been trying to make it up to Max, who is being held prisoner but sort of voluntarily by Vane’s crew. LadyPirate Anne Bonny has also started bonding with our favorite prostitute.

We open on Max, illuminated by LadyPirate’s fire. She watches her through her screen, entranced by her hair as red as the flame she sits near, seemingly less nervous with the pirate sitting watch outside her tent.

Flint’s crew is still on board the ship with the hiding captain. Billy is using the moment of calm to try to talk to Gates about Mrs. Barlow’s suspicious relationship with Flint, but Gates doesn’t want to hear it.

Below deck, Mr. Scott is chained up with slaves, probably regretting betraying Eleanor. The other slaves want to signal to the pirates out the porthole, but Scott doesn’t want to help; he says the weapons can’t return to Nassau. The woman sitting next to Scott steps over him and puts the signal out anyway.

Back on the island, the pirates are still rioting outside, while some captains wait within. Eleanor has been holed up in her office, and while one Scottish optimist hopes the for the best, the rest of the grumpy men assume the worst.

Finally, she emerges, lovely as ever. Eleanor nods once, signaling that she has lifted the ban on Vane’s crew. The Rapist, Hamund, blows her a kiss like the blood-boiling asshat he is.

Hamund trods off to celebrate with a little sexual violence, but he finds LadyPirate standing guard over Max and her tent.

Hamund is less than pleased, and Mustachio Jack pulls her aside for a word, asking why she’s risking her life to protect a whore.

LadyPirate stands up for Max, telling Jack not to call her that, and let it be known, that she shall henceforth no longer be known as LadyPirate. Our redheaded brooder has earned her name at last: Anne Bonny, you go girl.

Mustachio Jack does eventually convince her to stand down because he is afraid she’ll be thrown in the tent along with Max if she doesn’t, but she does it reluctantly, and tosses Jack a reproachful look in response.

On Flint’s ship, Billy reads the letter from Mrs. Barlow that is pleading with someone in Boston to grant Flint protection, stating that he wants to retire from his life of piracy. She offers the receiver of the letter money to protect Flint, stating that his crew will surely kill him if they learn of his betrayal.

Meanwhile one of Flint’s genius plans fails miserably, so he demands someone find him a new one.

Billy pulls Gates aside again and tells him about Mrs. Barlow’s letter and Flint’s potential pardon and Gates is like, “You’re kidding me, right?” Just like a funeral is a bad time to tell your parents about your relationship, a pirate battle is a terrible time to chat about how crazy you think your captain is.

Back on Nassau, Eleanor ponders life by the light of some lanterns when she is visited by none other than Anne Bonny. Anne has some choice words for Eleanor, and tells her that it pains her to be this close to her. But Anne Bonny admits she’s desperate, she needs Eleanor’s help. She says what Hamund has been doing isn’t right. (And I think she ships Eleanor and Max.)

Eleanor asks what she can do, and Anne says she can’t do it… everyone knows SHE hates him… she’s too close…but Vane is gone, and now is the time to kill Hamund.

At first, Eleanor refuses, and Anne spits the word coward in her face. But Eleanor clarifies-she won’t do Anne’s plan, but only because it isn’t dangerous enough.

Eleanor points out that there are eight men left on Vane’s crew, all of whom support Hamund, it would be foolish to kill Hamund, a suicide mission at best. If they want to kill Hamund, they’ll have to kill them all.

Eleanor’s plan is to make them all disappear into the night, with no one the wiser that her or Anne Bonny had anything to do with it.

Anne Bonny looks at her and says, “Impossible.”

Eleanor looks back and says, “Impossible things are happening every day.” (Okay, maybe that one was Whitney Houston. But she did say it was possible, they’ll just need a little help.)

Eleanor goes to Silver and tells him her plan. He laughs at her and asks why on earth he would help her, but she corrects him-she was not asking him for help, she was granting him the opportunity to help her. When he refuses, she says fine, then she’ll make him beg her to help instead. Eleanor, finally having a way to potentially win Max back, or at the very least to save her, has turned up the sass and the badassary and it’s amazing. Eleanor informs Silver that she is the center of all commerce, someone neither Silver nor Flint wants as an enemy. Better still, Eleanor is the only person who would be able to dissuade Flint from killing Silver. So NOW how does he feel about helping them?

Across the island, Mrs. Barlow gets a visit from the pastor. Mr. Guthrie betrayed Flint with Barlow’s betrayal, so the pastor wants her to get protection because he can’t leave her if he thinks she’s in danger. She invites him in and soliloquies her story to the him. She then calls him on his shit and says she knows he just wants to bed her. She literally disrobes and they get together in the biblical sense.

On the Andromache, Gates has a plan to attack the lower deck via dangling men off the sides to cause a distraction, but, shockingly, can’t find any volunteers. So Flint picks four people, including a gent named Logan, who is particularly opposed to the plan. They argue, and it goes a little something like this:

Logan: Dude, this is suicide.

Flint: Too bad, it’s my plan, and I’m the boss, no matter how unhinged I am.

Logan: Billy, back me up.

Billy: Er…

Flint: Listen, you can hang off the side of the boat and die or I can make you walk the plank and die.

Logan: Billy! For the love of Poseidon please grow a pair and tell him this is a terrible plan!

Billy: Er……

Gates: You make a valid point. Know who else can make a valid point? My fist.

He then punches Logan.

Flint then is distracted by the slaves’ hanky, so he rushes to the books to see who they’re holding down there. Flint can tell by how much the slaves are priced for that there are at least nine strong men that will be ready to fight with him if he frees them. Gates asks how he plans to get them out of their chains, and quite frankly I’m surprised Flint didn’t say WITH MY TEETH. He makes an Adderall-ridden Spencer Hastings seem downright calm and sane.

Instead he sends down a…railroad spike? Surely it’s something more ship-related, but it looks like a railroad spike.

A guard hears the racket and comes in to see what’s going on. Mr. Scott points right at the woman sitting next to him, and the guard picks her up and pins her against the wall. But before you can yell, SEE WHAT YOU DID, SCOTT? Mr. Scott uses his chains to choke the guard to death in a delicious dose of irony.

The woman slave is impressed…kind of.

On the Walrus, Flint has his men hi ho hi hoing like a bunch of jewel-mining dwarves. Meanwhile, Scott uses the spike to unchain everyone down below. The racket causes more guards to come in, but Flint’s crew succeeds in going down to the lower decks and saves Mr. Scott from certain death.

The other Captain gets shot in the eye, but still tries to crawl to a fancy contraption he has been playing with, but the woman slave kills him before he can get to it.

On the island, Hamund is relieving himself like the classy gentleman he is when Silver approaches him. He offers to sell him something, but Hamund has no money and isn’t interested. Silver then admits that he was Max’s partner and that he has information about the supposed missing pearls that might be of interest to Hamund.

This sends Hamund and his boys to find Mustachio Jack and Anne Bonny canoodling-and Anne is sans hat! Hamund thinks that half of the pearls weren’t lost to the bottom of the ocean, but thinks Max had them when Anne Bonny grabbed her and put her in a tent.

Mustachio Jack tries to talk his way out of it, saying surely someone is lying to him, but Hamund found some of the pearls in Jack’s tent, and is now demanding the rest. Anne Bonny chimes in and says that the rest of the pearls are buried by the wrecks.

They grab Jack and lead him away, looking very confused.

Out on the ocean, Flint’s crew starts to take the weapons from the Andromache to the Walrus, but one of his men picks up the other captain’s contraption, which sparks and makes the ship go boom.

They take what they have and start trying to make their way back. Despite the waves and chaos, Flint asks Billy about the letter he mentioned to Gates. Before Billy can answer properly, the Scarborough ship starts firing at the Walrus.

Flint starts shouting MAN OVERBOARD but aside from alerting everyone that someone fell off the ship, that statement is rather useless, and doesn’t make Billy magically appear. Flint doesn’t tear off his shirt and go diving in after his loverboy. Instead, Gates says, “We can’t turn back,” and the look on Flint’s face makes me wonder if maybe Billy didn’t just “fall.”

By the wrecks, Mustachio Jack hisses to Anne Bonny that he knows this is an ambush and is pissed that it’s happening. He’s especially mad about not being consulted before she decided to kill innocent men along with Hamund, but Anne doesn’t care what he has to think, because he had his chance to be on her side.

Silver goes back to Eleanor’s office and pours himself a drink. Eleanor offers him a room, no longer a prisoner in her office, but he says he’ll wait this one out where the booze is. The two of them, an unlikely team, wait to hear how the sting went. Silver admits that when he first met Eleanor, he thought she was an easy mark. Now he knows better, and doesn’t know who to be more afraid of, Flint or her.

Silver understands why Eleanor was so quick to go along with this plan. He saw her when she lifted the ban. The anger and fire in her eyes was enough to give him pause. He knew she was pissed, and not only because of the Max thing. He knows what her real message is here: No one fucks with Eleanor Guthrie and gets away with it. And sure enough, none of them did. The men Anne and Eleanor set up start killing off Vane’s men, one by one. Anne Bonny is sure to take her big ol’ knife and gut Hamund herself, like the stinky fish he is.

Max returns home to the Inn, and Anne Bonny walks her to her door. Max turns to thank her, taking her hand. After but a moment, Anne pulls her hand back and snaps, “I didn’t do it for you.” Max closes the door behind her, finally home, finally safe. Mustachio Jack is still hella pissed at Anne Bonny. He asks her what she said when Eleanor asked what he thought in all this, assuming he came up at all (spoiler alert, he didn’t). He asks where she, Anne Bonny, thought he stood on all this. She says that she knew, “given the choice between them and me, you’d choose me.” Mustachio Jack isn’t moved by what I imagine is the nicest, most romantic thing ever to come out of Anne Bonny’s mouth. Instead, he asks her what she thinks Vane will think. She scoffs at him-Anne Bonny doesn’t think for a second that Vane will ever come back.

Cut to Vane on his skiff, arriving at another island. He approaches a rather large man, and as he gets closer, we see that it’s the bearded man he had been hallucinating all last episode.

What did you think of “VI”? Are you happy that our ladies finally got a little revenge? What do you think will become of Max (and Max and Eleanor) now that she’s back at the Inn?

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