When the writers room for the second season of Our Flag Means Death met for the primary time, coproducer Zayre Ferrer regarded on the Zoom display and had a realization: They had been engaged on a present with 4 nonbinary writers of shade. It was a primary for them—by a longshot. Even as exhibits like Billions and Star Trek: Discovery have begun to provide nonbinary characters extra substantial roles, they’re removed from the norm, and Ferrer was taking a look at a room ready to convey their tales to the small display—as pirates.

Seeing the writers represented on the Zoom wasn’t simply an event worthy of a screenshot (although all of them enthusiastically captured one); it was additionally a possibility to get extra views on the tales they had been writing. “It’s so comforting,” explains Ferrer. Because “you might be wrong. Every nonbinary person’s experience is unique, so it’s great to have multiple perspectives, always.”

While Our Flag Means Death has at all times been a sequence targeted on queer relationships, together with the friends-to-lovers arc of Jim (Vico Ortiz) and Oluwande (Samson Kayo) and the enemies-to-lovers story of Ed “Blackbeard” Teach (Taika Waititi) and Stede “Gentleman Pirate” Bonnet (Rhys Darby), season two introduces much more. There’s Mary Read (Rachel House) and Anne Bonny (Minnie Driver), who had been lovers in actual life however get a much more, um, concerned story onscreen. There’s additionally Archie (Madeleine Sami), Jim’s new love curiosity, and a deepening of the story of Izzy Hands (Con O’Neill) as he tries to make peace together with his … difficult romantic emotions for Blackbeard.

Not each new character or storyline relies on a particular particular person or occasion, however all are rooted within the experiences of people that know what it’s wish to be written out of historical past. Our Flag Means Death has at all times been historic fiction within the loosest sense, however for lots of the writers on the present, the purpose isn’t to inform a narrative that’s traditionally correct. It’s to inform one in regards to the individuals whose tales by no means bought recorded within the first place. Because, as Ferrer notes, data of swashbuckler life are sometimes “anti-pirate propaganda, written by the colonizers being dispossessed of their stolen goods.”

Our Flag Means Death’s second season, then, is likely to be akin to what author and scholar Saidiya Hartman calls a “critical fabulation,” a story that explores “what might have been” and tells a narrative that simply didn’t get recorded. Max’s office comedy about pirates might not do that with the depth that Hartman does, however the intent is analogous: to share tales Ferrer describes as begging to be placed on display.

This manifests in actual and imagined characters, but additionally within the themes and concepts of the present. Most individuals consider pirates and pirating as a chaotic endeavor with each swashbuckler in it for themselves. But Ferrer factors out that that notion is simply one other instance of the highly effective attempting to vilify these on the margins.