Everything in its right place.
Warning: Full spoilers for Black Sails: Season 4 follow...
Blacks Sails thrilled us with epic battles on both land and sea during its final 10-episode run on Starz, while also drawing everything to an emotionally wrenching and satisfying close. It was a fitting endgame that saw all the major series characters land in rewarding places, even if some of them didn't make it out alive.
Also working underneath the grand mechanism of the show was the idea that everything here had to leave us off at the doorstep of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. There was a constant energy devoted to balancing that responsibility with the fates of the characters feeling real and natural to the journey they'd all undertaken on the series - and it was a seamless blending of fact, fiction, and future fiction.
Heading into Season 4, most of us knew, or suspected, that the core of the remaining tale would involve John Silver (Luke Arnold), Captain Flint (Toby Stephens), and the Urca gold. More specifically, the breakdown of Silver and Flint's bond and the subsequent, or coincident, burying of the gold. Around this, though, was the continuing battle for Nassau between Flint's coalition of pirates and former slaves and Woodes Rogers' (Luke Roberts) desperate desire to restore Nassau and settle his many crippling debts. It was a magnificent backdrop for chaos, carnage, and creative character arcs. Arcs that even managed to take both Max (Jessica Parker Kennedy) and Jack (Toby Schmitz) up and out of the turmoil and into the belly of the beast - civilization itself!
Amidst all the roar of cannons and the screaming of soldiers, love stood tall above most everything. Just about every character in this final season made huge, hard choices that pitted their desire to win against their heart. In the end, Silver's love for Madi (Zethu Dlomo) wound up becoming the key factor in the disintegration of his partnership, and friendship, with Flint. Flint's love, likewise, wound up taking us all the way back to the beginning (or Season 2, since that's when we were shown what the actual start of the saga entailed) as he was forced into exile - the consolation prize being that he'd be reunited with thought-to-be-dead love Thomas. It was a bittersweet spike that ran between Flint and Silver during the final episodes of the show, but Silver always had Flint's heart in mind, even when plotting his exit.
Max chose her love of Anne over the idea of marrying into power. Jack also chose his love for Anne over his alliance with Flint, throwing him off on a collision course with Skeleton Island and the final battle against Woodes. Eleanor too, in a last ditch effort to end the war and protect her husband and unborn child, came up with a drastic plan that probably would have worked had Rogers not just come from a humbling experience while keelhauling Blackbeard.
For all of Rogers' flaws too, he let his love for Eleanor -- or, more pointedly, his guilt over her death -- guide his final actions. Actions and decisions that would doom him to fall and the feet of a last gasp pirate team-up, and then shamed for all history by his debtholders. Indeed, he was the master of his own undoing, but you understood why. Nothing felt forced during this final run. Everyone's characters and motivations were fully formed and beautifully etched.
The violence this year, as the stakes raised to new and dangerous heights, was appropriately savage and unforgiving. From the nasty bit of business involving Edward Teach's torture to the pirate/slave assault on Nassau to Spain's sacking of the entire Island of New Providence, the havoc and hell unleashed on our main characters was particularly potent. And from a sheer spectacle aspect, the battles in both the premiere and the finale were stunning. Black Sails was always a show that could give us grand war sequences without anything ever feeling replicated or stale and this trait continued all the way to the end.
The Verdict
Many fell during Black Sails' rewarding and remarkable final season, but -- surprisingly -- not as many as you may have anticipated. Instead, by finale standards, most of our heroes won. Granted, any and all gains came from sacrifice and pyrrhic victories, but to see many of the people we cared about wind up in quasi-happy places by the end was both a treat and a thrill. Season 4, which was steered by both love and loss, was a triumph.
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