As a Fridge page, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance:
- In the very first episode, in his very first lines, Stede tells the crew: "What we're about to do will be perilous! Some of us won't be coming back. Others may be wounded. Still others may come back looking totally fine, but in reality, be mentally devastated by what they have witnessed." By the end of the show, these have happened to Izzy, Stede, and Ed respectively.
- Shortly after they first meet, Edward morosely tells Stede, "I thought I'd have a cooler death than this. Something like being eaten, eaten by a tiger." In the season finale, when thinking of a dramatic way to fake his death, Stede chooses to be eaten by a leopard.
- Of course Ed has no idea what retirement is. Having grown up very poor, the idea that one could just choose to stop working and still have a life must have been alien to him — in the lower classes of the time, you worked until you died and that was it.
- While showing him the ship's library, Stede tells Blackbeard "If I could be a little bit more like Blackbeard, I would give all of this away!". By the series finale, Stede has become a little more like Blackbeard, and his crew are made to throw all of his books away.
- The plant that the Revenge loot from a fishing boat in Episode 1 is dry and dying. After months in Stede's care, by Episode 8, it's alive and flourishing — just like his crew.
- Jim's birth name is far different from their chosen name, so where did they get "Jim" from? Their last name is Jiminez, which is easily butchered by non-Spanish speakers to sound like "Jim-in-ez" (the original pronunciation being closer to "Hee-mee-ness"). It's not a big leap to go from "Jiminez" to just "Jim".
- In Episode 4, Stede has a fever dream after being stabbed, which included Blackbeard impaling him with a spear. This spear is flat and white, making it look under-designed as a prop at first, but it actually resembles the spear on Blackbeard's flag.
- The night that Stede left his family, Mary told him she'd often heard him crying by himself. In the Season 1 finale, after he and Stede are separated, we find that Edward is doing exactly that.
- Early on in the show, Blackbeard wears fingerless gloves during all of his appearances. During his first moment of intimacy with Stede, his hands are naked, having given up his pirate identity. Then, when he transitions into his new phase as "the Kraken", he's suddenly wearing full-fingered leather gloves, closing himself off from human touch.
- It's a blink-and-you-miss-it detail, but at some point in Ed's post-breakup depression, he painted his nails
. Then, after Izzy threatened him over his supposedly un-masculine behavior, he changed back into his leather and drew on a fake beard... But it would have been almost impossible to take off the sparkly nail polish without modern polish remover, which might also explain his switch to full-fingered gloves.
- It's a blink-and-you-miss-it detail, but at some point in Ed's post-breakup depression, he painted his nails
- The one keepsake that Edward keeps of Stede after getting rid of his "playthings" is Mary's painting of a lighthouse — something that he recognised as meant to steer you away from the rocks, i.e. danger. Note that while Stede was out being a pirate, Mary started another painting of a solitary man holding a lantern; and she or someone else attempted to paint Stede out of the family portrait, rendering him as a figure shrouded in darkness.
- And note that the season ends on Stede standing with his hand raised, about to shepherd his crew away from rocky territory both literal and figurative.
- While this may not be intentional, Stede is often seen holding some sort of light source (be it a candle or lantern) whilst in darkness, adding to his lighthouse motif.
- Notably, the only memento Stede brings back home from his adventures (apart from guilt and trauma) is the petrified orange: a beautiful rock.
- The real Israel Hands was 16 when he joined Edward Teach's crew. Though the show is far from historically accurate, it is still implied that Izzy has served Blackbeard for his entire adult life. One can understand — though not sympathise with — being unable to handle Edward simply walking away from the work of a lifetime.
- The thematic appropriateness of Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam's "Miles From Nowhere" as the final track of the first season is underlined by the fact that the lyrics of the song reference Islam's journey from loneliness to spiritual enlightenment.
- Notice how Ed goes about separating Stede's crew: Lucius goes overboard, but Pete is marooned. Jim gets shanghaied, but Oluwande is marooned. Ed intentionally broke up the other two established couples. If he can't be happy and in love...
- Wee John and Frenchie are close enough friends to want to room together and plan on redecorating their new space — it's not uncommon to see them paired in fic. They are also separated, with Wee John marooned, and Frenchie shanghaied.
- Marooning Oluwande but taking Frenchie (whose most obvious asset, apart from needlework, is playing the mandolin) underscores that breaking up the relationships was Ed's overriding motive, rather than purging the least useful crew members. Oluwande is probably THE most reliable and capable person on the Revenge. While he wouldn't be happy with Ed's descent into brutality and might join a mutiny already in progress, he's made it clear multiple times that he doesn't want the captaincy. He's not volatile or prone to lashing out, and in fact he reins in those qualities in Jim, who could otherwise prove a serious internal threat on the new crew. The only reason to leave him behind is to separate him from Jim now that they're officially a couple.
- Lucius is the only "disposable" crew member to be thrown overboard instead of marooned — an abnormally direct murder attempt on Ed's part, given that he prefers to outsource to Izzy or otherwise distance himself from his atrocities. As the crew member closest to Stede, he takes the brunt of Ed's ire and shares the same fate as Stede's treasured possessions.
- Where do Stede and Ed hide from Izzy in the fourth episode? Stede's closet.
- Throughout the series, Buttons always spots other ships long before anyone else. In Episode 8, however, the English are able to sneak up on the Revenge and are only spotted once they are almost comedically close by. This is also the episode that Buttons is distracted with grief over Karl's death.
- It's always faintly possible that Karl was the one keeping Buttons in the know...
- The show deals with themes around intergenerational trauma (especially how Stede's troubled relationship with his father has impacted his own children, and how Ed's abusive childhood haunts him to this day). The main cast (characters with at least some historical basis, plus the fictional characters that round out the Revenge crew and Blackbeard's crew) are between the ages of 29 and 55. The outliers are 29 year-old Nathan Foad (Lucius) and 30 year-old Vico Ortiz (Jim) at the low end and 55 year-old Con O'Neill (Izzy) at the high end, with most of the rest in their late 30s to late 40s.
- It is NOT a coincidence that Lucius, one of the youngest main characters, is also one of the most perceptive and emotionally intelligent. Stede and Ed frequently refer to Lucius as a "boy", despite the fact that he's well into his twenties, emphasizing the fact that he's of a younger, and potentially more liberated, generation than they are.
- Likewise, Jim has a LOT in common with Darker and Edgier Ed and Izzy but is handling their trauma in considerably more constructive ways than their older counterparts. While Jim acknowledges that darkness and violence are part of who they are, they do not equate the darker aspects of their own personality with masculinity per se nor do they see their own darkness as ALL that they are.
- While Stede and Mary are both pretty flawed as parents, especially before the separation, it's clear that they're both trying to be better to their children than their parents were to them. Alma forgiving her father enough to split the orange in half shows that much.
- Both times Izzy explodes at Ed are when he's in a life-or-death situation where he's depending on Edward for his survival. The first time is in episode 4, when they're being pursued by the Spanish and Izzy is frustrated that Edward is seemingly blowing off any attempts to make a plan to escape them. The second time is in episode 10, when Izzy is surrounded by people who were seconds away from murdering him until Edward's intervention. With this context in mind, it's not surprising that he reacts so negatively to Edward acting in a way that could lose the crew's respect/fear.
Fridge Horror:
- Edward's spent his life shielding himself psychologically from the harm he's done. When Calico Jack comes along, he reveals that he was lying about never killing anyone, having burned down a ship with a crew in it and told himself that "the fire killed them". His plan to elope with Stede seems hopeful, but it's an extension of this refusal to be honest with himself — built on the idea that he can keep running away from his internalised trauma and guilt, and ignoring any responsibility to return to his crew.
- Reinventing himself as "The Kraken" doubles down on this. He's already externalised the Kraken as the creature that killed his father because he didn't want to face his own guilt — taking on that mantle is a demonstration to the world that he's embracing the image of himself as a ruthless killer...
- ...and yet he still chooses marooning as the fate for the Revenge crew. He can sail away while they're all as yet unharmed and pretend he wasn't responsible for their eventual deaths...
- ...all except Lucius, Stede's confidant among the crew and the most like him in personality. Ed personally throws Lucius overboard, then dumps Stede's belongings after him. Lucius was the only one to see Ed at his most vulnerable and had a pretty good shot at talking him through the heartbreak, so he had to go.
- Emotional catharsis aside, it is pretty goddamned dark to see Buttons and Roach desperately conspiring to cannibalise the Swede while Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam sings "Well, my body/Has been a good friend!/But I won't need it/When I reach there!"
- While it's not explicitly called out, present-day Blackbeard is wearing a brace on his left leg, likely to compensate for a long-term injury. This adds a darker meaning to his hobbling Izzy at the end of season one: "You want to know what it's like to be me?".
