The Big Picture
Black Sails
explores the concept of power through storytelling and control over Nassau.
Max’s journey from exploitation to control mirrors the shifting power dynamics of the island.
Max’s rise to ruler of Nassau symbolizes her resilience and cunning in a male-dominated society.
When we look at it through a certain lens, Black Sails is a show that is all about power. First and foremost, of course, the series concerns itself with the power of a great story. Its ending, in particular, is entirely dedicated to how art shapes our perception of history and how, when push comes to shove, all we have is a bunch of disjointed tales that may or may not be true and a flag that says a lot more than a few words. Plot-wise, though, Black Sails is also a story about power in the sense that it focuses on who has the power over the island of Nassau. Is it the pirates? The British? The soon-to-be-independent Americans, through the hands of the Guthrie family? Or is it someone else entirely? On a smaller scale, Nassau begins as the property of Eleanor Guthrie (Hannah New), then changed hands to Charles Vane (Zach McGowan), Woodes Rogers (Luke Roberts), Captain Flint (Toby Stephens), and Long John Silver (Luke Arnold)… But, in the end, the island’s control falls to someone no one expected to rise to such heights, an extremely powerful player hiding in plain sight.
Now, while the person named as governor of Nassau after Marion Guthrie’s (Harriet Walter) takeover is Mr. Featherstone (Craig Jackson), Jack Rackham’s (Toby Schmitz) former second-in-command, the de facto ruler of the island is someone else entirely. A key player in the scheme that helps Nassau escape from under Rogers’ claws, Max (Jessica Parker Kennedy) is the one that ends up at the head of the entire operation, controlling the flow of merchandise as well as the particular kind of law that governs their little, now secretive pirate society. It sure is a change for someone who started the show as an exploited sex worker at a brothel run by a character that few even remember the name, betrayed and mistreated by everyone around her.
But, when we look at Black Sails a little more carefully, it is obvious from the get-go that Max is not a character that should be trifled with. Smart, cunning, and complex, she rarely loses control of her own fate and knows the ropes of Nassau like few others. Unafraid of kicking off alliances with unsavory characters and of kicking out those who were once by her side, Max was always meant to rule everything and everyone around her. And, watching the show’s four seasons for a second time, knowing how the story ends, it is virtually impossible to see any other outcome for Nassau, even when Max is at her lowest point.
Black Sails
Follows Captain Flint and his pirates twenty years prior to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel “Treasure Island.”
Release Date January 25, 2014
Seasons 4
Studio Starz
Max Hits Rock Bottom at the Beginning of ‘Black Sails’
Max’s rock bottom takes place right in Season 1 of Black Sails and is easily the show’s biggest mistake. After selling the whereabouts of the Urca de Lima to Jack Rackham, then a member of Vane’s crew, Max is thrown to the wolves by Eleanor and Captain Flint as they are able to intercept John Silver before he makes the exchange. Feeling robbed and humiliated, the men of the Ranger, Vane’s ship, decide to take revenge on Max, and they do so by violently raping her. Eleanor tries to save her, but, disgruntled at her former lover, Max puts herself at the service of Vane’s men until they feel that her debt has been repaid. This turns out to be a mistake, as Max soon loses the control that she has over them, being repeatedly beaten and violated until Anne Bonny (Clara Paget) takes it upon herself to put an end to her plight.
Now, there is a lot to unpack concerning Max’s rape at the beginning of Season 1 of Black Sails. However, despite being a bizarre choice to have a female character choose to be sexually assaulted on a daily basis, there is no doubt that showrunners Robert Levine and Jonathan E. Steinberg thought they were making her a strong character, someone in control of her own destiny when they decided to have her refuse Eleanor’s assistance. They probably also thought they were giving viewers a powerful woman when they showed her slapping a co-worker who was stealing money from the brothel and talking, in much crasser terms, about the need to discipline a prostitute when she’s taking advantage of you. These scenes are ripe with a sort of misogyny that the show thankfully abandoned in its following seasons, but they nevertheless paint Max as more than a victim: they make it clear that she is her own person and that she is not afraid to do what is needed to rise in the ranks of Nassau.
And, indeed, after the infamous slapping scene, Max becomes a favorite in the eyes of Jack Rackham, the new owner of the deceased Noonan’s (Tony Caprari) brothel, and is eventually promoted to madam. As such, she gains control of the flow of secrets that runs through Nassau, for every pirate on every ship blabbers to her girls about what prize their captain is planning on taking next. In the middle of this crossroads of information, Max becomes a land-bound member of Rackham’s newly-formed crew, a co-captain of sorts, entitled to her own share of the treasures, including the one aboard the Urca de Lima. In the end, the ship that spelled horror ended up being the same one that made her the owner of one of the biggest fortunes in Nassau.
Related ‘Black Sails’ Most Game-Changing Death Is Actually a Fake-Out
And that is precisely what makes it so great.
Max Rubs Elbows with Pirates and Britishmen Alike in ‘Black Sails’
Image via Starz
But if Max isn’t afraid of rubbing elbows with pirates, she’s also not shy about changing her allegiances once the British come sailing into town. As soon as Woodes Rogers arrives aboard his ship, accompanied by an apparently reformed Eleanor Guthrie, Max trades her part of the Urca gold for political power and permission to continue conducting business on Nassau. She becomes the owner of the local tavern, as well as the brothel, since Jack Rackham is being hunted for having become such a renowned pirate after the Urca raid. She even goes as far as betraying Jack and selling him out to Rogers, who wants to deliver him to Spain alongside the entirety of the Urca gold in order to grant the island protection in the middle of an English-Spanish war. Her plan ultimately fails, as Jack is rescued by Anne, Vane, and Flint, but it’s really the thought that counts.
Now, one has to understand a simple thing about Max: if she does what she does, it is not out of cruelty or vengeance. In the end, what she wants is what she considers the best for Nassau. With a tragic past as an enslaved child who witnessed her father give a life of privilege to his legitimate daughter while she was treated like cattle, Max wants a world in which she can have access to all that she was once denied. And, so, when Woodes Rogers comes in promising pardons for all pirates — except Jack and Vane — and a civilized future for Nassau, she quickly embraces the opportunity. However, when Rogers’ rule becomes a virtual dictatorship fueled by a desire for revenge, she starts looking for ways to drop him while also protecting herself and her enterprise.
The problem is that Max doesn’t see much of a future in Flint’s plans for Nassau, either. Fully aware that his war against civilization is a fruitless endeavor, that the colonial powers will always fight back and claim as many lives as they can, Max even tries to neutralize John Silver when he tries to ask her for help escaping a maddened Israel Hands (David Wilmot). Again, she fails, but it’s the thought that counts. Eventually, she joins forces with Rackham, who is also tired of Flint’s war after seeing the sheer cruelty that Rogers’ is willing to employ to crush the pirates, and they go looking for the help of a third party, someone that might drive Rogers and his new Spanish allies away, returning Nassau to its glorious piracy days.
Max Becomes Ruler of Nassau in the Final Season of ‘Black Sails’
Said third party is none other than Eleanor’s grandmother, Marion Guthrie. Enraged by the murder of her granddaughter by a Spanish soldier, but more than anything, smelling a precious business opportunity on the horizon, the Guthrie matriarch agrees to use her power to drive Rogers off the island and even buys off his debt just so that she can condemn him to prison herself. Marion becomes the financial head of a piracy operation that employs Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny as their employees, but it has Max as its actual manager. With John Silver also ready to let go of Flint’s war and having secured a place for him on a farm far away, by his allegedly deceased lover’s side, Max rises to the highest ranks of Nassau and becomes the gray eminence of a society that once saw her as less than human, both as a Black woman and as a sex worker.
This ending might sound like a real twist, but it’s just what makes sense for Black Sails. For starters, the showrunners wanted to end their story on a positive note while also setting the stage for the end of the golden age of piracy. But, as it pertains to Max, when we take a good look at her trajectory, this is the only possible outcome. After all, as the master of secrets of Nassau, she could either end up dead or as a queen, and killing Max after everything she had been put through in the show’s first season was simply not an option. Now, of course, Nassau’s time as a pirate republic is coming to an end when Black Sails wraps up. Something else will soon follow, probably good, old colonialism. Jack and Anne will most likely die, but Max… Well, something tells us that Max will find a way to remain relevant. One doesn’t simply eliminate someone as powerful as her.
Black Sails is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
Watch on Netflix