Abstract: O ur Flag Means Death (HBO 2022-2023) is a refreshing romantic comedy situated in the eighteenth-century Atlantic. The genre- and gender-bending series reinterprets the piratical tales of the "Golden Age" of piracy wherein its lead characters—historical figures Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach—discover their love for one another. This series asks deeply profound questions that it asks when it comes to matters of masculinity, social and emotional fragility, and the present-day gendered expectations we have about the pirate. With a focus on the series' characters, specifically those of "Black Pete" and "Calico Jack," this paper examines the struggle to find oneself in a literal and metaphorical sea of gendered expectations, masculine violence, and criminal marginalization of the eighteenth-century as it is seen through a twenty-first century lens. In examining the fluidity of masculinity in both the past and the present, we can consider just how meaningful a show like Our Flag Means Death can be for a modern audience.
Victoria Barnett-Woods (2026) studied this question.