‘Black Sails’ season 3, episode 2 review: Drowning in the storm

Was Saturday night’s episode of “Black Sails” the most impressive visually out of any episode the show has done so far? We’d argue so, mostly because it both literally and metaphorically went into the heart of a storm in a way that the series has not before now.

The presence of this epic tempest-at-sea was useful on many fronts. It further showed the deteriorating mental state of Flint through his desire to take it on in the first place, and to follow that, the way in which the sequence was shot, with the danger clearly present from start to finish. Flint nearly fell on his own sword by tying himself to the wheel, and we did lose some lives in the process of dealing with the high winds and the waves. Muldoon’s drowning was the tear-jerker of the hour, a moment that played out very powerfully thanks to everything that preceded it between him and Silver. You got a full sense of this relationship, and even the spirit that Muldoon had in the moments leading up to the end.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this story is what happens next, with the crew really being out in the middle of the sea without many supplies, and without a whole lot of hope. Really great stuff all around.

Thanks to all of this, was Nassau as compelling? While seeing the connective tissue between Eleanor and Blackbeard was certainly interesting (as is the performance of Ray Stevenson overall), we found ourselves this week in particular wishing that the entire episode was just set out at sea to give us the same sort of feeling that Flint had, one of no escape from the relentless dangers of the high seas. Grade: B+