Season one of Crossbones ends next week, and all hell is starting to break loose. The pirates are murdering each other, enemies are getting closer to Santa Compana, and Lowe’s time is running out. Will Lowe find a way to protect his new friends while making amends for his past transgressions? The latest episode, Beggarman, aims to answer these questions while building excitement for the season finale.
Beggarman follows the aftermath of Lowe’s attempted kidnapping and the brain surgery that followed. Blackbeard is recovering from his surgery in an induced coma, which is unfortunate for Lowe because he is essentially the only person keeping Lowe safe from Rider, Nenna, and James Balfour. Lowe’s fortunes take a turn for the worse when one of Rose’s girls brings a very important letter to him that implicates Nenna in many wrongdoings. Of course, Nenna quickly discovers the letter’s existence and decides that she must murder every person who knows of its existence. In addition, Nenna decides to make her escape from the island while simultaneously ridding Santa Compana of Lowe and his troublesome involvement in Blackbeard’s life.
She is evil.
Basically, Nenna’s plan is to frame Lowe for multiple murders—with a little theft on the side—and escape the island while he is under trial. To achieve this plan, Nenna enlists the aid of another character that absolutely despises Lowe for understandable reasons, forming a powerful alliance in the process. Luckily, Lowe also has allies who are willing to fight for his honor—or to simply prevent his death. Beggarman quickly becomes a race between the two factions to implement their plans before Blackbeard awakens and stops the madness.
While Nenna is concocting her devious plan, Blackbeard is recovering from his surgery under the watchful eye of Selima. On the outside, Blackbeard appears to simply be sleeping, but his mind is filled with unpleasant memories of meetings with William Jagger. Apparently, Blackbeard and his wife were both captured by Jagger years earlier, when Blackbeard still had children and…hair. These memories play out as a series of flashbacks that explain why Jagger is so obsessed with utterly destroying Blackbeard. These memories also give the much-needed explanation about Antoinette’s mysterious powers and the fate of Blackbeard’s children. Crossbones had been hinting that Antoinette has some strange personality aspects, but Beggarman proved beyond any doubt that she is insane.
Beggarman was by far the strongest episode of Crossbones’ first season, providing extremely important information about all of the characters. Yes, Beggarman gave the expanded backstory of Blackbeard and Antoinette, but the episode also revealed some actually surprising information about Lowe and James Balfour’s relationship dating back to Balfour’s time in Scotland.
One other reason why Beggarman was a great episode was the amount of violence. To put it bluntly, “Characters got messed up.” Over the course of the episode, one character lost a finger, another was beaten repeatedly with a gigantic wooden hammer before receiving 40 lashes with a whip, and Charles Rider briefly had a mullet. You can decide which is more disturbing. Apparently, Crossbones took some cues from other shows and made the penultimate episode more intense than the rest of the season.
It was honestly nice to watch this episode of Crossbones and see some actual progression from the different storylines. Plus, the episode progress made the upcoming finale potentially exciting. How will Lowe handle the upcoming battle between the British forces and Blackbeard’s army? After some subpar episodes, I’m back to actually caring about Crossbones’ plot.
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