Exactly what the mystery woman wanted to talk to them about is revealed in the next scene, when Blackbeard is attacked at one of his creepy, skull-laden forest shrines. With the help of a bell on a chain, Blackbeard handily dispatches two sword-wielding assailants, and his allies (alerted by the clanging of said bell) show up in time to see Blackbeard attempting to force the name of their employer from them. Lowe is unable to help save the attacker’s life, much to Blackbeard’s frustration.
As he stitches up his room, Blackbeard explains his belief that Finnegan (Kevin Ryan), Sam’s first mate, is behind the attack. “Sam is too wily to try something so transparent,” he says. Still, it would be foolish not to watch Sam, and his followers demand it, so Blackbeard has him put in jail (Finnegan is put in a different prison area, to avoid any communication between the two). For her part, Selima bets that Lowe was involved. She still (rightly) believes that Lowe tried to poison Blackbeard in the first episode, but Blackbeard won’t hear of it. Funnily enough, the very man sent to kill him is becoming one of his most trusted allies. To pacify her, he gives the go-ahead for his men to round up Lowe and toss him into the cage with Sam.
While they’re in there, Lowe offers to end Sam’s suffering quickly, seeing as the pirates will arrange a prolonged, painful death by slow hanging once Sam is found guilty of trying to kill Blackbeard. In exchange, Lowe asks for intelligence. “What’s a hell-burner?” He asks. “A hell-burner is an empty ship, packed” with gunpowder, iron shards and other objects set to explode at a particular time, he replies. “It’s an object of indiscriminate destruction,” explains Sam. “Innocents will die by the score” if Blackbeard comes into possession of one.
This is the first we’ve really heard of Blackbeard as a ruthless murderer – the character who stuck needles in his head last week and speaks in such a ridiculous accent seems like more of a harmless kook than anything else. Then again, he did introduce himself by cutting a man’s throat in the premiere. Perhaps it’s Malkovich’s wacky performance that’s making it hard for me to buy him as a vicious psychopath, but that’s an issue that I anticipate having with Crossbones week after week.
Meanwhile, Kate lies to Blackbeard, claiming that Lowe spent most of the afternoon in her bed and would have been unable to arrange the attack. Blackbeard is amused, but he does nothing to set Lowe free. Later though, when he wanders down to the village, he finds that the other pirates have found Sam and Lowe guilty during his absence and strung them up for a death by slow hanging. “Look at me!” He screams to his people, shaming them into silence. “Who is can tell me who I am?” Then, in a highly theatrical gesture, he turns to Sam and tells him that he can’t stop his old friend’s execution, seeing as he isn’t truly the king of the island, but just one member. Sam is still shocked as Blackbeard’s right hand lady, Nenna (Tracy Ifeachor), comes out and kicks the chair out from under him. As Blackbeard watches his long-time friend kick helplessly, he shoots him one last, malicious wink. However, Kate’s words save Lowe’s life, and he’s cut down.
We then cut rather abruptly to the next day, where Sam is still slowly hanging to death in the town center. Lowe sneaks up from behind a corner, wielding a rifle. He takes aim and fires one shot, hitting Sam in the chest and putting him out of his misery. Lowe dashes off before the pirates can spot him, his promise fulfilled. We then see Blackbeard negotiating with newly promoted “Captain” Finnegan, who swears he would never have sent men after Blackbeard. In order to make amends for what happened, Finnegan agrees to take the chronometer to Jamaica and sell it to William Jagger.
