Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
This is a great analysis, and one I'm very glad to read too. I've always been on his side and have always supported -or understood at least- his decisions (except Gates), though with time I've started to understand also how most of his people could not trust him completely or doubt his choices.
It's undenyable that he would be ready to give up A LOT (including members of his crew. I mean, if he killed Gates for it, we shouldn't really be surprised about any "lack of interest" towards the others) in order to get what he wants, and it is also true that he keeps most of his plans for himself, partially because he has often reasons he can't voice, partially because he know he can't really trust anyone (and I mean, can we really blame him, considering the environment?), so I can understand why someone would not put his own life in his hands without seconds thoughts.
Still, as long as it's not strictly necessary, he does his best to save as many as possible, or better, to save the situation as much as he can.
It's the reason why he can be captain when no one else of his crew can (in my opinion at least): he knows how to look at the bigger picture, and this of course means making the most difficult decisions and taking the responsability for them (which I was so glad was underlined in this post).
I think that what his crew thinks about him depends not so much on his direct actions, often infallible (in fact every time he regains his power over them it's thanks to his smart moves, of someone who /knows/ how to rule a ship), as much as on his reputation (things they have only /heard/ about him) and on his character (which we know is not of the most sociable kind).
And always through his actions he shows how he actually cares to keep them alive at least.
I wouldn't say he cares about them personally, not at the beginning at least ("who is Billy?" says enough XD), but I think that with time, as the crew becomes more central in his war plan, and as the war becomes (at least for him) not just...plundering searching for gold but fighting for a cause, his attention towards them grows too. I felt this especially in 4x6, when he says he isn't going to leave anyone behind (that statement actually surpirsed me, honestly, and he wasn't even talking about the men of his crew alone, but about whoever had joined their fight).
Probably it is a selfish kind of attention, probably they are just soldiers to feed his lines or the last humans he still have left on his side, but still, as long as it is not inevitable he would reduce the losses as much as he can.
Anyway, I'll keep saying that people should have listened to him more, even if probably we wouldn't have had the show at all if they hadXD.
The thing is, I rarely deem his actions foolish (or reckless at least) but also when I do, it's easy to forget about it when I listen to his speeches, which is basically what his men often experience and probably the whole foundation of his character. I'm just saying that they built him /so well/! It's amazing.
I am also of the opinion that he didn't push Billy, btw. That would have been a silly move. Flint doesn't make silly move. Change my mind.
I have a take that might be lukewarm at best and boiling at most, but:
Hear me out.
Many of the characters in Black Sails have this perception of Flint as kinda aloof, distant and reserved, and he DOES prove time and time again the lengths he's willing to go to accomplish his goals regardless of the welfare of his crew. I mean, by the time the show is done, only three original members of the Walrus make it out alive (RIP to our girl, she put up such a fight until the very end). Everyone else is very much dead.
But like, remember the episode when they beach the ship to scrape the barnacles off the hull and make her faster and more nimble before the Urca job and some crew guys tie off the ropes on the wrong fucking trees before going off to the fuck tent for Gods know how long? And then the trees get uprooted under the weight of the Walrus while Randall and Morley are under there and Randall gets stuck UNDER AN ENTIRE SHIP AND IS ABOUT TO GET CRUSHED TO DEATH??
Who was the first among them to run under that ship while everyone else, including Billy Bones, the Eternal Defender of His Men™ (until season 4 that is lmao) scramble to get away and save themselves?
Flint did. FLINT.
He rushed in there without thinking in the hopes of saving at least one of the men under there, despite the danger to his own life. And if it hadn't been for him and Silver, both those men would have died. He saves Randall's life by cutting off his leg, which takes a looooong time, and hauling him away just in time before the rest of the ropes give up. Poor Morley though, he died trying to save Randall too.
And like, throughout the show he's always making decisions that he knows will save the most lives, as difficult as they might be for everyone else to accept later. He's the captain after all, it's his job to make the hard decisions. He'll always sacrifice the few to save the many, but that doesn't mean he doesn't give a shit about them. There are exceptions of course, like Mr. Singleton and Mr. Gates, whom I will never forgive him for bc Flint deprived us of the joy that is Mr. Gates for the remaining three seasons and he was the GOAT, but back to topic - note that both those men severely threatened his position as captain and therefore his suicidal revenge mission against England before he murdered them. It's like Silver himself says later: he only wants things done so long as they are done HIS way. But that's a conversation for another post.
Which brings me to the whole "did he or did he not push Billy overboard that night during the storm" question.
Personally, I don't think he did. He had every reason to do it, of course: Billy found out about Miranda and how she was pushing for a pardon to be given to Flint so the two of them could go to Boston and live the rest of their lives in peace, and if the crew found out about it, Bad Things would follow. Then Billy slips and Flint reaches out for his hand just in time to stop him going overboard (on an aside, I love that the writers didn't let the audience see what happened next, leaving all this doubt about what actually happened). Even Billy himself recounts later that he's not sure whether his hand slipped from Flint's or if Flint simply let go.
In my opinion, and this is just MY opinion, I believe he did try and haul Billy up and save him because up until that point, Billy was going along with Flint's plan. I mean, he lied to the crew about the blank page taken from Singleton's body and he knew about Miranda's pardon plot and the Maria Aleyne story for at least one episode. If he was going to tell the crew, he would have done so already. Saving Billy's life would have been a risk, sure: Flint would have to trust that Gates would convince him to keep his mouth shut and that he would obey. In fact, I'd argue that saving Billy's life would be much more advantageous in the long run than letting him drown at sea. Flint is a master strategist and would have taken all these things into consideration before making a decision.
Maybe that's why he ended up failing in saving Billy: he was so preoccupied trying to decide the more desirable outcome that Billy just... slipped and fell. And as we see as the season continues, Billy's "death" brought more problems than it solved. It wore out the crew's trust in him as captain, it destroyed his relationship with Gates and put in jeopardy the entire Urca mission and his plans for a war against the British Empire.
I guess, it doesn't really matter whether he intended to save Billy or not. Everyone thought he had let him fall or even pushed him. Given his past actions, who could blame them? The lies, the falsehoods, the secrets... They all had a cost, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.
What do y'all think? Sound off in the replies/reblogs/tags.
Still, TL:DR - Flint always cared about his crew no matter his decisions and worst impulses, and that's the hill I will die on!