“I think the dreams in the third season are a way for the audience to see inside Flint. Otherwise, how do you know what he’s thinking? He’s shut everybody out and then you’ve got a boring character. What I like about the device is you see this implacable person that he’s become, but when you look inside his head, you see this turmoil that he’s in. It is guilt, it’s regret, it’s just the pain of grief that’s going on and him also going, ‘What is my world about now? What is my purpose? I have no purpose. I have no home. Where is my home? What is my center?’ And it’s really – this is Flint’s journey to find something to cleave to. ‘What is my purpose?’”
“When I was drowning over Miranda… you helped me find my way out.”
— James Flint to John Silver, Black Sails 4×07
“Thank you… for opening that door.”
— James Flint to John Silver, Black Sails 3×05
“After Miranda, [Flint’s] lost, until he finds Silver. And actually realizes that Silver is probably, you know, the one he needed most of all.”
“[Flint] needs somebody to be partnered with and Silver becomes the ultimate person. He’s had Thomas, he’s had Mrs. Barlow, and then finally, it’s Silver.”
“Silver finds himself with the dubious honor of being the one person who understands Flint. That, in terms of the stakes of the show, has become a matter of life and death. He tells Billy Bones that he understands the things they’re forced to do at Flint’s behest [which] are the acts of someone who is in despair. Silver has to find a way to return Flint to a place where he gives a shit about the people around him and not thrust them into this nihilistic war on civilization.”
— Robert Levine Co-Creator/Executive Producer of Black Sails
“One of the things that Season 3 deals with is how Silver is going to penetrate this guy. The only way that he can save the crew and himself is by somehow getting through to this guy and influencing him. He has to become the next Barlow or Gates to Flint.”
“His humanity asserts itself when it is grasping for relationships with other human beings. He starts in a place of having lost Thomas Hamilton, who was very meaningful to him and then having lost Miranda in such an awful way that he feels alone. Part of the journey in season three is finding a new person that he feels he can be vulnerable with and understood by, and it comes from a surprising direction.”
— Robert Levine Co-Creator/Executive Producer of Black Sails
“The thing Flint doesn’t have in season three that he’s always had is a partner. Part of the arc of the season for us was about him really flailing alone and not having anyone to have that human experience with. [We liked] him finding John Silver and having that become the person with whom he’s able to emerge from this awful experience he’s having.”
— Jonathan E. Steinberg Co-Creator/Executive Producer of Black Sails
“[Flint’s flashbacks in Season 2 and dreams in Season 3] were useful because he didn’t have a relationship in the present where we could really access some of those emotions and Season 4 is significantly different in the sense that he now has that person in John Silver. ”
— Robert Levine, Co-Creator/Executive Producer of Black Sails
Good. Heavens. All these open acknowledgements.
(swoons)
mici's campfire 