I’m slightly tempted to go back and find every instance of someone in OFMD talking about what Blackbeard/Ed was like before we meet him. The show is just littered with references like, “He’d kill you if you called him Ed,” or listing the atrocities he committed like burning a ship full of people alive or feeding people their own toes, and even casual cruelties like telling Fang to put his dog down if he wants to join the crew…
… and the thing is, Ed is so lovely that we kind of dismiss all these statements the same way Stede does? They’re treated like comedy beats or tall tales at most. We’re kind of asked to forget and ignore them as being inaccurate—despite the fact they’re often coming from people who know Ed VERY WELL, much better than Stede knows him and for much, much longer— and we’re still being told to ignore them aaaalllll the way up until Ed’s heel turn back into the Kraken (a form of Blackbeard that might arguably turn out to be a way worse version than even the hair-raising rumors we’ve heard before this point).
I want to compile them because I think they may have all been true. And not just true but actually blazing neon signposts for what we can expect to see from Ed in S2. Sure, I think he’ll be redeemed, and yes I think his actions will be tempered by his regrets and the pain he’s in and the fact that maybe he still doesn’t really want to be doing all this anymore. But I think before we can get a proper healing arc for Ed like the one we got for Stede we have to see just how bad he really was and guys, I think it was really bad and that we’ve been told this outright the whole time.