I get why the writers chose an open ending. Why they wanted to explore “story is true, story is untrue” concept. But I feel like Flint wasn’t really the right person for it. His story is all about unveiling of the truth. Of shading light onto the things that history tried to bury. And Silver’s story is all about not knowing the truth. “What happened to him? Was is the truth?” would’ve fitted him perfectly. I know it wasn’t possible because of TI, so they had to do it with Flint, but… meh.

I agree, Anon. I think the ultimate irony is having a character whose entire story hinges on truth be condemned to being nothing more than the stories that are told about him – it’s a tragedy that they underscore in the narrative with the stories that are told about Charles Vane, actually. Jack says to the woman he talks to in Philadelphia that Charles was one of the bravest men he’d ever known, only to be shown in no uncertain terms that it doesn’t matter what someone’s friends say of them – it only matters what their enemies say, especially when those enemies win, and that’s the very thing that James was fighting all along. That, right there, is the heart of it, and it’s why it makes it a screaming, hair-ripping, agonizing thing to see James and Thomas fall prey to the same thing

Silver, on the other hand- he’s never been anything but one story after another. He’s never actually BEEN as opposed to being SAID TO BE, if that makes any sense, and in a way it makes him even more dangerous as a character because it sort of means that we know nothing about him. He’s no more and no less than what people say about him and I think that he derives power from that. He reminds me, actually, of every dangerous, fae character that has ever walked the pages of a fantasy novel – I’m talking straight out, Goblin King kind of power that’s derived from the power that people agree to give him. Anyway – what I’m saying in a long-winded kind of way is that I agree, Anon. James Flint is meant to be about truth and justice and fighting back against the stories told about him, whereas John Silver has only ever been a story, albeit a particularly powerful one.