*A few spoilers.*
Of the new major characters added in season 2, Archie is probably the one we get to know the least. Even though she’s in more episodes than Zheng and Auntie, she gets less focus, taking on more of a side-character role. Still, she’s plenty entertaining and adds a lot to the flavor of the season 2 crew.
At the start of season 2, she’s a new member of Ed’s crew. It’s the height of the Kraken era, and she’s in a different position than most of the people aboard. Frenchie and Jim have gotten used to sailing under Stede, and Izzy and Fang are used to the pre-Kraken Ed—all of them witnessed the severe shift in Ed at the end of season 1. For all of them, the state of affairs aboard the Revenge is very much not business as usual, and they’re troubled by the hopeless atmosphere around the ship.
But Archie didn’t know Ed before. She doesn’t see how he’s changed, so for her, Ed is just a bad boss, an unstable dick. This means she takes things a little more in stride than the others. She doesn’t despair because she doesn’t really know anything different. At the same time, though, that means she’s struck by the inner light of some of these characters, which persists beyond their current circumstances. She starts developing feelings for Jim when they tell (their version of) one of Stede’s old stories to cheer up Fang, because she’s not used to pirates caring about each other.
One of the most interesting glimpses into Archie’s past comes when Ed goads the crew into mutiny. When he orders Jim and Archie to fight to the death, Jim tries to argue, but Archie immediately punches them. “It’s my experience, it’s kind of how stuff goes, you know?” she tells Jim, beckoning them to join in and fight. And later, when Jim has Archie dead to rights, they urges them to finish it, saying, “It’s okay. It’s just life.” This scene offers up such tantalizing insight into what her life was like up until that point, and reason #783 why we need season 3 is because I’d love to learn a little more about it.
Once Stede and the rest of the Revenge crew come back and the day-to-day situation is less grim, Archie unwinds into what I assume is her natural state, a wild little chaos gremlin. We learn that she used to be in a snake cult, she’s nonchalant in violent situations, and she enjoys stirring shit up just for the fun of it. She’s not a crew member who gets much focus, but as the show has demonstrated time and again, everyone on the crew contributes to the comedy and the overall feel of the ship, regardless of how much screentime they get.
An area where we could’ve gotten more focus for Archie, and hopefully would’ve in season 3, was in the very subtly implied polycule. Season 2 makes it clear that Jim and Archie have gotten together, and there are little hints that Oluwande is still in the mix as well: he calls Jim “babe” at one point, all three of them share a room on the ship, and they all dance together at the Calypso’s Birthday celebration. And when Jim and Archie play rather obvious wingmen between Olu and Zheng towards the end of the season, they both consider leaving the Revenge and joining the Red Flag along with Olu. From the sounds of it, a combination of the reduced episode order and some studio interference cut this storyline down to what we see in season 2, and I wish we could’ve seen it as the show intended.
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