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Credit: Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. is a global entertainment company focusing on creating and disseminating works of film, television, and music. Established in 1923, it has evolved into one of the most prominent (and lucrative) media enterprises globally, boasting a storied legacy of iconic movies and franchises like Harry Potter, the DC Universe (DCU), and The Lord of the Rings.
Beyond its involvement in film and television production, Warner Bros. (now part of Warner Media) holds ownership of the prominent HBO Max streaming service (now rebranded as simply Max) and showcases many of its properties in Universal Studios theme parks across the globe.
Why the stuffy corporate introduction? Because fans of a canceled pirate comedy rom-com are waging war on the studio — and it’s rather glorious to watch.
Related: “Disney Deserved That Burn”, Disney’s Own Prematurely Canceled Show Calls Them Out
Our Flag Means Death: Canceled by Warner Bros.
The potent, aforementioned pirate office comedy rom-com titled Our Flag Means Death was created by David Jenkins and debuted to critical acclaim in 2022 — see Rotten Tomatoes’ impressive 94% critic and 95% audience score at the time of writing, if review aggregate websites are your thing. The series also quickly garnered an intense and dedicated fan following.
The irreverent, chaotic, and often hilarious television show featured an overwhelmingly talented cast, including Rhys Darby as Barbadian gentleman Stede Bonnet, opposite Marvel director of the Thor franchise Taika Waititi as Edward Teach/Ed Teach, AKA the notorious pirate Blackbeard.
Loosely based on the life of Stede Bonnet, the “Gentleman Pirate,” the series unfolds in 1717, chronicling Bonnet’s early and inexperienced days as a pirate after leaving behind his family and privileged life in Barbados. As Rhys Darby’s Bonnet navigates the challenges of piracy aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge, encounters with deadly foes, including naval warships and fellow pirates, set the stage for comedic, swashbuckling chaos. The storyline takes a twist when Bonnet and the crew cross paths with the dread pirate captain Edward Teach, leading to unexpected love and further misadventures.
Related: Fans Try To Get Warner Bros. CEO Fired As Company Makes Big Moves To Shut Down Diversity
With the conclusion of Season 2 in 2023 came a worrying silence for fans on the renewal front until the creator Jenkins himself confirmed on social media that Our Flag Means Death had indeed been canceled:
I’m very sad I won’t set foot on the Revenge again with my friends, some of whom have become close to family. But I couldn’t be more grateful for being allowed to captain the damn thing in the first place.
Signing off with a heartfelt “Our Flag Means Us”, it seemed like that was it for the swashbuckling Max comedy.
But remember those fans? They’re coming into play now.
What is #SaveOFMD?
Simply put, #SaveOFMD is the culmination of dogged fan determination and an intense dislike for Warner Bros. and its studio executives.
It is one of the main hashtags used by fans of Our Flag Means Death (OFMD) as part of their “Renew Our Flag Means Death” campaign.
The fan campaign has organized everything from mass phone calls to the Warner Bros. phone lines asking for renewal to buying ad space to bring the “Save Our Flag Means Death” slogan to more eyes. It’s a concerted effort that is getting noticed by the cast and crew.
When creator David Jenkins saw this #HoistTheAds effort at New York City’s Times Square, he expressed that he was paying very close attention to this campaign:
@Gen_Huttslayer: So we did this (left)…but the Universe made the companion ad happen. 😂💜 I hope Dad see this @david_jenkins__
#SaveOFMD #RenewAsACrew #HoistTheAds #RenewOurFlagMeansDeathDavid Jenkins: I’m watching all of this.
I’m watching all of this
— David Jenkins (@david_jenkins__) January 19, 2024
The fan group at the center of this push is “Renew as a Crew” — a spin on the “… as a crew” recurring joke from the show. The campaign spans a dedicated fan website, a Change.org petition (with a whopping 71,000 or so signatures at the time of writing), and a presence on nearly every single major social media website available.
Giant flashing signs naturally draw eyes, and Our Flag Means Death star Vico Ortiz, who plays Jim Jimenez, also took to social media to thank the fans for the overwhelming support, with a message drowning in heart-filled emojis:
Idk if I’ll ever be able to say thank you enough times 😭🥹🫶🏽❤️🩹✨ living in constant gratitude 🥰
Idk if I’ll ever be able to say thank you enough times 😭🥹🫶🏽❤️🩹✨ living in constant gratitude 🥰 https://t.co/f9wTDzlsNM
— Vico Ortiz (@V_Vico_Ortiz) January 19, 2024
User @chaoticmulaney helpfully summarizes the #SaveOFMD achievements so far:
petition: 64k+ signatures
#saveofmd: trending with 50k+ tweets
ofmd plane: flying over LA
ad truck: driving around LA
billboard: stunning in times square
important blogs/pages: writing articles about the renewallove you guys 🫂❤️🩹
#ourflagmeansdeath #RenewAsACrew #HoistTheAds
petition: 64k+ signatures #saveofmd: trending with 50k+ tweets
ofmd plane: flying over LA
ad truck: driving around LA
billboard: stunning in times square
important blogs/pages: writing articles about the renewallove you guys 🫂❤️🩹#ourflagmeansdeath #RenewAsACrew #HoistTheAds pic.twitter.com/bR8Dd3K3AG
— sara 🦋 #SaveOFMD (@chaoticmulaney) January 19, 2024
If this sounds at all familiar, that’s likely because there have been a myriad of fan campaigns to save their respective shows in the past. A few have been of note — including fans attempting to rescue Fox’s Lucifer series starring Tom Ellis, and Netflix and Marvel’s seemingly abandoned Daredevil series starring Charlie Cox that ran for three seasons, and their fans’ #SaveDaredevil campaign.
The good news for #SaveOFMD? All of the abovementioned campaigns actually worked.
When Marvel President Kevin Feige announced Daredevil: Born Again as the continuation of the Daredevil story — about a blind lawyer who lives a double life as a superhero — was now going to be explicitly tied to the mainline MCU, the members of the #SaveDaredevil campaign rejoiced, retitling their website and social media #WeSavedDaredevil.
The intense fan dedication to Lucifer also saw their beloved TV show getting picked up by Netflix for a Season 4, after Fox dumped the DC-inspired series.
The consensus says that this sort of fan movement can work by showing studios that their fears about viewership were misplaced — but unfortunately, this time, there might be other elements at play pertaining to the show’s unapologetically queer-coded nature.
What’s Happening to Queer Television?
There has undoubtedly been a rise in openly LGBTQ+-friendly television shows as of late.
But with these seemingly promising greenlights comes a rather fascinating trend plaguing many of these shows across various studios — the simple fact is that these shows often never get to tell the story they set out to tell.
Fans looking for LGBTQ+ representation in TV have been dealt constant blows.
The Grease (1978) spinoff Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies (2023) about the all-female gang from the musical got canceled by Paramount+ (Paramount Plus) — and actually removed from the platform, in a “particularly brutal move” according to show creator Annabel Oakes. It featured queer high school relationships.
Similarly, A League Of Their Own, about a team of World War II-era female baseball players (and their queer relationships), got pulled from Amazon Prime after just one season.
Not to mention the LGBTQ+-friendly Disney series The Owl House also getting canned unreasonably early, about a young Luz Noceda (Sarah-Nicole Robles) falling into a realm of magic — and falling in love with schoolmate Amity Blight (Mae Whitman).
The trends do not look too good for openly queer media, especially as studio execs seem particularly trigger-happy in writing these shows off for what appears to be studio (or even personal) gain.
Why Do Fans Hate Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav?
What does that have to do with WB’s David Zaslav? Well, as TikTok user @mandyhadtodoit seems to allege, it all surprisingly might have to do with insider trading.
@mandyhadtodoit I just appreciate people collectively saying ‘respectfully get wrecked’ to rich white men who make bad decisions. #twitter #twitterdrama #warnerbrothers #hbomax #ofmd #ofmds3 #saveofmd #davidzaslav #whatawanker #stock #insidertrading
When Zaslav sold his Warner Bros. shares, fans immediately got suspicious about the sudden cancelation of Our Flag Means Death, fueling fan resentment towards the parent studio.
What Is the Future of LGBTQ+ TV?
The future of LGBTQ+ media and TV, however, may not be as bleak as it seems — with innovative, queer-friendly shows’ fate at the whim and fancy of the nefarious Hollywood elite.
There do exist exceptions to this rule of sequel season cancelations, even if, the number is currently abysmally low. In fact, this writer can only really think of one.
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s 1999 novel “Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch”, about an angel and a demon teaming up to save the human world from pending apocalypse, saw a faithful adaptation on Amazon Prime Video spearheaded by none other than Gaiman himself. The Sandman creator swore to bring the live-action show to fruition in honor of the late Pratchett, whose wish was to see an adaptation of their book on screen.
The overwhelming critical success and burgeoning fandom helped secure a second season, despite production having to move to Scotland and the script undergoing significant cuts to save on cost. With Season 2 left on a horrific cliffhanger (and spoilers: the essential breakup of the main duo of David Tennant’s Crowley and Michael Sheen’s Aziraphale and impending Armageddon 2.0), fans were hungry for a third season to bookend the metaphorical show-sandwich.
Fans inundated Prime social media, flooding nearly every post on X (Twitter) and YouTube with requests to renew the show for a Season 3, and mass-rewatched the show on Amazon’s official streamer to boost watch numbers.
Even with a less coordinated effort, fans of the Good Omens were heard.
Perhaps fans of Our Flag Means Death, with the sheer dedication they appear to be harboring (pirate pun) for the series’ renewal, will get to see their show thrown a lifeline, even if Warner Bros. themselves are unwilling to follow through on a Season 3.
Do you think Our Flag Means Death deserves a Season 3? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
More on Our Flag Means Death
Alongside the Taika Waitit’s Blackbeard/Ed Teach and Rhys Darby’s Stede Bonnet are Ewen Bremner as Nathaniel Buttons, Joel Fry as Frenchie, Samson Kayo as Oluwande Boodhari, Nathan Foad as Lucius Spriggs, Vico Ortiz as Jim Jimenez, Matthew Maher as Black Pete, Kristian Nairn as Wee John Feeney, Nat Faxon as The Swede, and David Fane as Kevin/Fang, Samba Schutte as Roach, and Con O’Neill as Blackbeard’s first mate Israel Hands/Izzy Hands.
In Season 1, Rory Kinnear played Captain Nigel Badminton, while Guz Khan played Ivan, and Fred Armisen was Geraldo.
Season 2 increased the presence of Leslie Jones as Spanish Jackie and introduced Ruibo Qian as Zheng Yi Sao, Madeleine Sami as Archie, Anapela Polataivao as Auntie, and Erroll Shand as bad guy Richard Banes/Ricky Barnes.