‘Our Flag Means Death’ Costume Designer on Transforming Izzy Into the Revenge’s New Unicorn
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Our Flag Means Death, Season 2 Episodes 4 “Fun and Games” and 5 “The Curse of the Seafaring Life.”]
Our Flag Means Death continues to deliver heartwarming moments in its second season as crew members of the Revenge come to terms with their traumas. While not everything is resolved for the characters, one made a strong comeback from some really low moments as Izzy Hands (Con O’Neill) transformed into the Revenge’s own “Unicorn” courtesy of a new peg leg.
Losing his limb following an infection caused by Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) shooting him, Izzy has been boozing, more irritable and emotional, as well as traumatized from his experiences, which reared its head in the fourth installment. Taking notice of his spiraling attitude, the rest of the Revenge crew decided he needed the most attention after storming their “safe space” gathering below deck with the ship’s unicorn legs in hand. When his makeshift peg leg buckles underneath him, Izzy refuses help and crawls back to his cabin, while his crewmates are inspired by the materials he leaves behind.
(Credit: Nicola Dove/Max)
Opting to paint one of the legs gold, the crew fashions Izzy a new and more secure peg leg, leaving it at his door. At first, he’s angered by the knock on his cabin door, but the touching gesture softens him upon reading a note fans later learn says, “for the new unicorn.” The sentiment clearly states his importance to the rest of the crew, and we later see him take his helm at the front of the ship where the wooden once featured.
“It was a real co-pro,” costume designer Gypsy Taylor says of helping make up Izzy’s peg-leg look this season. “I’m involved from the knee up, and Nick [Weir], our props master was involved with the leg.” She notes that all planning was run by series showrunner David Jenkins, revealing, “We had to run it across our showrunner, David, and production design.”
Among the elements that had to be thought out were how O’Neill would walk up the stairs and get around. “When [Con] arrived in Auckland, we had big chats,” Taylor says. Ultimately, they worked it out that Izzy would have “This stagger. He’s trying to get used to it. And so Nick had come up with the idea of the table leg,” Taylor recalls of Izzy’s initial peg leg.
(Credit: Max)
On her side of things, Taylor says, “We helped incorporate the leather straps and what he would’ve used. We talked about belts or would it be rope, but the rope wasn’t strong enough.” In the end, Taylor and her team had to incorporate VFX elements as they “had to build a little green sock so [O’Niell] could bend his knee and then still be able to walk safely on the ship.”
Eventually, that table leg turns into what Izzy will operate on moving forward as Taylor gushes, “[He] gets the slick unicorn leg. And by then he’s just our beautiful peg-leg pirate.”
Viewers get to see the peg-leg in action as Izzy gets back in fighting shape during the fifth episode at the same time that Blackbeard’s going through a little makeover of his own, donning a burlap onesie and cat collar. “We wanted a really extreme change,” Taylor says of the shift which was made to regain trust among his peers after treating them poorly in Stede’s (Rhys Darby) absence. “He’s gone from that crazy leather upon leather to nothing. And we were like, ‘What is the best nothing that you could get on a pirate ship ?'”
In the end, that was rice sacks, something that Taylor found in her research about pirate ships back in the day. “I was listening to a pirate podcast about what food they would carry down below, and rice was always easy. You could always eat it, even if it got a bit wet. It was sustainable. You could live on rice at sea, basically. So I was like, ‘let’s just get a hold of rice sacks that they’ve picked up on their sort of journeys across the Silk Road,” Taylor says of the inspiration.
While there’s no backstory for the garment onscreen, Taylor says she imagines “Wee John made it.” Apart from the one-piece, she adds that the goal was to have “everything else gone.” The only other accessory was “a little catbell so we know where he is, which is amazing,” Taylor gushes. “We didn’t want to do shoes. He’s stripped back to just a rice sack. So that’s one of my favorite transitions.”
Stay tuned for more transition and amazing costume details as Season 2 continues on Max.
Our Flag Means Death, Season 2, New Episodes, Thursdays, Max
