Luke Arnold On Becoming The Long John Silver Black Sails Deserves

As Starz‘s acclaimed pirate drama Black Sails enters its final season tonight, no single character has undergone more radical changes than Luke Arnold’s John Silver.

Starting as a coward who hid — literally and figuratively — from conflict, Silver has become a badass and one of the focal points of the show as it has drawn toward its close.

That makes sense, of course: Black Sails has not only been creating the story that led to the “golden age of piracy,” but also serving (by Silver’s mere presence) as a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, in which Silver was the primary antagonist.

“It would have been heartbreaking for me if we’d only done one or two seasons,” Arnold told ComicBook.com. “You start a pirate show and then as we’re building the character. At the beginning, you go, ‘well the fun is to not be a pirate, to be the guy who doesn’t want to be a pirate, who doesn’t feel like a pirate yet. He’s kind of the fish out of water,’ then having the trust that that journey’s going to be the satisfying part of the story.
Seeing him go from someone so different to the Long John Silver in our heads is going to be what’s going to feel so rewarding by the end of it. To get to that point, the first point was losing the leg which was really important. Then some of the journey in Season Three, like I think the scene with Dufresne and the stomping. That stuff was like okay we’re really getting into it now. This darkness is starting to come out. This leadership role is starting to come out.”

Just because he’s come a long way since hiding under a table in season 1, though, that doesn’t mean he’s quite done with his evolution yet.

“In season 4, it’s a whole other part of the journey again,” Arnold said. “He really is becoming from boy into a man and from an individual into a leader of men. I think the character goes through another three evolutions within this fourth season.”

And en route to his famous destiny, of course, Silver is presently at what could be seen as the most dangerous point of his life. Not only are governments after him for his role in piracy and helping to foment unrest in the region, but other pirates are starting to see him as Flint’s heir apparent and, as such, someone to be either feared or, perhaps, taken out entirely.

According to Arnold, not only is that all true but Silver is essentially becoming a power player on the global stage as the war between pirates and the rest of society starts to ratchet up in intensity.

“There’s definitely a target on him in a huge way. Him now being kind of the face of the pirate Maroon revolution. Also, it’s the internal stuff as well. Silver was the guy that didn’t want anyone relying on him. Kind of said, I’m out for myself, don’t trust me to do anything but look after myself,” Arnold explained. “Now, he really has the responsibility of everyone around him. There’s allegiances with Madi in the Maroon camp and then also Flint and Billy, who are starting to kind of find themselves on opposite sides of each other. Yeah, the vulnerability isn’t just people out to kill him but also people wanting him to fall on their side against someone else. Then just also the nature of where they are. This war begins now. The real fight between pirates and civilization is underway. He used to be hiding behind things when the fight broke out and now he’s right on the front line.”

That’s a huge change of pace, of course, from the first couple of seasons. In the beginning, Black Sails only played with sociological and political concepts outside of the relatively insular world of piracy. Much of the story centeredon survival for Silver, and only Flint really had a sense of scope and scale that went beyond the day-to-day.

“Yeah, it was that complete day to day, moment to moment,” Arnold said. “Ambition’s tough when you’re in a society that doesn’t reward ambition, where whatever class you’re born into is usually the class you’ll die in. All he had to worry about before was survive, find some coin, find a way to eat, grift a few people. But that kind of upward momentum is not something that exists in a class society.”

That’s what makes Nassau so appealing and frankly remarkable for many of the characters, who were either slaves or lower-class or somehow ostracized where they came from. Arnold calls back to a line from the show — but not one of his, a line from Flint: “Where else in the world would you wake up and matter?”

And that is telling: even with all the progress Silver and some of the other characters have made, Flint remains in some ways the character with open eyes and clear ambition. That, Arnold told us, will inform season 4 a great deal.

“Flint is the only one really with any understanding of any plans for something bigger. No one else knows it yet. He’s got these plans. Eleanor to a degree is involved. No one really knows like what’s going on in his head, which is to attack civilization as a whole. It’s really once he gets Silver on side for that plan that everything starts to move forward,” Arnold teased. “I think that’s the fun of the show, is while you see the characters have evolved, Nassau has evolved, what it means to be a pirate has evolved, the fact that it is a war now has all kind of grown in a really nice organic way. Obviously, it makes it very different. Even when Silver was first becoming a pirate, in season 1 pretending to be a cook, in season 2 going ‘oh, I just need to make myself useful.’ They just still wanted a bit of gold. That was it. Those were the plans. Now it’s so much bigger and the lives of so many people are wrapped up in what these characters do that it is great to play to that level. You get a bit more Shakespeare and Greek theater starting to come in. That feeling where the actions of a few will affect the many.”

Black Sails returns for its fourth and final season tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Starz.