Black Sails: 10 Pirates Who Should Appear In Season 2

2. Edward Teach

Real or storybook? Real, but massively fictionalised down the years Who is he? Literally the most famous pirate of them all (even Jack Sparrow had to cross swords with him eventually), Edward Teach is a major character in so many fictional stories that the truth about him is kind of irrelevant at this point. The real Blackbeard was a privateer who turned to piracy and joined the crew of Benjamin Hornigold, captaining a sloop under Hornigold's command. Feeling Hornigold was not a committed enough pirate, Blackbeard had a vote to overthrow him and took control, captured a much larger ship that he named Queen Anne's Revenge, and became one of the most feared pirates of the age. After Woodes Rogers took control of New Providence and Hornigold became a pirate hunter, Blackbeard fled both and began to operate around North Carolina where he teamed up for a time with Charles Vane before being killed in battle. Legend has it that he went into battle with lit tapers in his hair and beard, but contemporary accounts are more likely to mention the much less scary tying of ribbons in it. Where would he fit into Black Sails? Surely the real pirate that audiences are waiting to see, it is only a matter of time before Blackbeard arrives in Black Sails. During the first season he was being played by John Malkovich in Crossbones (AKA "that pirate show that isn't Black Sails"), but that series has now been cancelled, although that's not to say that Malkovich couldn't be brought back for a crossover. Given the links that already exist between Teach and historical Black Sails characters like Vane and, especially, Hornigold, it would not be at all hard to introduce him to the story. As the rivalry grows between Vane and Hornigold and Hornigold sets out to sea it would be easy to establish Teach as his more aggressive quartermaster. Equally a Blackbeard plot would pull in many of the other characters on this list from Black Caesar to Captain Hook and even our final entry.