When Our Flag Means Death first premiered, the pirate comedy series — a novel genre mashup in and of itself — didn’t necessarily make a big splash in the streaming landscape. It didn’t take long, however, for positive word of mouth and a slowly growing fanbase to lead to impressive viewing numbers, with the first season becoming the biggest new series in the U.S. across all platforms — and its popularity has only grown since. Now, on the precipice of the series’ return, over a year after it was finally renewed for a second season, viewers are eagerly preparing to tune in to find out what will happen to Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), Edward Teach/Blackbeard (Taika Waititi), and the rest of the Revenge’s crew now that everyone has been divided into two separated groups.

Ahead of the Season 2 premiere, Collider had the opportunity to speak to creator David Jenkins for a spoiler-free conversation (if you’ve checked out some of those trailers already, that is!) about what fans can expect. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Jenkins discusses when he found out the show would be renewed, the unprecedented response to Season 1, and why he enjoys engaging with the OFMD fandom online. He also digs into discussing why Season 2 takes a somewhat darker tone, the importance of adding more female characters to the cast, his envisioned story for the show’s planned three seasons, and more.

COLLIDER: You made a whole season between now and the last time we spoke!

DAVID JENKINS: It was a long time ago. Here we are!

And I know it was a bit before we even knew that Season 2 was going to be a possibility. How long was that wait on your end?

JENKINS: Yeah, I blocked it out, if I’m honest. [Laughs] It was a minute. We’re really lucky that they picked us up, and they’ve been really wonderful to us at Max. They’re just very fun to make this show with. There was a minute where I would call it kind of a slow-burn fandom, and the show just seemed to grow and grow and grow. I think we became more and more viable as the weeks went by after the finale, and thank god we got to do it again.

With the response to Season 1, it felt like week after week, even once the whole season was out, there was just this exponential growth. What was your reaction to that? Has that ever happened to you before, in your experience?

JENKINS: Oh, it’s never happened to me. I don’t know if it’s happened to other shows. Somehow, I feel like the streaming of it makes this unusual, and then the fact that it is actually a romantic relationship between these two characters. Audiences didn’t want to get burned again, and then saw that they weren’t going to be, and celebrated it. It just really moved me, actually. I thought that they’d kiss, and people would be like, “Oh, cool, cool!” I kind of thought people would know a little bit more [about] where we were going, but then in hindsight, no, people have been hurt and burned on so many other shows and then made to feel silly. So it was very gratifying to see the show embraced — to see every element of the creative embraced, every element of the production design, every department get their due in attention, was just overwhelming. It’s the honor of my professional life. I don’t think this happens very often, so I’m just savoring it.

You don’t always see creators who are willing to engage with the fandom online, or they try to keep a distance, but it feels like you’re getting in there occasionally and interacting with fans. How do you feel about that particular response, the fandom and their passion?

JENKINS: It’s an honor. If it were a different circumstance or a different property or something else that maybe had a different tone that brought in a more dyspeptic, less gracious [fandom]… Everyone’s been lovely. When people are being nice and normal, easy to be around, yeah, I wanna be at that party. Are you kidding me? And then you’re gonna celebrate all the work that we did when we didn’t know if the show would be good? Because when you’re making these things, you’re like, “Well, I know this is just my weird thing. Maybe people like it, maybe they won’t.” When people are this gracious and effusive and not weird about it, it’s like, “Yeah, let’s talk. This is great. You’re a fan of the stuff that we were a fan of. We’re not different.” So that’s really rare.

RELATED: ‘Our Flag Means Death’ Season 2: Release Date, Cast, Trailer, and Everything We Know So Far

Image via Max

In terms of the overall tone of Season 2, there’s definitely a darkness that it starts with. Was it more of a conscious decision to embrace that side, or did it really inherently come from picking up with these characters after where we left off with them in Season 1?

JENKINS: It’s picking up with where the arc is in the story. We’re post-breakup, and they’re trying to fix it. One of these characters is very, very damaged and has never made himself vulnerable in this way before, and I don’t think [he] would react very well to having his heart broken in this way. I don’t think it would be cute, and I don’t think it would be funny. I think it would be scary as hell to watch a very damaged guy that we’ve established in Ed, who killed his dad and thinks he’s not capable of being loved, deal with rejection and see that Stede really hurt him. It’s important to do that, to give him stakes because Rhys [Darby] is adorable, and Taika [Waititi] can be adorable, and sometimes when they’re being adorable, they become invulnerable. I want to see a love story between two people who are very vulnerable, for better and for worse. So you have to pick up in a place where there’s been damage done and there’s a price to pay, and then it’s like, “Can they come back from it?”

That’s not to say that there aren’t moments of levity and comedy. Stede, from his perspective, is this more pining figure writing letters, but he’s definitely not in the same mental or emotional space as Ed is at this point because he doesn’t realize how hurt Ed is.

JENKINS: The lovely thing about Rhys and about Stede is Stede’s cluelessness. He eventually does the right thing, but he doesn’t know his own strength, and that’s his problem. Then he does damage, and then he has to repair that damage, and that’s the growth of that character. Ed is a guy where you’re like, “Wait a minute, you’re invulnerable. You’re Blackbeard,” but then you see he’s hurt, he’s not getting up. To me, those are the natural journeys for those two characters. Then you see Ed come back, and he has to wear a bell around his neck, and he’s gonna fix a lock on this door, and he’s gonna learn to fish and just be a three-dimensional human as opposed to just a scary drawing. Those are the tensions of those guys, and that’s why Rhys has dog energy, and Taika has cat, and that seems to go along with both of those arcs.

Image via Max

I wanted to ask you about one of the things that feels like a really nice addition to Season 2, which is just the number of female characters that we get for the crew to bounce off of.

JENKINS: Good, I’m glad you feel that way.

Leslie [Jones] is back, we get Minnie Driver, and there’s a new female pirate captain who shifts the power dynamic, among others. Did that feel like a natural way to expand the cast, or was that a change that you really wanted to make after Season 1?

JENKINS: It felt like both. Watching Season 1 is like, “Oof, there’s a lot of dudes.” We do go into Jim’s experience as a non-binary crew member and Jim’s relationship with their mentor and mother figure. In Season 2, it felt important and also the most logical way to build the world out. So it was fun to add these characters, even one-offs like Hell-Cat Maggie, and be like, “There are so many different perspectives to bring into this show.” It just felt natural to do that.

What’s your favorite needle drop that the show has used so far in Season 1, and which one are you excited for fans to get to in Season 2?

JENKINS: Season 2 is built around [Kate Bush’s] “This Woman’s Work,” and that was very early on. That was a little bit like [Fleetwood Mac’s] “The Chain.” I knew I wanted to use that, clear it, script where it should go in the season. There’s a couple of those where it takes a minute to get that song, and there’s a lot of back and forth, and if you don’t get it, there’s not a real good replacement for it. In that first season, “The Chain” really worked. We could have found a different song, but “The Chain,” that really works there. Also, [Cat Stevens’] “Miles from Nowhere” at the end of the first season felt like the Stede Bonnet song with that version of “Miles from Nowhere.”

Season 2, Nina Simone makes a couple of appearances, and I just love the size and grandeur of what she’s doing. She seems to fit with a really large fantasy show — obviously, she’s Nina Simone — and what she’s talking about and how she’s expressing it up against this world is really exciting to me. I don’t know why it works for me as much as it does, but it really moves me. She comes back at the end of the season with a different track, and I just love having her music up against these pictures.

Image via Max

I’ve seen quotes from you recently where you talked about how—fingers crossed—if there’s a renewal, Season 3 would be the planned final ending for this show. Was that something that you always envisioned, that it would be three-and-done?

JENKINS: I think so. When Taika expressed interest in doing it, I was surprised. “Are you sure?” He was like, “Yeah, man. Yeah, I wanna do it.” I was like, “Okay, but it’s not limited. Can you do it for three seasons?” “Yeah.” “Really? Really, you’ll do it for three seasons?” “Yeah, man. Yeah.” So my expectation was we’re only gonna get Taika for three seasons. But beyond that, three is good for this show. The first season is about two emotionally underdeveloped men who are at about 14, 15, 16, emotionally. Season 2 is about them getting older and maybe, in terms of the relationship, being around 25 to maybe 30 by the end of the season. And then I think there’s one more story to tell, and it’s how does a relationship evolve? Where do we find them again in the third season? What are they dealing with? That’s very interesting to me, and there is a big story that I’d like to tell there.

Our Flag Means Death Season 2 premieres with its first three episodes October 5 on Max, with two episodes dropping weekly thereafter leading up to the season finale on October 26.