Episode "XXXI." of Black Sails was a notable chapter indeed. As Captain Flint and Long John Silver launched an assault on Nassau, iconic pirate Edward Teach -- AKA Blackbeard -- met a horrific and grisly end at the hands of Woodes Rogers via the old nautical execution method of "keelhauling."

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I spoke to Black Sails executive producers Jonathan E. Steinberg and Dan Shotz about Blackbeard's big and brutal exit, John Silver's rise to power, and what it might mean for everyone during the remaining episodes of this final season.I think it's hard in that, yes, as a writers room conceit it is a little bit liberating to not have to save bullets for anything. As producers and as friends of these people, it's always hard. Sometimes the story dictates it, but it doesn't change the fact that you're telling a story that requires a person to not be in your life anymore. And not be able to work with them. So it's always a bit of a balancing act. It's why we try to apply a lot of scrutiny, I think, to those kinds of story moments. Because we hate doing them. We hate losing people from the show. With this one, I think, it survived the test that we applied to it. Does the ghost of this person create a story that's really compelling and hard to get away from? In this particular case, it was almost impossible to get away from it in the sense that Long John Silver can't be the Pirate King if the last Pirate King is alive. He needs to survive him. The episode is filled really deliberately to watch the old king die as the next one arrives to claim the crown.I think the overall principle is, in the way that we've built the story, is that we decided early on where to plant flags in the historical record. What events and what moments and what truths felt important enough that if you upset them then you're no longer living in that world at all in a meaningful way. And then I think the further away you get form those flags, and the more you get into the details of those things, the less you strain to be fueled by it. The Teach stuff is a good example because there is no record of him being keelhauled. He most certainly was not. But he was killed by a pirate hunter and his body after he was killed, depending on which account you believe, was decapitated and dismembered. You know, it was used as a symbol by England that they had defeated the pirates. And there was a bit of a legend that grew out of it that his body was thrown into the water and the he didn't die. So really we're dealing with this folk tale combined with the historical record combined with the Edward Teach character who inhabits our story. And in the intersection of those three things our job is to tell the most compelling version of that as best we could.I think also this character of Edward Teach comes in in such an iconic way in the story, in that we waited two seasons to bring this character to screen, so he needed to go out in a very big way. One that was specific and was brutal and was worthy of someone who carried the legend that he did at the time. The keelhaul was also something we'd been waiting to do because it was done in that time and I don't think anyone's ever done it on TV or film. Not that we've ever seen. And it felt like something very special and it could show the type of person Teach was to survive it that many times. It was to be an iconic moment for the series.It's hard to know how it actually happened. The historical record is pretty spotty. It's actually one of the things that made this technically difficult to pull off is that there's no manual for this. Nor is there any detailed account of how this worked. So we had to reverse-engineer it with the help of our sailing consultants and production designer in order to practically figure out how you would do this. I think for us, what made it compelling, is the cruelty of it. It is so clearly designed to tell a story about Rogers' capacity for violence and his dominance over them, in what was meant to be a very bloody victory for him. I think what became complicated for us was, not only did it need to do all the things Dan mentioned in being a big noisy death for Teach but it was also important somehow that Teach save Rackham's life. In a moment where Teach is bound and mostly dead and lacking really any agency, that was hard to do. This idea that just by not dying he saves Rackham's life felt right. And I think as a Rogers story it was interesting in that Rogers thinks that he's the star of the show and thinks he's the one everyone's going to be talking about tomorrow. And just by not dying, Teach becomes the star of the show and kind of makes him a hero in the moment when he's supposed to be a prop. You understand why Rogers has to walk away and cut his losses and risk losing the narrative he was trying to tell.There's an underlying theme to all of this which is the unintended consequences of violence. And the paradox, I guess, in the sense that as emotions run high a number of these characters are driven to violence and are either completely unaware, or just delusional, to the fact where every time violence has been used as a solution it's created three more problems. Ones bigger than the original one. In some extent, Max is the voice of that at this point in the season. And Rogers is the victim of that. He's so threatened and cornered and feeling a lack of good options going forward that he gets into it. He achieves his immediate goal of making a spectacle of Teach, but is pretty clearly opening up a whole other set of problems as to how radicalized Rackham will be and what lengths Rackham will go to in order to defeat him.It was interesting that when Silver tells Hands' story, it's not the first time we've heard that story. We start to understand that Hands was the beginning of Nassau being overrun by pirates the first time around when Teach was the one pulling the strings. It felt that if Long John Silver was to step into Teach's shoes and be the one in the spotlight in the moment when the cycle starts itself all over again, it kind of needed the same midwife to help bring it about. Hands has the role now in both these stories that makes him "kingmaker" in a sense, in an immediate way. It also legitimizes Silver's rise to the throne as well, that he's being handed it by the same guy who handed the last guy his crown. There's a symmetry to those two stories that felt worth tracking.It was also the moment where it happens that's worth noting. Where Hands waits for Silver to give him that nod. Even though we see Silver playing that role, of being on the horse and arriving as Long John Silver with all this anticipation. He's going to come and take his rightful place as the king of Nassau, essentially. That moment where Hands waits for the okay, for Silver to make the decision, in front of Flint and everyone, shows that Silver has that power. And that's going to shift everything going forward.

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler