The Buccaneers: The Disaster of Theo and Lizzy
The Buccaneers Season 2 has a lot going for it. The aesthetics are sublime. The character work is compelling. The main love triangle is still functioning surprisingly well. But where the romance is falling apart is in the potential for a relationship between one of Nan’s best friends, Lizzy, and Nan’s husband, Theo, the Duke of Tintagel.
We saw the beginnings of the Theo/Lizzy when they were flirting while on a scavenger hunt. Theo is aware that his marriage is not ideal, that Nan is heartbroken over Guy. Meanwhile, though, Lizzy is starting up a relationship with politician Hector Robinson. Hector is sweet, stable, and demonstrably into her. Theo is…well, Theo is a hot mess, to say the least. And this is why them pursuing a relationship between Lizzy and Theo is a terrible idea. Or, these are the several reasons why.
Theo doesn’t actually like Lizzy; everything is a reaction to his relationship with Nan
Theo only starts making a connection with Lizzy when he’s worried about Nan. Even the “flirting” that he and Lizzy do is largely centered around his wife. Theo talks about the story of Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere in relation to himself, Guy, and Nan. One of the most intense moments is when he confesses that he knows Nan is nursing a broken heart. And in episode three, two of the biggest moments are also colored entirely by what Theo is going through with Nan. When he feels rejected and devastated in finding out that Nan spent the night with Guy just before their wedding, he gives the whole speech about how Lizzy deserves better than Hector. And Theo, I love you my man, but you’re only doing that because you want someone to look at you like you hung the stars because you’re mad at Nan. He’s manipulating Lizzy in that moment, albeit because he’s hurting so deeply. But again, that makes the point. His “connection” to Lizzy, if we can even call it that, is entirely related to his feelings for Nan. It becomes even more clear when he entirely dismisses Lizzy at the end of the episode when he decides he has to go after his wife when he gets the full picture of why she married him. He abandons Lizzy after shaking her over her relationship with Hector because the woman he actually cares about has caught his attention again, dismissing and disregarding Lizzy as meaningless to him. Because she is! He doesn’t care about her in any real way, and frankly, I don’t think Lizzy cares about him in any real way either. But I’ll talk more about Lizzy later. In the meantime, let’s talk about her other love interest.
They’re wasting Hector if he’s just a distraction
Hector deserves a better arc than being a cuckold for Theo, let alone a pit stop on getting Theo and Lizzy together, which…the endgame of that seems far too distant to be fully contemplated at this point. If Lizzy and Theo have an affair, which seems the only option given how everything is set, it means she’s going to have to betray Hector in a very significant way. As of episode three, they’re engaged, and of course Theo and Nan are married. The union of a Duke and Duchess is not going to be easily dissolved, and I doubt we will see that play out this season anyway as the focal point divorce will likely be between Nan’s parents. So Hector would only then get to be shoved to the side and betrayed to serve another narrative. And while this show certainly doesn’t follow the book to the letter, Hector and Lizzy have the best relationship of the story. Abandoning that for a one-season arc feels like an utter waste. And whatever it does to Hector, it does worse to Lizzy.
This would make Lizzy a terrible person and completely undo her arc from Season 1
Lizzy’s journey in the first season of The Buccaneers is the absolute best, bar none. Her revelations about shame are, well, revolutionary. But if they stick her with Theo, there goes that development. Because in Season 1, Lizzy starts off as a competitive, jealous girl who is really only interested in Seadown because he’s already paid attention to Jinny. She gives up a ton of her power in order to please him, and betrays Jinny in the process. And it leaves her gutted and ashamed. After working through that, learning and growing and placing the blame on James’s shoulders, where it belongs, she is in a much better place. She’s able to recognize and appreciate a man who has no other agenda than wanting to get to know her. Hector isn’t playing games, he isn’t trying to string her along, he just likes her and wants to make her happy. Honestly, that would be a phenomenal arc for her that she commits to a guy who makes her feel good and the best version of herself, and falls madly in love with him in the process. She gave up what she was “supposed” to want in the eyes of society, a man with a title, and instead went with her heart and what’s best for her.
But Theo is…the opposite. He’s the shiny toy that’s attractive to her because her best friend nabbed him. It’s the ugly competitiveness that many of the girls had to work through in Season 1 rearing it’s head again. Instead of making some in-depth commentary on how Lizzy is torn between what her family wants and what she really desires, it just feels off. What is the point of her interest in Theo from a thematic perspective? Hector is already a somewhat rebellious choice. But a married Duke? Married to one of her best friends? That’s just a terrible idea. It undercuts the power she achieved in Season 1, and it puts her out of the driver’s seat entirely. Lizzy is jerked around at the complete whim of Theo, invested in him when he pays her scraps of attention, still mostly talking about Nan, and when he pays her some direct compliments, she ends up questioning her entire relationship with Hector. It strips her of her agency entirely, and that is a dreadful position to put Lizzy in after she has learned and grown so much in the previous season.
Ultimately, this reeks of lazy writing, which is such a disappointment. I am withholding official judgement because we are only three episodes into the season, and I’m cautiously optimistic that Theo’s fairly brutal dismissal of Lizzy in the most recent episode is the end of things. We do see Lizzy in a wedding dress in the trailer, and Theo is all about Nan again after only a brief fit of anger over her choices. So my hope is that they don’t push this any further for the cheap drama, because realistically, that’s all it can ever be this season.
Maybe the worst part of this, too, is that it will ruin any chance that Theo and Lizzy could be endgame. It dooms them to being a toxic relationship that just makes them both worse when, if this is just a seed planted that doesn’t come to any fruition until season three or four or five (if we get them, which I hope we do), they could be something that mattered. They could be something real. But if they start off in these circumstances, if the show pushes them together any further than they already have, it will wreck any chance they really have at being something down the line.
