Mary Read is a guest star character in the fourth episode (titled “Fun and Games”) of the second season of the HBO pirate comedy series, Our Flag Means Death (2022-). Mary is portrayed by Rachel House. A retired pirate and now antiques collector, she and her partner are old friends of Blackbeard/Ed Teach (Taika Waititi). While she is not a full villain, she has some antagonistic qualities about her that can make her dangerous to other people around her.
Once a fearsome pirate — and a friend of Blackbeard’s from her glory days — Mary has settled in the jungle with her lover Anne Bonny (Minnie Driver) in order to open up an antique shop. But feeling the landlocked blues, Mary and Anne stir up trouble in a myriad of unhealthy ways to keep the spice in their relationship going — everything from verbal barbs to stabbing and poisoning each other is fodder for use. Mary makes many declarations of her love for Mary in the episode, however perverted they may seem to modern audiences since they are often expressed through forms of harm to her lover.
While we do not see Mary display evidence of attraction to either Blackbeard or Stede (Rhys Darby), she does describe in a story to Stede and Blackbeard that initially she thought Mary was a guard “with the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen” and was attracted to him before Mary took off her face mask and revealed herself to be a woman.
While it is not the healthiest form of bi representation, chaotic women-loving-women relationships are not often seen in modern media. While the characters do set their own house on fire, it is not clear whether they perish from their psychosexual cat-and-mouse game, thus avoiding the #KilllYourGays trope. This relationship also has the advantage of being historically accurate in spirit (as in their real lives, Mary and Anne met a very different fate) due to the chaotic freedom of the golden era of piracy.