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I don’t write meta often but I need to get these thoughts down and explain why Izzy is the Little Wood Boy.
The story of The Little Wood Boy is important right through Our Flag Means Death. In episode 1 season 1 part of what stops the mutiny is Lucius’ inability to do the voices right, while the crew is invested in the story.
When we meet Izzy he’s set up as being Blackbeard’s head lacky. Whatever the captain says, he does. Blackbeard pulls a string and Izzy moves. But a puppet is a performer, and Ed is tired of the show. He’s not doing things the way they’ve always been done and we see Izzy getting angry and frustrated and pulling back on his strings very quickly. When Ed goes literally off script during Here Be Dragons and refuses to kill Stede this is when Izzy really loses it and tries to get the show back on track because what is a puppet if the puppeteer is done?
We jump into season 2 and Izzy is having the worst case of Just What I Asked For, Not What I Want. The show is back on, seven days a week plus matinees, but Blackbeard doesn’t care about his puppets and is literally cutting toes strings.
The writers described Ed shooting Izzy as a breakup. Ed cut all the strings leaving Izzy a heap on the deck. Here is where Little Wooden Boy comes back in. During the post credit scene Jim, who has been shown to be the one carrying Stede’s memory of people focused management, starts telling the story of The Little Wooden Boy to an upset Fang. It is a horrific version that brings in a monkey paw, prayers to a dark lord, and the Little Wooden Boy starts growing flesh that they describe as Soft.
Softness and being soft are a running theme through the series. It’s treated as a negative by the so-called Real pirates, except for Zheng, and Stede has always been bullied for being soft, but the soft flesh is what the Little Wooden Boy prayed to the Dark Lord for.
Episode 2 and we have Izzy shooting Ed right back. Now the connection, as unhealthy as it was, between puppet and puppeteer is totally gone, but where does that leave the puppet?
Izzy’s first wooden leg that we see is a classic pirate peg leg, like he’s trying to keep up the image of what a pirate is and that he is the most pirate of them all, even missing a leg. Except that leg, the “pirate” leg, snaps under him leaving him drunk and screaming “who even are you” to himself in the mirror.
Then he gets his new leg. The note is for the Ship’s Unicorn. A Unicorn is a creature of magic, just like a wooden boy who can move without strings but doesn’t necessarily know what to do now. I also ask you to look at the profile of his new leg. The rounded, flat bottom horse hoof looks a lot like the more common Pinocchio animations, then any one-legged pirate that has ever been in popular media.
In The Curse of the Seafaring Life Izzy is having to relearn the “basics”, but this is the first time, probably in his entire adult life, that he hasn’t had a captain. There is not the safety of knowing that someone else has the strings in hand. He’s on his own. I’m pretty sure this is why he was willing to run Stede through the basics of pirating. He’s not looking for a new Blackbeard but he’d like someone halfway competent in charge.
He also tells Lucius that a shark took his leg and gives him the shark he’s been whittling the whole time. If it has been a while since you’ve subjected yourself to at least the Disney Pinocchio, at one point Pinocchio get’s swallowed by a whale and happens to find his father.
At the start of Calypso’s Birthday, Izzy is still a bit at loose ends and is drinking enough for Ed to comment on it, but then Ed apologizes for the leg. In the previous episode Ed stated that he never apologized for anything he did as captain. Even his apology to the crew was a non-apology.
By the time Calypso’s Birthday Party kicks off Izzy is perhaps realizing that he is a real boy, or at least getting close to it. He changes his look, he sings, he probably would have danced with Wee John if Ned hadn’t shown up. And quite frankly, he had waaaaaay too much of a spring in his step at the start of episode 7 to have not gotten some action the night before. He spent that night making decisions for himself to make himself happy, ya know, like a real person occasionally does.
Now, the Blue Fairy promised Pinocchio that if he was Brave, Truthful, and Unselfish that he would become a Real Boy. Through season 2 Izzy became brave enough to stand up to Blackbeard knowing it was probably going to get him killed, but someone needed to stand between Blackbeard and the crew. He was unselfish, despite Finally confessing his love to Ed, helping Ed and Stede, and supporting Stede during the “Breakup” even admitting that Stede was good for Ed. And in the end he was Truthful. He apologized and confessed to Ed that he had needed Blackbeard long past the time when Ed did, and told him just go and be Ed.
And here is where I believe #IzzyHandsLives. Most people are going to know Pinocchio from being traumatized by the 1940 Disney version (seriously, there is some messed up shit in there). While helping his father escape from the whale, Pinocchio dies. We see him face down on the beach not moving, then later on a bed with Geppetto crying over him still unmoving. Geppetto even says “you’re dead Pinocchio”, but for his good deeds Pinocchio is resurrected as a Real Boy.