‘The Buccaneers’ Creators Explain Season 2 Ending & Season 3 Hopes

SPOILER ALERT: This post majorly spoils the finale of The Buccaneers Season 2.

Another season of Apple TV+’s The Buccaneers has come to a close with many cliffhangers and loose threads to dissect.

With the help of Mrs. St. George (Christina Hendricks), Nan (Kristine Frøseth) cooks up a plan to announce her pregnancy at midnight at the ball in a classic Cinderella fairytale fashion, but it turns out the time is up on this fantasy life as Theo (Guy Remmers) takes the moment to abdicate his position as Duke of Tintagel in order to divorce Nan and eventually marry Lizzy Elmsworth (Aubri Ibrag).

“Absolutely everything’s up for grabs, and none of the things that she thought were certain are certain anymore, except for the fact that [Nan]’s got [Theo]’s child in her stomach, and he doesn’t know about it,” Katherine Jakeways told Deadline. “He doesn’t know that child exists. So she’s got freedom. Suddenly, she’s got freedom from being a Duchess, freedom from her marriage, and freedom from him knowing about this baby. So unlike when Jinny ran and Seadown knew that there was a baby, Theo doesn’t know there’s a baby, so Nan has carte blanche now to make her own decision.”

Nan’s revelation of her pregnancy to Lizzy before she runs off burdens Lizzy with a secret that could heavily impact her next steps with Theo. There’s also Guy Thwarte (Matthew Broome) and the fact that he is “never gonna go away in terms of what [Nan] wants.”

“There’s just so much unraveling to do, isn’t there? They’re all in a bit of a corner. Lizzy’s in a corner. What’s she going to do? Is she going to tell Theo about the baby? Will she lose him? If she does [tell him], does that mean she’s betrayed Nan? Is she going to keep quiet? What does that mean? What’s Theo going to do if he finds out about the baby?” Willis said. “And what’s Nan going to do now that she’s in hiding and she’s got a baby? The thing I’m most interested to know is, ‘How are they all going to get out of that corner?’”

In the below interview creator and showrunner Katherine Jakeways and executive producer Beth Willis dive deeper into how the girls are still the heart of the love story, Nan’s fairytale ending coming to an end, where the finale leaves things for Theo and Lizzy’s love story as well as the love between Guy and Nan and more.

DEADLINE: When Nan runs away in that final scene, where is she going?

KATHERINE JAKEWAYS: I’m not sure she knows, actually. I think when she’s running away on that beach, it’s been such a whirlwind and such a shock to her. She thought she had this plan that she’d made with her mother that she was going to announce the pregnancy and that that was going to secure her safety in the castle, and she’s so blindsided by Theo getting up and announcing his abdication, and what the ramifications of that are for their marriage, because it now means it’s possible for him to divorce.  It also takes away the power that Nan has started to enjoy and been so good at as being a duchess. She’s no longer a Duchess. He’s no longer a Duke.

RELATED: ‘The Buccaneers’ Star Kristine Frøseth On Nan’s Relationship Status At The End Of Season 2’s Finale: “I Think She Makes The Right Choice”

While that’s an absolute shock, and it’s not at all what she was expecting, there’s a hint in her expression as she’s running away down that beach, that, although it’s sort of horrifying, there may be some relief in it that that actually she’s leaving that castle behind her, and maybe that isn’t the worst thing in the world. She’s saying goodbye to her friends, which is heartbreaking, but it has not been an easy season for Nan or for any of them, really, in terms of what they’ve navigated. I think she doesn’t know where she’s going. She just knows she has to get out, and that the castle is behind her for now.

DEADLINE: The finale almost has a Cinderella element to it with the clock striking midnight and Nan’s fairytale coming to an end.

JAKEWAYS: You’re right. We started Nan and Theo’s relationship with an episode, and it’s the third episode of the first series where it feels quite fairytale-like where she comes to Tintagel for the first time, and she sees what it might mean to live in this amazing castle on a cliff and wear these dresses and have this life. She’s beguiled by it and by him, and he seems great. It’s this Prince Charming fairytale life. You’re right that when we get to the end of Episode 8, it is the end of the dream. It’s the end of Nan and Theo’s relationship, certainly for now. It’s the end of him being a Duke. She’s no longer a Duchess, and she was going to stand up and she was going to own it, and she’d made this plan that she was going to say, ‘”‘m pregnant, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got this baby.” What that meant in her head was that she and Theo were going to be more of a unit, and she was going to be bound to him and bound to this baby.

DEADLINE: Was that parallel with Jinny’s (Imogen Waterhouse) story intentional? Another sister is running away when she is expecting a baby.

WILLIS: What we wanted was for Nan to have learned from Ginny’s experience. So yes, there is a mirroring of those experiences, but clearly Theo isn’t like Seadown. He’s not going to be murderously dangerous, but he is the Duke of Tintagel. He’s got enormous power. She is somebody who’s only got that voice and that power by association and by marriage, and having seen Jinny in real time, experience having her child taken away from her because that child doesn’t belong to her, [Nan] knows that the Dowager and Theo would want to bring that baby up at Tintagel. It would be groomed to be a future [Duke or] Duchess and she may not be part of that picture, particularly if he wants to spend all his time with Lizzy. They’re similar stories, but hopefully Nan’s understanding of that scenario has moved on and is informed by what happened to her sister

DEADLINE: And it’s for sure Theo’s baby?

JAKEWAYS: I think she’s pretty certain it’s Theo’s baby. The timing of it, [Guy] was away in Italy a long time, and the timing of it is that. Yeah, it’s the it’s the heir to Tintagel. Athough Guy has got history of bringing up other people’s babies, and he’s good at it. He’s a very nice man.

DEADLINE: Guy and Nan almost kissed and now it seems like they’ll be separated again. Is there any chance with the two of them getting together? Paloma (Grace Ambrose) is very likeable.

JAKEWAYS: We agree. She’s great, isn’t she? I think for Guy, what Paloma represents is an easy life. She’s good fun, she’s lovely, she’s beautiful, she’s got this very simple life with no complications. She’s the absolute opposite of Nan, who now has a baby, a husband, a castle, and all of the ramifications of that, with it being Theo and his best friend.

The scene between Nan and Paloma in in Episode 8 of the second serie is a great one because what Nan is seeing in Paloma is a younger version of herself or a less complicated alternative reality for her. When we first met Nan, she was the one climbing out of windows and being carefree and being able to run around with Guy Thwarte having a great time. She meets this girl who she really likes, and both of them in that moment when they’ve kind of had this vision of each other in their heads, that’s the first time that they speak and they go, “Oh, actually, I really like you. You’re great.”

For Nan, [there’s a] sadness of she could have been Paloma, she could have been climbing lighthouses with Guy Thwarte and had that life. The conflict for Nan, in Season 1 was all Guy versus Theo, and in Season 2, it’s the power and the influence and and the genuine enjoyment and pleasure she gets out of being a Duchess and the advantages of that versus her heart, knowing that Guy Thwarte is never gonna go away in terms of what she wants. Paloma represents the kind of third wheel of what Nan and guy’s life could have been like.

DEADLINE: So is Guy out of the picture?

JAKEWAYS: I think he’s always gonna be a picture for Nan. I don’t think that she’s ever gonna let him go. I think he’s the love of her life, and she’s the love of his life. Although Guy and  Paloma might have a lovely kind of life together, and I think that would be what Paloma would like in an ideal world, she’s not someone who’s gonna take second best, really. So I think she knows as well as he does and as well as we do, that his heart’s always gonna belong to Nan.

DEADLINE: Nan says that the girls were always meant to be the love story. The Buccaneers were such a close knit group, and this is such a big wedge for them. Can they repair this?

JAKEWAYS: The heart of our show is always and always will be the girls and their relationship and the sisterhood between those five women, so absolutely. Although they’ve had the most horrendous kind of fallouts and things happening to them — some of them their fault, some of them not at all their fault —over the course of Season 2, they will absolutely always have each other’s backs, and that will be their end game no matter what.

DEADLINE: Theo is heading into a second marriage with a secret that he should probably know about. Is his second marriage doomed as much as the first one?

JAKEWAYS: You’re right. Theo, here we go again. He’s not a man who likes being lied to. He loves very deeply. He does everything very, very passionately. He has really fallen for Lizzy. She has this secret. He doesn’t know about it. That’s obviously heartbreaking for him and heartbreaking for Lizzy. Because she would love for that to be straightforward, but she’s been left with this bombshell, and she knows she’s not going to be able to be honest with him. So yeah, we leave them in a in a bind, to say the least.

DEADLINE: Will The Buccaneers have to choose now between Team Lizzy or Team Nan now? Going forward, how can they keep the group together?

WILLIS: Good question. They’ll find a way, somehow. Whether Lizzy even talks about what she knows will be a question, and it feels like, in that sort of row they have at the end, they’re apologizing to each other at the same time as landing each other in this really difficult situation. Lizzy is saying, “I never wanted it to happen,” and Nan says to her, “We’re supposed to be the love story. It’s supposed to be us in the love story.”

It should, we hope, feel a little bit heartbreaking that they’re both acknowledging that, they’re not saying, “I hate you.” They’re saying “I’m sorry that this is where we found ourselves. This dilemma is not resolved, but I hope we find our way back to each other.” I think all the other girls would feel the same way.

The other girls could have responded in a much more, much meaner way to discovering that Lizzy had had a relationship with Theo, but their first instinct was to protect their friend because they’ve all suffered at the hands of the brutal public opinion, and they don’t want Lizzie to have to go through the same thing. They all go to that ball together. And Nan’s Jinny’s sister, she’d have every right to say, Lizzy, I’m really cross with you. But instead, having been pulled through the court of public opinion herself, she stands up and is counted. So it’s complicated, and they’re pulled apart, and they come together, but they do all care about each other deeply.

DEADLINE: We really want to know who will play Kit! EP Joe Innes said before Season 2 came out that it would be “someone handsome.” Any dream scenarios?

JAKEWAYS: Email us the answer.

WILLIS: Yes, tell us.

Nellie Andreeva contributed to this interview. It has been edited for length and clarity.

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