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‘The Buccaneers’ Has Forgotten the Best Part of the Show, and It’s Disappointing

August 9, 2025

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for The Buccaneers’ Season 2 finale.

“Because the love story should be us, the girls. We should be the love story, and that’s how it should’ve been.” Spoken by Kristine Froseth‘s Nan in the final five minutes of the last episode of The Buccaneers Season 2, this line evokes the character’s disappointment with the current mess that her life and, more specifically, one of her closest friendships have devolved into. After two seasons of suffering about whether she should be with her true love, Guy (Matthew Broome), or with Theo (Guy Remmers), Nan has found out that one of her best friends, Lizzy (Aubri Ibrag), is having an affair with her husband. This has led her down a spiral that has culminated in her running away to keep her unborn child safe from the grasp of the Dowager Duchess of Tintagel (Amelia Bullmore) and Theo stepping down from his position as duke in order to be able to divorce so that he can be with Lizzy. Needless to say, Nan is not particularly happy about it. Her line about how the girls should’ve been the love story speaks of her unease at the fact that her life, as well Lizzy’s, has become all about men.

However, the line also betrays something about how The Buccaneers itself has changed in its second season. The show that was once more focused on how these five girls — Nan, Lizzy, Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse), Conchita (Alisha Boe), and Mabel (Josie Totah) — could help each other navigate the trials and tribulations of love, marriage, and 19th-century England has now transformed into full romance. At its core, we no longer find the complicity and intimacy of this close-knit pack of American expats. Instead, Season 2 has been almost entirely devoted to love affairs, particularly love affairs involving Nan and Lizzy. Now, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a good romance story, but it does seem like the folks behind The Buccaneers have forgotten about the dynamics that actually make the show tick.

‘The Buccaneers’ Season 1 Was Devoted to Friendship More Than Anything

Image via Apple TV+

Of course, romance has always been an essential part of The Buccaneers. Still, the series, which has been hailed as the anti-Bridgerton, was much more about the difficulties of finding true love and living within the confines of married life in British aristocracy than about sugary love stories that inevitably end with a happily ever after. Conchita starts the show getting married to Richard (Josh Dylan), and her drama revolves much more around how to make his ridiculously uptight family accept her. Jinny’s plot, on the other hand, is all about how women can find themselves trapped in an abusive relationship almost without notice. The only character for whom romance was at the forefront was Nan, who was caught in a love triangle between Theo and Guy. In this scenario, The Buccaneers was much more about how the girls had each other’s backs than about who they would end up with.

If you doubt us, just think about the ending of Season 1 for a second. It’s a conclusion that feels earned and even somewhat happy, despite the fact that Nan finds herself forced to marry a man that she is not in love with. Nevertheless, the ending is satisfying because we see the girls coming together to help a pregnant Jinny escape her horrible husband. We see how much Nan is willing to sacrifice for her sister’s well-being. And this echoes all throughout Season 1. We are constantly shown how much the girls are willing to ignore their own pain in favor of their friends, whether we’re talking about Conchita forgiving Nan for not being there at Minnie’s birth or Lizzy willingly being in the same room as Seadown (Barney Fishwick) in order to keep an eye on Jinny.

Of course, there are moments of drama between the girls. There’s the aforementioned fight between Nan and Conchita, and there’s Jinny’s entire personality shift after her marriage to Seadown. These, however, are seen as anomalies, things that can be excused for one reason or another. Nan was suffering because she had just learned that Patti (Christina Hendricks) was not her birth mother, and Conchita is quick to forgive her upon learning about that. As for Jinny, her cruelty towards Conchita and Nan can be explained by the desire to please a manipulative husband, and the girls are also quick to come to her rescue when she needs it. The season is also full of scenes in which the five American women are seen chatting, playing, or even just sleeping in the same bed. The message is clear: not even a man like Seadown can stand between them.

‘The Buccaneers’ Season 2 Focuses Too Much on Nan and Lizzy’s Romances

But then Season 2 comes, and all of this seems to vanish into thin air. This season was extremely light on scenes of the girls just being friends, and while there was some show of solidarity when it came to protecting Jinny upon her return to England, most of the action ended up falling on Richard and Honoria’s (Mia Threapleton) shoulders. Following Richard’s tragic death, the series failed to show the girls coming together to comfort Conchita, instead reducing her entire grief journey to a single episode that wasn’t even entirely hers. Nan, in turn, attends her parents’ divorce trial completely alone. While we do get some lines about how these women are all still there for each other, this season was very much lacking when it came to showing it. Instead, it turned its attention to two much more dramatic, but uncharacteristic stories: Nan and Guy’s romance, and Lizzy’s affair with the Duke.

These are two stories that completely betray the premise of a series centered around female friendship. After all, in order to get to Guy, Nan is completely careless and exposes her sister — the very sister that she once married a man she didn’t even love just to protect. Meanwhile, Lizzy is placed in the position of betraying Nan’s trust by sleeping and eventually falling in love with her husband without even bothering to tell her, even though she knows very well that Nan’s affections lie elsewhere. Ultimately, what The Buccaneers Season 2 did was not only relegate the girls’ friendship to the background, but also center two stories that are completely antithetical to what it promised in Season 1.

And, so, Season 2 of The Buccaneers ends with Nan completely cut off from her friend group, keeping her pregnancy a secret from everyone but Lizzy — who found out about it by accident, we should add. As for Lizzy, Conchita, Mabel, and Jinny, they’re still together and even living under the same roof. However, in the season’s final episodes, Conchita, Mabel, and Jinny have been reduced to mere extras in Lizzy and Theo’s love story. And, again, we reiterate, there’s nothing wrong with a good dose of romance. However, we miss the days when The Buccaneers was also about a group of friends. When and if Season 3 drops, let’s hope the writers can remember that the show’s love story should also be about the girls.