Nan St. George is a menace. A terror. And honestly, a terrible friend. Almost all of her problems are of her own making — sure, the Dowager Duchess of Tintagel has some part in it, but mostly it’s all Nan, all the time — and yet she is so frustratingly blind to that fact. Many of her problems could be fixed with a conversation or two, or confiding in anyone, but she refuses to do so over and over. For a series with a foundation built on the power of strong female friendships, the main reason The Buccaneers ever worked in the first place, there was so little of that throughout season two, most notably in Nan’s arc, and the show really suffered for it. Sure, her actions in this finale episode are meant to be colored by the big reveal that she’s pregnant with Theo’s baby and terrified, but as much as she runs around yelling about “My baby!” (too much some might say), it never excuses how awful she is to everyone, especially those who could help her. Oh, Nan. We were rooting for you. We were all rooting for you.

As you may recall, at the end of the previous episode, Nan discovered two alarming things: Lizzy had been sleeping with Theo, and Guy is married to Paloma. No one at this point, including the audience, knows that Nan is pregnant, but this double whammy sends her into a rage. We find her two weeks later still refusing to speak to Guy, attempting to evade even speaking to him by horseback. Like, can you even imagine? This man just wants to have a conversation, mostly to apologize, and rather than talking to the man she supposedly loves, she gallops away. I guess ghosting wasn’t a thing back then, but horsing sure was. When Guy screams at her to let him explain and to remind her that she was the one who told him to move on when she left him again in a pretty permanent way, she yells back that she meant he “should get a hobby.” Nan is such a dick, there is no convincing me otherwise. Listen, getting drunk married is dramatic, but was he never supposed to interact with women ever again lest she decide again to walk away from Tintagel? Get over yourself, Nan.

She can’t. Following her brisk horseback ride, Nan, for the first time in fourteen days, sits down to breakfast with Theo and promptly accuses him of wanting to make her disappear and get rid of her the moment he brings up living separately now that Jinny is back. It’s frustrating to side with Theo here since he is an absolute weenie, but he’s right: Living separately was Nan’s idea! Throughout this entire episode, it’s as if Nan is attempting to paint Theo as some villain, but the joke’s on her; Nan is the villain in their story. She’s the one who cheated and lied and ran off and then came back with demands. It seems to stand that Theo, with all that Duke Power Nan loves to talk about, could’ve punished his wife; he could’ve been an absolute monster, but he never is.

This Twisting the Truth bender Nan is on continues when Lizzy races to Tintagel for her first face-to-face with her friend after the affair with Theo is exposed. Speaking of villain behavior, Nan sends out her invitations for the traditional masquerade to mark the end of the social season hosted by the Duchess, and includes that pesky little earring in Lizzy’s envelope. Immediately, Nan tries to spin the facts. Lizzy has betrayed her. Lizzy encouraged her to go to Italy to get Theo alone. Lizzy chose Theo over Nan. Yes, there is a level of betrayal to the girl code there, but the facts lean squarely to Lizzy’s side of this drama. Nan said she was in love with Guy; it was always Guy. It was Nan’s idea to run off to Italy. And let us not forget that Guy isn’t just some rando — he was Theo’s best friend. Nan has no room to shame her friend, who does genuinely seem sorry for hurting her friend.

Thankfully, it seems Lizzy is sick of Nan, too. She reminds her how her friends have stood by her through all of her questionable choices. Nan, going full monster here, doesn’t care for the truth. Instead, she tells Lizzy and Theo that she is going to expose the affair unless Theo lets her stay at Tintagel as his wife. She tells him she has realized this life gives her a voice and other benefits, and she isn’t letting them go now. Theo, like Lizzy, grows a backbone and lets Nan have it, reminding her that she was the one who broke his heart, that she robbed him of his freedom to find real love, and now, the final touch: blackmail.

The very next day, the newspapers all have headlines about an affair between the Duke of Tintagel and someone in the Duchess’s close circle of friends. Lizzy is never named, but even Lizzy knows she is the most likely suspect. She will be ruined once people piece this together.

Since, by this point, Nan’s actions seem irredeemable, this is when the big pregnancy news gets revealed. Nan partakes in the time-honored tradition of having a bathtub cry, and then she summons her mother to meet her in the Tintagel mausoleum for a chat. Nan can’t trust anyone in the castle, you see! She tells her mother that she’s pregnant, yes, it is Theo’s baby, and she is scared. She is scared that because Theo is in love with Lizzy, he’ll want Nan gone, and these two people who haven’t really ever acted like complete ghouls will take her baby from her. Later, she’ll say the same about Blanche, which also just reeks of paranoia rather than precedent. Patti, of course, wants to protect her daughter. She wants to ease her fears. Instead of maybe encouraging her to talk to Theo or even Lizzy about it, she comes up with a plan that, honestly, is pretty good: If Nan announces she is pregnant with the heir of Tintagel, there’s no way they can cut her out. The Duchess’s Masquerade is the perfect opportunity. And so they prepare for Nan to make her big announcement at midnight during the ball.

While Nan and Patti are coming up with their plan, a couple of interesting moves are made in light of the affair being exposed in the papers. Theo runs off to see his mom, who is living full-time with Reede, and it looks good on her. They have a mysterious conversation that seems perhaps to crush Blanche’s spirits. Over in London, Hector arrives to see Lizzy. He was shocked to read about the affair — sure, my guy — but admits it did help make sense of her calling off the wedding. He still loves her, he says, and he wants to protect her. If they were to get married, the rumors, the threat of ruin, would all go away.

If you haven’t yet realized that it was Hector who planted the story about the affair to the papers in order to manipulate Lizzy into marrying him, Reede figures it out the moment he catches his son chatting up Lizzy at the masquerade. He doesn’t out his son, but boy does he shame him. Reede is simply too good for everyone on this show, and he’s definitely going to suffer for it.

The midnight hour is upon us at the ball, and everyone is instructed to remove their masks for, I guess, dramatic effect. Nan makes her way to the front of the room to make her announcement, but she is interrupted by Theo before she can say anything. Turns out, he, too, has a plan. He is abdicating his title as Duke of Tintagel. He loses the title, the castle, and everything that comes with those perks, but he gets to divorce. He announces that the papers are correct, he and the Duchess have been living a lie, he is in love with someone else, and he wants to give her a whole love and a whole life. Nan had asked him if love was more important than Tintagel, thinking she had called his bluff, but she got it very, very wrong.

Nan, now no longer a duchess, bolts out of the room. It’s Lizzy who follows her, only to be met with more cruelty. “Oh, you got what you wanted,” Nan spits at her friend. Lizzy is taken aback for several reasons, but mostly because, once again, this seems exactly like what Nan wanted all along. This is the moment Nan starts yelling about “My baby!” in a way that is permanently seared into my brain. Now that Nan is no longer tied to Tintagel, she is going to make a run for it. She believes that once Blanche finds out there is an heir, she’ll stop at nothing to rip the child away from Nan. Again, Blanche has been misguided, but she isn’t evil. My sister, please take a breath. Nan also tells Lizzy that if she tells Theo the truth, Lizzy will lose him. “This is his child, too,” Lizzy responds, the only person with a functioning brain in this conversation. Nan doesn’t care. She wishes her friend good luck with this new life and “good luck lying to Theo,” which is such an insanely cruel thing to say after Nan is the one who is forcing her to lie to Theo. What the actual fuck, Nan?

Nan runs off into the night. Now she is free, she says. Free to do what, I wonder, since she has been so awful to everyone who cares about her.

The Society Pages

• If The Buccaneers gets a season three, the drama over Tintagel is, apparently, just getting started. Blanche confesses to Reede that Theo’s abdication means she is free of Tintagel as well. Surprise! Theo’s father had a secret son with another woman, and while Blanche tried to hide it all from her own son, she felt she had no choice but to inform Theo’s secret brother Kit that Tintagel is now his. Reede’s reaction to the news is basically, Oh no, Kit is a horror show, which honestly could be fun!

• Theo’s abdication and the new duke also slow down Reede and Blanche’s plans to share a full and happy life together. She will have to guide Kit, she says, though who is forcing her, no one will ever know. She doesn’t dump sweet Reede, but this development isn’t a great sign.

• Oh, okay, I love this new business venture hatched by Conchita, who can’t get clients now that word is out that her husband’s family is psychotic, and Mabel, who realizes there is a whole LGBTQ+ community out there in high-society England that could probably use some matchmaking help. If nothing else, it’ll rescue Mabel from having little to absolutely nothing to do throughout season two.

• Paloma has the annulment papers to end her marriage to Guy but is lying about it! She might be just a little bit in love with him, regardless of the fact that he repeatedly talks about how in love he is with Nan. Paloma, you deserve better than this, friend. Someone tell her!

 Nan’s penchant for being a horrible partner, friend, and all-around person blows up in her face, sending her fleeing into the night.