[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Buccaneers Season 2, Episode 6, “Every Single Piece of My Heart.”]
The Buccaneers takes a dark turn in its latest episode, “Every Single Piece of My Heart,” which sees Richard (Josh Dylan) and his sister Honoria (Mia Threapleton) set off to save Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse) and baby Freddie from the clutches of her vengeful husband James (Barney Fishwick).
While the episode’s beginning sees Jinny return to London after her brief escape, running away to safety in Italy with her sister Nan’s (Kristine Frøseth) true love, Guy (Matthew Broome), it also finds her in close proximity to James, who stole their child in a ploy to trap her. Initially, upon Jinny’s return, she maintains a low profile, speaking directly to a reporter who is summoned to speak with her at Richard and Conchita’s (Alisha Boe) home.
Jinny relays that she ran away because she was abused and only did so to protect her unborn baby at the time, and now she’s concerned for little Freddie’s safety after he went missing. By having the chance to tell her story, Jinny has more power than she’s had in some time. “We haven’t really seen that for a while,” Waterhouse tells TV Insider, adding that at the time, Jinny “isn’t falling for [James’s] tricks anymore… She knows what she wants, and she’s gonna protect her baby.”
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Sadly, that brief power only lasts so long after she’s tricked into confronting James at the opera, and he feigns fear, painting her as unstable. Jinny is subsequently institutionalized, leaving Nan to try all she can to get her out. One day, when Nan tries to get Jinny and bring her home, she finds that she’s already been released into the supervision of James.
Eventually, James’ mother reveals to Richard and Honoria that their brother has holed up at their aunt’s estate, and the siblings set off to try to rescue baby Freddie and Jinny. While Richard distracts James in the living room, Honoria manages to free baby Freddie, and Jinny, who is locked behind a door, advises her to take the baby and run without her.
Honoria gets away in a carriage, and at this point, James has caught on to the situation, leading the brothers to fight and Richard to set off in search of Jinny. When he knocks the door down, he advises Jinny to run, but James is waiting at the bottom of the stairs with a gun. A back-and-forth fight allows Jinny to slip past them.
Realizing he’s lost everything, James exchanges some upsetting words with Richard before turning the gun on himself, but as Richard pleads with him to reconsider, viewers are left wondering who was shot when gunfire rings and Jinny overhears it from the estate’s fields. Unfortunately, for the kind-hearted Richard, he’s the unlucky one in this scenario as James ends up pulling the trigger on him instead.
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“I really enjoyed filming that bit,” Dylan tells TV Insider, despite it meaning his character Richard’s demise. The actor particularly enjoyed the moments between the Brightlingsea siblings. “We didn’t get that many scenes as siblings… It’s sort of very dramatic, but we had moments of stillness, just the three of us in the room, which I don’t think we’ve ever really had,” Dylan adds of bringing the scene together. “It made our scenes in the lead-up mean more.”
As for whether James feels any resulting guilt for his actions, Fishwick says, “I think he does feel guilty…. He’s always spinning a master plan, but actually, it’s just moment to moment… The decision to kill Richard is a totally momentary thing; he loses control, which is ironic ’cause he’s just so obsessed with being in control.”
Meanwhile, viewers get a taste of Conchita’s grief as realization sets in when Jinny returns to her and Richard’s home alone. Going forward, fans will continue to see Conchita’s journey as she grapples with Richard’s loss. “It’s nice when you have more to explore,” Boe says of expanding her character’s story with this fateful event. “It’s really unexpected in this show because [the] tone is light, generally. So it was unexpected that we were going to explore grief and show how Conchita moves through it.”
To see what else the cast has to say about Richard’s death, watch the full video interview above, and stay tuned to see how Conchita continues to deal with Richard’s loss and the impact of his death as Season 2 continues to play out. And let us know what you thought of Richard’s death in the comments section below.
The Buccaneers, Season 2, New Episodes, Wednesdays, Apple TV+