Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of Apple TV+’s ‘The Buccaneers’ throws a curveball at its characters and the audience in its sixth episode, which ends with a massive shocker. It begins with Jinny’s return to London after Seadown kidnaps baby Freddie. While she and the girls try to find a way to get her story out in the open, Richard tries to find his brother so that he can put a stop to the whole debacle. His intentions are in the right place, but the way things turn out is not what anyone could have intended. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Richard’s Efforts to Save Jinny Lead to His Death
At the end of the sixth episode, ‘Every Single Piece of My Heart,’ Richard discovers that Seadown is hiding at their aunt’s place, which is also where they have been keeping Jinny and Freddie captive. He knows that his brother is not in the right state of mind, so he and Honoria decide to tread carefully. The plan is for Richard to keep his brother engaged, while his sister looks for Jinny and Freddie and gets them out of the house. While Honoria finds Freddie, she is unable to get Jinny out of a locked room. Jinny pleads with her to get her baby out at any cost, so Honoria leaves the house with the baby.
As expected, when Seadown realises what has happened, he loses his marbles completely. He lashes out while Richard tries to put some sense into him. Jinny’s cries for help lead him to break down the locked door, but by this time, his brother has found a gun and he threatens to shoot Jinny and Richard if they don’t give him Freddie back. While Jinny runs out of the house, Richard tussles with Seadown for the gun. At one point, Seadown points it at his own head, intent on killing himself now that he knows that his wife will never love him like he wants her to.
Shockingly, when the sound of a shot rings out and Jinny runs back to the house, it is Richard dead on the floor, not Seadown. It seems that he changed his mind about killing himself, and shot his brother instead. Or, Richard tried to get the gun from his brother’s hand but ended up getting shot himself. In any case, the bullet hits him in the chest, and he has already left his mortal coil before Jinny shows up at the door. Both Jinny and Seadown’s reactions show that the worst has happened and Richard is not coming back from this tragedy.
Josh Dylan’s Return to The Buccaneers is Highly Unlikely
‘The Buccaneers’ is based on the unfinished novel of the same name by Edith Wharton. In the book, Richard and Conchita go through some financial trouble, but they find a way out of it, much like what happens in the show. However, Richard does not die in the book, and he and Conchita go on to have a beautiful, fulfilling relationship, despite the challenges. The Apple TV+ show, however, changes that drastically by killing Richard, which is why perhaps his death comes off as so unexpected and shocking. Considering that ‘The Buccaneers’ is not the kind of show where people come back from the dead, it is fair to say that Richard is gone for good.
For actor Josh Dylan, who has appeared in ‘Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,’ ‘The End of the F***ing World’ and ‘Masters of the Air,’ playing Richard was challenging and fulfilling at the same time. He described the character as someone “caught so strongly between head and heart.” Calling Richard a “sensitive soul,” he said, “I imagine for a man like him, living in the 1870s, expressing yourself emotionally and going against the grain might’ve been difficult and possibly unusual. That’s something I enjoyed pondering and exploring.”
Bringing Richard’s story to such an abrupt end, just when it seemed that he and Conchita were finally becoming the power couple they were always meant to be, means that Dylan will be saying goodbye to ‘The Buccaneers.’ There is a way for him to return in the form of flashbacks about his and Conchita’s courtship before their wedding or as Conchita’s hallucination while she grieves for him. At the end of the day, however, she will have to find a way to move forward without him, for better or worse, and whatever part Richard needed to play in her life is done.
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