The cancellation of Our Flag Means Death came as a surprise, not just to the fans and the press but apparently to the cast and crew, many of whom took to Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter to express not only their sorrow but also their love for the show, its fandom, and each other. As the days shifted, however, the fans seemed unwilling to let the show go, and launched a renewal campaign via social media, asking Max to reconsider the decision. The press lamented the loss of the show. Others expressed surprise that a show that had been featured on Max’s homepage and list barely a few days before the announcement, and that had been touted as Max’s premiere flagship series based both on viewer engagement and critical reaction, had been so suddenly canned.

Now, the renewal petition has amassed nearly 75,000 signatures (and growing). The campaign has posted a billboard in Times Square, and started phone-calling and letter-writing campaigns to streamers, advocating that the show be picked up—all modeled after Stede Bonnet’s brand as a “polite menace.” Creator and showrunner David Jenkins and the cast and crew have posted their love for the fandom and about the campaign via their socials.

Shows have had renewal campaigns before, with varied success—Brooklyn-99 and Lucifer among the most notable successes. But this campaign has been remarkable in both its intensity and how it has brought renewed scrutiny on streamers, especially Max, and especially about queer and BIPOC shows and films that have been tossed overboard. Following the cancellation of Our Flag Means Death, Max canceled Rap Sh!t, a Black-woman fronted comedy produced by Issa Rae that had received nods from Gotham Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards. In some of their advertisements, Max has publicized shows that have already been canceled—including Doom Patrol, Rap Sh!t, and Our Flag Means Death—to get people to subscribe to its service. The apparent popular and critical success of Our Flag Means Death once more questions whether any show is safe from being canned, and why viewers would care to invest themselves in stories that streamers will refuse to complete.

But why all the excitement over what looks, on the surface, like just a silly gay pirate comedy—and certainly Our Flag Means Death is not the only queer show in existence? Our Flag Means Death relies on not just the subversion but the total overthrow of genre tropes in the treatment of queer and BIPOC characters. Few characters are heterosexual (Taika Waititi recently referred to the show as a game of “spot the hetero”)—most are queer, and the gender and sexuality spectrum runs from one side to the other. And while there is definitely violence and suffering, the emphasis is continuously on the search for joy and the power of kindness, even against overwhelming odds. Love, in all its forms, is the central theme, and the resistance to toxic masculinity, misogyny, homophobia, colonialism, and racism all circle around the power of love and kindness.

The central romance on which both seasons rely is between two men and the connections between their acceptance of each other and their own identities that touch directly on not just the more standard cis-male coming-out narrative but also trans narratives. Much of the cast is BIPOC, including one of the leads, and a number of episodes center around the mocking of racists and colonialists (one of the only guarantees of a violent death on this show is being racist or homophobic).

Queerness within the show is about an attempt to find joy, and the typical narratives of queer trauma do not apply, even as the show doesn’t deny that trauma is a part of their lives. Stede and Ed fall in love, reunite, have sex, and end the second season intent on building a home together. The final episode of Season 2 features a matelogue wedding between Lucius and Black Pete, and teases the possibility of Ed and Stede following suit. Olu, Jim, and Archie enter into an increasingly complicated polycule that will include the Pirate Queen herself, Zheng Yi Sao. Izzy Hands, the character with the most complicated and difficult relationship to his own masculinity in the show, is able to shed his shame, put on drag, and sing “La Vie en Rose.” An entire episode is dedicated to “Calypso’s Birthday” as the pirates throw a Pride party.

One of the features of the Hays Code was suppression of queerness under the heading of “inference of sex perversion.” While some films circumvented this, introducing subtextual layers and quietly implying the existence of queer characters, a huge swath of American culture worked to actively suppress even the depiction of queer people existing. The Code was not government imposed; it was something that Hollywood studios accepted in order to, in their view, hold on to audiences. Even post-Code, many queer narratives were rewritten or sanitized (Tennessee Williams adaptations), subsumed under subtext, or explicitly tragic (The Children’s Hour). Queer filmmaking and queer narrative was underground for years, and often still is, because it had to be. Representation like that in Our Flag Means Death, Good Omens, Gentleman Jack, and other shows like them would have been impossible in the past, and there is every danger that it will again be made impossible in the future. Depicting queer existence in mainstream media, never mind queer joy, remains a subversive, riotous act.

What many fans have expressed is the way in which Our Flag Means Death relies on love and queer joy—it’s a comedy, first and foremost, and explicitly avoids the pitfalls of both baiting and trauma-porn that so characterize far too many queer narratives, without entirely ignoring the dangerous and toxic reality that the characters inhabit.

The sorrow and subsequent anger at its cancellation comes from a community that has too often been told to accept crumbs of representation in mainstream media, to watch queer characters suffer and die to further the straight leads’ arcs, and to only see queerness in subtext. For Max to so summarily end a show that squashed those negative expectations and gave us instead a story of love and joy is a slap in the face to a community tired of being slapped. Queer people are once again being asked to sit down politely and accept what they are given, not what they want. Unsurprisingly, the response to this has been a resounding “fuck you.”

But it is not only the queer community who have seen representation in Our Flag Means Death, because this is far from “just another queer show.” The humor, the romance, the critique of toxic masculinity, the pirate adventures themselves appeal across the gender and sexuality spectrum. It is a show that claims no one identity or sexuality to be the default, embracing instead the humor, the sorrow, and the joy of being human.

Any other streamer would be lucky to absorb the impassioned fanbase and broad, international viewership, and perhaps there’s hope still for Our Flag Means Death to get its next act and give its queer characters the story they deserve. But the response to the cancellation, and the very loud call for its continuation, says that art does indeed matter, TV shows matter, and representation matters. In the midst of sorrow, joy matters.

And joy is worth fighting for.