‘Black Sails’ Season 3 trailer is a head-crusher

“Black Sails” returns in 2016 with Blackbeard sailing into the fray over the lost pirate homeland of Nassau.

Starz on Thursday released the Season 3 trailer introducing Ray Stevenson as the iconic pirate. Blackbeard is shown fighting Captain Flint (Toby Stephens) and standing side-by-side with Captain Charles Vane (Zach McGowan). But that doesn’t necessarily explain his allegiances; my guess is Blackbeard will be all for Blackbeard.

The bigger surprise in the trailer is the state of John Silver (Luke Arnold). Last season, he lost his leg, bringing him a step closer to becoming the legendary Long John Silver.

Toby Stephens appears as Captain Flint in the Season 3 key art for Starz’s “Black Sails.”

Ray Stevenson as the pirate Blackbeard in Season 3 of Starz’s “Black Sails.”

Luke Arnold as John Silver in Season 3 of Starz’s “Black Sails.”

Silver appears to have done some heavy workouts while recuperating. At the end of the clip, we see a beefier version of the quartermaster walking ominously into a bar.

“I come on behalf of Captain Flint,” he says before crushing a man’s head with his peg-leg.

Here’s the tease Starz shared about the upcoming third season:

In the wake of the burning of Charles Town, all the New World lives in fear of Captain Flint. But when his campaign of terror crosses over into madness, it falls to John Silver to locate the man within the monster before it’s too late. Meanwhile, with Eleanor Guthrie in prison, Jack Rackham oversees a new Nassau, hoping to secure his legacy as a king among thieves. All will be tested when a new threat arrives, one the pirates could never have anticipated. It knows them. It understands them. And in the blink of an eye, it will turn them against each other.

What is the new threat? Blackbeard? Flint’s madness? That damned Urca gold? Or British colonialism?

The 10-episode third season arrives on Starz in 2016. Other returning cast members include Hannah New as Eleanor Guthrie, Jessica Parker Kennedy as Max, Tom Hopper as Billy Bones, Toby Schmitz as Jack Rackham and Clara Paget as Anne Bonny.

Based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic “Treasure Island,” the series begins filming its fourth season this fall in South Africa.

It’s created by Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine and executive produced by Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes partners Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, as well as Chris Symes and Dan Shotz.