I feel like the reason Izzy’s death felt unsatisfying to me, is that the first season and this one had a consistent logic of how character injury worked. If it’s was for whatever villain the pirates fought, they died and that’s that, but if it was anyone on the crew, the injury could always be fixed in some way, and the crew would get to stay together. I don’t need real world logic in my piracy show, I just need the show’s logic to be consistent. This was such an abrupt departure from the rest of the show.
I know they were foreshadowing it the whole season, but I really thought they saw what a lazy trope killing off the just redeemed character is. I thought they would put a fun spin on it, makes some jokes or maybe do a fake out death, anything except actually killing someone on the crew. It was jarring and entirely unnecessary.
I was honestly hoping for Izzy to take over as captain, completing his arch of being accepted by the crew and finding out who he is without Blackbeard. But noooo, he had to die to be symbolic of Blackbeard dying so Ed could let go (which is dumb bc Ed had already done that without Izzy dying)