- “"What would you...hm? What would any of you be willing to do, hm? Would you sail to the ends of the Eart' and beyond, to fetch back witty Jack and him precious Pearl?"”
- ―her enticing the crew of the Black Pearl to rescue Jack.
Tia Dalma is a ovaraching protagonist in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series.
She first appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. She is a soothsayer and Caribbean priestess who is the mortal guise of the sea goddess Calypso.
Background[]
Calypso was a sea goddess and the lover of Davy Jones. Calypso was as harsh and untamable as the sea itself but nevertheless fell deeply in love with Davy Jones. She asked him to carry out the duty of ferrying souls drowned at sea to the afterlife, giving him use of the Flying Dutchman to visit the dimension between worlds that came to be known as Davy Jones' Locker. As a reward for carrying out a decade of service, Davy would be reunited with Calypso for a single day, and if she was faithful, he could come and go on land or sea forevermore afterward.
Davy remained true to his word and spent the next ten years faithfully carrying out his duty. Calypso did not wait for him when he returned to the land of the living, however, as her very nature would not allow her to wait. Heartbroken and enraged, a vengeful Davy Jones made a deal with the first Brethren Court to imprison Calypso in human form. Led by the original Pirate King, the Pirate Lords' nine pieces of eight were used to bind Calypso into the body of Tia Dalma, and only with all nine pieces could she ever be released. With Calypso's fiery and unpredictable nature bond, the Brethren Court deemed the seas safe to travel as they were so pleased.
Afterward, Dave Jones returned to the world of the living and left the dead to wander aimlessly in the Locker. However, Davy's grief at Caylpso's abandonment of him, and guilt at the part he played in her imprisonment became so great that he carved out his own heart and locked it in the Dead Man's Chest. For abandoning his duty, Davy was slowly transformed into an amalgamation of human and tentacled sea creature to reflect the man inside, and his crew suffered similar disfigurements.
Personality[]
Tia Dalma's personality is flirty and playful (according to the legend, Calypso was something of a seductress), and she enjoys speaking in riddles. She speaks with a thick West Indian accent, and all her "th"s come out as "d"s. Her language is Jamaican Patois, so she often uses grammatically strange phrases, such as "him carve out him heart."
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- In Dead Man's Chest, Tia Dalma mentioned that Jack bought his magic compass from her. Although in Dead Man Tell No Tales, Jack received the compass from Captain Morgan on the Wicked Wench.
- When Tia Dalma mentions it was "a woman" to cause Davy Jones' downfall, she visibly gestures at herself: a subtle clue to the fact she's indeed the woman she's talking about.