Outer Banks has been renewed for season 5, but with the season set to be the show’s last, there are a few storylines that need to be resolved and things that really should happen before the show ends. The series has taken treasure-hunting teenagers from the Carolinas to the Bahamas and Morocco and has been quite the adventure for four seasons already.
With those adventures, however, come plenty of character teases and plot threads that are still dangling for the audience. In order to have a satisfying final season, there are a lot of things that fans – myself included – would like to see resolved before the final credits roll on the last episode. Though Netflix is considering a spinoff from Outer Banks, the show still needs to give the original characters the send-off they deserve.
Justice For JJ
JJ’s Death Is Too Significant To Ignore
Groff needs to face some sort of justice for all of the events he set in motion during season 4.
For a teen adventure series, Outer Banks has had no shortage of death. Some of those deaths belong to characters the audience did not get to know as a jumping off point for a mystery. Others, however, have been significant plot points, like the deaths of Sheriff Peterkin, Big John, Terrance, and Ward. They were all killed due to complications that arose during treasure hunts. JJ’s death, however, is the most significant for the show.
That’s not just because the audience spent four seasons getting to know JJ. It’s also not just because JJ is one of the Pogues at the center of the story. It’s because of how particularly brutal his death is. JJ has spent all of his life feeling like he didn’t fit, being pushed around by Luke, and trying to do right by the people he cares about. As soon as he finds out who his biological parents are, his father betrays him and then murders him all over some treasure. Jonathan Groff becomes the show’s worst dad.
The same man who murdered JJ is responsible for setting the Pogues on the search for the Blue Crown in the first place. Groff needs to face some sort of justice for all of the events he set in motion during season 4. While some fans have theorized that the Blue Crown, which is rumored to great the person who finds it their greatest wish, will be used to push the show into supernatural territory and bring JJ back to life, that seems unlikely for a show that, for all of its outlandish adventures, has still been grounded in reality.
Squaring Away The Mom Mysteries
John B And Sarah’s Moms Are Still MIA
Season 4 provided us with answers about one of the missing mothers in the series. While Kiara’s and Pope’s parents are very present in their lives, the others have not been, at least when it comes to the mothers of the show. JJ got answers about what happened to his mother in season 4 and found out that finding the truth about his parentage was not all it was cracked up to be. Sarah’s mother, however, has never been mentioned, and John B only mentions that it’s been him and his dad since he can remember.
That begs the question of whether either of their mothers are important to their backstories. After all, much of Kie’s conflicts with her parents stem from the fact that her mother fell for a Pogue. All of the character’s fathers have played significant roles in their storylines, from JJ being abused by both of them, John B learning to search for treasure from his, Sarah losing hers to his greed, Kie’s threatening her relationship with the Pogues, and Pope’s trying to set him on the path to a bright future.
It’s interesting that fathers play such a large role in the series, but for the most part, mothers are ignored. Season 4 hints that questions about JJ’s mother have been bothering him for a long time, so it makes me wonder if we will finally get to learn about John B and Sarah’s mothers in the final season of the show.
Pope’s Future Gets Settled
Pope’s Freedom Is On The Line
At the start of Outer Banks, Pope had the most promising academic future of any of the Pogues. He is clearly the most intelligent of the group and the one with the most common sense at any given moment. As the show has gone on, however, he has become more of a risk-taker and his loyalty to his friends has won out time and time again over his common sense. He would put his life on the line for the Pogues, and that has jeopardized his future pretty heavily.
Not only did he miss a significant portion of school from getting stranded on an island in season 3, but he also broke the law in season 4 and skipped out on his chance to avoid jail time by joining the military. It’s not entirely surprising that Pope would make those choices since, despite his love for the structure of academia and his love of learning, Pope does not appreciate it when others attempt to box him in. He does not want to be forced down a specific path.
The problem is that Pope is very likely going to be boxed into a corner. He might not have a choice but to end up serving jail time for the crimes that are piling up. It’s unfortunate that he seems to be the only member of the group who will face repercussions for the things they have all done though.
It would be nice for the final season of the show to give Pope some way out of his predicament, like studying a subject in a country that will not extradite him to the United States, for example, but that seems like too easy of a path for him. Pope is someone who has always taken responsibility for his actions, and even though the consequences might be unfair, the audience needs to see how Pope’s future shakes out.
Resolution For Rafe
Will He Be Punished For His Crimes?
If Pope’s future has to be settled, so does Rafe. Rafe always seems to just squeak by and not pay for any of his bad deeds. Season 4 of Outer Banks appears to have started him on some sort of redemption arc. Rafe realizes that the only family he has a relationship with is Sarah, and he wants to make up for the hurt he has caused her. He also, of course, wants revenge on Groff for taking his money, so teaming up with the Pogues ends up being a win-win for him.
Rafe, however, is a budding serial killer. He has very little impulse control and his first impulse always seems to be to kill someone when something does not work out for him. He killed Peterkin in the first season, tried to kill Sarah multiple times, and is now bent on killing Groff. While the audience will easily forgive him if he manages to get to Groff, that does not discount his past behavior. He is a loose canon that is always one spark away from going off. The show has to find a way to deal with that.
Either Rafe manages to channel his impulses to become more like his father and hide them away, or he pays for his crimes, or he goes out in a blaze of glory saving his sister. There are very few paths forward for Rafe that would be satisfying for the audience as a whole. As great as it would be to see him redeemed, it’s hard to imagine all of the work the show will have to do to get him there in just one more season.
Kiara Forming A Truce With Her Parents
The Carreras Have Horrible Communication
The Pogues all have contentious relationships with their parental figures at best. Pope has had the best relationship with his parents, and even that is in jeopardy after him making a run for it in season 4. Kiara, however, has had the worst relationship with parents that are not directly involved in the treasure hunt in the last two seasons of the show – especially since it seems like she had a great relationship with them before the events of the series began.
The biggest issue for the Carrera family is that they do a very poor job of communicating with one another. Kie’s parents want the best for her, but they try to enforce it by giving her ultimatums and never listening to her point of view. For her part, Kie prefers to scream at them or run away instead of trying to calmly get her point across, so both parties are in the wrong. Their lack of communication led to Kie getting shipped off to a camp meant to “straighten her out” before JJ came and got her in season 3.
There’s a brief moment in which it seems like Kie and her parents have figured things out since they attend the award ceremony at the end of season 3, but Kie spends no time with them in season 4, preferring to be with the Pogues. She is 19 as of season 4, and an adult, but her whole world is also rapidly falling apart since the Pogues have lost their business and their home thanks to fraudulent business practices by some of the Kooks, and now, she has lost JJ while in Morocco.
Kie needs to finally be in a good place with her parents, even if it’s just to get comfort from them at the loss of her boyfriend when she comes home, or to have a place to stay while she rebuilds her life. She needs someone in her life who can be a safe place instead of causing treasure-hunting chaos.
A Return To The Outer Banks
The Show Is At Its Best In The Carolinas
Since season 2, Outer Banks has been taking us far from the location it is named for on new adventures. It makes sense that searching for treasure that was carted across the ocean by pirates would involve some globe-trotting, but Outer Banks is at its best when it is actually in Outer Banks.
The best part of the first season of the show is that the treasure the Pogues were searching for took them all over their own backyard. The series could have easily used more lore specific to the Carolinas and the pirates who made their homes there, but it chose to expand the scope of the show. It’s time to return to the Outer Banks. Not all of the characters have to choose to remain there in the end of the series, but the show cannot end on the other side of the world. There needs to be closure for these characters in their homes and with the people in their hometown.
The Show Is Ultimately Their Story
A deal-breaker for the show… would be losing John B and Sarah.
It seems very unlikely that every Outer Banks main character is going to get a happy ending tied up with a bow. It’s very hard for writers to do that when they have such a large ensemble cast in a show, and it’s even harder to do that when the show is built on such high-stakes adventures like Outer Banks is. The series already lost JJ in season 4, and it’s entirely likely more characters will be lost before season 5 ends. A deal-breaker for the show, however, would be losing John B and Sarah.
John B starts the entire story. He is originally the point-of-view character for the show. He is the narrator and this is his adventure. Yes, the point of view has expanded to include the rest of the Pogues in scenes he is not a part of, but it is still his story. Only Sarah has shared narration duties with him so far. The show’s adventures stem from his relationships with his friends, his love for Sarah, and the interest in lost treasures that he shares with his father.
To not give John B and Sarah their happy ending, especially after Sarah discovers she is pregnant, and the two want to get married in season 4, would be a travesty. Outer Banks is not a romantic comedy, but it is also not a tragedy, and to not give these two a happy ending after they’ve gone through so much – losing their fathers, losing friends, almost being killed multiple times, losing the Merchant gold – just would not work.
