‘Outer Banks’ Stars Chase Stokes, Drew Starkey and More Unpack Season 4’s Explosive Part 1 Ending
[This story includes major spoilers from Outer Banks season four, part one.]
Outer Banks never fails to deliver shocker after shocker for its main characters and Part One of season four was no different.
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The final moments of episode five, “Albatross,” delivered blows to Rudy Pankow’s JJ, Jonathan Daviss’ Pope, Madelyn Cline’s Sarah, Chase Stokes’ John B and the rest of the crew in one form or another.
Part one kicked off with a recap of what the Pogues were up to in the 18 months between returning from their City of El Dorado discovery in season three to when Wes Genrette (David Jensen) approaches them with Blackbeard’s captain log, potentially setting them up for a new treasure hunt.
Over the course of the Part One episodes, the Pogues set up a bait-and-tackle shop, with a charter business for tourists, as well as diving and surf lessons. But the money they got from the gold they brought back from El Dorado only lasted them so long — thanks, in part, to JJ putting most of it into an auction to buy back his family’s home.
And that’s only the first of many times during which JJ’s impulsivity put him and his friends in a precarious position. Another came in the form of a dirt bike race against the Kooks that put them out of their final savings from their gold earnings.
“I think he blames a lot of things on himself, which I think is actually partially true,” Pankow tells The Hollywood Reporter of why JJ hasn’t seemed to learn his lesson when it comes to acting without thinking. “There’s a lot of things that are his fault. Now, does he cope with that correctly? No, he does not cope, and he tries to correct it, and I think he overcorrects it.”
Despite his poor decisions at times, Madison Bailey’s Kiara never fails to be on his side as his now-girlfriend and best friend.
“She sees him in a way that maybe he doesn’t even realize that she sees him. I think he’s still maybe a little like, walls built up, and Kiara is just like, ‘You don’t have walls for me,'” she tells THR. “I just think she has a soft spot for him. I think she understands what he’s been through and doesn’t hold it against him, because it would be unfair to hold it against him. I think she just, at the end of the day, really loves him.”
Meanwhile, John B and Pope are trying to get to the bottom of another mystery, when it comes to Blackbeard’s mysterious Blue Crown, one of the hidden treasures of the British pirate. But nothing can ever be easy for the Outer Banks crew.
They’re not the only ones looking for the treasure — because, of course, they’re not.
Early in Part One, the Pogues got a visit from an ominous figure, who fans later came to know as Lightner (Rigo Sanchez), a mercenary also looking for Blackbeard’s treasure. The friends have several run-ins with him, one of which almost got Kiara and JJ killed, and later, Cleo as well.
Episode five then saw most of the group head to Charleston in hopes of finding Blackbeard’s treasure. Lightner and his mysterious boss, Dalia (Pollyanna McIntosh), get to the map inside a crypt below an old church before the Pogues do. Lightner and Dalia escape, unknowingly leaving Pope and Sarah to drown in the crypt as it begins to fill up due to rainfall.
Before the mercenaries get away, John B has a shot at Lightner, but is stopped in his tracks when he has a flashback to when Big John (Charles Halford) shot some of Singh’s (Andy McQueen) men in season three right in front of his son.
“He’s seen his father pull the trigger or do the worst-case scenario,” Stokes tells THR of why his character is unable to go through with it. “So, I think John B has a moment of true humanity and acknowledgment of the path that he started to go down. And I think this whole first part is really about him going from being really hesitant to get into it to then the commitment, and then realizing that maybe he is turning into the person he told himself he would never be, which is a version of his father.”
In the crypt, things are looking grim for Pope and Sarah, who are trapped below ground with seemingly no way out. Daviss and Cline recall filming the scene and having similar reactions to it as their characters did — Pope was calm, cool and collected for the most part, while Sarah was freaking out.
“It played exactly how it looks. Maddie was in there. She was not happy. The water, even when you land inside, it’s like dripping, so it’s freezing cold,” the Do Revenge actor says. “It was fun to do because it really felt like I was filming an Indiana Jones [movie] or something like that. I was like, ‘This is like what it’s like to be on like those kind of sets.'”
The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery actress, on the other hand, was having a bad time.
“I feel like I’ve made it pretty clear that I get claustrophobic very easily. And then I show up to set, and I look at what we have to crawl through, and I’m like, ‘Guys, we talked about this,'” she says. “It felt like a social experiment, for sure. … I didn’t pass with flying colors. I passed with walking colors. JD was awesome to film that with. He was the calm, and I was the not. And I’m very, very grateful for him.”
Back on Figure Eight, Rafe (Drew Starkey) is perhaps considering turning over a new leaf and making amends with his sister, Sarah, after years of them being at each other’s throats. But it’s going to be a long road ahead for the Cameron siblings; it’s not easy to move past the fact that your brother almost drowned you.
Despite Sarah being hopeful for some sort of reconciliation, they have a lot of history and, most of it at least recently, has been very dark and traumatic for both of them.
“I definitely think that Rafe blames her for the death of their dad, and I think she knows that,” Cline says. “I think she feels a lot of guilt because I feel like she feels like a lot of people blame her for his death. It’s all very heavy and way too heavy for just a single conversation. It’s something that has to happen over time.”
When it comes to the Kooks’ favorite bad boy, Rafe, fans have likely been waiting for him to do a little better and not be as horrible as he has been in the past. Starkey, who plays the character, explains those self-improvements have to come with time and growth.
“He’s maturing. I also think losing his father is a huge motivator,” the Queer star tells THR. “I think he’s accepting some responsibility, and I think he realizes how alone he is, and he wants to mend bridges and build connections again. So yeah, I don’t think he’s ever been able to fully express [himself], and he’s still struggling to express that in a certain way.”
While a lot of things seemed to go downhill for the Pogues in the first half of this season (it is a drama series, after all), there was one shining light — love. All six of the kids are in relationships and one couple, in particular, stood out: Pope and Cleo.
The two laid the groundwork for a relationship over the course of the previous two seasons and finally made things official in the final episode of season three when Cleo tells Pope she quits the “No-Love Club” they formed earlier in the season.
Daviss shares that bringing Pope and Cleo’s love story to life in Part One has been “amazing,” as has working alongside Carlacia Grant, who has become a “really, really good friend.”
“Being able to kind of bring ourselves into these characters more, to explore more moments with each other, we didn’t get a lot of that season three, but I feel like this season we really got a good opportunity to explore the relationships between these characters and really flesh it out onscreen,” he says. “So it felt like a natural evolution of where we left off in the third season. It felt like they were in a really good spot. It was a joy to be able to do that.”
Despite joining Outer Banks in season two, Grant notes that everyone welcomed and supported her, as they helped her make the best character possible.
“This group was just a really good group, because we’re all really friends, and that really, I think, bleeds onscreen,” she says of the cast’s dynamic in real life. “And just to have the support group of like people who I consider friends, it made it an amazing experience. And the thrill of the ride is fun, but it’s also fun when you have your friends with you.”
Outer Banks season four, Part One is streaming now on Netflix. Part Two drops on Nov. 7.
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