Crack open your PBR, kids — Outer Banks is back. And with the return of Netflix’s YA treasure-hunting drama comes its special, sudsy brand of chaos. In case you forgot what that brand of chaos is, last season, John B., Sarah, Pope, Kiara, JJ, and Cleo, also lovingly known as the Pogues (P4L, baby!), a group of teens with seemingly very few skills and a general disregard for their own safety, discovered the real El Dorado and its gold. Also, two of their dads were killed in the process. It’s mostly fine; they were both kind of terrible.
Eighteen months later, season four finds the Pogues dealing with property-tax and zoning issues as they attempt to re-create their Poguelandia oasis from season three with their El Dorado golden nuggets. But that only lasts, like, one episode. Soon enough, the crew is swept up on another adventure. This time, they’re looking for Blackbeard’s lost treasure, but, as usual, nothing is easy for the Pogues. On top of treasure hunting, the crew is dealing with daddy issues (not just dead ones), another group of murderous treasure hunters, and, yes, that primal rivalry with the rich bitches in town, the Kooks. May their rift never heal!
What do you say, Pogues? Are you ready to journey through another wild, ridiculous chapter in the Outer Banks story? Are you ready to suspend your disbelief within an inch of your life? Are you ready to spend hours wondering to yourself, Do these youths ever shower? Us too. So let’s band together and run through the highlights of season four as Outer Banks unfurls its latest treasure-hunting mystery as only Outer Banks can.
The youths are unable to contain themselves at a land auction.
Admittedly, I’ve never been to a land auction, but I do have some strongly held beliefs about land auctions, and those include that, for the love of God, there should be an age limit. Twenty-five and older only, okay?! Get the youths out of here!!
I guess I can’t hold this turn of events squarely on the shoulders of poor land-auction bylaws, because the Pogues should’ve known better. When they cash in all of their El Dorado money and wind up with over $1 million, Pope comes up with a very reasonable plan to buy JJ’s dad’s land back from the bank and the friends can re-create Poguelandia, but this time with a surf-and-bait shop to have some working income. He even comes up with a plan to not overspend their money on the actual land. This is all very thoughtful — but why on earth would they let JJ also attend the auction? He immediately gets his back up over an adult Kook trying to buy the land and spends over $775,000 just for the shitty piece of property. JJ sucks (I love him), but the other Pogues should’ve known better.
JJ jumps — and lands — a 50-foot gap over an inlet in the Kildare Enduro, a dirt-bike race on the beach.
Wow, everyone is very into this dinky bike race all of a sudden, including one rider named Meatball who I, personally, would like to know more about. Meatball spinoff, anyone? It’s obviously just another vehicle (dirt-bike pun, baby!) to get the Pogue-Kook feud going even though we — both our characters and the world at large — have much bigger issues to deal with than this never-ending turf war between youths with terrible group names. It’s honestly so much dorkier the longer it goes on; you’ll see later.
The Enduro is also a way to watch JJ make additional boneheaded decisions because that kid will never learn: Here, he takes the last nug — yes, for some reason, they have left some of their gold in rock form instead of cash form, no one knows why, and yes, JJ only refers to the gold as nugs, which I respect — and bets it all on himself to win the Enduro. Now, you know this boy is not going to win the Enduro. He makes a valiant effort, though. Many people note how terrible his bike is, and yet, the guy still lands a 50-foot jump to hop into the lead. But the Kooks are cheaters, so JJ loses the race and all the remaining Poguelandia 2.0 money.
A teen utters the sentence, “We have a $13,000 property-tax payment due in seven days and we have zero working capital!!!”
(1) At least this is said by Pope, the only Pogue I can buy being able to put these words together in a sentence.
(2) It’s a very succinct way to clarify this season’s stakes, which is important because we need all the time we can get to focus on Outer Banks’s top priorities, which are treasure-hunting and surfing.
(3) It does help illustrate the range of a series in which the youths say things like the above and also the sentence, “Surf violence is violence, man.”
A creepy old guy thinks he’s cursed by the ghost of Blackbeard’s wife and wants to pay teens $50,000 to find the ghost’s amulet in Blackbeard’s sunken ship to stop the curse before he dies.
Ah, Wes Genrette, another creep adult to add to Outer Banks’s collection. The owner of Goat Island seemingly has a ton of money but also only wants to live in a dark, musty mansion. He does, however, conveniently have a portrait painted of every single person in his story about his cursed family; it’s nice to have visual aids! He’s a direct descendant of the English officer who beheaded Blackbeard and killed his wife Elizabeth, the Genrettes have been cursed for hundreds of years, and his own daughter Larissa saw Elizabeth’s ghost a week before she and her baby died at sea. Wes dies by the end of episode two under suspicious circumstances, so maybe he was onto something with all the curse stuff. His son-in-law, Chandler Groff, however, lives to creep another day.
JJ and Kiara get the bends!
Like, of course they get the bends. Honestly, how has someone not gotten the bends on this show yet? Anyway, yes, JJ and Kiara dive to look for that amulet (you can bet neither are scuba certified), but there just so happens to be someone else down there also looking for the amulet at the exact moment they are. This man, Lightner, tries to murder both teens, but they stab him with a speargun, get the amulet, and swim back to the surface as fast as possible — hence, the bends.
JJ and Kiara hook up in a hyperbaric chamber!
I mean, they are in there for 12 hours, so why not? Actually, there are lots of reasons why not, but Pogues are gonna Pogue. Alas, their decompressed smushfest gets interrupted when Lightner arrives at the hospital to take care of that speargun stab wound and he spots them. JJ and Kiara proceed to break themselves out of that hyperbaric chamber and make a run for it. This feels in no way plausible, but also, on Outer Banks, literally everything is plausible.
John B. gives us a wild history lesson, bless this child (who is played by a 32-year-old man)
The Pogues eventually discover the real treasure everyone is after is not the amulet (that’s just a clue) but the fabled Blue Crown. John B. recognizes the name and informs his friends of the crown’s importance throughout history. His explanation includes things like, “Alexander the Great, beat the shit out of everybody, he’s wearing it,” and that it was also worn by “Julius Caesar, also a badass, murdered a bunch of people.” Apparently, the Blue Crown, which is a priceless artifact (a much bigger get than $50,000 for the amulet), went missing in the 1700s and is believed to be — wait for it — among Blackbeard’s missing treasure.
The Pogues press pause on what seems like an urgent situation to go surfing all day.
It’s Swell Day, baby. Who cares if your land and everything you own is going to be repossessed and you have no money and also scary treasure-hunting adults are trying to murder you and you have a property-tax bill due in mere days?! None of these things matter when the waves are good, bro. It’s the law in Poguelandia, which is made up. Thankfully, Pope is taking this all seriously, so while the rest of the team go surfing, he continues the treasure hunt. (This guy should get a much bigger cut of the treasure than the rest of these fools. Know your worth, Pope!) Topper, Rafe, and the rest of the Kooks, of course, park right up next to the Pogues on the very empty and wide beach, which obviously stirs up some drama.
There is a very dramatic kerfuffle around a turtle hatch.
In a fun twist, the most psychotic Kook isn’t Rafe (who, against all odds, seems to be getting a redemption arc) or even Topper, but Topper’s girlfriend Ruthie. She decides it would be fun to pretend to run down the Pogues with her Jeep, and she almost kills Kiara, who is trying to protect a turtle hatch making their way into the ocean. (Remember, Kiara is an environmentalist first, a treasure-hunter second.) And then JJ threatens all the Kooks’ lives on video, which seems like a bad choice, even if warranted. Regardless: Ruthie, girl, GET A JOB.
The Pogues hide a dead body behind their sofa and get away with it!
Oh, so during this whole Swell Day debacle, no one even realized Cleo had been kidnapped by Lightner the night before. Wild, but true. He’s using her to get the amulet, and in a little twist, we learn that Cleo’s father figure Terrance was hired by Lightner’s crew not long ago. When Cleo can’t locate the amulet in the Poguelandia house, and Pope, who has the amulet, returns a minute past the deadline Lightner gave him to get back to the house, things go bad. Terrance tries to save Cleo from Lightner but winds up getting shot and killed. Lightner takes off with the amulet, and the Pogues are left to figure out what to do with Terrance.
JUST THEN, everyone’s favorite Kildare County law-enforcement officer Shoupe appears. They decide it’s better to hide the body than tell Shoupe what happened, and so they shove Terrance behind their couch and clean up his blood as fast as possible. Shoupe’s there to question JJ about the whole “threatening to kill all the Kooks” thing and warn him that Chandler Groff has implied the Pogues have something to do with Wes Genrette’s death. He does not notice any weird smells in that house, of which there have to be so, so many, and goes about his day (but does have someone keep eyes on the Pogues, just in case).
John B. thinks he and Sarah should consider her biological clock.
Even Sarah is like, I’m 19, slow your roll. Ah, John B. He is a dummy, but he’s our dummy, you know? Remember when he wrestled an alligator??
Yes, Pope and Sarah do end part one trapped in a catacomb in Charleston that is rapidly filling with water.
After (reverently) dumping Terrance’s body, John B., Sarah, Pope, and Cleo head to Charleston because thanks to all of Pope’s research, they believe Blackbeard hid something of importance there — possibly the Blue Crown itself. Spoiler alert: It’s not the Blue Crown. And while the hunt takes Pope and Sarah underground, Lightner and his boss lady, Dalia, are hot on their trails. They wind up finding the Blackbeard item in the catacomb: a 300-year-old scroll. Pope and Sarah try to follow them out but wind up trapped inside just as things are about to get very, very wet.
JJ learned to read cursive!
He still hates it, but this is a big moment of growth from season one.
JJ learns he’s been lied to his entire life while on top of a lighthouse!
The cursive JJ had to read? It’s a letter Wes Genrette wanted delivered to JJ in case of his own untimely death. In it, he tells JJ to ask his own father about something called the Albatross. JJ’s dad Luke is a fugitive at this point, but he’s also a fugitive who is conveniently hiding out right in town. When JJ confronts his dad to get an explanation, Shoupe, who has been trailing JJ, blows up their spot. JJ helps Luke escape … to the top of a lighthouse, which is a terrible hiding place; there’s only one exit!! Luke has a wild reveal for poor JJ: He isn’t his biological father! And his mother wasn’t his biological mother! JJ is actually Larissa Genrette’s son! The Albatross is the boat she died on! And JJ is the baby believed to have died with her at sea! And that means Chandler Groff is JJ’s real father. But worst of all: It means JJ was actually born a Kook. If you thought JJ was off the rails now, wait until he puts that little fun fact together. I bet he rues the day he ever decided to learn how to read cursive — it only leads to heartbreak.
Town Council meetings in Kildare are revealed to be lit AF
The hottest club in the Outer Banks is the Kildare County Town Hall. The entire town arrives — Kooks on one side, Pogues on the other, of course — to be present on the whole re-zoning Poguelandia situation. Evil Kook No. 1, real-estate magnate Dale Zeales, wants to build a fancy country club on the land but insists it is a “club for all” (which is the opposite of a “club” but okay), those from Figure 8 (Kook land) and the Cut (Pogue-ville) are all welcome. Later, we learn his plans are called “The New Cut,” which is hilarious because could no one come up with any less subtle of a name? The re-zoning resolution is basically already passed, but they do allow someone to speak on behalf of the Pogue contingent. No one is prepared for what seemingly should’ve been the most expected part of this entire event, and eventually, John B. is pushed up to the mic, and his argument against re-zoning is just him pleading, “This is our home!” It doesn’t much matter anyway because the entire thing devolves into class warfare within the packed town hall. No, really. When JJ learns that his dad (not the new one) cut a deal to say that the bank’s sale of the land (Remember, the Pogues bought the Maybank land from the auction) was invalid in return for immunity from those felonies he racked up, JJ loses it, smashes a window, and fist fights and rioting against the police ensues. Are all Town Council meetings like this? I thought they were just people reading municipal codes and banging gavels, I didn’t know they were packed to the brim with mayhem.
JJ re-creates Beyoncé’s “Formation” video.
JJ is a broken man. You just knew he was not going to take the news of his biological parentage calmly. In fact, he kind of takes it the opposite of calmly, by which I mean he steals a bat from children playing at a baseball field, breaks all the storefront windows downtown, starts a fire, smashes some cars, incites a looting riot, breaks into the Zeales office and destroys everything, and then has a standoff with the police in which his best friend Pope gets arrested for assaulting a police officer. See what I mean? Not calm at all.
John B. accidentally sets his own boat on fire.
We come to this place for magic. And that magic is John B. making the dumbest decisions possible. Like, when he, Sarah, and Kiara set off on a mission to rescue JJ, who has now been taken hostage, along with Chandler Groff, by that Lightner guy and those baddies, who we learn are North African mercenaries. John B. attempts to throw a fireball at the mercenary boat, but it is so bad at it that he sets his own boat on fire. Hilarious, no notes. When Kiara and Sarah help him put out his fire, because women get shit done, he does successfully launch a Molotov cocktail at the boat, save JJ, and manage to steal back Blackbeard’s scroll from Lightner, so credit where credit’s due but also let’s be so real, so much of that is pure, dumb luck.
The Kook kids search the town to make JJ pay for inciting that riot, but instead of pitchforks, they bring lacrosse sticks, which is so on-brand that I am obsessed with them.
The Kooks remain the lamest villains in all the land. They drive around with their little lax sticks to get justice for their town and like, what, are they going to murder him? What is the endgame here, folks? All they end up doing is interrupting what would have been John B. and Sarah’s secret City Hall WEDDING because, surprise, Sarah is PREGNANT, and they are going to really do this thing together. I cannot believe that the scene with John B. worried about Sarah’s biological clock was actually foreshadowing. Say what you want, but Outer Banks always has a plan, regardless of how insane it is.
Well, what do we have here? Another creepy adult man trying to kill a teen out in the middle of the ocean, that’s what.
When will the Pogues learn to never head out on a boat alone with questionable male figures? (I hope never.) JJ, who is already calling Chandler Groff “dad” (JJ is walking daddy issues, poor thing), falls prey to Groff’s “I’m so lucky to have you as a son” schtick. (This is after Groff made JJ pull a necklace off his biological mom’s skeletal remains and locked him in his family’s mausoleum for a while, mind you.) But once JJ realizes that Groff has been using JJ to get back the scroll and get the necklace, which contains a gem that is key to reading the scroll, and he’s definitely going to steal the Blue Crown for himself, he calls him on it. And in turn, Groff throws him overboard and leaves him to die in the ocean. Thankfully, the Pogues have recently got into the Find My Friend app on their phones and are able to locate him.
Rafe convinces Sheriff Shoupe to let the Pogues follow Groff to Morocco.
I know that sentence seems like it is riddled with typos, but it is not. Our favorite psycho killer, Rafe, is fuming because Groff and Hollis swindled him out of $400,000, and he decides to form an alliance with the Pogues by way of purchasing a fishing boat and helping them sail across the Atlantic and track Groff down in Morocco before he finds the Blue Crown. When Shoupe arrives to haul JJ off because he’s now a suspect in the murder of Hollis herself, somehow Rafe becomes the voice of reason. Shoupe already has evidence that Groff is a con artist and serial killer, and he pretty much owns up to the fact that Groff definitely murdered Hollis and framed JJ, so it’s not like he needed that much of a push to let the Pogues go, but still. All of them have reason to be arrested; two of them have felony charges against them. I’m not saying that I’m rooting against the Pogues, even though their crime sprees have gotten out of hand as of late, but I am saying that Shoupe really needs to hang out with adults more often.
The youths set sail for Morocco, and Sarah gets tossed overboard during a giant thunderstorm at sea!!
Of course. But don’t worry too much: JJ, who has been drunk for this entire trans-Atlantic voyage because his daddy tried to kill him, picks a fight with John B. after he asks him to be the godfather to his and Sarah’s baby, and so when Sarah gets swept overboard, JJ dives in after her to make up for what he said and everyone survives and somehow lands near each other on the Moroccan coast.
Cleo refers to Sarah and John B.’s baby as a Poguelet.
The single greatest gift Outer Banks has given us.
Rafe pushes Groff down a well and yells, “Checkmate, bitch!”
I think we can all agree that Rafe is the best character on this show. He ditches the Pogues as fast as possible and decides he doesn’t just want his money back from Groff but also that Blue Crown treasure. He uses Groff to get as far as possible and then pushes that man down a well and leaves him to die. (He does not die.) The “checkmate, bitch” thing probably sounded cooler in his head, but still, we love him.
The Cameron siblings have a healing heart-to-heart while mercenaries are trying to kill everyone.
The only reason this works at all is because you have Drew Starkey and Madelyn Cline playing Rafe and Sarah, two actors who can really pull this complicated, teary-eyed reunion off. I cried, okay? Leave me alone! As moved as I was, however, I will still never understand how Sarah can take Rafe screaming at her about how she killed their dad (she didn’t, she explains this, finally) and never once asks Rafe to apologize for that time he tried to drown her in that cooler.
Pope shoots Lightner in the head?!
Man, oh man, the Pogues have really corrupted this kid. He does it to help his lady get revenge on the man who killed Terence, but still. I’m with Heyward! Get this kid away from his friends. They are bad news. (He might be joining the Marines, so we’ll see!!)
You bet your ass there is a massive sandstorm just as all parties descend on the small village where the Blue Crown is hidden.
I would say what perfectly terrible timing, but honestly, the only reason the Pogues survive Dalia and her mercenary goons’ final attempt to claim the Blue Crown for themselves is because of that sandstorm. Thanks to the cover of all that sand, JJ is able to ascend the statue where the crown is located and grab it for himself and for the good of Poguelandia, of course.
JJ is murdered!! By his father!! He really dies!!
This is actually the least Outer Banks thing to happen in Outer Banks season four because who thought this show would have the guts to kill off a beloved main character!! All of these Pogues should be dead. It is ridiculous that they are alive after the escapades they’ve faced, and yet still, I cannot believe they actually killed off JJ. I mean, they were telegraphing his death pretty hard in this back half of the season, giving him an obvious redemption arc and having him linger on Kie’s face while talking about his greatest wish in life. By the time Groff reappears (he climbed out of the well), holds Kiara at knifepoint, and JJ doesn’t hesitate to hand over the crown nor to tell Groff that it doesn’t matter because he already has everything he wants, you know this guy is a goner. And yet still, what a shock it is to see Groff stab his own son and walk away. JJ dies telling Kiara he loves her, and then Rafe encourages everyone to seek revenge for their friend’s death because Rafe is a menace to society (compliment). The remaining Pogues vow to get Groff’s ass, and you know what? I love this for them.