The creators of “Outer Banks” describe the end of season 4, part 1

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Outer Banks Season 4, Episodes 1-5.

JJ's family tree just got a lot more complicated Outer Banks.

The Season 4 Part 1 finale, “Albatross,” revealed that proud Pogue is actually a weirdo, as his abusive father Luke (Gary Weeks) revealed to JJ (Rudy Pankow) that he is not his biological father. It turns out that JJ is actually the son of the late Larissa Genrette and Chandler Groff (J. Anthony Crane) and the grandson of the recently murdered Wes Genrette (David Jensen). Not only does this mean that JJ comes from money, but he is also a member of the family that Wes believes is cursed to die a violent death.

To sum it up: JJ is a Kook, which is the kind of person he hates the most, he's possibly cursed to die, and… oh yeah, the rest of the Pogues are in a bad situation too. Pope (Jonathan Daviss) and Sarah (Madelyn Cline) are trapped in a grave that is quickly filling with water, John B (Chase Stokes) almost shoots a man, and Cleo (Carlacia Grant) is still reeling from Terrance's murder ( Terence Rosemore). . And let's not forget that the Pogues committed a major crime by getting rid of Terrance's body, despite Kiara's (Madison Bailey) pleas to just tell the cops the truth. At the end of Part 1, things aren't looking good for the Pogues!

Below the Outer Banks Showrunners Josh Pate, Jonas Pate and Shannon Burke answer (and dodge) everyone Weekly entertainment's burning questions about these cliffhangers. Bring it home!

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Did you know in advance that Season 4 would be split into two parts?

JONAS GODFATHER: No, but this is kind of a new trend with some of their bigger shows. In fact, halfway through the season they started telling us, “Make sure Episode 5 has a big cliffhanger.” So that's when we knew.

Did this change your original plans for episode 5?

JOSH PATE: Not too much. We had the information in time to plan. We're always looking for a big cliffhanger in the middle of the season anyway, so the fifth episode is always a pivotal episode in some ways.

Before we get into the cliffhanger, I want to go back to episode 2, where we literally see a ghost. We've never seen anything supernatural on this show. Is this ghost real?

JOSH: We can't tell!

JONAS: I trust Shannon.

SHANNON BURKE: It seems real. And you just have to watch what happens.

JONAS: (Laughs) Oh, what a non-answer. Brutal non-response.

SHANNON: The Curse: We throw hundreds of ideas around and what we do feels organic.

JOSH: We always try to create a mythology around the treasure, so our usual process was to make up crazy stories. I don't know if it was inspired by anything specifically. It just seemed like something useful and creative.

SHANNON: Superstition, curse, threat, it just felt like a part of the Blackbeard story. I feel like that's not a good or satisfactory answer for you, but that's how we came up with it. It feels right. That's what it feels like Outer Banks, and it became part of the mythology of the treasure legend.

Sure, curses come with buried pirate treasure.

JOSH: (Laughs) It's a gateway drug.

But ghosts? At first I thought it was just a delusional old man who believed in the curse, but then it was actually us see the spirit.

JONAS: (Laughs) “What's going on here? What are these guys doing?”

JOSH: We've played with Supernatural before and like to tease it, but I'm not sure we'll make it to the end.

JONAS: Supernatural-adjacent.

JOSH: You will see it, and it will become clear later.

Why did you decide to change JJ's family tree?

JOSH: We focused on one character each season and knew this season would be truly JJ-centric. And that was one of the first ideas we had. The worst thing that could happen to JJ would be him finding out that he's actually a Kook because he's the Pogueist Pogue, and that would just get him in the frying pan. This was an idea we had fairly early on in the development of the season and we loved the idea. And we thought about bringing up this revelation at the beginning of the season, but we like where it ended up. But it's all part of the YY year.

Luke being the one to tell him the information is just another punch in the gut – that's like the worst person to hear the news from.

JOSH: Fully. It was fun to think about how he would react to that, which is complete denial. “It's not true. It can’t be true.” It was fun to put him through that.

Fun! How will he deal with this in Part 2?

SHANNON: It really begins a long journey for him, during which he experiences probably the most extreme sequence of events ever Outer Banks. This is the first step to things that we obviously don't want to talk about since it's the entire second part. But JJ, he's not taking it well, that'll be clear in a moment.

JOSH: He firmly rejects it. But I think part of him knows it's true – a deep part of him is afraid it might be true.

The fact that he stopped Kiara from dealing with this before he even knew the full story worries me. How will this affect their relationship in part two?

SHANNON: It's all connected. This will be part of the story where he deals with these things and rules them out.

JOSH: Secure. It's the big personal story engine of the season, and it drives a lot forward, especially in the second half.

SHANNON: Basically, the end of Episode 5 really drives the entire second half of the season, and we're only just getting to it. We held it back so we could have Pogue fun first – we saved that reveal until then so we could tell some more personal stories and have some Kooks and Pogues on the beach in Episode 4, things you couldn't do , if it is the real treasure The hunt had begun.

JOSH: And we wanted the first half of the season to return a little bit to the mood of the first season, where it's not just dominated by a high-stakes adventure.

Side note: Is it safe for JJ and Kiara to meet in a hyperbaric chamber? I was kind of worried…

JONAS: (Laughs) Yes. Every time I've done it, it's worked out well. Is it safe? Probably not. Teenagers, they just do things! Good question. This is hilarious.

What are you most looking forward to for fans in Part 2?

JONAS: Definitely the best episode we've ever done is the finale. We are very proud of the ending and excited to share it.

SHANNON: The second half of the season is the best half of the season we have ever done. There's at least one other really great story that…

JOSH: Comes later. We try to find new challenges for the couples. We don't tell love stories or love triangles anymore because all the characters are happy with their significant other, so we have to find new obstacles to throw at them, and that's what we really wanted to explore. How do we move the love stories forward? That's why we focused a lot on that.

What's going on with Rafe this season? Is he really invested in this new relationship? Or will he still be the villainous Rafe we ​​know he can be?

SHANNON: The best Rafe is an unpredictable Rafe. Every now and then we'll notice that Rafe almost borders on Pogue. But the best Rafe is the bad Rafe, so we always have to remind you of that.

JOSH: There are also some redeeming things.

JONAS: He's still Rafe. Come on. He killed Peterkin! He must pay for his crimes.

Now that the Pogues have gotten rid of Terrance's body, how will it hang over their heads in the future?

SHANNON: This will begin a series of events that will likely continue beyond this season.

JOSH: We always try to put pressure on them. And that's easy when you have crazy teenage characters because they always do the wrong thing – out of the frying pan into the fire.

Another cliffhanger is the fate of Pope and Sarah, who become stuck in the grave as the water level rises. How worried should we be about two main characters making it out alive?

JOSH: I think we should worry about everyone. I would say: worry.

SHANNON: Expect more emotional high stakes.

JOSH: They were really in trouble in the second half. And there is more at stake. The adventure they go on is probably my favorite adventure. They go on a globetrotting trip that takes them further afield than ever before, where they're really, really out of their comfort zone, and that makes for a really dramatic, explosive story in the second half. We're going to have the biggest (action scenes) we've ever had. The scope is enormous.

SHANNON: It's almost like a double album. The first half is Pogue-esque fun, and the second half has more stakes, more emotion and more adventure than ever before.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The first five episodes of Outer Banks Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix. The second half of the season begins on November 7th.

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