Through good, bad, and ugly, with rapt attention, we tune into Outer Banks and wholly embrace the ride that’s always in store for us.
And Outer Banks Season 4 was no exception, delivering the series’ biggest and most compact season to date with twists, revelations, celebrations, and tragedy.
While the season had many enjoyable aspects, we also have plenty of gripes and must address those.
While we await what the final season has in store, let’s unpack some of the glaring issues that frustrated us during an epic season.
So here are some of the reasons Outer Banks Season 4 lost the plot and subsequently pissed us off in the process.
So, check it out, and then hit the comments, not the Kooks, OBX Fanatics.
The Pogues’ Abysmally Low El Dorado Finder’s Fee
At the center of Outer Banks is that “Life isn’t fair, and if you’re poor, you’re fucked.”
Despite that, the mere thought that these teens traveled across the world for the umpteenth time, found one of the most famous historic locales in existence, happened across all that damn gold and didn’t get, like, anything, was ridiculous.
These six beloved people had to somehow divide one million dollars amongst themselves, not including Uncle Sam taxing it to the high heavens.
Do you know what you can do with one million dollars in this economy? Not very much.
The Pogues risking life and limb for peanuts that still had them scraping by is as on-brand as it gets, but even for them, that was one hell of a lowball.
JJ’s Recklessly Beyond Comprehension Blowing Through the Money (Twice)
We get it. JJ was the most reckless individual ever to strut the face of this Earth, and we loved him for that.
We couldn’t have gotten half the adventures if he wasn’t leading the charge for living on the edge.
However, JJ being reckless is one thing, but being mind-numbingly inconsiderate is totally different.
It didn’t ring true that he would bet the majority of their money on his crappy old house on marshy land right off the bat and didn’t seem to care in the slightest how the others felt about it.
But JJ betting their last bit of gold on a bike race with the Kooks, who notoriously don’t play fair, and then losing it all is the most asinine contrivance since Kie risking their lives and evidence to holler “murderer” at Ward.
From Badass to Damsel: Cleo’s Characterization Gives Whiplash
Cleo was one of the best additions to the series, and she feels like she’s been with the Pogues forever.
As a feisty teen who rolled with pirates and carried a trusty switchblade everywhere, she’s repeatedly proven that she’s a certifiable badass in nearly every situation.
She’s a brawler right up there with JJ, proving that kids cast to the streets need to fight to survive.
Now, I’m all for a woman, especially one of color, getting to be both strong and vulnerable, but it was as if they sapped all of Cleo’s badassery this season.
No, she couldn’t go toe-to-toe with actual mercenaries and win, but we at least expected her to fight back a little bit or give them a run for their money.
Outer Banks too easily slotted her into another damsel role this season, which was incredibly frustrating and a disservice to the character. Cheese on bread!
JJ’s Contrived Character “Ruination” and OOC Moments as the Primary Plot Device
We may as well get back to JJ since this was unquestionably his season.
There was nothing wrong with delving into his character this way; it was one of the best aspects of the season.
But it felt like the series had to quickly back JJ into a corner to make him lash out as the entire season plot hung on that, and they didn’t do the greatest job of executing it.
Inexplicably, well before JJ learned life-altering secrets about his background, he became an asshole to his friends, which is not who we knew him to be.
He lashed out at the others, disregarded their feelings and what they had to say, shut down on his girlfriend, and generally flew off the handle.
JJ putting their lives and livelihoods in jeopardy when he’s infamously the one who endangers himself to protect his friends felt incredibly off for the character.
It was like the season desperately wanted to make him insufferable to “redeem” him later and make his subsequent death more meaningful and impactful, and it never worked.
Even JJ’s naivety and gullibility with Groff felt wildly out of character.
His ties to Luke supported why he would still want to give who he deemed was his father the benefit of the doubt. But that’s not the case for Groff.
As a notoriously skeptical character who doesn’t easily extend trust, there were no real grounds for why he kept putting trust in Groff repeatedly after all of Groff’s deception, placing himself in the most dangerous and eventually fatal situations imaginable.
Outer Banks Squanders Deeper Exploration of Kook/Pogue Division
On one hand, it was exciting that they could explore the Kook/Pogue divide as the characters we know and love have grown older.
The characters were at a critical point in their lives where what shifted from teen bullying, rivalry, and child’s play evolved to the more structured forms of socioeconomic warfare in which Kooks learn to weaponize systems that work in their favor to exact life-changing damage to the Pogues they feel are beneath them.
There were even some moments when it felt like teens on both sides of the divide expressed a baser exhaustion to upholding these structures.
But then, the season never takes it much further than that.
Topper and the other Kooks simply become one-dimensional, sadistic cartoon villains who kill turtles for fun.
The Pogues had too much going on, including fighting real battles with the more adult Kooks, to allow any of this to really breathe or settle in.
It’s no surprise that the Pogues are forced to grow up faster as the world never bends to them, but it would be nice to have more on that comparison.
The moment we make real headway in unpacking that, the series follows the Pogues out of the country, and we never properly unpack how the town is at a boiling point after the Kooks snatched land right from beneath JJ.
A reckoning may be on the horizon, mainly after JJ destroys the town (and will likely now be immortalized as a town folk hero) during that kickass and wonderfully shot sequence that gives us a preview of the types of roles Rudy Pankow can pull off in the near future.
But we didn’t see enough of it onscreen when it counted most.
Especially once we had to leave a more divided than ever Outer Banks, with Pogues of all ages frustrated, Hollis plotting, and Sofia behind.
P4L? Disjointed Pogue Friendship Takes an Alarming Hit
The season delivered on the group dynamic to establish how Poguelandia became their home via some montages.
They had a nice thing going for them before the Kooks came to ruin it all.
Fortunately, the season didn’t separate critical members of the Pogues longer than necessary.
But the season was very “couple-focused,” which highlighted the collapse of the friendship even more.
We got some brief mix-and-match dynamics (Sarah and Pope on an adventurous task together was a highlight simply because they never share one-on-one time together), and the first half delivered so many of these moments that felt like the first season again, but the balance issue was so pronounced in the second half!
Cleo, who initially befriended John B and has more in common with JJ than most, has no close bonds beyond Pope, including the Pogue girls.
The others didn’t even realize mercenaries kidnapped her until hours later, and they barely reacted or seemed to care or check in with her after the fact.
Pope went to jail after that riot, and there was little conversation about it or him from the others, which felt totally unrealistic for a group of people who actively plotted to free John B from jail.
Pope went to jail because of JJ, harkening back to how JJ did the same for him.
The conversation between the two, which could’ve delved into that more, simply petered out instead of giving us the deserved moment of brotherhood we’d come to expect from both characters, who will literally do anything for each other!
The Pope and JJ dynamic was startingly off.
The season made it seem like John B was JJ’s only best friend in the end and downplayed the brotherhood of the JJ/Pope dynamic.
Are we really to believe that Pope would hear JJ’s casual suicide ideation and not do or say anything about it? Just no reaction whatsoever? Bullshit.
Would JJ really accept that Pope had to stay away and head off to the military? Never.
John B. and Sarah getting lost in their own bubble, while a depiction of the diverging loyalties sometimes between our friendships or extended family, and the one we’re starting on our own, felt ill-placed at times when so much was going on that required them to communicate more and care.
JJ wandered off with his biological father, whom no one trusted, and no one checked in with each other the entire day; all of these little moments had the group feeling incredibly and wildly disconnected.
At the heart of Outer Banks is the friendship, which seemed to unravel a bit as the season progressed.
Cold War and Disappearing Chemistry: Jiara’s Love Story Never Takes Off
I’m not here to add to the speculations about whatever behind-the-scenes drama may or may not have transpired between Madison Bailey and Rudy Pankow or dissect scenes with body doubles.
It’s not really my business.
What I can talk about is the product right in front of us, and after an effort to build up Jiara, whether intentional or not, the pairing falls completely short when they barely even seemed like friends, let alone a couple.
Outer Banks Season 4 doubled down on the sweet romance between Pope and Cleo, and they’ve always given us John B and Sarah in abundance (sometimes even to the detriment of the other Pogues).
This season, despite what they promised and previously teased, Kiara and JJ had zero affection or chemistry, which was unfortunate.
For a pairing that viewers waited to see take off, it fizzled out this season.
Viewers never figured out what the two looked like as a couple.
And here’s the thing: JJ’s navigating a steady romantic relationship, given his background and characterization, was worth deep exploration and critical to his character development.
He doesn’t know how to handle someone loving him unconditionally, so the second he committed to the dating component, that journey required a bit more exploration, and yet we got nothing.
The audience wasn’t privy to whatever intimacy may have grown between the two as they shifted from friends to lovers.
If we had seen that, it would have made JJ’s final scene more devastating and Kiara’s pledge for vengeance more effective.
Sadly, it just didn’t click.
Sarah’s Unnecessary Pregnancy is Cringe
Pregnancy plots are rarely entertaining, to begin with, and they’re even more frustrating story vehicles now for obvious reasons.
One of those obvious reasons is that this plot was frustrating in its execution and even its realism.
John B. and Sarah are poor, unhoused, jobless, and chronically in trouble with the law, and their only support system is other young adults in the same boat as them, quite literally.
And never once did they even freak out about not being able to go through a pregnancy and raise a child together feasibly.
You simply cannot raise a child on wishes, hopes, dreams, and positivity, and life has alread dealt the Pogues the worst hands life has to offer regularly (they had mercenaries trying to kill them).
It seems irresponsible for them not to have more conversations about their game plan or that, ironically, JJ was the only one with a realistic reaction to this news.
And Rafe’s utter LACK of a reaction stretched the bounds of credulity altogether. We got NOTHING from him, as he essentially sat there posing and looking great but not offering any expected commentary.
Pregnancy plots are good for older, more established ships.
There’s nothing idyllic or cutesy about two 20-year-olds living as the Pogues do, racing around countries, treasure-hunting, and dodging bullets, starting a family together.
It’s a setup for them to get out of the “G-game,” but there were other ways of allowing them to do that, like moving out of Outer Banks or going to school.
Luke’s Flimsy, Nonsensical Role in JJ’s True Background Story
Outer Banks played around with softening Luke in a frustrating way this season.
Via flashbacks, we see a man who genuinely loves JJ as if he were his own child, for reasons that are still unknown since he never actively had a romantic relationship with JJ’s mother.
He didn’t want Groff to come back, and that’s fine. But presumably, Luke raised a kid he at some point stopped wanting and abused alcohol and JJ, and there was never a shakedown for more money to look after this kid?
At no point did Luke spill the beans for his or JJ’s benefit?
It felt like they downplayed how bad Luke was as a parent because Groff was infinitely worse, and evil AF, but it also didn’t make sense why of all the things Groff could’ve done with young JJ (including kill him, since he was an heir, and Groff is a psychopath), he gave the child to a single male groundskeeper.
Treasure Hunting Becomes an Unfun, Unexciting Afterthought
It may seem foreign now, but Outer Banks was an escapist show about treasure hunting that got us through a bleak period.
The treasure-hunting component was so much fun, and the group’s enthusiasm for figuring out what it could mean for their circumstances was oddly hopeful.
But since life has routinely beat the shit out of the Pogues at every turn, their approach to treasure hunting felt more like a dreadful thing they reluctantly had to do.
Even then, much of the treasure-hunting component felt like an afterthought as motivations blurred, with some leaning more towards tracking down Groff and others simply being about them fleeing their hometown.
The latest treasure wasn’t even worth mercenaries constantly trying to kill them.
JJ “realizing” that the treasure didn’t matter as long as he had his framily and Kie didn’t even hit the effective notes because somewhere along the way, no one seemed to actively care about the treasure in the first place, including JJ.
Shoupe’s Inefficiency and Incompetency Reaches New Lows
Shoupe, as a good-hearted antagonist to the Pogues, stopped being endearing long ago, but it reached new lows.
Without Shoupe at least pushing back against the Kooks and some of the political agendas, he’s just this guy who aimlessly fixates on this same group of Pogues specifically for all that ails that town.
Shoupe knows all of these kids, meaning he knows what they are and aren’t capable of, yet he never garners respect or trust enough to investigate.
He was so painfully getting led by his nose during his investigations, knowing that there was more to all these murders than just freaking JJ (hell, even Kiara’s dad, who hates JJ knew at this point the authorities had gone too far), and yet every other moment he was initiating manhunts for kids.
While it worked to propel the plot forward, Shoupe letting the Pogues flee to Morocco to bring back a killer con artist only after negotiating with Rafe, of all people, was so absurd there aren’t enough words for it.
That Motherfreaking Color Grading and Editing Hellscape
The budget this season was great, you could tell, namely because much of the Morocco content was top-tier.
Did the sandstorm, fighting, and fleeing sequences last too long? Sure, but when you’ve paid for Morocco, you milk it for all it’s worth.
But the highly saturated blue filter utilized for most of the night shots was so distracting it pulled you out of the story rather than worked as a cool editing trick.
This season’s color grading was grating on many levels, too sharp and saturated and wholly a nightmare.
Rafe’s Poorly Executed and Retconned (though Well-Performed) “Redemption” Arc
The only reason Rafe’s redemption works is that it’s Drew Starkey. Now that they’ve killed off a fan favorite like JJ, it’s on brand to expand another fan favorite’s role more.
I won’t even pretend I wasn’t all-in on (a more muted) Rafe collaborating with the Pogues, taking the “it takes a killer to go after killers” approach to it all, and quietly instigating the Groff vengeance tour.
As I said, Drew Starkey has a wonderful way of making anything work, even things that aren’t supposed to. This character has somehow managed to last all these seasons when he objectively should’ve been killed off after the first season.
But the season doesn’t earn Rafe’s redemption even though they put a good effort in setting it up via his growing discontent with how juvenile the Kooks were behaving.
We sailed past things like how often Rafe tried to kill his own sister; this unspoken tension due to his unspeakable actions hanging in between them even showed via flashes but was never adequately addressed.
Rafe never actually takes responsibility for his actions; he even doubles down on some of his worst traits throughout the season.
Not actively causing direct harm versus passively watching much of it unfold doesn’t “redeem” him despite the best efforts.
And now we have this quiet understanding and love emanating from the Cameron siblings. We’ll just move on from there and let all that murky, murderous, downright sociopathic water flow under the bridge.
Groff’s Villainy Propelling Him Up a 50 ft Well Unharmed Defies Logic
Groff is obviously the most evil person they’ve had to deal with thus far.
He’s like Ward 2.0, but because of his specific body count, he’s enemy #1 on the series, and we’ll happily await his demise.
But Groff’s villainy was bizarre in that despite serving as a conman, it made little sense that he was able to pull the wool over the Pogues’ eyes, especially a notoriously distrustful JJ who knows the game.
Nevertheless, leaving him at the bottom of the well was a key moment they would all regret in the finale.
But forgive me if I couldn’t quite wrap my head around nor suspend the belief required after Groff not only got pushed down a well and somehow avoided broken bones or a broken neck but succeeded at scaling his way out of there and was still unharmed.
It was the beginning of the end in Outer Banks’ frustrating execution of JJ’s demise.
JJ’s Tragic Death is Frustratingly Banal and Meaningless
I can argue all day that Outer Banks was supposed to be an escapist television show and that, as a result, we would have happily carried through its run without losing a member of the Pogues, even if it defied logic.
The premise sold us on this, and it was actually okay for them to stand by that instead of tapping into realism when that has been a selective feature at best.
As upsetting as it is, we’re not questioning that JJ dies.
Out of the bunch, it’s sadly fitting that the most reckless, risk-taking member of the bunch who “didn’t have much going for him” and whom all around him deemed was “heading nowhere fast” would die.
It’s a sad reality for some people who live hard and fast and die young and early, and it’s bleak and hopeless in a way that is saddening.
After all, sometimes, it’s nice to see the JJs of the world win, particularly when the general audience likely relates more to characters like him than the Toppers of the world.
But that’s more of a reason why if we had to succumb to the hamster-in-wheel hopelessness of the economically disadvantaged and perpetually fucked Pogues never getting anywhere, their deaths need to matter and be more meaningful.
If the implication is that JJ died knowing that true happiness was in his found family and that’s all he needed, then the real “fuck you” to the system is to let him live to have that.
Another dead, poor kid who society screwed over isn’t groundbreaking, and the acceptance of being spirited while downtrodden teeters on glamorizing and romanticizing poverty, social insecurity, and trauma.
JJ’s a kid with no real home outside of what he created — and an advesary helped bury him in the middle of the desert in an unmarked grave like a pauper. JJ couldn’t even rest in peace.
The problem is that a canonically wary and skeptical JJ, who Groff routinely betrayed, could simply turn away from this man and believe that he had really won and that all was over.
JJ, the most loyal and self-sacrificial Pogue to ever Pogue, DIDN’T die protecting the supposed love of his short-lived life or his family.
He died senselessly in a moment that seemed more about catering to shock value than serving as a proper swan song to a beloved character after spending half the season telegraphing and foreshadowing it with the subtlety and restraint of a sledgehammer.
Groff stabbed him, essentially gutting him like a fish for caricaturistic evil funsies, and skipped away with the crown as Kie watched on, frozen and barely reacting.
JJ, a child of the sea, drowning in the ocean saving Sarah and her unborn child, of whom John B and Sarah will name after him, would have been a more meaningful and apt sendoff.
It would’ve stayed more faithful to his character as a young man who, against all odds, had a heart so full of love and fiercely protected those he loved.
But the only sacrifice here was the series sacrificing JJ’s characterization and heroic death for the plot, setting up a final season of vengeance.
Given JJ’s background and history within the series, making his death senseless reinforces society’s perceptions of him rather than reinforces what we know this character to be, which is as upsetting or even more so than his death in the first place.
Alright, OBX Fanatics. It’s time to hear from you!
How did you feel about the season? Are we pouring one out (or smoking one up) in honor of the Poguest of Pogues, JJ?
What are your theories on all the gossip and drama?
Woogity, woogity, I’ll see you in the comments.
