‘Outer Banks’ Season 3 defined: Inside ‘most debated’ twist

Warning: The following comprises spoilers for “Outer Banks” Season 3.

In the primary three seasons of Netflix’s “Outer Banks,” the Pogues — the moniker adopted by a close-knit group of working-class teenagers residing off the coast of North Carolina — have survived near-fatal drownings, aircraft crashes, automobile chases, animal assaults, fiery explosions, numerous gunshots and different brushes with grasping treasure hunters trying to money in on their worldwide seek for an historic fortune.

So once they got down to wrap up a three-season, 30-episode thriller involving the legendary metropolis of gold often known as El Dorado, co-creators and government producers Josh Pate, Jonas Pate and Shannon Burke have been ready to swing for the fences.

“The show has always been a little unhinged, in a fun way,” Jonas Pate tells The Times in a video interview. “And we felt like we needed to go big in the last round.”

The 79-minute season finale, titled “Secret of the Gnomon,” finds protagonist John B. Routledge (Chase Stokes), his associate Sarah Cameron (Madelyn Cline) and his father Big John (Charles Halford) mountain climbing by way of the South American jungle and utilizing pictorial clues from an archaeological web site to discover a darkish cavern that comprises untapped reserves of gold. With Big John wounded, John B. and Sarah are tasked with finishing the ultimate leg of the journey collectively.

While some components of the episode have been shot round Charleston, S.C., the cave scenes have been shot on location in Barbados, the place the producers needed to obtain particular permission from the federal government to movie and swim in swimming pools which are usually closed to the general public.

“We were deep down — sometimes 600 feet down — and we’d be down there all day,” Burke recollects. “Chase and Maddie were actually in a pool deep, deep down inside the Earth. They’re ducking under a pool and coming up over and over again. They’re crawling through underground rivers. They’re slipping in mud inclines. That is not fake.”

Father is aware of greatest?

When Caribbean crime kingpin Carlos Singh (Andy McQueen) finds and corners the Routledges and Sarah on their means out of the cavern, Big John should determine between saving his son or preserving the treasure that has develop into his life’s work. The flawed father finally chooses his son, and the trio escapes the cave simply earlier than an explosion kills Singh inside.

Moments later, Sarah’s envious and murderous father, Ward (Charles Esten), who had secretly been on their tail all day, holds the three at gunpoint, however he’s unable to drag the set off. Instead, when Singh’s final remaining guard, Ryan (Lou Ferrigno Jr.), seems and threatens to shoot his daughter, Ward takes the bullets himself and tackles the person off a hill, killing them each immediately.

The choice to jot down Esten, who has develop into a mentor to the youthful solid members, off the sequence was not made frivolously. “It was probably the most debated point ever in the three years [of this show]; it went on for weeks and weeks,” Burke says.

Josh Pate, who was essentially the most reluctant of the creators to eliminate Ward, says he finally realized that the writers “didn’t have another move for the character” after the third season. The penultimate episode, as an illustration, brings Ward’s relationship along with his solely son, Rafe (Drew Starkey), to a head; Ward entrusts Rafe with the remaining household enterprise in Outer Banks, giving him the vote of confidence that Rafe has looked for his total life.

“We knew that if Ward was still the dominant villain, it would be harder to explore [Rafe’s] evolution going forward, so it gave us space for that in the future seasons,” Jonas Pate says, including that the writers can be trying to discover extra of Rafe’s romantic relationship with Sofia (Fiona Palomo) with a purpose to humanize and villainize him in subsequent seasons.

Ward wasn’t the one character to fulfill an premature finish within the finale. On the boat journey again to the principle village, Big John dies in his son’s arms, surrounded by the remainder of the Pogues. It’s a tragic — albeit poetic — ending that, in line with the creators, was at all times within the playing cards for Big John, who disappeared however was later revealed to be alive on the finish of the second season.

For John B., who initially continued his father’s treasure hunt with a purpose to uncover the reality about his disappearance, “it feels totally tragic because he just got him back, and it almost seems like his father has finally broken through to accepting Sarah and being the father that he could be,” Burke says. “I think they — Sarah more than John B. — both have mixed feelings about their fathers’ deaths and what happened.”

Much of the battle within the present has stemmed from John B. and Sarah’s “Romeo and Juliet”-esque relationship — he’s a working-class Pogue, whereas she was born right into a rich household of Kooks. The stark distinction between her present and previous lives is introduced again into focus within the sixth episode, when Sarah, having been lower off from her household, bumps into her ex-boyfriend, Topper (Austin North), who invitations her to spend a day with their previous mates. For the creators, the choice to reintroduce Topper was born out of a shared love for the character and a need to revisit an previous impediment for Sarah and John B.

But cautious of the backlash they may obtain for Sarah’s ill-fated hook-up with Topper and betrayal of John B., the writers determined to get Cline to do voiceovers within the seventh and eighth episodes, in an try to shortly “excavate” her character’s psychology at that time within the story. “We were like, ‘Oh, this is the chance, and we need to do it,’ because we need to build empathy for Sarah for what she’s about to do, so that everyone’s not just furious at her,” Josh Pate explains.

“We always liked the idea that it was just John B. and Sarah who take the last mile to the top of Mount Everest,” Jonas Pate provides, “and that after all their heartbreaks, it would be this really fulfilling moment that brings them even more strongly back together.”

Pogues do mack on Pogues, in spite of everything

John B. and Sarah usually are not the one Pogues to discover a romantic relationship. During the present’s freshman season, the creators admit they didn’t think about J.J. (Rudy Pankow) and Kiara (Madison Bailey) a pair. But after seeing the fervent response from followers on social media, who had lower collectively clips from the present, that they had a change of coronary heart and commenced ready for a climactic scene that felt particular sufficient for a primary kiss. That second comes within the ninth episode of Season 3, when J.J. saves Kiara from a wilderness remedy camp.

“We finally landed on them doing it in front of a room full of delinquent girls that then cheered for them,” explains Josh Pate. “It’s the audience of girls watching that intensifies the effect of that scene. We were like, ‘OK, people will remember that scene.’”

Meanwhile, Pope (Jonathan Daviss) is given a second likelihood at love with Cleo (Carlacia Grant), the Nassau native who was raised on the streets and joined the Pogues on the finish of the second season. Although they solely share a handful of scenes collectively, the writers have been eager to focus on how Pope and Cleo complement each other. “He’s giving her the family that she doesn’t have,” Burke says, “and she’s the girlfriend he always wanted.”

Cleo is “such an Artful Dodger character — pretty hard-bitten, pretty cynical, not sentimental,” Jonas Pate says. “So, I think when she finally has a home for a moment, and she starts to participate in the [Heyward] family, and she’s cooking dinners with them, it starts to dawn on her what a life with Pope could be like.”

Earlier this month, forward of the return of “Outer Banks,” Netflix renewed the soapy teen drama for a fourth season. Following the 18-month time leap on the finish of the finale, by which the Pogues have been being honored for his or her treasure-seeking accomplishments and later tasked with cracking a brand new thriller involving the English pirate Blackbeard, the creators can be trying to discover extra mature themes in grownup relationships going ahead.

“We wanted to grapple with those first choices in adulthood,” Josh Pate says. “Also, the actors are getting older, [so] we didn’t want to stretch believability any more than we already have. We felt like if we got them out of high school, [the characters] could figure out what kind of life they want to lead. Do they want to go back and have a normal life, or do they have a life for a while and then get restless and realize it’s a pirate’s life for them? It just gives us a chance to till some new ground in a different setting when they’re out of school.”