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The Outer Banks Season 3 Ending Sets Up A New Treasure-Hunting Adventure
The finale included several deaths and a time jump.
Major spoilers ahead for Outer Banks Season 3. In his final voiceover of Outer Banks Season 3, John B (Chase Stokes) made an astute observation. “Sometimes the biggest victories come with the greatest losses, and sometimes the biggest villains are also unexpected heroes,” he said, aptly summing up the latest adventure. After he and his fellow Pogues — Sarah (Madelyn Cline), Kiara (Madison Bailey), Pope (Jonathan Daviss), JJ (Rudy Pankow), and Cleo (Carlacia Grant) — washed ashore on a seemingly idyllic desert island they dubbed “Poguelandia,” things quickly took a turn when they got caught up in a life-or-death race as they hunt for El Dorado. Indeed, three major characters died in the Season 3 finale — here’s how it all went down.
In Episode 10, “Secret of the Gnomon,” the Pogues’ search for El Dorado brought them deep into the jungle, where John B, Sarah, and Big John (Charles Halford) ended up in a shootout with Singh (Andy McQueen) and his men. After evading the armed treasure hunters — and Sarah’s dad, Ward (Charles Esten), who’d made a deal to team up with Singh — the trio entered a cave where Big John sent the teens ahead because he’d sustained a gunshot wound to the stomach in the standoff. After diving underwater, John B and Sarah actually discovered El Dorado, too, but their celebration was short-lived.
When the pair emerged from the water, Singh was on the surface pointing a gun at them. After Singh threatened to shoot his son, Big John came out of hiding and threatened to blow up the cave with a stick of dynamite if he didn’t let them live. Though Singh thought he was bluffing, Big John threw the explosive, which eventually blew up in the villain’s hands, as the rest of them escaped. They weren’t out of the woods yet, as Ward appeared with his gun and threatened to kill Big John. When the rest of the Pogues arrived and surrounded him, Ward eventually broke down and gave his daughter his gun, announcing that he just “couldn’t do it.”
But then Ryan (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) showed up and pointed his gun at Sarah. In a poignant act of redemption, Ward sacrificed himself to save his daughter, also killing Ryan in the process. In the aftermath, John B noticed that his own father had begun to lose consciousness as his earlier gunshot wound continued to bleed. So the Pogues loaded Big John in a boat to get him medical attention down the river, but he didn’t survive much longer.
As was the case with Sarah and Ward, John B also made peace with his father before he died. In a final conversation, Big John admitted to his son that he knows he hadn’t been a great father, but that he was “the best son any man could hope for.” After a quiet, bittersweet celebration for finally finding the gold, Big John’s last words were, “I’ll see you at home, kid.”
Fast-forward to 18 months later, and the Pogues were being honored at a public ceremony for succeeding “where centuries of conquistadors, explorers, and admirals failed” in solving the 500-year-old mystery. As John B noted to Sarah, things suddenly felt “so normal,” citing that Kie was saving turtles, Pope was going away to school, JJ bought the charter boat, and they were running a “killer surf shop.”
The normalcy didn’t last for long because a mysterious stranger interrupted their conversation. Explaining to the group that he was impressed by their remarkable success with the Royal Merchant, El Dorado, and Denmark Tanny, the man asked if they would look at his captain’s log from 1718. “I would investigate it myself, but I’m too long in the tooth,” he explained. “I need partners, and you all were first on my list.”
After JJ asked who the captain was, the man responded, “Edward Teach. Blackbeard,” eliciting a mischievous smile from John B, who said, “Hot damn,” before the screen faded to black. As he said earlier, he is his father’s son.
The mystery of real-life pirate Blackbeard — who lived in North Carolina in the early 1700s and ransacked and pillaged unsuspecting ships off the shore — will likely be central to Outer Banks Season 4, which Netflix announced on Feb. 18. “Seeing Poguelandia come to life was nothing short of spectacular,” co-creators Jonas Pate, Josh Pate, and Shannon Burke said in a statement. “The Pogues are enjoying an adventure of a lifetime, and we now get to map out more twists and turns as the joyride continues into Season 4 of Outer Banks.”
