The following story contains spoilers for “Outer Banks” Season 5.
“Outer Banks,” the treasure hunting adventure series that captivated fans from the pandemic and six years onward, has come to a close – but did the Pogues get their happy ending?
After a fifth and final season full of twists and turns, taking the rebel rousers to Morocco, Azerbaijan and beyond, the series finale of the show celebrated the inlet that brought the friends together.
Chase Stokes told TheWrap that many series — even theirs in earlier seasons — are guilty of baiting viewers with unsatisfying cliffhangers. Stokes assured fans that that wouldn’t be the case for the Season 5 closer.
“I’m really proud to be a part of a show that cements the ending with a true happy ending,” he said. “Everybody gets the thing that they want the most, and instead of it being sort of out in the ether…like let’s prompt a conversation afterwards, it’s like no. You’re going to watch the end of the show. You’re going to be thoroughly satisfied.”
“You’re going to get all the big feelings and big emotions, and if you stuck around since April 2020, and you’re still here in August of 2026, you’re going to be, I think we would say, pretty damn proud to finish this thing with us,” he added.
Despite many near death experiences and devastating losses, the Pogues did have their happy ending after all. Kiara (Madison Bailey) avenged JJ’s death by killing his biological father, Chandler Groff (J. Anthony Crane), Sarah (Madelyn Cline) and John B (Stokes) welcomed their baby and honored their late friend by naming him JJ and the treasure hunting crew found the lost Royal Merchant gold.
Keep reading for a full explanation of how the five-season adventure series came to a close:
The Blue Crown’s legend
Throughout the final season, the Pogues traveled to Morocco, Croatia and beyond in an attempt to find the Blue Crown and fulfill its prophecy.
The Pogues mourned JJ’s death throughout the season, but it all came to a head when the crew tracked down the crown’s whereabouts in Croatia in the hands of dangerous pirates.
Kiara and John B fended off the pirates, which allowed Ki to steal the crown and sneak up to the lake to fulfill the prophecy. She then recited a prayer to the stars and the “god of gods,” where she begged for JJ to rise. Instead, Ki saw several shooting stars – but the prophecy did not immediately come into effect.
However, a few moments later, a comet-like shooting star emerged in the sky, which triggered a series of flashbacks from Kiara and JJ’s time together, including the time they saved a dying dolphin on the beach to his final breath.
Though the final season did not officially revive JJ, his legacy loomed large over the season and Kiara got the closure she needed.
Groff is dead
Madison Bailey told TheWrap that, from the Season 4 finale onward, she knew it would be Kiara who killed Chandler Groff.
Kiara witnessed JJ’s death at the hands of his biological father firsthand, and, in Season 5, it was her mission to avenge his death. She had several chances during the season to kill Groff face-to-face, but she did not get the courage to do so until after her Blue Crown closure.
While everyone tried to evacuate the island because of the en route hurricane, Kiara overheard that a Kook yacht got stolen and that the thief took sail close to Blackstone Manor, the Genrettes’ old estate. She soon realized that it was Groff who stole the Royal Merchant gold.
And so, Kiara left her family behind to face him once more – only this time in the middle of a storm. The two then battled it out in a tense knife fight, which saw Groff pinning Kiara down and almost slitting her throat. Kiara responded by hitting a lever, trapping Groff in a rope that suspended him over the raging waters.
The mast he was tied to snapped soon after thanks to the rain, prompting Kiara to cut the cord. Groff, in turn, sunk and proceeded to drown under the water, killing him once and for all.
“I always knew it was gonna be Kiara,” she said. “I knew that last season, but to see it was amazing.”
Bailey admitted, though, that she thought it took the series a long time for Groff’s death to actually happen, but she was satisfied with how it turned out.
“I was a little thrown off that we were waiting until [episode] 10,” she said. “It felt on the nose, but also right. I was really happy to read that in the script. And I like the way that they did it, and I love that it’s not too gory or too hard to believe that she could do that.”
The merchant gold
After Kiara defeated Groff, she tried to take control of the yacht in the storm, even contacting 911. Unfortunately for Kiara, the winds were too rough.
She then threw some of the gold, which was stored on the yacht, off the boat to try and prevent it from sinking. But, she was eventually sent overboard into the waves. The Pogues came to her rescue and took her back to the lighthouse, with the gold sinking with the yacht.
As the storm subsided, the Pogues realized they were the only ones left on the island. Pope calculated a plan to track down exactly where the gold may have been left out at sea.
The Pogues then went to the spot in question, resulting in John B emerging from the murky water with a gold bar in his hand. The adventuring crew finally recovered the $400 million in gold from their initial Royal Merchant treasure hunt.
Rafe’s goodbye
Rafe had a change of heart in the fifth and final season. Rather than opposing the Pogues, he joined them in their quest for the Blue Crown.
Towards the end of the season, he was put behind bars for a crime he committed in Season 1: the killing of Sheriff Susan Peterkin. However, Rafe broke out of prison and went on the run.
His fiancé, Sofia, was also arrested for helping him evade the police. The runaway prisoner then crafted a plan to break her out of jail as everyone evacuated for the hurricane. As Rafe snuck Sofia away, he told Deputy Shoupe to let him go and promised to never return to the island.
“He always felt like he was the black sheep of his family in a way, and now all of a sudden you have someone in front of you that that accepts every part of you,” Drew Starkey told TheWrap of Rafe’s relationship to Sofia. “I think Rafe would go to the ends of the earth just to have that feeling of love and family, so it was kind of a different version of what I’ve been playing over the course of the earlier seasons.”
Rafe then took off with his fiancé to South America, leaving the Outer Banks and his sister Sarah behind.
Wedding bells
The last moments of the season saw the Pogues getting their true happy ending. Sarah and John B welcomed their baby and named him JJ, in honor of their late friend.
Months later, Sarah and John B held a wedding ceremony, which took place at the new and improved Chateau that they refurbished thanks to the gold. They welcomed friendly faces from Kildare Island to celebrate their love, and the season ended with an upbeat feeling for the future of their family and the Outer Banks.
Sarah’s biological mother, who we met for the first time in the final season, also made an appearance at her wedding – which suggested that she now plays a larger role in Sarah’s life.
“Moms have been a funny subject, meaning there’s two,” Madelyn Cline quipped to TheWrap of the show’s few maternal figures. “I think it was nice to introduce Sarah’s mom and give a little bit of some Cameron backstory and … give Sarah some closure about what’s happened with her mom and make her hopefully feel a little less crazy or gaslit by her dad and brother.”
Sarah also gave the Tannyhill Plantation, the luxurious Figure Eight mansion home where the Cameron family lived, to Pope and Cleo. The estate originally belonged to Denmark Tanny, a 19th-century formerly enslaved man who survived the Royal Merchant shipwreck and used the treasure to buy his freedom and property.
All of “Outer Banks” is available to stream on Netflix.
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