'Outer Banks' Season 1 Has the Most Stressful Ending [SPOILERS]
Updated April 15 2020, 5:34 p.m. ET
The Netflix series Outer Banks can best be described as if Ozark and Spring Breakers had a baby: Everyone lives in a small town surrounded by a large body of water, people use speedboats instead of cars to get around, and there is a lot of cash hanging around that the IRS definitely was not told about.
But instead of a husband and wife scheming to launder money, Outer Banks (located in Outer Banks, North Carolina) follows a group of teens investigating a sunken ship and a mysterious disappearance.
If you're planning on watching and don't want to know how the first season ends, stop reading now. However, we're assuming you clicked on this story because you want to know what happens. If that's the case, keep on scrolling!
First: A quick Outer Banks plot summary.
Before we get into Outer Banks spoilers and such, let's quickly go over what you need to know. Outer Banks's main character, John B (played by Chase Stokes), had a father who spent years of his life looking for the lost, sunken treasure of the Royal Merchant. It sank in 1829 and rumor has it, $400 million in British gold went down with it. Predictably, as soon as John B's father gets closer and closer to discovering it and what happened to all that money, he vanishes.
Less than nine months after his dad's disappearance, John B finds a bunch of clues (including a newspaper article about the slave trade that ties everything together) that lead him closer to the truth about his father, the ship, and the money. As John B and his group of friends (called the "Pogues") uncover the truth, they end up making some enemies (some of whom belong to the "Kooks," who are the snobby rich people who live on the island) who don't exactly want him knowing said truth. A lot of drama ensues, and we learn what happened to John B.'s dad.
Before we get to that, let's go over the Outer Banks cast.
Key characters to know: Sarah Cameron (Madelyn Cline) who's wealthy and popular, but definitely full of surprises; JJ (Rudy Pankow), who's John B's best friend; Kiara (Madison Bailey) who comes from a wealthy family but becomes a Pogue; Ward Cameron (Charles Esten), who's Sarah's dad and is one of the wealthiest people on the island; Pope (Jonathan Daviss), who's the smartest Pogue; Topper (Austin North) a rich, entitled guy who's Sarah's boyfriend; Rafe Cameron (Drew Starkey) is Sarah's brother; and Sheriff Peterkin (Adina Porter) who's the Sheriff of Outer Banks.
How does Outer Banks end?
First of all, we learn that John B did't just disappear — he was killed. Bad guy Ward Cameron and Sarah's brother Rafe killed him because he knew too much about the sunken treasure, and the death of Sheriff Peterkin (yup, she also gets killed) is pinned on John B. JJ, Pope, and Kiara help him by stealing the keys to JJ's dad's boat and tell John B to meet them the next day. John B escapes the police, but they're on his tail. John B ends up hiding in a church. Rafe finds him and tries to smoke him out of the building.
Topper saves everyone by dressing up as John B to distract the cops and prove his love for Sarah (John B and Sarah have feelings for each other, BTW). At this point, John B. and Sarah hide in a vacant house that's for sale. Sarah attempts to tell the cops the truth about her father's involvement, but he stops her. John B. gets away and meets his friends on JJ's dad's boat. Unlucky for them, there's a storm coming, which will make escaping really difficult (and dangerous).
Sarah doesn't want to leave John B, so they all decide to take their chances and ride into the storm. Although it initially looks like the storm wipes everyone out, it turns out the group survived and are picked up by another ship that's headed toward the Bahamas.
Outer Banks is currently streaming on Netflix.