Mona Elzein '23
Social Media Coordinator
Warning! The following review contains “Outer Banks” season three spoilers, so proceed with caution.
For those of you who haven’t seen “Outer Banks,” the premise of the show follows a group of four friends: JJ, Kiara, Pope, and John B. The group lives on an island which separates its population into either the “kooks” or the “pogues.” The kooks are considered wealthy and privileged while the pogues are the poor— think of the kooks as the haves and the pogues as the have nots.
Throughout the TV show, the audience follows the pogues through their adventure of finding the long lost gold that totals to 400 million dollars. By season two we’ve not only seen the pogues find, lose and find the gold again, but also fall in love and overcome the battles of high school. Their adrenalized treasure hunting and coming of age story line captured the lives of many teens and young adults during quarantine; with its total overall streams for just the first season being around 35.1 million hours.
Although myself and millions of others loved the romance between the pogues along with their high stakes adventure–season three, in my opinion, lacked an important component of relatability. Season three was solely centered around treasure hunting, leaving out all the relatable teenage drama. This made many viewers disinterested as this season not only dropped their relatable plot line, but also split up the iconic pogue friend group. Splitting up the group made the show lose its coming of age feel that drew in the younger audience. It made many feel detached from the characters and lose interest in the show.
Another issue I had with the plot of season three was the addition of John B’s father, who was absent in the previous two seasons. Adding this plot point of finding John B’s father alive, could have been a new and interesting direction for the show. However, they made John B’s father so insufferable and treasure hungry, that it was hard to care whether the character lived or died.
While having this overarching plot of rescuing John B’s father when he was kidnapped in South America, the show imputed mini plot lines for each character such as Kiara being sent out to boarding school for troubled teens or Sarah Cameron cheating. These mini plot lines were so interesting, yet were rushed and given little to no screen time. Due to this, they were not executed properly and gave the audience no time to connect and care for the situations presented.
Overall, in this season of “Outer Banks,” the plot lines were not only rushed, but poorly written. Even when John B’s father truly did die, there was not a single person that felt attached to him, making his story line unnecessary and a waste of screen time.
The audience yearned for the nostalgic feel that was given in the first two seasons when the friend group was together and all shared a similar task: finding the gold. Now, each character has their own plot line, making the show too hectic and unrelatable. In my personal opinion, I do not recommend watching season three of Outer Banks and to just stick with the first two seasons.