After five seasons and seven years playing the Kooks and the Pogues on Outer Banks, the cast is hanging up their flip-flops and bikini tops.
In its fifth and final season, the hit Netflix series takes cast members Chase Stokes, Madelyn Cline, Jonathan Daviss, Drew Starkey, Madison Bailey, and Carlacia Grant across the world for one last adventure, this time to try and locate a crown with supposed resurrection properties. It’s a hard left turn from the original treasure-seeking gang of Carolinians who fans met back in Season 1.
Even as the show has grown exponentially over the years and evolved from a group of teens scampering around to young adults who are actively flouting law enforcement and searching for magical relics, the cast says there is still so much about Outer Banks that they will remember for changing their lives and giving them unforgettable experiences.
“I think a lot of the scenes I will look back and remember fondly, but also, when we were shooting them I was thinking, ‘What are we doing?’” Cline — who plays Kook princess Sarah Cameron — says with a laugh in a sit-down with DECIDER for Season 5. “Like when we’re running away, just running, but very Scooby-Doo style. We go this way and then the bad guys go that way and then we pop out of an alley and then like we actually come face to face and then run the opposite way before they realize that they lost us. I have had so many laughs. Like I’ve had to turn my head away from the camera so many times while doing, just thinking of it and thinking about how funny it is. I’ll look back at those scenes. And also, it did keep me in shape, so I am appreciative.“
While some fans will always hear songs like “Left Hand Free” by alt-J and immediately think of Stokes’ voiceover describing Outer Banks as “paradise on earth,” the cast themselves has a different soundtrack that they say will play when they think back on their seven years of filming the series.
“Listening to Khruangbin, for sure,” Starkey — who has gone back and forth as a villain in the series, playing Rafe Cameron, Sarah’s brother — said, referencing the group that is featured heavily across the five seasons of the series. In the first season of the show, alone, Khruangbin’s music is featured nine times in ten episodes. Their music was also brought back for Season 2. “That band, it was kind of throughout. Just because we were listening to them [all the time].”
To that, Daviss added, “Even before the show premiered during Season 1, we got to go see them perform live in Charleston. Me and Drew went, that was dope. Khruangbin, if you’re listening, we’d love to come back and see them at the concert. We love you guys, you’re the best.”
As far as what Bailey says she is taking with her into her next chapter of life and work, there is one lesson and memory that will revisit (more like haunt) her for the rest of her life.
“I’m not saying I’ll never work on another show on a boat, but I know that I will always look back on the boat days — specifically me, it’s very specific to this show —and those are the good and the bad days,” Bailey shared of some of the show’s trickiest sequences. “We’re on a boat, but then there’s so many other things happening… I’ll look back fondly and also like, what the heck, we were just fish out of and in water.”
It’s a bittersweet goodbye to a show that
Outer Banks Season 5 hits Netflix on Thursday, August 20. The first four seasons are now streaming on Netflix.
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