SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about Season 5 of Netflix‘s Outer Banks.

There were a lot of full-circle elements in the fifth and final season of Outer Banks.

The series ended the way it started, with a hurricane. Sarah (Madelyn Cline) wore a version of her iconic Midsummers white dress from Season 1 to her wedding to John B (Chase Stokes) in the series finale where the two recited the vows she used for their impromptu nuptials on the open seas in Season 2. And the Pogues, in the same lineup as their very first treasure hunt (sans the late JJ), went on one final adventure together in Azerbaijan.

It wasn’t your typical Outer Banks season: there were three proposals — two by Pope (Jonathan Daviss) to Cleo (Carlacia Grant), one by Rafe (Drew Starkey) to Sofia (Fiona Palomo), a wedding (Sarah and John B) and a baby, as the couple welcomed a son whom, as expected, they named JJ, after their beloved friend who was supposed to be the baby’s godfather.

The show leaned into the supernatural, too, with Kiara, JJ’s father Chandler Groff (J. Anthony Crane) and rich collector Finch all chasing Blackbeard’s Blue Crown to try and resurrect a loved one: JJ; Groff’s wife (and JJ’s mother), whom he had killed; and Finch’s young daughter, respectively. (Groff also senselessly killed JJ, but he didn’t seem to feel remorse over that.)

Holding the crown, Kiara did see JJ under a meteor shower, but it was her memories of him. The season also had a revenge thriller vibe as, in her grief, Kiara went full Kill Bill on Groff, chasing him down to murder him, which she did on her second try.

Ultimately, it was a happy ending for the Pogues who were able to get back one of the many treasures they had discovered only to see them being taken away – the Royal Merchant gold — which they recovered from the bottom of the ocean after the boat Groff and Kiara were on sunk in the hurricane. Kiara managed to stay afloat while waiting for the Pogues to rescue her as she found herself in calm waters under the eye of the storm. This was the second time she cheated death, having been sent to the bottom of the ocean by Groff in an earlier episode, summoning JJ for help both times.

With the money from the gold, the Pogues “rebuilt the island the way it should be so all of us, Kooks and Pogues, could live there… forever,” as John B said at the end of the finale. On the new Kildare, Kooks largely bailed out, Pogues moved in, Pope and Cleo settled into his ancestral home, Tannyhill, and Topper is a bartender.

In an interview with Deadline, Outer Banks creators Josh Pate, Jonas Pate and Shannon Burke discuss the ending, what parts of it they had conceived years ago and what elements they had added more recently. They also answer burning questions about the fate of some characters, including what happened to Rafe and Sofia, and whether Sarah and Rafe’s stepmother Rose got any of the gold she had kept until Groff stole it from her.

Each Outer Banks character had their own ending, many of which converged at John B and Sarah’s wedding.

The trio also explain whether they ever considered bringing JJ back from the dead or have Rudy Pankow reprise his role in any way, if they thought of killing off another Pogue and why Groff was so unredeemable.

As part of the interview, Josh and Jonas Pate and Burke also revealed that a prequel set 20 years prior, which features the Outer Banks parents’ generation, is in active development at Netflix.

“It really is the story of how the island split — and it’s particularly relevant in our country right now — how it split into the haves and have-nots, how the Kooks and the Pogues started,” Josh Pate said. “How did this rift start?”

Below, they tease another possible spinoff.

Ending On a Win

DEADLINE: Let’s start with with the ending. You said after Season 4 that you’re “bringing it all home.” Is this what you envision, building a Kildare utopia with Kooks and Pogues living in harmony?

JONAS PATE: Yes.

JOSH PATE: I don’t think the Kooks are there anymore. I think the Kooks have all been kind of driven off.

JONAS PATE: No, no, no. There are some, maybe we have a disagreement on that. But I think it’s the happiest ending you could possibly have. Everybody’s there living together. We had lost for 49 straight episodes, so we feel like we earned the happy ending.

JOSH PATE: I agree. I think it’s a happy ending, and that’s what we wanted it to be — as happy as we could make it, given everything that had happened in the story.

DEADLINE: Is this ending in the ballpark of what you had envisioned from the beginning, from when you created the show?

BURKE: It is. Many elements of the final sequence, we discussed at the end of Season 1.

DEADLINE: Like Sarah and John B’s wedding?

BURKE: Yeah, all that. Tannyhill going to Pope. We sort of knew that it got some traction after Season 1, so we long-arced it from there. So we knew this is where we were going the whole time.

JONAS PATE: And bookending with a hurricane, getting an ending with a hurricane. That was pretty much an original idea because [the series] starts with a hurricane.

DEADLINE: I thought you were going to end it with the Pogues on the beach after the storm and recreate that power outage photo that became the inspiration for the show. Did you think about ending the series with that shot?

JOSH PATE: No, that’s a good question, though. I wish you’d been around. That’s a great idea.

JONAS PATE: Do you want to be on the writers staff for the prequel?

DEADLINE: Was there anything in the ending that changed from the way you had originally planned it?

JOSH PATE: I think Rafe was a big change. I don’t think that at the beginning we had thought that Rafe would be as big a character as he became, as much as we started to really like Drew. Would you guys say that’s fair? I think that evolved.

JONAS PATE: Yeah, and I’d say Pope and Cleo. Both of them had real distinct journeys over this year particularly and I would say that that is more reacting to what happened to Pope in the final episode of the last season and just following it through.

Where In the World Is Rafe?

DEADLINE: Speaking of Rafe, was it deliberate that we never heard from him again? He was supposed to send the gang a postcard from Rio, that didn’t happen. He and Sofia left literally with just the shirts on their backs. Where are they? Are they in South America?

JOSH PATE: That is another spinoff possibility.

JONAS PATE: In the credits, you see a video call from Rafe at the wedding.

DEADLINE: Yes, but we still didn’t get an update. Did he and Sofia get a cut from the gold?

JOSH PATE: Good question. I don’t know. We sort of felt like just Rafe not being arrested for murder, that’s his win. He’s not in jail for the rest of his life.

DEADLINE: Still, it feels sad for him not being able to walk his sister down the aisle.

BURKE: The intent was, it felt like as good as you could possibly get for someone who was so bad for a lot of the series. It was as realistic as you can get with him being as bad as he had been, and so we wanted to thread the needle where he had to pay to some extent. He’s exiled, but he does get a second chance.

Death Does Not Become Pogues

DEADLINE: After JJ’s death in the Season 4 finale, did you consider killing off another Pogue in Season 5? You flirted with Kiara, who came very close to dying twice.

JONAS PATE: Josh, we never thought of killing anybody else, do you remember?

JOSH PATE: I never recall any. I didn’t want to kill anybody, I don’t want anyone else to die.

JONAS PATE: I didn’t think so either. I was just trying to think, like, ‘Did we ever think about it?’ I don’t think so either. Though I would say that something’s thought about at all times. Like, you always consider, everything’s thought of at some point.

OGs-Only Treasure Hunt

DEADLINE: In Season 5, Cleo was sidelined in the Bahamas twice. For the trip to Azerbaijan, Rafe also had a reason to stay, so the Pogues went after the Blue Crown in their original formation (sans JJ). it felt like a throwback to Season 1 and one last adventure for the OGs. Was it intentional?

JOSH PATE: Yeah, I think we’re trying to chime some old vibes, classic OBX vibes on some of this season.

BURKE: And also it gave Cleo a real singular moment where she did something at the end of eight on the runway, and it also set up finishing the Pope and Cleo story. But yeah, it felt good to have just the OG Pogues on one adventure. Jonas, what do you think about that?

JONAS PATE: Yeah, I liked it. I mean, the whole show, honestly, was such a blessing to shoot. The process of making it was so much fun for all of us that I think that we wanted to make sure we experienced all those types of things that we had felt over the course of the season. So it was a little bit of adventure, a little bit of stuff in their home on their home turf. We tried to, as Josh said, chime all the old school, the old versions that we had done in the final season, just to make fans feel satisfied.

Twinkie Lives On

DEADLINE: You mentioned Cleo’s heroics, which included blowing up John B’s beloved VW van Twinkie. It made a return, first in the form of Sarah and John B’s wedding cake, and then as their Just Married van. Was this the refurbished original one or a new incarnation of Twinkie?

JONAS PATE: Nellie, you really watched this, I appreciate that. It was a new incarnation of Twinkie, which is not easy to find. Over the course of the season, I think there were seven, because they kept breaking down. We had to keep replacing them.

Outer Banks or Outer Realm

DEADLINE: Blue Crown’s supposed powers. Why did you decide to introduce the element of immortality and did you consider at any point taking a supernatural route and bringing JJ or somebody else back to life?

JOSH PATE: Actually, there’s a similar supernatural element in earlier seasons with [Carla] Limbrey. We always knew that the show was not a supernatural show but some people believe supernatural things in the world, and these kids could believe in these myths without us actually crossing the line into actual magic, which we never wanted to do.

JONAS PATE: But we felt like, to your point, Josh, it’s human to be superstitious, right? I mean, that’s what a lot of religion is. So we never thought about crossing the line, but we knew that we could have characters that could believe in those types of things, and it could motivate their actions.

BURKE: And we wanted to walk right up to the edge of that line, to the point of where some people believed that it was supernatural, and some people didn’t. We wanted to get right up to the edge of that line, but then not cross it.

DEADLINE: So the ball of light, was it just a natural phenomenon? Because it wasn’t just Kiara; Finch, Groff and others also believed in the crown’s powers.

BURKE: I would say in the staff or the people who are on this phone call that some people here thought it was supernatural, and some people thought it wasn’t. Would you say that’s true, guys? Because I said not supernatural, and I think Jonas said it wasn’t, and Josh, I don’t know what you say.

JOAH PATE: I don’t think it was. I mean, it was a meteor shower. But again, two people can see the same thing, like a lightning bolt, and one can take it in a supernatural, spiritual way, as a sign or a message, and someone else can just be like, “Oh, it’s a lightning bolt.” People can interpret those two things differently.

So, I think there are characters in the show that are on both sides of that fence, and all you have to do is show. It is coincidental? Well, they knew that there was a meteor shower. There was an incredible video that was captured online of this blue light during a meteor shower that basically was the template for the way we did that. That was real, so we didn’t push it that much if you’ve actually seen this one video of this girl underneath a meteor shower.

JJ’s Presence

DEADLINE: So there was no consideration of bringing back JJ at any point, right?

BURKE: Not in any corporeal, like not as a real person, but maybe in a dream sequence, sort of as it was.

DEADLINE: But even in the flashbacks, you had younger actors portraying JJ and Kiara’s early years. Was there a conversation with Rudy to come back?

JOSH PATE: Honestly, not really. We always knew we wanted to show when they first met. I don’t know, maybe glancingly, but it never got very serious.

DEADLINE: In another natural-adjacent phenomenon, Kiara found herself in the eye of a hurricane when she fell overboard, which likely saved her life. It was a beautiful moment but was this supposed to be just symbolic or do we think JJ helped?

BURKE: It’s what you think. Like Josh said, it’s walking right up the line, and you can think one thing or the other. Probably everyone is going to look at that and have a different interpretation. Did he really help or was it just that the eye of a storm passed over?

DEADLINE: Do you have the answer?

JONAS PATE: I guess I know what I think, but that’s not… .

JOSH PATE: I think I know what Kara thinks.

DEADLINE: What does she think?

JOSH PATE: She thinks JJ helped her.

Legalizing the Gold

DEADLINE: I am a little confused how Rose couldn’t legalize the Royal Merchant gold for so long, and our guys did it in no time, becoming very rich.

JOSH PATE: Shan, you want to take that one? Nellie, you’re just grinding us here.

BURNE: We’d have to look that up. In maritime law, if you find it on land, there’s different laws. They were saying that before it was found in someone’s house, they didn’t own that house. The gold goes to the person who is from the house, but now that’s a treasure that they found underwater. That’s a maritime treasure, and I think it goes to them. But I’d have to check that to make sure. It’s a good question. But until proven otherwise, it’s because they found it in water, not on land.

DEADLINE: Well, they didn’t have witnesses, so I don’t think anybody knows where they found it. And the gold was on land before getting on that boat but OK, I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole.

JONAS PATE: In the scene between Rafe and Rose, she says that Ward hadn’t bought the Crain House yet, and they would backdate the sale that so when he found it, that’s his, that it came with the property.

Rose Gold

DEADLINE: Speaking of Rose, the Pogues rightfully scoffed when she asked them to bring her back some gold for a cut. But then we saw her at the wedding, and she kissed John B. So are they on good terms? Did she get any money out of the gold?

JOSH PATE: I love these questions. I don’t think so. What do you think, Shan?

BURKE: I don’t think so. I think she has hooked up with another rich guy on Outer Banks, and she’s okay. We wanted to be gracious with everybody. Like, they had some contentious relationships but they still grew up with her, she’s part of Sarah’s family, and it’s a happy ending. Everyone’s more or less on good terms. But yeah, I don’t think she got the gold.

“Seductive Charmer”

DEADLINE: Rose seemed like a good, reasonable parental figure until she hooked up with Groff. Who in their right mind would associate themselves with somebody like him?

JOSH PATE: I think old Tony is a seductive charmer.

JONAS PATE: I mean, If you see watch the whole show, you see all the bad sides of him.

JOSH PATE: Shannon and I are, we always described the character of Groff as “tennis handsome.”

DEADLINE: Groff is one of the most irredeemable characters I’ve ever seen on TV. Did you try to humanize him, or he was just there for us to hate him?

JONAS PATE: We like the good villain, right?

JOSH PATE: We toyed with it, and there were elements that we wanted to soften. I think he’s just got a deep psychopathology that’s going on.

There was this book called Blood Will Out that our buddy Walter Kirn wrote. It’s about this sociopathic guy who imitates a Rockefeller, he murders somebody, and Walter, who’d befriended him, goes to see him in prison after he’s been convicted of murder. And he’s like, “Okay, man, you lied to me about everything, and you f*cking killed somebody. And the guy looks right at Walter and goes like, “I didn’t kill him.” He’s still lying.

That’s what we just kept thinking about. Like, wow, this guy can really go all the way.

BURKE: There’s that moment where he has the painting of Larissa, he’s talking to Larissa. I don’t think he’s redeemed, but I think it’s explicable that his original sin is that he married up into Larissa’s family, and then he ends up killing her, and then he’s trying to go back to reverse this thing that he did initially. He’s obviously insane, he’s gone crazy, so not redeemed in any way, but maybe explicable?

The Case Of The Disappearing Kooks

DEADLINE: Can you explain how the Kooks disappeared somehow, and how in the world is Topper now a bartender? Don’t the Kooks have wealth?

BURKE: Well, even wealthy people – they still work as bartenders, they have trouble. The intent was to soften him, to make him more relatable, like he’s actually learned something.

JOSH PATE: I think he’s been excommunicated from his parents a little bit too. He’s had a lot of trouble with his mom and dad, so maybe he got cut off and has to support himself now as a bartender. But again, yeah, to make him a little bit more likable, as Shannon would say.

DEADLINE: But Kooks still live there, they are just not as rich as they were? There seems to be a clear shift in the dynamic on the island.

JOSH: I think the Kooks abandoned the island after the hurricane to a large extent because the island’s destroyed, and what’s happened in the coastal Carolinas is, you can’t get insurance anymore. So they’ll pay you back, but they won’t let you rebuild, and that’s kind of it. Kind of like what’s happening in LA, and so I think, the post-hurricane island returns to more a poorer version of the island.

Acknowledgments

DEADLINE: Any final thoughts about your Outer Banks journey and ending the show on your own terms?

JOSH PATE: We feel really a lot of gratitude to being allowed to end the show in the way we wanted to. A lot of gratitude to Netflix, to Ted [Sarandos] and Bella [Bajaria] and Nne [Ebong], who believed in the show from the beginning, and they largely let us tell the story that we wanted to. So, you’ve been around Hollywood long enough to know that you rarely get to end on your own terms. So, we feel a lot of gratitude for that.

Jaafar Jackson will reprise his role as Michael Jackson in the Michael biopic sequel in the works at Lionsgate and the late singer’s estate.

In a new interview, Jaafar Jackson said he would want his uncle’s point of view on all the child abuse allegations.

“I think the second film will give even more insight from his point of view, because at the end of the day, [the allegations] are always from someone else’s,” Jaafar Jackson said in an interview with GQ Middle East.

He continued, “It’s someone else’s story. It’s someone else’s idea of what it is, and it’s mainly driven by an agenda. And that’s really the issue we’ve been having as a family – not having Michael’s voice being heard. I think that’s very, very important, especially in the late years.”

Allegations against Michael Jackson started in the early 90s and were not addressed in the first film, as the Antoine Fuqua-directed film ends in 1987 with the release of the Bad music video. The filmmaker said the biopic originally included scenes covering the allegations, but they were later removed to focus on Michael Jackson’s journey to stardom and what made him who he is.

“This first film focuses on Michael from his roots. So you get that idea of who he was before he had all the success and became the icon that people are familiar with, you understand who he was as a human being first, because at the end of the day, that’s who he was in the ’90s until he passed,” Jaafar Jackson said.

He added, “He never changed that purity, that sense of always wanting to find the good in other people. And no matter all the stuff he went through, how he was treated, what things were said about him, he never stopped treating people with kindness. He never stopped believing in and wanting to look for the good in people… even though he was broken, his heart still stayed the same… I hope that this is felt in the second movie.”

In an interview with Deadline, Lionsgate’s Adam Fogelson gave a timetable for when audiences can expect the Michael sequel, telling us, “We are targeting a production start towards the end of this year or early next.”

Dog days of August? What dog days of August do you speak of?

Absolutely none here as Spider-Man: Brand New Day heads for a healthy fourth weekend of $35 million at this weekend’s domestic box office, and $85M worldwide. That 50% fourth-weekend decline is on par with Disney/Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame.

As we told you, Spider-Man‘s fourth weekend in North America will likely not be one for the record books; the best fourth weekend at the domestic B.O. belongs to Warner Bros’ American Sniper at $89.3M, followed by Avatar with $50.3M.

How high will Sony’s highest-grossing movie ever with $2 billion-plus go? It likely won’t topple the high points of 20th Century Studio’s Avatar ($2.9B) or Avengers: Endgame ($2.79B, and will raise its grosses more after its September re-issue). However, Brand New Day has a shot at pushing China’s animated Ne Zha 2 further down on the charts (that pic grossed $2.27B).

As we told you earlier this week, Spider-Man: Brand New Day became the fastest film to cross $800M in 19 days stateside. The movie remains in competition with history; Disney/Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the only movie ever to cross $900M in North America.

Sony will likely have bragging rights for No. 2 stateside this upcoming frame with Blumhouse Atomic Monster’s $18M spinoff Insidious: Out of the Further, which is looking at $23M-$27M at 3,303 theaters. The previous installment, 2023’s Insidious: The Red Door, came in well ahead of expectations for the 16-year-old PG-13 spooky franchise with a $33M start (though not a record; that’s still owned by Insidious 2 at $40.2M), knocking out Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in its second weekend. Red Door is considered a bit of a unicorn as it was a reunion of the franchise’s original cast Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson, the latter making his feature directorial debut. The pic wound up becoming the highest-grossing in the franchise with $189M worldwide.

The entire Insidious franchise’s global gross to date is nearly $732M.

Insidious: Out of the Further will share PLFs with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Imax will be split between Brand New Day and Odyssey. Previews start in U.S.-Canada at 2 p.m.. Rotten Tomatoes critics are at 60% fresh for Out of the Further.

Overseas, Insidious: Out of the Further, which stars franchise’s thespian Lin Shaye and is directed and written by Come Play‘s Jacob Chase, is looking at $26M in 64 territories for a global start between $49M-$53M. The offshore forecast of $26M is around where Insidious 3 and Insidious: The Last Key were. These supernatural movies do well in Catholic countries, and already we’re hearing that Out of the Further has posted the best opening day for a horror movie ever in the Philippines (Red Door opened to $3.7M there). Shaye traveled to Peru, so expect at pop at the B.O. there (Red Door opened to a reported $1M there). The sequel won’t be going in Japan or China, but will be scaring up Korea in addition to other major foreign territories.

Overall, Out of the Further will be another test for franchise horror in a year dominated by YouTube genre creators via Obsession and Backrooms. Scream 7 is by far the biggest horror franchise opener YTD with $97.2M WW (and $63.6M domestic). Those numbers were also record starts in the series for that Kevin Williamson franchise.

Others wides entries at the domestic B.O. this weekend are in the single-digits range, i.e., Black Bear’s Spa Weekend from The Hangover architects Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, at 2,009 sites with $3M-$5M. Pic stars Anna Faris, Isla Fisher, Michelle Buteau and Leslie Mann and follows a group of friends (and the one GF they box out) at a posh spa resort where they wreck havoc.

Lionsgate has the Jean-François Richet-directed Jason Statham movie Mutiny, which follows a guy aboard a cargo ship on a one-man crusade after witnessing his billionaire boss’ murder and is framed for the crime. Statham’s protag is out to avenge his boss’ death only to discover an international conspiracy. The studio has released a long list of Statham movies. The R-rated pic’s previews start at 5 p.m. today. Critics are 49% Rotten on Statham’s latest. Mutiny is booked at 2,703 theaters in U.S./Canada.

RELATED: Film Buyers Fume As Amazon Accidentally Leaks Jason Statham’s ‘Mutiny’ Ahead Of Cinema Release

Vertical has the Andrew Garfield family movie The Magic Faraway Tree at 1,611 theaters. It follows a family who relocates to the countryside where the children discover a magical tree with eccentric residents. They’re transported to fantastical lands, rekindling their family bond through adventures. The Ben Gregor-directed movie has already collected more than $32M at the foreign B.O., per Box Office Mojo, $20M+ of that coming from the UK. It’s Vertical’s first family feature. Critics are 84% fresh on RT. Previews start at 2:10 p.m.