Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 3 of Outer Banks.
Outer Banks is back for a third season and as usual,the Pogues find themselves in quite a predicament. This time, they find themselves stuck on a remote island, aptly dubbed Poguelandia, before eventually getting back to civilization and right back into some high-stakes treasure hunting. As viewers saw at the conclusion of the second season, John B (Chase Stokes) may not be all on his own after all as a shot of his believed-to-be-dead father was the final image from a tumultuous season. Was it real or was it a misdirect? Well, the third season didn’t waste much time diving right into this storyline as John B’s neverending optimism that his father was still alive was quite literally saved by a bell when the two reconnected in the appropriately named third episode, “Fathers and Sons.” It was a moment that had been teased from the instant we first saw the teenager being pursued by child protective services in the pilot. Yet, once the father-son reunion occurred, there wasn’t enough time to let this moment breathe or for the two to really expound on the lost time. As a result, what should have been a pivotal turning point forOuter Banksfelt a bit out of sync.
Not Lost At Sea
Where the story originally took the absence of Big John (Charles Halford) was that he was presumed dead at sea after investigating the Royal Merchant shipwreck where the treasure was believed to be missing. When the pilot episode kicked off, he had already been missing for nine months and when theOuter Banksjourney begins, it shows John B. refusing to believe this is the case. There are multiple moments in the first season in which he feels connected with his father, including finding a sunken boat in that first episode in which they find a compass that once belonged to him with the words Big John engraved on it. Jumpstarting the Pogues wild pursuit for not just the treasure but also for the truth,Outer Banks’premise was centered on John B. finding the truth about his father, so it’s no wonder this Season 3 moment carried so much weight.
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Later on, there’s more learned about what actually happened to Big John. He wasn’t just lost at sea by his own doing; he was in a scuffle with Ward Cameron (Charles Esten), the father of Sarah (Madelyn Cline), in which he banged his head on the side of the boat and Ward proceeded to toss his body over the deck. At some point, he washes ashore in Barbados. There’s another person tied to this whole conflict, and that’s Carla Limbrey (Elizabeth Mitchell), who was in on the treasure hunt and is later revealed to be the one who saves him, as seen in the Season 2 finale. Limbrey didn’t get off on the right foot withthe Pogues, though, as she was in pursuit of the Cross of Santo Domingo, which was believed to be able to cure the sick, and this is the storyline that plays out for much of the second season.
An Embrace Nearly a Year in the Making
Attempting to escape the island and from the danger presented by Carlos Singh (Andy McQueen), who already had captured Kie (Madison Bailey) and Rafe (Drew Starkey) before their eventual escape, the Pogues had finally found a way out of harm with access to a boat. Before getting on, though, John B. couldn’t help but feel that something meaningful was behind the constant bell toll that frequently happened for the first few episodes. Flashbacks show that Big John would call his son back home from the water for dinner with a bell and to John B, this was his father’s doing. As outlandish as a narrative point as it may seem, he was right, so he bolted back to the tower while his friends left as Sarah couldn’t wait anymore with Singh’s men approaching, leaving John B on his own. This is where the third episode kicks off and John B finds himself just feet away from his father.
This wasthe moment that had been built up since the beginningand even more so over the first two episodes through flashbacks, including one to kick off the third episode, which had John B narrating how his mother left them when he was 3, and his father became his best friend. But their final exchange — before he was lost at sea — was not on the best of terms. The show did as well of a job as it could in getting to this point, making the viewer understand this father-son connection more so than had previously been known, but as soon as Big John turns around to see his son and the two hug, it’s barely 10 seconds before Singh’s men pull up, bringing a jarring halt to the biggest moment of this series. “We gotta vanish” are some of the first words Big John says to his son after missing him for nearly one year, which just dampens this should-be heartfelt moment. Understandably, the two meet under a tense situation as they’re both being tracked, but not even having a few minutes where all is right in their world does take away from the initial payoff.
Big John Is Definitely Not a Perfect Dad
That being said, the two end up on the run together and as a result, there still is plenty of time for these two to deliver some emotional moments, though the attempts to do so are, as per usual, cut short on this treasure hunt. The ones that do play out, like when Big John is introduced to Sarah, come at points when his intentions are in question as right before this meeting in which John B was proud to show him his wife, Big John was engulfed in finding Denmark’s diary and barely had care for anything else. From the moment Big John gets on our screens, he quickly becomes a tough character to root for because he’s so obsessively focused on finding this treasure and the city of gold that he lacks any empathy. He puts his son in danger multiple times, including in an attempted negotiation while boarding a boat in which a gun is pulled on John B.
While he’s able to save his son, it just shows that he’s willing to do anything to reach his goal. His brutality is also on display in this scene as he holds nothing back in shooting these two men despite his son urging him not to. It’s understandable that he’d be a grizzled and gritty character after what has happened to him, but there’s just not enough time from the point we meet his character in Season 3 to his eventual demise in the season finale, where he’s able to truly be a father to his son. In his final moments before dying, Big John does his best to restore his character, telling his son to keep Sarah around and that he was the best son he could hope for.
Outer Bankshad the tough task of bringing in a character who many believed to be dead and trying to insert him into a story that was already going at warp speed. There just wasn’t enough room for Big John to ever display enough emotion with his son for the moment to pay off, and in the times when the two did take a minute to explore their past and their feelings for one another, it just never landed as it should. Big John may have been a loving figure before his accident at sea, but in the time since, he became so lost in his pursuit of treasure that he simply lost who he was and could never get past that in the seven episodes we got to see him interact with his son.
