I want to start this review with a shout out to a reader who reached out on Twitter to report having missed the recaps during the long wait for season three (Thanks, Megan!). Megan made a comment about needing more MacGuffins in day-to-day life, and it really drove something home for me about the opening of this season of Outer Banks. Our main characters have become the supporting cast in their own show. Let me explain.
Despite any faults in seasons one and two of Outer Banks, John B and the gang had plenty of meaningful objectives and motivation. There was always something propelling them forward. John B wants to know how his dad died. There’s a sunken treasure. There’s a golden cross that may hold the secret to eternal life. Whatever it was, they always had a MacGuffin. So far this season, John B and the gang are simply wrapped up in everyone else’s questing. They are somehow side characters.
So what I’m hoping is that this return to the titular Outer Banks will serve as a hard reset for the season. John B and the gang get their groove back. I want them solving the riddle of the Sphinx using high school algebra. I want them racing across Paul Bunyon’s giant griddle on butter skates so they can escape with the Ark of the Covenant. That’s the Outer Banks I know. Episode four, “The Diary,” let’s get it in.
Finally back in the OBX, Dad B regains the old diary that leads to the lost city of El Dorado. Due to its importance and delicate state, the priceless journal was kept in… a Volkswagen van. Like, just sat out on the back seat. As you’d expect, that shit is drenched in rainwater and decimated. All is lost, it seems.
Dad B covers his shattered hopes well as he, Sarah, and John B are reunited. They all bring it in for a hug in what is best described as a very “earthy” cuddle puddle. It’s incredible to consider how disgusting they all must be. I love it.
“Dad, meet your new daughter-in-law. Not only are we married. We also smell like someone used their air fryer as a hamper.”
Our main characters then begin the process of revealing to their loved ones that they aren’t dead. This is just a first act THING. We are three minutes deep in this episode, and everyone is doing a resurrection reveal. They’re all just a bunch of vibrant, youthful Beric Dondarrions.
Everyone’s parents just welcome them back from the dead with a big ol’ hug because this is like everyone’s third resurrection. That’s except for JJ, who returns home to find plenty of stale beer and an eviction notice. You’ve heard of an Irish goodbye. This is what’s known as a Piedmont hello.
With the diary destroyed, Dad B says he has a plan B. He grabs his son, and they visit the history teacher who originally deciphered the diary. It’d be cool to see more of this educator’s life. Buying supplies for his students out of pocket while sitting on a potential guide to El Dorado.
Dad B breaks into the teacher’s home, assuming that he has the contents of the treasure diary posted up on his fridge with a South of the Border magnet. They do find the teacher’s notes detailing the diary’s contents, so mission accomplished, I guess. But wait?!
The Family B are jumped by two of Singh’s men who don’t simply murder them. They have a gun. They could have done some simple murders, but I guess sensibility is a virtue in hired guns. They take the teacher’s notes and flee on a boat.
John B steals a jet ski, and chases down the thieves, which again is incredible considering the sheer scale of the ocean. Have all my maps misled me about the size of the bodies of water that span the globe? Are there not sea creatures jutting from the waves and giant letters spelling “Here be dragons” just across the horizon?
Anyway, Dad B switches into his loquacious Southern lawyer character and tells the thieves they can get a lot more money by holding onto the diary rather than giving it to Singh. He tells the thieves they could work together and track down the big treasure.
Since Dad B looks like a Marlboro Santa who bought his poncho at the gas station, the thieves don’t buy his story plan to murder John B and hand his father over to Singh for a reward. Sensing his son was in danger, Dad B murders the two men in front of his shocked son. John B soon realizes that this isn’t the first time his father has disposed of corpses in the middle of the sea.
I’d think the open water would be the easiest place to hide a body, but Outer Banks makes it appear as if the ocean is just where people get found. It’s like the opposite of Dexter except for when it comes to protagonists faking their own deaths by steering a boat into a hurricane. In that one, very specific aspect, Outer Banks and Dexter are in agreement.
Back at Ward’s place, where golden hour lasts all day apparently, he stares in reverence at the giant cross he stole from a gang of teenagers. He has had a stand made special just to display this impossibly large emerald crucifix in his new home — just as Liberace would have wanted. Ward flashes back to frolicking with Sarah when she was a child. He does a big cry over having pushed her out of his life. This paragraph, y’all. It is shambolic.
Because of the guilt of losing their daughter to the Pogues, Ward and his wife decide that the cross is so traceable and recognizable that they’d never be able to fence it. Instead they will donate it to a museum for a tax writeoff.
…
…….
What?
You’re shittin’ me. All that. Everything that happened. And they are gonna donate the cross to a museum. Ward even went so far as to have a stand made! Yeah, I know they have plenty of other gold, but why, as a show, would you downgrade one of its most desired treasures as a tax write off? It’d be like if the Avengers sequel had a scene where everyone demonstrated the ease with which they could lift Thor’s hammer. Like if they made a Top Gun sequel and the last 15 minutes was someone with an iPad stepping in and steering a team of drones to save the day, while Maverick struggled to save something as a .PDF.
Anyway, just when Ward thinks he’s found a way to atone, he and his wife have a realization. How will Rafe respond to this charitable new plan? Oh, let me tell you. You better not be a nearby wall when Rafe hears about the museum plan. Rafe already has the composure of someone trying to divide by zero. When he hears about this, Rafe is going to go Super Saiyan and unleash his Limitbreaker Kamehameha at the family pickleball set. Rafe is going to be so upset that his shadow is just gonna Peter Pan itself the hell off. Speaking of Rafe…
Back at her childhood home, Sarah is frantically gathering her possessions when she hears the front door slam. She overhears Rafe on the phone with their dad. Ward wisely decided to break the news about the cross while a sufficient amount of ocean separated him from whatever happens when Rafe lets slip his veil of humanity and — 100 percent — cracks his phone screen.
Sarah overhears that Ward has shipped the cross back to the States for Rafe of all people to calmly hand over to a museum. The only thing Rafe knows about museums is that they are on the list he was legally mandated to make of “things not to burn.”
With news that Rafe is back in the OBX and a fresh lead on the cross, the gang has plenty to chase after. But wait, there’s more.
Dad B finds clues in the diary that will most likely lead to them exhuming the corpse of a priest in a Charleston cemetery. That might be very difficult because the old cemeteries in Charleston are all very close to the bars. Maybe get an intoxicated bridal party or some CofC bros to help unearth a parson. Lean into that King Street fever.
Aaaaand with everything else that is going on, Pope is grounded. I’m sure he and Cleo will just stay in the house like Carl from The Walking Dead. Looks like Outer Banks is back to its old ways. And not a second too soon. See you next episode.
