‘Outer Banks’ Stars Talk Season 4 Character Growth and What’s to Come: “We’re in This Healing Journey”

“Poguelandia: An Outer Banks Experience” made its return to Los Angeles on Saturday ahead of the show’s season four part two premiere, where fans, artists and the show’s cast gathered at an immersive pop-up.

The pop-up included all things Outer Banks — the characters’ surf shop, food inspired by the series and a concert topping off the event with performances by Jungle, Remi Wolf and Glorilla. The second annual event is modeled after the Netflix hit, which centers around the haves (Kooks) and the have-nots (Pogues), who are going through teenager-hood while on an island solving murders and mysteries.

Chase Stokes — who plays John B and experiences much loss in the show — shared with The Hollywood Reporter how he channeled his character’s need for survival this season, saying, “I think as an artist we always go internal for things like that.”

“I am not somebody who is fortunate enough to not have trauma in my life, so I think it was really kind of doing a deep dive and revisiting some experiences from my past that I really brought into John B this season,” the star added.

From season one to the first part of season four — which released on Oct. 10 — the characters’ growing pains included dealing with unhealthy family dynamics, friendships complications and treasure hunts.

“I’ve seen my character grow in ways of getting more stressed that his friends are not going to be there anymore,” Rudy Paktow said. “I think he’s really wanting to try to hunker them down. And when Pope came up with the idea of having Poguelandia 2.0 be his property that just made his world, I feel like that was exactly what he wanted.”

Madelyn Cline added, “I think that now we’re in this healing journey. But how much healing are we really doing when we’re running?”

Other cast members including Carlacia Grant and Jonathan “JD” Daviss, whose characters typically are the voice of reason amongst the crew, spoke to THR about what’s to come this season for their characters.

“[Cleo’s] going to see red,” Grant said. “She’s going to go through every stage of grief and anger is one of them.” As for Daviss who plays Pope, he explained, “At the end of the day, they really will all crash out.”

While the resolution on screen for season four is yet to be seen, in real life, the crew formed a close bond over the past five years working on the show.

“There’s a level of trust that you have with the people around you to know that they’re going to show up and do their job as well,” Stokes said. “We’ve been that way for the last five years and it’s never changed.”

“It is all the small moments I think that add up that really are my favorite parts of it,” Daviss added. “Any friend group you have your in-jokes, we could go off and speak entirely in our own little in-joke for the whole conversations that nobody would know what we’re talking about. So that has been a blessing to have a group of people to come up with this in this way.”

After the premiere event, held at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, the venue opened up to fans for a DJ set, cast interactions and live musical performances including Glorilla who performed her hits “Tomorrow” and “Wanna Be.”  

Part two of Outer Banks season 4 premieres on Thursday. Check out first-look images and THR‘s part one coverage here.