WARNING: Spoilers ahead. 

By Maddie Ball

Outer Banks, a new Netflix original series released on April 15, is currently the most popular show on Netflix. I know that I, among many others, are already eagerly waiting for season two to be released. 

Outer Banks is about two groups of teens living in the Outer Banks area of North Carolina. One group is the “kooks,” the wealthy people of the island. The other group is the “pogues,” the financially challenged people of the island. The show follows the adventures of four of the pogues: Ki, Pope, JJ, and the main character John B. 

Each of these characters has a distinct personality and their own challenges. Ki is technically a kook, but she hangs with the pogues, despite her parents pushing her to hang out with the kooks. Her parents don’t like that she hangs out with the pogues and reminds her of how they are trouble every chance they get. This group of friends are constantly trespassing, getting chased by the cops, and throwing parties on the beach, which makes Ki’s parents uneasy. 

Pope would give up everything for his friends, which his parents resent. He is an intelligent kid on the path to getting a college merit scholarship, which he needs because his parents can’t afford college. But he is willing to give it all up for his friends when they need him, and his parents disapprove of this. 

JJ is a stubborn, wild character who seems to have no boundaries. He would do anything to protect his friends, even if that means risking his own life or putting his entire life on the line. After Pope sinks the boat of a rival kook, JJ tells the police he sank the boat so that Pope doesn’t have to go to jail. He battles problems with his father and tries not to get his friends involved with his issues at home. He is constantly cracking jokes and making his friends laugh, but he doesn’t seem to care much about his future. 

Lastly, there is John B., the protagonist. He lives alone because his father disappeared a long time ago. He is desperate to find the Royal Merchant, a famous shipwreck in the area, which he thinks will help him also find his father. He wants to finish his father’s mission and encourages all his friends to help, even though it may get them into a predicament. His father’s mission before he went missing was to find the Royal Merchant, because it was believed that there was still gold on the ship. John B. is frantic to get to the bottom of his dad’s disappearance, and that gets him into some dilemmas. He and his friends have a few run-ins with the local sheriffs and are also almost killed by some criminals who want a compass that is in John B’s possession, which used to be his father’s.  

These characters travel all over their island on a task to get to the bottom of what happened to John B’s father and to finish his work of finding a ship that sank in 1829 and the gold that is allegedly inside the ship. Along the way, the pogues and the kooks cross paths, causing additional drama within the show. A love story even brews between a kook and a pogue, which is unheard of. The combination of love, drama, and adventure made the show addictive and challenging to stop watching.

Another reason I found the show so addictive is because the characters don’t use cell phones, because a storm knocked out all cell phone service on the island. They just explored and enjoyed lives with minimal rules and no technology. I thought it was interesting how they spent every day outside exploring, rather than sitting inside on technology. These characters always found an exciting way to spend their days, and each day is a new experience and one day closer to finishing the mission. There were so many dramatic and unexpected twists and turns.

Grace Marchetti (‘21) binge-watched the show and said that it was an “adventurous, addictive escape from the outside world, that I couldn’t get enough of.” Kylee Sanderson (‘21) thought that “at first the plot was kind of cheesy, but the characters made it such a good watch that I basically watched it in one night.” Tate Crawford (‘21) said that she “really enjoyed the plot of the story and how it was so action-packed.” She also said that “It was also fun to watch because it was kids our age going on thrilling adventures during summer, which we all want to be doing right now.” 

The show contains ten episodes, each about 45 minutes. That is seven and a half hours’ worth of TV that a few of my classmates and I all watched in less than a day. Madeline Cline, who plays Sarah Cameron in the show, shared exclusively with Seventeen Magazine that “We were also on the edge of our seats waiting for the next episode to be emailed to us.” If that doesn’t tell you how addictive the show is, I don’t know what would. The end of the season left me wanting more. It ended on a cliffhanger, and I, among many others, am anxiously waiting for season two to be released.