Following an emotional Instagram post last week announcing that the final season of Outer Banks has officially wrapped, Chase Stokes (Uglies, Tell Me Your Secrets) sat down with People to reflect on the journey. While expressing deep gratitude for the hit Netflix series, the actor admitted that he and his fellow cast members feel sense of closure and are prepared to move on to their next chapters, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“We want the story to end on the right note versus [turning] four seasons into season nine and we’re going after aliens or something,” Stokes said. “We want to cut the cord before we lose the plot.”
Since its 2020 debut, the hit teen drama has centered on a group of North Carolina teenagers caught up in high-stakes treasure hunting. The Hollywood Reporter says that beyond the on-screen adventure, Stokes shared that the cast–including Madelyn Cline (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Stranger Things), Drew Starkey (Queer, The Other Zoey), Jonathon Daviss (Do Revenge, Age Of Summer), Madison Bailey (Time Cut, Maintenance Required), and Carlacia Grant (Roots, The Resident)–has evolved into a “true family” over the course of the series.
“There’s just so much gratitude because I was a kid who had a dream and no access to an industry, never really even knew what the process was,” Stokes continued. “I’ve checked so many boxes that I thought it would span the course of the next 40 years of my career.”
Stokes also talked about his thoughts regarding his career, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I always reference Robert Pattinson after he finished Twilight and [the] Harry Potter [franchise] and how he took creative risks, but really challenged himself as an artist. That’s the blueprint for me. I want to show people that the floppy-haired beach boy from the Netflix young adult show, is now 33 years old,” he said. “All I want to do is challenge myself.”
He teased about the series finale, saying, “It’s beautiful to know that even though there’s the highs and lows throughout all of the seasons, it’s ending exactly how I was told when I started the show,” he said, via The Hollywood Reporter.
The fourth season concluded with the startling demise of JJ, the character portrayed by Rudy Pankow (Reminders of Him, Uncharted). Series creator Jonas Pate later shared with The Hollywood Reporter that this major plot twist had been set in motion as early as the conclusion of season three, further detailing the narrative reasons behind the decision to write the character out.
“It’s been kind of lurking in his DNA from the beginning. He’s really a tragic figure, and the idea of mortality, and you only have a finite window — it’s also a theme of the show. It’s something John B has talked about from the first season,” Pate said. “So believe it or not, this is something that was always sort of baked in the cake, and we just wanted to tell the story as elegantly and interestingly as possible.”