Warning: This story contains major spoilers for season four of Netflix’s Outer Banks.
The Pogues made the most of a heartbreaking moment.
Josh Pate and Shannon Burke—who co-created Outer Banks and co-wrote the show’s season four finale—revealed that the Netflix series’ cast had somewhat positive reactions to their decision to kill off beloved character Jackson “JJ” Maybank at the end of the fourth installment.
In fact, Rudy Pankow, who plays JJ on the show, was actually on board with the idea of his character facing a tragic fate from the start.
“He seemed excited about it,” Shannon exclusively told E! News. “Like, just the idea of doing a death, dying scene, in the abstract.”
Rudy also had a lot of time to prepare for the big moment, as Josh recalled coming up with the idea to kill off one of the Pogues early on in the teen drama’s development and pitching it to the 26-year-old shortly after.
“It was actually an idea that was almost present from the beginning of the series that, at some point, one of the Pogues would die,” the screenwriter explained. “By the second season, we realized it would be JJ. And we even talked about it with Rudy far off in the future, like, ‘When this character goes, it might be in Kiara’s arms.’”
