Pogues
Why Rafe & Kiara Should Be Endgame in ‘Outer Banks’ Season 5
[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for the Outer Banks Season 4 finale.]
When one door closes, another one opens.
That’s how we will preface the case we are about to make out of respect for those Outer Banks fans still reeling from the death of JJ Maybank (Rudy Pankow) in the Season 4 finale of the Netflix adventure series.
Listen, we get it. The body isn’t even cold yet, but matters of the heart must be discussed. JJ and Kiara (Madison Bailey) seemed fated to be together from the beginning. Their playful banter was dripping with chemistry as they navigated the dangers of the Royal Merchant gold, the increasingly precarious parental situations at home, and, later, the Lost City of El Dorado. The thrill of the hunt ratcheted up the already palpable romantic tension at play between them to the point that it became undeniable in Season 3. We get about five episodes of bliss with them as a couple in Season 4 Part 1 before things start to go to hell, as is often the case with the Pogues. But with his death, it’s clear just how important JJ and Kiara were to each other’s stories for a moment — just not a lifetime. Once a Pogue, always a Pogue. That will never change, nor will what they meant to each other.
Jackson Lee Davis / Netflix
But in our humble opinion, Kiara’s soulmate is still alive and kicking, and his name is Rafe Cameron (Drew Starkey). Now, we know what you are thinking. Why would you pair Kiara with the bad seed of the Kooks? She doesn’t deserve that. Isn’t Rafe a killer? Hasn’t he tried to undermine and/or murder the Pogues at every turn, especially in Season 2? Didn’t he previously have a drug problem and serve as the poster child for anger management issues? All of this is true. We can’t deny it.
And yet, Season 4 proved the show has an interest in redemption for its Kook bad boy. He rejected some of the more cruel Kook behavior toward the Pogues as childish and sought to legitimize his family’s business dealings. He even fell in love with and proposed to Sofia (Fiona Palomo), before learning about her betrayal. In other words, he’s working on it. No one is perfect!
Still, no pair has more effortless chemistry than Rafe and Kie, thanks to Starkey and Bailey. For a show that is rarely subtle in its approach to, well, anything, Outer Banks has spent four seasons gradually showing just how in tune “Riara” is with one another despite the circumstances. Every season, at least once, these two show they might be at odds, they might meet each other guns blazing, but they are always on the same wavelength. In the few fleeting moments when the show crosses their paths, there is something electric that fires on all cylinders. Like caged animals fighting their instincts to respond to the kinetic pull of the other. She is resisting her Kook origins. He is always denying that he cares more deeply for the Pogues than he wants to admit, his sister Sarah (Madelyn Cline), and Kiara specifically. He understands their hustle.
At the beginning of Season 3, Rafe and Kiara get their first real mission together when they find themselves in Barbados in the clutches of former Big Bad, Carlos Singh (Andy McQueen). For all their talk of being mortal enemies in the eternal Pogue-Kook war on the Outer Banks, Riara eventually realizes they need each other to escape, and as a pair they are pretty good at executing a plan. Then, as they so often do (him more than her), they betray each other for their own personal pursuits — him looking out for his own self interests, and her looking out for the Pogues. When he offers to take her back home but refuses to rescue her friends, she literally kicks him off of his own boat and leaves him to tread water.
There’s a survival instinct and a respect that they respond to — knowingly or unknowingly — in each other. It is their truest form of connection because, in these perilous moments, they know they can trust the other to act on that shared instinct.
For all the bad stuff Rafe has done (which is a lot), Kiara could have done far worse to Rafe than eject him from his boat, but she didn’t. She just took what she needed, as he has been wont to do on many occasions. Even in Season 4, after the gang heads to Morocco to find the Blue Crown and tie Rafe up as a proactive measure against his past behavior, it is Kiara — not Sarah — who cuts him free before he drowns in a storm.
Whether they like it or not, Riara has been watching out for each other. And with JJ gone, there is nothing that can or should stop them from, as the kids say, “working it out on the remix.” In this fifth and final season of Outer Banks, Kiara is going to be squarely focused on getting revenge for JJ’s murder. We see the anger and the drive in her eyes as OBX4 cuts to black. Rafe knows a little something about that internal fire, having been driven by an animalistic need for vengeance for almost as long as we have known him.
There feels like no way around having these two meaningfully team up in pursuit of justice. But we also have to imagine that Kiara won’t succumb to the darkness quite literally and all consumingly as Rafe has, and seeing that restraint and goodness might just be what helps pull him back from the edge for good.
We aren’t ready to move on from JJ quite yet, so we know Kiara isn’t. In fact, the Pogues’ road to revenge has only just begun. But as longtime viewers of the show, the Riara reality has never been more tangible and possible. Nor has ever been more narratively appropriate for the series. They are enemies to lovers personified. Kiara and Rafe’s stories have orbited each other from the beginning, and there has to be a reason for that. Slow burn is an understatement for these two so far, but in OBX5, things feel like they are finally ready to heat up.
Do you want to see Rafe and Kiara get together in the final season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Outer Banks, Season 5, TBA, Netflix
