Outer Banks: What Season 3 time-jump means for Season 4

Outer Banks is returning for Season 4 on Netflix, and the show’s writers have been explaining what the Season 3 time-jump means for the future of the series, as well as their plans for Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard.

Season 3 of Outer Banks recently dropped on Netflix, and completed a story arc about efforts to retrieve gold that went missing from a sunken ship called The Royal Merchant.

With that plot concluding, the creators of the hit show need new storylines to explore as the series moves into a fourth season, with the end of Season 3 serving as something of a reset.

They did that by introducing the name Edward Teach – aka Blackbeard. And jumping forward in time at the end of the season. One of those writers has been explaining what that means for Season 4 of Outer Banks.

What does the time-jump mean for Season 4 of Outer Banks?

The time-jump at the end of Season 3 was introduced so that the writers could explore older versions of the characters, at a different phase in their lives.

Outer Banks co-creator Josh Pate tells The Hollywood Reporter: “We felt like we needed to get them out of school. The actors are a little older, and it was harder to keep them in High School. We just wanted to move them into a new phase in their lives and move them forward a little bit.”

Those characters and that young cast include John B. (Chase Stokes), Sarah Cameron (Madelyn Cline), JJ (Rudy Pankow), Pope (Jonathan Daviss), Kiara (Madison Bailey), and Cleo (Carlacia Grant).

Pate adds: “The epilogue at the end of [Episode] 10 was to set up those two things that we knew we wanted to do going forward.”

How Blackbeard will fit into Season 4

The “two things” Pate is referring to is the time-jump, and the introduction of Edward Teach, who is better known as the feared pirate Blackbeard. At the end of Season 3, the diary of Teach is teased, potentially containing clues to more treasure.

“Blackbeard is part of Outer Banks lore,” Pate tells THR. “So there’s just a lot of stuff we can work with out of that. It is going to be a part of it, but it’s not going to be a traditional Blackbeard-type tale, although we’re using elements of the mythology going forward.”

Outer Banks is currently streaming on Netflix, while everything we know about Edward Teach – aka Blackbeard – can be found here.