Pankow’s character, JJ Maybank, was murdered in the season 4 finale and does not appear in the final season
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/madison-bailey-2-082026-65423f0779444b50a6558b568b1c9ee4.jpg "Madison Bailey, Madison Bailey as Kiara, Rudy Pankow as JJ in episode 401 of Outer Banks.")
Credit: JC Olivera/WireImage; Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix
NEED TO KNOW
- Rudy Pankow does not appear in season 5 of Outer Banks after his character, JJ Maybank, was killed in the season 4 finale
- Stars Madison Bailey, Madelyn Cline and Jonathan Daviss tell PEOPLE what it was like filming the final season without their longtime costar
- The final season of Outer Banks is now streaming on Netflix
There’s no getting around it: Outer Banks is not the same without JJ Maybank.
In the fifth and final season of the Netflix series, the Pogues try to move on after the devastating murder of their best friend, JJ (Rudy Pankow), by his own dad. That grief — and a need for revenge against Groff (J. Anthony Crane) — is what fuels Kiara (Madison Bailey) in the final episodes, as she’ll stop at nothing to recover the Blue Crown that JJ died to find in Morocco.
“The whole tone of this season is a lot more serious,” Bailey, 27, tells PEOPLE of adjusting to a story without JJ and not having Pankow, 29, on set.
“It’s hard to know. But I think there was, like, we’re missing a little comedy,” she says of the new season. “We need some more jokes, but also, there wasn’t a lot of room to tell a lot of jokes.”
Credit: Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix
Echoing Bailey’s explanation, Madelyn Cline tells PEOPLE of season 5, “It’s a really serious storyline this year.”
JJ’s death, “as shocking as it was, it was also unfortunately the catalyst for the rest of the season,” she says. “So as much as we did miss JJ’s, like, his quips and one-liners, [his absence] really was a driving force [for] why our characters do a lot of the things that they do this season.”
Jonathan Daviss tells PEOPLE that he was “sometimes” looking around for Pankow on set when filming first began on season 5. “That character is so important to the dynamic, so with him gone, it is kind of like, oh, there’s just space that [would be] filled by JJ.”
“So there was an adjustment, but I think that also is the point. That’s what the characters are going through. They’re adjusting to not having him around. So all that just kind of works its way into the performances.”
Credit: Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix
In May, Pankow was asked if he plans to tune in to the final season of the show, his first as a non-cast member. He said he is “totally going to watch.”
“I want to see how they do it. I really want to,” he said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “They’re going to crush it. No doubt.”
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Choosing to kill off JJ in the season 4 finale was a “really hard decision,” co-creator Josh Pate told Netflix’s Tudum when the episode aired in 2024. “He’s such a great piece of the ensemble. It sets the stage for an epic fifth and final season. We’re planning a story of redemption, and a season that embodies the friendship that JJ had come to represent.”
“JJ’s death was a hard but necessary piece of the architecture for the story, and we plan on honoring that as much as we can because we love the character as much as the fans do, and Rudy’s a great friend of ours,” Pate said.
The fifth and final season of Outer Banks is now streaming on Netflix.
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