‘Outer Banks’ Season 3: News, Updates, Cast, and Speculation

Netflix’s highly-anticipated Outer Banks Season 3 is on its way with revenge, $400 million worth of treasure, and a complicated father/son relationship. And thanks to recent news from Netflix, we finally have updates on the upcoming season!

According to the Nielsen’s rating report, Season 2 of the popular mystery teen drama was the most viewed streaming show to date. The show helped Netflix to secure 8 of the top 10 most-streamed shows in the ranking. With the success of the first two seasons, and the riveting cliffhanger provided by the Season 2 finale, all that’s left to do is wait until we can find out what’s next for the Pogues.

Before that long-awaited release date, here’s everything we know so far, including recent updates.

Outer Banks Season 3 Cast and Crew: Returning Cast

When taking a look at who will return to the Outer Banks cast and crew, we have one new bombshell addition: John B’s father!

You know, the dead man we’ve been trying to uncover the secrets of and avenge? Yep. Not quite as dead as we thought after that Season 2 finale. Not sure where that leaves us on the avenging front if he isn’t actually dead.

So Big John, as played by Charles Halford, will certainly play a large role in Outer Banks Season 3. To date, Halford is best known for his performance as Chas Chandler in Constantine, an NBC series.

Also returning will be the seasoned cast members from the first two installments, including:

• Charles Esten as Ward Cameron
• Chase Stokes as John B. Routledge
• Madelyn Cline as Sarah Cameron
• Madison Bailey as Kiara Carrera
• Jonathan Daviss as Pope Heyward
• Rudy Pankow as JJ Maybank
• Austin North as Topper
• Drew Starkey as Rafe Cameron

Carlacia Grant got promoted to series regular for her character Cleo. She’s become a tried and true member of the Pogues after she assisted in their escape in the Season 2 finale. We’re excited to see her become a part of the team.

Chase Stokes talked about how he’s interested to see what her dynamic brings to the group now that she’s one of them. He also thinks it will be a positive change for the group to have someone that will keep them all in their place. Grant hopes we’ll discover more of Cleo’s backstory as the season progresses.

Outer Banks Season 3 New Cast

In addition to the returning cast, we have three new members joining Season 3. Andy MacQueen joins as Carlos Singh, a “Caribbean Don” described as smart, posh, and ruthless. What type of treasure is he looking for?

Fiona Palomo joins as Sofia, someone who says she’s a Pogue, but really wants to be a country club girl. Where will her friendship with Rafe lead? Lou Ferrigno Jr. will play Ryan, a calm security officer who’s young and hungry under the surface.

Although we only know their names from IMDB, we can see that these characters have been added as well:

• Ted, played by Rick Perez
• Officer Henderson, played by Art Newkirk
• Cruise Ship Patron, played by Angela Lentz
• Security Guard, played by Drew Broderick

Interestingly, WCBD News 2 reported that the producers were searching for an actor that could play young John B. The report said, “Casting agents say the show’s director is looking for a juvenile actor to portray a younger version of the show’s lead character, John B.”

Are we getting some flashbacks to show how John handled the supposed loss of his father? What will we discover about John as a young boy? Accessing this part of his life will certainly reveal interesting elements of the story.

Unfortunately, Alexander Jennings passed away due to injuries after being struck during a hit-and-run during the Season 3 filming. He was a body double for one of the actors.

Outer Banks Season 3 Production

Filming for Outer Banks Season 3 began in February 2022. A post made by Stokes at the beginning of filming raised the hopes of fans. For those of you that follow the actors outside of their roles, Chase Stokes and Madelyn Cline, who dated after Season 1 of the series, announced they had split, but remain great friends.

“She’s one of my favorite people on planet Earth,” Stokes, 29, told Us Weekly at an event at City Winery in New York on December 2nd. “You know, it’s super awesome to work with somebody that you care about that much, and yeah, I’ll leave it at that.”

So when he posted a photo featuring him holding Cline’s hand tightly at the beginning of filming, fans hoped it meant they were back together. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. 

Production in Barbados came to a close in August. Charles Esten, the actor who plays Ward, posted at the end of August, “Last Night in Barbados! 3 weeks shooting Season 3 of @obx in this extraordinary paradise, but now it’s time to go home. More to shoot in Charleston, but in this moment, I could not be more grateful for this amazing job that keeps bringing me here, or the wildly talented and deeply kind cast and crew I get to work with every day. VERY thankful, too, for all the incredible Bajans that have made us feel so welcome here! Put Barbados on your bucket list. You won’t be sorry!”

According to public reports, Netflix had a budget of $5 million per episode. This brings the grand total to $50 million for Outer Banks Season 3. Considering the fact that the show ranked as number 1 on Netflix for 4 weeks after its release, it makes sense that they want to invest deeply in the show’s success.

Shannon Burke, Jonas Pate, and Josh Pate continue to serve as showrunners for the TV series.

Outer Banks Season 3 Plot

Even though we have no official confirmation on what’s to come in Season 3, the head creatives on the show have given the press plenty of teases about future seasons.

The cliffhanger at the end of Season 2 alone gives them more than enough material to work with. Josh Pate, showrunner and screenwriter, told EW that “John B’s relationship with his dad is a huge theme [to shape season three]. Having his dad back around and eventually they’re going to meet back up and John B has to reconcile his idealized version of his dead dad with the reality of his alive dad… It gives us a lot of thematic father-son stuff to work with.”

Another writer, Shannon Burke, added to his sentiment by saying the revelation of John B’s dad is “going to be instrumental and maybe the spine [of season three] basically. It’s obviously a gigantic revelation that’s going to power a huge part of the third season.”

Chase Stokes, the actor who plays John B, also has interesting insight into what this revelation might mean for his character.

He told TV Line that he is “hoping to continue to tell the story for a couple more seasons…It wasn’t like he [Big John] was swept away by a natural disaster or whatever the case may be. It was his choice to go out and leave his son, and what does that look like? What does it look like when a kid comes face-to-face with a parent who’s left and chose to put him in these circumstances and has no idea what has happened in the meantime?”

Don’t worry. Not everything will be about John B’s dad. Josh Pate confirmed that, “Teen romance and teen soap are a big part of the show…We wanted to explore the Ki-Pope relationship but obviously, we’re aware of how the fans feel about JJ and Ki. We wanted to tease that for the third season. We didn’t want to do it immediately, but we definitely want to do it just because that took us by surprise, like, the audience’s reaction to JJ and Kiara and rooting for that romance. So we were immediately open to it because it seems like an interesting idea to explore but we kind of left it for season 3.” So hopefully you’ll see your favorite ship on screen!

According to Esten, his character must choose a path from his current crossroads. He thinks he will either realize the evil of his ways or go deeper down the dark path. What he chooses remains to be seen.

Outer Banks Season 3 Release Date News and Updates

All 10 episodes of Outer Banks Season 2 dropped on July 30, 2021, which meant you could instantly binge the entire second installment in the series. The Season 2 premiere got fans excited, and the end of Season 2 left us with quite the cliffhanger that made us question everything we knew to be true up until that point.

So when can we get the resolution to that shocking revelation about John B’s dad? We definitely need to hear his dad’s side of the story before jumping to conclusions.

As of December 7th, 2021, Netflix officially renewed Outer Banks for a third season! With the cliffhanger at the end of Season 2 and the showrunner’s plans for upcoming seasons, we knew that a renewal was coming. So we’re not surprised at all to hear the news, but that didn’t stop us from the anxiety of waiting for an official answer.

We’re excited to see what Netflix has in store when Outer Banks Season 3 comes to the streaming platform sometime in 2023. That’s currently the only definitive release date announced at TUDUM. Netflix confirmed that this season will also consist of 10 episodes.

What’s Next for Outer Banks

We have so much information and lots of teasers for what’s to come in future seasons. Unfortunately, all we can do is wait until the release before we discover what’s next for these North Carolina kids.

As one of the most-streamed TV shows on Netflix, it’s not surprising at all that Netflix renewed the series for another season. We expect that it will get renewed once again. But only for one or two more seasons. Creators have expressed in the past that this was intended to be a 4 or 5-season show arch.

Jonas Pate explained how “we’ve sort of long-arced it out pretty far. I’m just hoping that we get a chance to actually tell those stories.” If Outer Banks Season 3 performs just as well as Season 1 and 2 did, we’re sure they’ll get that chance.

It also seems clear that the writers know where they want to go. However, the Outer Banks’ creators have an interesting approach to their creative process.

According to Pate, they never know for sure where they’re going to go with the story until they finish production. In the first season, they reportedly shot different endings, eventually choosing which one best fit with where they wanted to take the show.

Pate says, “Sometimes you just don’t know until you put it together and that’s definitely part of our process, trial, and error.” They weren’t even 100% sure they were going to add Big John into the mix in Season 2.

Around episode 6 or 7, the creative team realized that they had the opportunity to bring him back into the narrative. Pate explained that all the madness and action in the finale was intended to throw viewers off guard for his reveal.

He did promise that in Outer Banks Season 3, “the treasure hunt is going to expand, and the mythology around the treasure hunt is going to evolve and get deeper.” We’re excited to see what he means by that.

The masterminds behind the show have plenty of plot lines to tease us about. We can’t wait to see where they take the story in Outer Banks Season 3!

Are you a fan of Outer Banks? Are you excited about the Season 3 renewal? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!