By the time Hurricane Cassandra hits Kildare in the Outer Banks Season 5 finale, Kiara has already lost everything once. She just got it back the hard way, and the storm is not done with her yet.
Kiara boards Chandler Groff’s boat to finish what started with JJ’s murder back in the Season 4 finale. She gets her revenge, cutting Groff loose over the water after he holds her at knifepoint, but the fight leaves her stranded in the ocean as the boat sinks beneath her.
A sail strikes her and knocks her under. Struggling to stay afloat with the storm raging around her, she fires a flare and calls out for the one person who cannot answer. “Help me JJ,” she says. Moments later, she finds herself sitting in an eerie pocket of calm water, the eye of the storm settling right where she happens to be. The rest of the Pogues arrive shortly after and pull her out alive.
The scene plays exactly the way Outer Banks has played JJ’s presence all season: close enough to feel real, vague enough to argue about. Deadline put the question directly to co-creators Josh Pate, Jonas Pate, and Shannon Burke, asking whether the eye of the hurricane genuinely saved Kiara’s life or whether the show wanted viewers to believe JJ had a hand in it.
Burke’s answer refused to settle the debate either way.
“It’s what you think,” he said. “Like Josh said, it’s walking right up the line, and you can think one thing or the other. Probably everyone is going to look at that and have a different interpretation. Did he really help or was it just that the eye of a storm passed over?”
Josh added that he knew what Kiara thought of the moment.
“She thinks JJ helped her,” he added.
Related: How the Outer Banks Finale Kept JJ’s Memory Alive in the Most Heartbreaking Way
The flare moment was not the first time the show tied Kiara’s survival to JJ. Earlier in the season, Groff throws her overboard during the masquerade ball, and she survives that fall too, with John B diving in to pull her out. Two brushes with drowning, two moments where JJ’s name comes up as she fights to stay alive, and two rescues that arrive right when she needs them most.
The creators built the ending around restraint rather than a literal comeback. JJ stays dead. The Pogues still get their treasure, their revenge on Groff, and a rebuilt Kildare by the time the credits roll. Whether JJ had anything to do with Kiara making it out of that hurricane is left exactly where Burke wants it, in the hands of whoever is watching.
Outer Banks Season 5 is now streaming in full on Netflix.