Outer Banks EPs Break Down Motivation for Sarah’s Season 4 Pregnancy

The second half of Outer Banks season 4 resulted in two bombshells for the Pogues, including a pregnancy reveal and a major death.

Warning: Spoilers below for Outer Banks season 4, episode 10.

While some fans theorized that a pregnancy was coming, it wasn’t until the finale of OBX season 4 dropped on Thursday, November 7, that fans’ speculation was confirmed via Sarah Cameron (Madelyn Cline) and her positive pregnancy test.

“There was something organic about it on some level, and it has to do with our larger vision of the series,” executive producer Jonas Pate told Cosmopolitan in an interview published Thursday.

Sarah initially only told BFF Kiara Carrera (Madison Bailey) the pregnancy news because she had just finished telling John B. Routledge (Chase Stokes) she wasn’t interested in becoming a teen mom. Executive producer Josh Pate told the outlet that resistance to motherhood is “why we gave her one,” referring to the unplanned pregnancy.

Executive producer Shannon Burke chimed in, saying that Sarah and John B have “been through a lot of different things as a couple, and this is sort of the next stage.”

When Sarah told her boyfriend about the pregnancy, John B attempted to get a marriage license, but JJ Maybank (Rudy Pankow) derailed his plans with his own chaos.

Throughout the season, JJ learned that his biological father is Chandler Groff (J. Anthony Crane), and, as a result, started to spiral, taking his pals to Morocco to search for Groff and a treasure called the blue crown. While JJ eventually realized he had everything he wanted in life with the Pogues, Groff killed him in the finale and took the blue crown for himself.

Outer Banks fans weren’t the only ones surprised by the major plot twists ahead of season 5. During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly, Austin North, who plays Topper, recalled his initial reaction to the feature-length finale of season 4, released on Thursday, November 7. “That took everyone for a surprise. I hadn’t seen it. […]

JJ’s death shook all his friends, but it doesn’t change the fact that John B and Sarah are going to be parents. According to the showrunners, Sarah’s pregnancy is part of a much bigger picture they have planned for the fifth and final season.

“We have this overall arc in our heads of where everyone will end up and what the end will look like,” Burke told Cosmo. “It just felt like it was time to play that card and have them enter the next stage in their relationship.”

She noted that the couple have already weathered nearly every storm imaginable. “Obviously, they’ve been together, they’ve [not been] a hundred percent loyal to each other and doing things wrong, and they’ve made up,” Burke added. “They’re devoted to each other now and this is the next stage.”

Although an unplanned pregnancy for the couple felt right to the EPs, Jonas said they “talked about all the outcomes” of Sarah’s pregnancy story line “early on,” including if she should choose to remain pregnant.

Outer Banks has inspired countless conversations about romance — but which of the show’s fictional couples come out on top? The hit Netflix series, which premiered in 2020, introduced viewers to a coastal town in the Outer Banks of North Carolina that’s divided into wealthy and working-class sides. The show follows a group of teenagers […]

“As Shannon was saying, they are devoted to each other, and they’re married — in their own weird way with beer can rings. So it felt real,” Jonas concluded. “And there was zero larger statement that we were thinking about outside of these two characters.”

Sarah’s pregnancy wasn’t an obvious story line for some fans — and castmate Austin North revealed he was also surprised by the twist.

“Sarah getting pregnant is definitely a curveball,” North, who plays Sarah’s ex-boyfriend Topper Thornton, exclusively told Us Weekly on Friday, November 8. “And it is right in the middle of the treasure hunt too. It’s like, ‘All right, perfect timing!’”

Outer Banks is streaming on Netflix.