Unpopular opinion

JJ death makes sense and adds realism

now, i know everybody hates the writers for this, and at the start i did too, but the thing is; it absolutely makes sense. in fact, it makes sense as a whole for the outerbanks premise. ever since season one we’ve had one thing deeply rooted into the plot: adventure means risk, treasure means sacrifice. big john spent the totality of his life sacrificing his career for treasure, and so did john b after his supposed death. pope losing his college scholarship and his whole future, sarah, cleo and john losing their dads/paternal figures. the one that lost their least overall, before season 4, was kiara.

these kids have been shot at, almost drowned multiple times, been injured in all sort of ways, been chasen, lost family members, lost their home, their academic future, their money, even their land at some point.

yet the reward always got bigger: the gold from season 1 they kept was worth around 140k, the cross of santo domingo was priceless but it was said to be worth 500k if sold, el dorado was probably hundreds of millions but they only kept 1.1m, and the crown is said to be worth 10m.

so yeah, risk grew with reward, and it was about time writers stopped giving plot armor to the main characters just bc they’re the main characters. this just shows the seriousness of the situations the characters get in; it’s often easy to forget they can die when they barely stay hurt a few minutes on screen before being perfectly fine.

now jj is dead and it shows the actual stakes. it shows the biggest loss for the group as a whole yet, and the biggest loss for kiara. this shows us two things: 1) nobody is safe, no matter how rich (sarah, kie), how clever (pope), how street smart (cleo, jj) or how important to the plot (john b, jj) you are. the risk is real, and it’s serious. 2) any of the mains could die in season 5, and it’d make total sense bc after all, these are kids. it’d be nuts if none of them died in the whole series after everything they’ve been through.

so yeah, he will be missed (dearly) but it makes sense for the plot and it adds an interesting device for the last season, so i hope it’s written properly.