“When a storyline conflicts with fans’ desires or expectations … they may feel not only disappointed but personally affected,” media expert Paul Booth told Yahoo.

For some Outer Banks fans, the Season 4 finale is something they’d prefer to forget.

The first five episodes, released Oct. 10 on Netflix, culminated in an explosive cliffhanger. When the second half of the season was released on Nov. 7, it seems nothing could have prepared fans for the ending — and the shocking death of fan favorite JJ Maybank (Rudy Pankow). In the final moments of the nearly 90-minute season finale, Maybank is stabbed and killed by his biological father.

The unexpected conclusion isn’t sitting well with some viewers.

Since its debut, Outer Banks has been a streaming hit. The teen drama, which premiered in April 2020, is set on a fictional island on North Carolina’s Outer Banks and follows John B (Chase Stokes) and his misfit crew of best friends known as the Pogues as they hunt for lost treasure. Season 4, Part 1 racked up 1.19 billion minutes of viewing in the first three days of its premiere and landed at No. 2 on Nielsen’s streaming Top 10.

Now Outer Banks fandom is trying to understand why showrunners would kill off one of its most beloved characters. Some are speculating about whether Pankow wanted to leave the show.

“When a storyline conflicts with fans’ desires or expectations, especially regarding a beloved character, they may feel not only disappointed but personally affected — often resulting in vocal expressions of grief and anger,” Paul Booth, a media and pop culture professor at DePaul University, told Yahoo Entertainment. “In many fandoms, these reactions are almost ritualistic — they form a part of fan identity and culture.”

Rudy Pankow in Outer Banks. (Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection)

As the most impulsive but loyal Pogue, Maybank immediately drew fans in, which makes processing his death difficult.

“For fan cultures, characters are more than just narrative devices; they often represent complex relationships, mirror real-life analogues or can be sources of comfort,” Booth explained. “When a central character dies, especially unexpectedly, it can disrupt fans’ expectations and can feel like a betrayal, especially when fans have devoted time and energy to engaging with the story.”

“Given the suspicions around the decision to kill off JJ, it also speaks to fans feeling unaware,” Effie Sapuridis, a media studies PhD candidate at Western University in Ontario, Canada, and committee member of Fan Studies Network North America, told Yahoo. “There’s a safety net that fans often rely on when it comes to their favorite characters, especially when they’re part of the main cast — that they’ll never be killed off or majorly hurt.”

Rudy Pankow and Madison Bailey in Outer Banks. (Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Some fans believe the plot device may have something to do with an alleged feud between Pankow and his co-star Madison Bailey, who plays his onscreen girlfriend Kiara Carrera. Pankow and Bailey are rumored to be keeping their distance because their real-life partners are uncomfortable with fans “shipping” them offscreen.

While neither Pankow nor Bailey has addressed the speculation, Bailey told Entertainment Tonight in June 2020 that fans should “keep the ships on the show” because “Madison and Kiara and Rudy and JJ are two different people.” Pankow, on the other hand, took to social media in 2021 to address the hate his girlfriend Elaine Siemek had received from fans of the show.

Rumors of Pankow and Bailey’s alleged rift hit a fever pitch when the second half of Season 4 dropped, and viewers began to suspect that body doubles were used to film romantic scenes between their characters.

As speculation continued to mount, a source told People on Nov. 12 that the pair are not feuding.

Netflix did not immediately respond to Yahoo Entertainment’s request for comment.

Fans are also looking to the show’s writers to cast blame for Maybank’s fate. Some have taken to X to argue that the decision seems rash and unjustified for a character who endured “constant trauma” and was the most deserving of a happy ending.

But Maybank’s tragic end was always part of the plan, according to the series’ creators. Showrunner Jonas Pate told the Hollywood Reporter that Maybank’s fate had been “lurking in his DNA from the beginning.”

Co-creator, and Jonas’s brother, Josh Pate told Netflix’s Tudum that they’d planned for Maybank to die during the course of the series.

“It was a really hard decision because he’s such a great piece of the ensemble,” Josh said. “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.”

Outer Banks isn’t the first show to experience the wrath of diehard fans when a plotline doesn’t meet their expectations. Devoted fandoms have a history of wanting to influence their favorite television shows both on and offscreen.

Amazon Prime’s The Summer I Turned Pretty is a recent example.

While most “Bonrad” shippers — fans that want Belly Conklin (Lola Tung) and Conrad Fisher (Chris Briney) to end up together — are respectful of the fact that Briney is in a serious relationship with girlfriend Isabel Machado, there are some that hope he and Tung consider dating in real life. In 2023, Briney received backlash from fans for not posting a photo of him and Tung on Instagram while promoting Season 2. Members of the TSITP fandom fear Briney and Tung may drift apart due to fan harassment, as Pankow and Bailey are suspected to have done.

In some cases, disapproval from fans can be so strong that it both tanks ratings and influences the direction of a storyline.

J.J. Abrams’s Lost, which ran from 2004-10, demonstrates how negative reception from fans can lead to characters being written out. Diamond-grubbing murderers Nikki (Kiele Sanchez) and Paulo (Rodrigo Santoro), for instance, were introduced in the show’s third season and killed off after 14 episodes due to an overwhelmingly unfavorable response from viewers. Similarly, Gossip Girl fans got their way in Season 2, when Aaron Rose (John Patrick Amedori), Serena van der Woodsen’s (Blake Lively) artist boyfriend, boarded a plane to Argentina and never came back. Although Rose played a larger role in the books, creator Josh Schwartz ultimately chose to get rid of him because he failed to resonate with audiences. Amedori appeared in just six episodes.

For Pankow, Maybank is a character he’ll always cherish.

“Thank you to this amazing cast and to fans for loving him,” Pankow told Netflix in a Nov. 12 video. “A thank you to JJ. I will always carry a piece of you for the rest of my life. Always remember: Stupid things have good outcomes all the time. JJ Maybank, you have changed my life forever. I love you forever.”