Outer Banks – Season 3 Episode 9 “Welcome to Kitty Hawk” Recap & Review

Welcome to Kitty Hawk

Episode 9 of Outer Banks Season 3 starts with the entire group alive but watching the shouldering ruins of their house burning down. They’ve got nowhere to go and it’s an absolute miracle that it didn’t spread anywhere else. Not only that but there are no firefighters anywhere in sight.

With all the group together once more, you get the feeling that this is the calm before the storm. They’re ready to fly out to South America but before they go, each of our characters work to say their goodbyes and prep for this journey ahead.

Remember the busted U-Haul drug truck last episode? Well, Mike shows up to see JJ, unhappy with him messing up the plans and desperate for revenge. JJ flees on foot, taking one last look at the house before heading into the woods.

Kie rehearses a speech to her parents but unfortunately, she’s instead carted away by reps from the wilderness camp, Kitty Hawk. Kie is not happy but she’s helpless. JJ realizes there’s something up and asks John B for an extra hour to hold up until he rescues her.

When JJ learns where she is, he charges to the camp to save his beloved. Unfortunately, he ends up with a flat tyre on the way and he’s stranded by the side of the road. It’s actually Mike, who shoots out the tyre and holds him up at gunpoint.

JJ tries to weasel out of this awful situation, pointing out the gold down in South America that could be waiting for him if he lets him go. It seems to work too and JJ blags his way into the front of Kitty Hawk. H concocts a story that Kie’s cat, Marley, has passed away, and the teen gets the message. So too does JJ, who tails the counsellor and figures out where Kie is being held.

Rafe heads back to see Barry and decides he wants to call off the attack on Ward. The thing is, he’s already got a guy on this and it’s out of his hands. Rafe realizes his father could meet a horrific demise and races up to find him. At the same time, Topper shows at the airport where he finds Sarah. He confronts her and questions what a compulsive liar she is. When he leaves, he phones the District Attorney and decides to follow up with his formal charges against John B.

The assassin grabs Ward while he’s gutting a fish and looks set to do the exact same thing to Sarah’s father. However, Rafe shows up and saves his pa. When he does, a kayaker happens to head past and notices that Ward is alive. Realizing they need to go, Rafe takes his father on the back of his bike and scrambles for the airstrip. News spreads quickly and Ward Cameron still being alive is big news. I mean, how he managed to avoid detection across the entire town for the last 4 episodes, including at the airstrip and all the areas in between, is anyone’s guess! Alas, I digress.

Rafe drives to the airport where he asks Sarah and the others for help with Ward. John B, Pope and Cleo aren’t exactly in the helping move but given the guy is brought on the plane with them, it throws their plans for South America completely awry. Time is up for JJ and Kie though, and John B messages to let them know they’re leaving. Ward tells his son that he’s proven himself in the end, before parting ways and letting the plane take off.

In the dead of night, with the plane gone, JJ finds Kie and eventually admits his real feelings for her, including how he loves her, Hilariously, all the other girls in the cabin begin cheering and applauding them. The duo scramble out the cabin and find Mike, who’s waiting for them with a plane of their own, given they’re going down to South America.

Down in Venezuela, along the Tres Rocas, Singh speaks to Big John about their journey and how it’s destined for him to find. Big John has two days before the full moon to prove his worth, and time is running out.

The Episode Review

Finally it looks like we’re going to get back to the treasure hunting, in what’s otherwise been half a season of character drama distractions. The fact that the police are almost non-existent in this world unless the plot calls for it really does break the immersion at times. And that’s before mentioning the fact no one appears to have seen Ward at all despite moving around town and even touching down at the airstrip which would surely call for air traffic to greenlight landing, right?

With the cross melted and the attention instead turning to a much larger treasure, big question marks remain over exactly who will come out on top at the end of this season. The frustrating thing here is that the cat and mouse chase, along with the puzzles, could have made this season amazing had we focused exclusively on the El Dorado treasure.

All the drama in Barbados was pretty good but since then we’ve had a lacklustre love triangle with Topper and this Rafe subplot that’s gone absolutely nowhere. With a feature length finale up next, hopefully that will go some way to close everything out on a high.