Outer Banks Season 5 Puts Rafe on the Pogues’ Side, But He Hasn’t Become One

Seeing Rafe Cameron standing with the Pogues in Outer Banks Season 5 looks almost absurd if you remember where the series started. But Rafe is not suddenly helping John B and the others because everyone has forgiven him. Their alliance began forming in Season 4 because Rafe and the Pogues developed a common enemy in Chandler Groff, survived Morocco together, and, most importantly, Rafe finally began repairing his relationship with Sarah. Netflix deliberately calls their Season 5 partnership an “uneasy alliance.” Rafe may be fighting on the Pogues’ side for now, but the show has stopped well short of declaring him a Pogue.

Spoiler Alert

When Did Rafe Start Helping the Pogues?

Rafe’s shift did not suddenly happen between seasons.

Season 4 quietly spent its final episodes putting him on the same road as the Pogues. He helps arrange the boat that takes the group across the Atlantic, persuades Sheriff Shoupe to allow them to pursue Groff, and eventually travels with them to Morocco. When Groff attacks Rafe with a knife in the desert, Rafe overpowers him and throws him into a well.

Those are strange actions from the man who once terrorized the Pogues, but Drew Starkey’s explanation of Rafe’s motives is important.

Rafe is still operating partly from pride and self-interest. Starkey described him as wanting to reclaim what he believes belongs to him and said his anger toward Groff had become another source of revenge.

So Season 4 does not suddenly transform Rafe into a selfless hero. It simply gives him enemies who happen to be the Pogues’ enemies too.

Why Does Rafe Want Groff Taken Down?

Groff is one of the few people dangerous enough to make Rafe Cameron look comparatively predictable.

By the end of Season 4, Groff has betrayed nearly everyone around him. He repeatedly plays different sides of the Blue Crown hunt against each other, attacks Rafe, escapes after being left in a well, takes Kiara hostage and eventually murders JJ after JJ gives him the Crown.

That gives Rafe a very practical reason to remain with the Pogues. They all need Groff.

Groff has the Blue Crown. The Pogues want justice for JJ. Rafe has his own score to settle with him. And the first minutes of Season 5 confirm that Groff is preparing to sell the Crown in Portugal, turning Lisbon into the next immediate destination in the chase. For once, Rafe does not need to become a Pogue for their goals to match.

Why Is Sarah So Important to Rafe’s Change?

The most important reason this alliance can exist may have nothing to do with treasure.

It is Sarah.

Rafe and Sarah spend much of Outer Banks on opposite sides of the Cameron family’s collapse. Rafe’s obsession with earning Ward’s approval repeatedly puts Sarah in danger, while Sarah effectively leaves the Kook world behind and builds a new family with John B and the Pogues. Season 4 finally creates a crack in that hostility.

During the Blue Crown pursuit in Agapenta, Sarah explains the truth about Ward’s death to her brother. Rafe finally listens. The two recognize that, after everything their family has lost, they are essentially the Camerons they have left.

The show’s creators have acknowledged that this was intentional. Jonas Pate said they wanted to redeem Rafe “a little bit,” particularly in Sarah’s eyes, and deliberately bring the siblings into an unlikely alignment going into Season 5. That wording matters. A little redemption is not the same as absolution.

Related: Outer Banks Season 5 Makes the Blue Crown JJ’s Last Hope

Has Rafe Actually Become a Pogue?

Not yet. Netflix’s own Season 4 ending explainer raised this exact question, but neither the episode nor the Season 5 material gives Rafe official Pogue status.

Starkey described the relationship more carefully. After surviving so much together, Rafe and the group have developed a bond created by being “in the trenches” together. In a life-or-death situation, they have effectively found themselves on the same team.

That is very different from John B, Kiara, Pope and the others forgetting everything Rafe has done.

Rafe killed Sheriff Peterkin. He has repeatedly attacked the Pogues and even tried to kill Sarah. His history does not disappear because he helped them reach Morocco.

Season 5 seems much more interested in asking whether someone like Rafe can change than pretending he already has.

That makes the word “uneasy” in Netflix’s official description particularly important. They need him. That does not necessarily mean they trust him.

Does Rafe Really Care About the Pogues Now?

Sarah is the clearest exception.

Season 4 shows that losing Sarah, or even believing he may have lost her, affects Rafe in a way his relationship with the other Pogues does not. Chase Stokes noted that Rafe is forced to process the possibility of losing another family member while surrounded by people who love Sarah too. That creates a form of shared grief between him and the group.

There is also an interesting change in John B.

After Sarah and Rafe begin repairing their relationship, Stokes suggested that John B can see a possible path toward understanding Rafe as well. Both men carry complicated relationships with dead fathers whose choices shaped much of their lives.

That does not make them friends overnight.

But Outer Banks has spent years defining its characters through the division between Pogues and Kooks. Rafe working alongside John B attacks that division from the inside.

He is still Rafe. He simply no longer fits comfortably on the opposite side.

Could Rafe Still Betray the Pogues?

Absolutely, but there is currently no confirmation that he will.

Rafe’s motives have almost always mixed emotion with self-interest. Even while helping the Pogues in Season 4, Starkey described pride and personal revenge as major forces behind his decisions. That leaves Season 5 with two believable directions.

Rafe could finally complete the redemption arc the writers began building with Sarah. Fighting beside the Pogues against Groff could force him to choose family over money, status and his old resentments.

Or his selfish instincts could resurface when the Blue Crown is finally within reach.

The important thing is that the writers appear aware of that uncertainty. They have not presented Rafe as suddenly rehabilitated. Netflix is advertising an alliance, not a conversion. That distinction gives the storyline its tension.

Why Is Rafe With the Pogues in Outer Banks Season 5?

Rafe is with the Pogues because Season 4 gradually made cooperation more useful than conflict.

Groff is now their shared enemy. Rafe has already survived alongside the group in Morocco. Sarah and Rafe have begun repairing their damaged sibling relationship. And JJ’s murder gives everyone involved a reason to pursue the same man.

The Season 5 trailer then takes that uneasy relationship further. Netflix shows Rafe hitting rock bottom alongside the surviving Pogues as they regroup after JJ’s death and prepare for the final fight.

But the interesting question is no longer whether Rafe can stand beside them. We already know he can.

The real question for Outer Banks Season 5 is what happens when helping the Pogues eventually requires Rafe to choose between the selfish person he has always been and the brother Sarah is beginning to believe he could still become.

That choice, rather than simply calling him a Pogue, may be the final test of Rafe Cameron’s redemption.