The second half of Outdoor benches season 4 resulted in two bombshells for the Pogues, including a pregnancy reveal and a big death.

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

While some fans theorized that a pregnancy was on the way, it wasn’t until the finale of OBX season 4 dropped on Thursday, November 7, and fan 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 bigger vision for the series,” said 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 told John B. Routledge (Chase Stokes) she wasn’t interested in becoming a teen mother. Executive producer Jos Pate told the outlet that resistance to motherhood is “the reason we gave her one,” referring to the unplanned pregnancy.

Related: A look back at Sarah and John B’s epic ‘Outer Banks’ romance

Outer Banks stars Chase Stokes and Madelyn Cline’s relationship may not have lasted, but their on-screen character’s romance is forever. Stokes and Cline play John B Rutledge and Sarah Cameron respectively in the Netflix series, which premiered in April 2020. John B is a Pogue, or from the wrong side of the tracks, while Sarah (…)

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 kind of the next phase.”

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

During the season, JJ found out that his biological father is Chandler Groff (J. Anthony Crane), and as a result began to spiral, taking his friends 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 finals and took the blue crown for himself.

Related: Outer Banks’ Austin answers burning questions after JJ’s polarizing death

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 Season 4 finale being released . on Thursday, November 7. “That was a surprise for everyone. I hadn’t seen it. (…)

JJ’s death shocked all his friends, but that 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 a general arc in our heads of where everyone is going to end up and what the ending is going to look like,” Burke said Cosmos. “It just felt like it was time to play that card and let them enter the next phase of their relationship.”

She noted that the couple has weathered almost every storm imaginable. “Obviously they’ve been together, they’ve (not) been 100 percent loyal to each other and they’ve done things wrong, and they’ve made amends,” Burke added. “They are committed to each other now and this is the next phase.”

Although an unplanned pregnancy felt good for the couple in the EPs, Jonas said they talked “early on about all the outcomes” of Sarah’s pregnancy story, including whether she would choose to stay pregnant.

Related: We rank every ‘Outer Banks’ couple: from JJ and Kiara to John B and Sarah

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

“Like Shannon said, they’re committed to each other, and they’re married – in their own weird, beer-can way. So it felt real,” Jonas concluded. “And there was no bigger statement that we were thinking of outside of these two characters.”

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

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

Outdoor benches is streaming on Netflix.