The OBX Showrunners Want To “Explore” Rafe & Kiara’s Relationship
The actors hate this ship, but fans love it.
A completely unexpected ship has taken over the Outer Banks fandom, and now it sounds like it might actually become canon in the show’s upcoming final season. But... not everyone would be happy about that — including the actors! Here’s why the potential pairing of Rafe and Kiara has pretty much everyone split.
Spoiler alert: This post will discuss a major plot point from the Outer Banks Season 4 finale. Fans shipping Rafe and Kiara slowly began in Season 3, when the two first shared significant screen time together after they were both kidnapped. But things went into high gear in Season 4, especially after the final episode of the season killed off Kiara’s boyfriend JJ.
With Rafe more aligned with the Pogues than ever before, the Outer Banks showrunners are interested in seeing what unfolds between the antagonistic Kook and Kiara. “It’s a hard turn to go straight to a Rafe and Kiara ’ship given where they’ve been in the past. But we also know how great Drew and Madison are as actors and how great they are together,” Josh Pate told Cosmopolitan on Nov. 7. “So we’re definitely going to explore that relationship.”
In the rest of the interview, co-showrunner Shannon Burke also expressed interest in developing a romantic arc for Rafe and Kiara, but third showrunner Jonas Pate confessed he’s against it.
The EPs being on opposing sides of the Riara issue reflects the larger battle lines that fans have drawn concerning the ship — with one side arguing the two characters have strong parallels and would make the perfect enemies-to-lovers arc, while the other doesn’t think Kiara would be with someone who’s tried to kill her.
Madison Bailey and Drew Starkey are less divided on the idea of a relationship: They both strongly oppose it. “If you like and love both characters, then it doesn’t really make sense,” Bailey said of the Riara ship. “Kiara wouldn’t be Kiara if she was with Rafe.”
“I think it’d be especially unfair to Kiara, you know?” Starkey has said of it. “I think she deserves a little better than that.”
