🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

P4L –– Pogues for Life –– isn’t just a motto in Outer Banks. It’s a commitment. 

In the Season 2 finale, Cleo (Carlacia Grant) jumps off the Coastal Venture ship and dives straight into uncharted waters — in more ways than one. When she finds herself stranded on Poguelandia with Pope (Jonathan Daviss), John B (Chase Stokes), Sarah (Madelyn Cline), JJ (Rudy Pankow) and Kiara (Madison Bailey), little does she know that she’s gaining the one thing she never really had: a family. “She hasn’t been able to trust for so long,” Grant tells Tudum. “So now her Achilles’ heel is trusting these people.”

Like Cleo, it didn’t take long for Grant — known affectionately as “Lacey” to the show’s cast and crew — to be fully initiated into the tight-knit group. “From her second day on set, Lacey was so embraced,” Outer Banks co-creator and executive producer Jonas Pate tells Tudum. “All the young cast had been together [for so long] and they were fast friends, so I thought, ‘Man, this might be hard for a new person to come in and immediately just hit the ground running.’ But she really did. It’s almost like she’s been there from the beginning, really.”

Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix

But it was actually Season 2 when we met Cleo, a native of the Caribbean, for the first time, when she tentatively allies with John B and Sarah, who are on the run in Nassau, the Bahamas. When Cleo meets the adrift couple, she and her shipmates Terrance (Terence Rosemore) and Stubbs (Jontavious Johnson) see John B and Sarah’s connection to the Royal Merchant gold as a lucrative deal. But Cleo comes to trust and protect the Pogues when she sees that they’re pure of heart, and she chooses to go rogue and leave her crew behind to ensure John B and Sarah’s escape back to the Outer Banks.

On the show, we don’t know a ton about Cleo’s background — other than she was living on the street, parentless, until Terrance showed up and employed her on his ship —  so, as well as crafting an island accent, Grant did a lot of her own “homework” to formulate a backstory for her character. She asked the creators what they envisioned as Cleo’s path and scoured the Internet, “just really tapping into what it’s like to grow up as an orphan and the types of feelings and abandonment issues that come with that.”

It’s those feelings of neglect that fuel Cleo’s bond with Pope Heyward in Season 3. Although she and “Pipe,” as she calls him, have a rocky start, they grow on each other after surviving Poguelandia together at the start of the season and sharing their experiences of heartbreak.

Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix

“Pope has his own abandonment issue where he gave everything he had to a person he was really close to, and she just didn’t feel the same way,” Daviss tells Tudum of his failed romance with Kiara in Season 2. “It sucks that Pope kind of got strung along for as long as he did. I felt bad about that.”

Adding salt to his rejection wound is the fact that he now has to watch Kiara grow close to his best friend, JJ. This leads him and Cleo — who’s also seen her share of heartbreak — to form the “No Love Club” to protect themselves. “He takes it really seriously at first,” says Daviss. “He’s like, ‘I just don’t want to feel bad anymore, and I want to move on and feel better about myself.’ ” 

Cleo and Pope's 'No Love Club'Carlacia Grant and Jonathan Daviss form the No Love Club on Outer Banks Season 3

But, as it turns out, Cleo is there for Pope in a much more significant way. When Rafe (Drew Starkey) melts down his family inheritance, the Cross of Santo Domingo, Pope hits rock bottom and even considers killing Rafe. It’s Cleo who brings him back from the brink and makes him realize killing Rafe won’t be worth it.

“Everything in the world just says, ‘Fuck you,’ you know what I’m saying?,” says Daviss. “Everything he was working for is gone, so now he has to try to find a way to stay motivated to even keep going. And Cleo does that for him.”

It’s not long before that support system develops into a romance and Cleo has to face her “bravest fight yet — to accept love because she’s been deprived of it for so long,” says Grant. When she quits the “No Love Club” and kisses Pope in the finale, she feels like all the trust they’ve built from the ground up is worth the risk of heartbreak for the first time in a long time. “She’s letting Pope in in a way that she doesn’t let anyone in.” 

Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix

Adds Daviss, “Just bringing that mentality to Pope gave him a lot of optimism that he probably never had. That’s a beautiful thing for him, and I’m excited to see how that relationship continues.”

And things are looking bright for the couple’s future. By the time we jump 18 months ahead in the finale, they’re clasping hands at the El Dorado ceremony, heavily implying that they’re still together.

But Grant herself is curious about what went down during that 18-month gap. “I feel like Cleo bought a boat and is just living on the boat, catching fish,” she says. “She’s back to island life. Cleo might even be considering going back to the Caribbean. There are a lot of things that are left to explore for future seasons.”

Like whatever happened to her old crew, Terrance and Stubbs? “I don’t want to give too much away, but I envision a huge fight scene [with] Terrance coming up behind her and just being like, ‘You sold out.’”

Season 3 of Outer Banks is now streaming.

Carlacia Grant on Landing the Part of Cleo in 'Outer Banks'Outer Banks' Carlacia Grant Talks Playing Cleo in Season 3