For a show about a mystery many have deemed unsolvable, “The Curse of Oak Island” does a surprisingly good job of keeping its audience engaged. The reality TV show, which focuses on brothers Marty and Rick Lagina and their team of explorers as they seek to locate the legendary treasure rumored to be buried on Oak Island in Nova Scotia, has offered plenty of exciting plot threads, clues and breakthroughs over the course of its nine-seasons-and-counting run.
Much of this long-term engagement with the series stems from its solid narrative structure. Like many TV shows of its kind, “The Curse of Oak Island” often builds up a particular avenue of exploration across a season and saves some of its most exciting discoveries and payoffs for its season finales. Though these episodes often deliver in terms of archaeological thrills and entice viewers with the promise of more discoveries in the next season, there was one particular final episode that punctuated its chapter of the show with a rather sour note.
Season 3’s finale was a big let-down
Before it aired, the Season 3 finale of “The Curse of Oak Island,” titled “Secrets and Revelations,” held perhaps the most groundbreaking potential of any episode. It represented the culmination of what can arguably be called the “first arc” of the series, which centered upon the team’s exploration of Borehole 10-X, an shaft on the island that stretched deep underwater and was rumored to house secrets about the treasure. A sonar scan conducted by the team in Season 2 suggested that the shaft contained a hidden chamber with a number of man-made objects inside.
Things came to a head in the penultimate episode of Season 3, when the Lagina brothers hired a professional diver, who, in the final moments of the episode, finally reached the mysterious chamber. Audiences waited with baited breath for the finale to reveal the secrets of the discovery. But as it turned out, there were no secrets to learn. The finale saw the diver carry out his exploration, not only failing to find any purported man-made objects but also concluding that the “chamber” was, in fact, just a natural geological formation.
Season 3’s finale was a strong disappointment not just because it was an anticlimactic resolution to the season, but an anticlimactic resolution to one of the biggest original mysteries of the entire show. Though the exploration team soldiered on and diverted their efforts toward other avenues in the following seasons, this was one finale that stung.