The actors have played siblings on the series since 2020

Warning: this post contains spoilers for Outer Banks season 5.

NEED TO KNOW

• Drew Starkey and Madelyn Cline have played siblings Rafe and Sarah Cameron on Outer Banks since 2020
• Starkey tells PEOPLE about the emotional scene where he said goodbye to Cline in the final season of the series, which he says was “a strange kind of exercise in actually what it means to say goodbye to a person”
• “Maddie and I have been through a lot together,” Starkey says

Drew Starkey and Madelyn Cline’s tears were not just for their characters in the Outer Banks finale.

In the final episode of season 5, which concludes the Netflix series, Rafe (Starkey) fled Kildare with Sofia (Fiona Palomo) to avoid being charged with the murder of Sheriff Peterkin. He said goodbye to all the Pogues, and his goodbye to his sister, Sarah (Cline), was particularly emotional.

“I’m sorry for everything that happened. I really am,” Rafe told Sarah, choked up. “But I don’t think I’m gonna be able to come back here again, so I’m not gonna be able to see your baby.”

Both Starkey, 32, and Cline, 28, had tears in their eyes during the scene, and Starkey tells PEOPLE of filming it: “In that moment, it felt like I was saying goodbye to one of my sisters. It felt like I was saying goodbye to her.”

“It felt very honest,” he says. “I love Maddie, and Maddie and I have been through a lot together.”

Filming the goodbye was “a strange kind of exercise in actually what it means to say goodbye to a person,” Starkey says.

“I mean, God, I’ve loved working with Maddie. I’ve loved our friendship. So yeah, that moment felt very much like Drew and Madelyn saying goodbye to each other.”

Starkey was admittedly more emotional than he expected when the show wrapped up. “I did cry a lot. An embarrassing amount of tears were falling from my eyes,” he says.

“Our showrunners and our UPM [unit production manager] crafted it in a way where everyone would be on set together for that last day, and we had our whole crew out there,” he remembers. “Really, I think it was just seeing all these faces that I’d seen almost every day for the better part of seven years, and the realization that it was coming to an end, was incredibly overwhelming.”

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In season 5, the Pogues are “at their absolute breaking point following the tragic loss of JJ in Morocco,” per the official synopsis. “Stranded far from home and mourning the heart of their crew, they’ve lost the Blue Crown and continue to face a gauntlet of familiar threats. With Chandler Groff still at large, Dalia and the Corsairs closing in, and the Kooks ensuring the Pogues have no home to return to, John B, Sarah, Kiara, Pope, and Cleo must rely on their scrappy instincts—and an uneasy alliance with Rafe—to keep from falling apart for good.”

The final season of Outer Banks is now streaming on Netflix.

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