Oak Island Season 13 Finale: The Biggest Twist in Show History!

The water’s squirting up from the bottom. You’ll see it in the back corner.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> Do we know if it’s fresh or salt?
>> I know.
>> A sealed chamber has been discovered beneath the shoreline of Oak Island.
When Rick Lagginina and the excavation team finally breached its walls, they were stunned to find the interior completely dry. A perfectly preserved space untouched for centuries.
This was no ordinary find. It was a true time capsule. Carbon dating of timber samples recovered from inside places the construction somewhere between 1350 and 1400 AD, making it the oldest confirmed man-made structure ever discovered in Nova Scotia. If the artifacts inside align with the chamber’s medieval origins, Oak Island could instantly become a billiondoll archaeological site. But what truly changes everything is this. The money pit was never the treasure vault. It was the lock. For 229 years, treasure hunters have tried to [music] force that lock open, drilling deeper, triggering floods, losing fortunes, and even lives along the way.
Six men have died pursuing the Oak Island mystery, giving rise to the famous legend that a seventh must die before the truth is revealed. Generation after generation believed they were just one dig away from the answer. Yet, the real secret was never hidden at the bottom of a flooded shaft. It was concealed sideways beneath the shoreline in a place no one thought to search. For nearly a decade, all attention had been focused elsewhere. Now, evidence was pointing unmistakably in this new direction. Over the years, the shaft in question has been labeled differently, shaft 12, shaft 17. But scientific dating of the wood recovered from it suggests it predates the very beginning of the treasure hunt itself. The season 13 finale will finally reveal what Rick Lagginina, Marty Lagginina, and their team discovered when they opened a door sealed for more than 600 years. This is not another tease. This is not another tune in next week cliffhanger. The evidence uncovered this season fundamentally reshapes the Oak Island story. By the end of this revelation, the entire mystery looks different. All because of what lies beneath the shoreline. The discovery took place during the filming of the episode Billiondoll Clues. Gary Drayton was scanning the shoreline with his metal detector when he picked up a signal that immediately felt wrong. It wasn’t the sharp ping of a coin or the dull thud of iron. It was deeper, heavier, and more [music] resonant.
Rose head spikes, the kind found on old doors and chests, [music] are familiar to seasoned treasure hunters. The hope was that this find might connect to early efforts around the Money Pit or Smith’s Cove. After decades of treasure hunting across four continents, Gary knows exactly how different materials sound underground.
And this signal didn’t fit anything he’d heard before. It suggested a void where none should exist. When excavation equipment was brought in to investigate, the crew struck timber. The sound that echoed back was unmistakable, hollow, resonant, almost like a drum. Wood only makes that sound when there’s empty space behind it. Gary froze, metal detector still in his hand. In all his years on Oak Island, he had never encountered anything like it. Rick Lagginina stood at the edge of the dig when the hollow strike registered. His face went pale after 13 seasons filled with false [music] starts and near misses. After watching his brother invest millions into the island, after enduring skeptics, [music] doubters, and endless questions about whether any of it was worth it, Rick knew exactly what that sound meant. They had finally found something real. Something was down there. Something hollow. Something intentionally built. No one was ready to walk away from this moment. The excavation team knew there was more to uncover. The spoil piles from the money pit are massive, built up over centuries of digging and dumping. Anything could be hidden within them, and the excitement was impossible to ignore. The hope was that these layers would finally reveal meaningful clues tied [music] directly to the treasure and the so-called money area. For weeks, the anomalies detected underground had baffled geologists. Natural rock formations don’t create empty cavities like this. Water erosion doesn’t form voids with straight edges and defined boundaries. When the crew dug deeper, the truth became clear. These weren’t natural features at all. They were walls, deliberately constructed walls positioned at a depth that shielded them from the constant rise and fall of the tides. This was advanced engineering requiring a deep understanding of hydraulics, soil behavior, and structural planning. It was knowledge far beyond anything pirates of the 1700s would have possessed. Whoever built this chamber understood how water moves through earth. They understood pressure, flow, and how to create a seal capable of lasting centuries. This wasn’t a rushed hiding place dug by opportunistic treasure hunters. It was a carefully designed structure [music] planned and executed with precision, reflecting generations of accumulated expertise.
When the final breach was made, the crew braced for disaster. Every previous excavation on Oak Island had been destroyed by rushing seawater, [music] but this time it never came. The seal held, and when the first air escaped from inside the chamber, it carried a distinct smell. ancient wood mixed with stale earth. The unmistakable scent of a space untouched for hundreds of years.
There was something else in the air as well. A deep mustiness that spoke of extreme age, of timbers cut during a time when medieval kings still ruled Europe. [music] In the dim light, the chamber walls revealed marks left by hand tools. These were not the clean, uniform cuts of modern machines, but the deliberate strokes of craftsmen who worked slowly, measuring time in seasons rather than hours. The team recognized what they were seeing. Possible offset chambers or underground voids. Data collection began immediately. Marty Lagginina arrived at the site within the hour. He stood at the edge of the opening, staring silently into the darkness. After a long pause, he finally spoke quietly but with certainty. This was it. This was what they had been searching for. The chamber answered a question that had puzzled researchers for generations. The flood tunnels connected to the money pit were never meant as simple traps. They were part of a sophisticated hydraulic system designed to divert water away from this hidden room. The system wasn’t built to flood the money pit. It was built to protect what lay beneath the shoreline.
For more than two centuries, every tunnel dug, [music] every shaft collapsed, and every excavation flooded had been aimed at the wrong place. The real vault had been here all along. The pressure surrounding the chamber is immense. Tons of saturated earth and ocean water pressing against timber that has slowly aged and weakened over centuries. And yet, against all odds, it still stands. The risk of a catastrophic collapse had never been higher. One wrong move, one small miscalculation, [music] and everything inside the chamber could be crushed or flooded before it was ever properly documented.
No one understood that risk better than Rick Lagginina. Standing at the edge of the brereech, he faced a decision that would define season 13. move slowly and risk losing the narrow window of opportunity or push forward and risk destroying the very discovery they were chasing. Rick chose to move ahead, but reaching the chamber came at a price.
[music] The money pit pushed back.
Season 13 demanded an aggressive strategy, massive equipment, expanded excavation zones, [music] and a determined effort to finally drain the central dig site. The decision wasn’t reckless. Rick and Marty Lagginina knew they couldn’t simply drill wherever someone claimed treasure might be. Every move required careful evaluation of the technology and the data behind it.
Still, they committed fully to the effort, investing millions of dollars, years of planning, and the weight of 13 seasons of expectation. Then, without warning, the ground gave way. A hollow space deep underground collapsed, triggering a chain reaction that rippled upward through the surface. [music] Heavy machinery lurched toward the void.
Workers shouted and scrambled for safety. As the ground shifted beneath them, shock waves traveled across the island, clouding water in multiple shafts and corrupting data from nearby excavations.
A towering plume of dust rose into the air, visible even from the causeway. The sound was unforgettable. A deep grinding roar as tons of earth shifted and settled. And then sudden silence. The kind of [music] silence that follows disaster when everyone is counting heads and praying no one was lost. Gary Drayton was working at a nearby site when it happened. He felt the ground shudder beneath his boots and saw the dust cloud rising from the money pit.
Instinct [music] kicked in. This wasn’t good. He headed immediately towards the evacuation zone. The collapse forced an immediate shutdown. Evacuation procedures were triggered. [music] Safety assessments began at once. For several days, no one was allowed anywhere near the money pit. The area was sealed off, deemed far too unstable for human access. Conditions on Oak Island had deteriorated to the point that local authorities stepped in with stopwork orders. Beneath the surface, limestone and gypsum layers are slowly dissolving. A natural process that has been occurring for thousands of years.
But every drill hole, every shaft, every excavation accelerates that breakdown.
The island is literally coming apart.
From the outside, viewers are drawn to the danger. Ratings climbed this season as audiences watched from the safety of their homes. But for Rick Lagginina, Marty Lagginina, and the crew on site, the danger is not entertainment. [music] It’s a daily reality that grows harder to control. A collapse at a depth of 100 ft is no minor incident. The force radiates outward, destabilizing nearby shafts, [music] contaminating water samples, and undoing months of careful excavation work in seconds. Years of effort can be erased in an instant. But then came an unexpected twist. As the ground shifted, it exposed a debris layer that had never been recorded before. From the wreckage, timber samples were recovered. Wood that does not match the searcher tunnels built in the 1800s.
And that discovery changes everything.
The wood showed unmistakable handcarved marks dated to the medieval period. The collapse destroyed valuable evidence, but it also exposed a secret that had been hidden for more than 600 years, a direct medieval connection. The artifacts recovered during season 13 are not from the age of pirates. [music] They are far older. Carbon dating places human activity on Oak Island between 1350 and 1400 AD, centuries [music] before Columbus ever crossed the Atlantic. This discovery forces a difficult question. Have searchers been digging in the wrong place all along? If the real story was hidden on lot 5 and beneath the shoreline [music] while attention stayed locked on the money pit, then years of effort, millions of dollars, countless hours of labor, and [music] even six lost lives were spent chasing a carefully constructed distraction. The implications go far beyond Oak Island. If Europeans were building sophisticated underground structures in Nova Scotia during the 1300s, then the accepted timeline of transatlantic contact must be reconsidered. The Vikings are known to have reached North America around 1,000 AD, but their settlements were temporary and abandoned within a short time. What the season 13 evidence suggests [music] is something very different. A planned expedition with the resources, skills, and intent to construct permanent hidden [music] infrastructure. Tools recovered from lot five match designs used in medieval France and Scotland. [music] The same kinds of tools used to build castles, cathedrals, and fortified structures. These were construction tools, not makeshift searcher [music] equipment. Implements designed for serious building on a large and deliberate scale. Among the finds was a pickaxe, old, broken, long ago. Its wear consistent with centuries of age. Its shape and size told a clear story.
[music] This wasn’t a heavy surface tool. It was short, specialized, and designed for tunneling. Rick Lagginina held one of the recovered wood fragments in his hands, slowly running his fingers [music] across its surface. The tool marks were unmistakable. Shallow curved grooves left by an implement that hasn’t been used for hundreds of years. The wood was dense and heavy, saturated with centuries of moisture, yet remarkably well preserved.
Each groove reflected the hand of the craftsman who made it. The angle of the swing, the pressure applied, the care taken by someone who knew this structure needed to endure.
This isn’t search or debris, Rick said quietly, turning the fragment over. This is original. This came from the builders. He passed the piece to the archaeologist [music] beside him. The room fell silent as the weight of the moment settled in. This was physical evidence of medieval construction recovered from beneath the soil of Nova Scotia. Evidence that shouldn’t exist according to the history books. The implications were staggering. Europeans were present on Oak Island at least 300 years before the money pit was supposedly [music] discovered in 1795.
Long-held assumptions now stand on shaky ground, and the theory gaining traction suggests the treasure was never gold or jewels at all. Instead, Oak Island may have been a secure storage site, a hidden repository for an organization under threat, a place designed to conceal documents, [music] artifacts, or objects of immense religious or historical importance. The Knights Templar. The idea of a Templar connection [music] has circulated for years, often brushed aside as speculation, a carved cross in stone, [music] a symbol that could be coincidence. But this time, the evidence is different. It’s physical. It can be dated. It can be verified. The Templars weren’t pirates. They were engineers, architects, [music] and masterbuilders responsible for some of the most advanced structures of the medieval world. Cathedrals [music] that still stand today, and fortresses that have endured centuries of war and weather.
They understood hydraulics, soil behavior, mechanics, [music] and large-scale construction in ways no pirate crew ever could.
Suddenly, the flood tunnels make sense.
Designing a system that interacts with ocean tides isn’t something pirates could pull off. It requires mathematics, physics, [music] and an understanding of pressure refined over generations. A monastic military order with centuries of construction experience would have possessed exactly that knowledge.
Marty Lagginina sat in the war room staring at the lab report confirming the carbon dates. The wood recovered from beneath the shoreline predates Columbus by more than 150 years. The figures on the page meant more than scientific confirmation. They represented validation, [music] years of investment, years of doubt, years of people questioning why two successful businessmen would pour their lives and fortunes into a hole in the ground. The lab analysis showed no modern alloying elements, no manganese, nothing that would indicate a later period. The conclusion was unmistakable.
“We’re not treasure hunters anymore,” Marty said, setting the report on the table. “We’re archaeologists, and we’ve just uncovered proof that changes history.” Rick stood by the window, looking out over the island that had consumed so much of their lives. Neither brother spoke for a long moment. They didn’t need to. The weight of the discovery filled the silence. The season finale will reveal these artifacts in dramatic [music] fashion. Ads marked timber, medieval tools, and carbon dating results that place construction firmly in the 1300s.
After 13 seasons of theories and speculation, Oak Island finally has physical evidence pointing to its true origin. But that evidence raises an unsettling question. If something was deliberately hidden here, if powerful people went to extraordinary lengths to ensure it would never be found, maybe there was a reason it was meant to stay buried.
The legend of the seventh death has haunted Oak Island from the beginning.
Seven must die before the truth is revealed. Six men have already lost their lives searching for the island’s secrets. And the season 13 finale comes closer to a seventh than any moment in the show’s history. The curse has often felt like television drama, a narrative device to raise the stakes. But standing at the edge of a collapsing pit, watching heavy machinery slide toward an unseen void, the men on Oak Island don’t experience it as entertainment. They experience it as a real and terrifying possibility. That today could be the day the legend completes itself. The collapse wasn’t just a setback. It was a near disaster that genuinely shook everyone on site. In the final days of filming, a massive piece of equipment nearly slid into a void that opened without warning. Workers were only feet away when the ground began to fail.
Seconds separated survival from catastrophe.
After the evacuation, Rick Lagginina stood at the perimeter, [music] watching dust settle over the money pit. His expression showed something deeper than frustration, something closer to [music] grief.
13 years of his life had been poured into that hole, and now it felt like the hole was trying to take something back.
The footage from the finale carries a heavy, somber [music] weight. There were no celebrations, no champagne, just exhausted men sitting quietly in the war room trying to process how close everything had come to disaster. The relief on their faces said more than any narration ever could. They had uncovered something extraordinary.
And at the same time, they were reminded in the most visceral way possible that Oak Island wasn’t finished with them.
Now, the boldest theory being discussed is a strip mine solution. The tunnels are too dangerous. The shafts keep collapsing. After 13 seasons, precise drilling has failed again and again. The only way forward may be to eliminate the danger entirely. a massive open pit excavation that exposes everything to daylight and finally settles the mystery once and for all. Fans have argued for years that the Lega brothers should take the Tony Beats approach. Move everything, remove the soil, lay it all bare.
After this season’s collapse, that once extreme option no longer feels reckless.
It feels inevitable. But that decision carries enormous consequences. Once the island is torn open, there’s no turning back. The archaeological context would be destroyed. The mystery would end one way or another.
The season 13 finale places Rick and Marty Lagginina in front of an impossible choice. shut down the excavation because the risk has become too great. Or push even harder and tear the island apart in search of answers that may have been buried for a reason.
What the finale ultimately reveals is that season 13 was never really about treasure. It marked the moment when the search became something else entirely.
The discovery of the shoreline chamber, the medieval timber, and carbon dating that places construction in the 1300s.
These aren’t clues leading to a chest of gold. They are evidence of a hidden chapter of history, a secret someone went to extraordinary lengths to protect. The material recovered is definitively not modern. It can be confidently placed in the 1700s at the latest and very possibly much older.
That realization changes everything. The story is no longer about digging straight down. It becomes a sideways mystery, linking the swamp, the shoreline, and the money pit in ways no one anticipated.
It suggests the builders had a far more sophisticated plan than simply hiding a box. They were constructing an underground stronghold, a secure facility designed to [music] protect something for centuries, something so valuable or so dangerous that it justified crossing an ocean to hide it in one of the most remote places imaginable. Oak Island may have begun with the Knights Templar with later groups continuing the work to preserve the secret for future generations.
That possibility now raises serious questions about the involvement of the Knights of Malta and others who may have helped maintain and conceal what was built here. The money pit, it now appears, was designed to fail. Every searcher who drilled downward triggered floods, lost their fortune, and sometimes their life was following a path meant to lead nowhere.
The real vault was hidden in plain sight beneath the shoreline, sealed safely away from the tides that destroyed everything [music] else.
Gary Drayton summed it up perfectly as he stood at the edge of the chamber opening, watching the sunset over Oak Island. 200 years of digging in the wrong place, and the answer had been right there all along. The finale won’t provide every answer. It never does, but it reveals enough to change the question forever. The mystery is no longer where is the treasure. The mystery has shifted. The question is no longer where the treasure lies, but what was so dangerous that medieval builders crossed an ocean to conceal it and engineered a system that has already claimed six lives from those who tried to uncover it. Season 13 brought the team closer to that truth than anyone has come in more than 200 years. And the finale reveals just how close they truly were and what it almost cost them. The seventh death has not yet happened, but on Oak Island, the curse waits.