Oak Island Season 12 Episode 24: The Terrible Underground Collapse Caused Lagina Team To Panic

Hey guys, in season 12, episode 24 of The Curse of Oak Island, something truly spectacular happened. Something that sent a shockwave through the very bedrock of this centuries-old mystery.

At 171 ft underground, deeper than any known searcher tunnel, the Fellowship of the Dig made a discovery that may just rewrite everything we thought we knew. But this isn’t just another artifact or wooden plank. This is something far older, far stranger, and far more significant than any previous find. A broken handwrought iron tool, possibly part of a pickaxe, forged centuries ago.

The moment began with a simple clang of metal from the dirt. Gary Drayton and team had unearthed what looked like a medieval tool buried not just beneath the soil, but beneath centuries of diggers, doubters, and determined treasure hunters. A chunk of wrought iron, rough-hewn and heavy, emerged from the earth. Like a whisper from the past, this wasn’t just any tool.

Carmen Le, a blacksmithing expert with the kind of seasoned eye that doesn’t miss a trick, took one look and dropped the bombshell: this thing looks 1500s, maybe early 1600s, no later than that. And suddenly, the air in the Oak Island lab turned electric.

You see, this wasn’t found at a shallow depth. This wasn’t sitting in some old searcher tunnel built in the 1800s. This was buried deep in virgin ground beyond the reach of past expeditions. And if that’s true, then friend, that pickaxe could have been used by the original depositors themselves.

Could it have been the hand of a Templar knight or a seafaring monk that wielded this tool, digging into bedrock to bury something worth guarding for eternity?

By the time the team reached the 180 ft mark in the T1 shaft, affectionately dubbed “Toot One,” tension was rising faster than the casing being driven into the earth. With every load of earth pulled from the solution channel, anticipation grew. Would this be the chamber, the fabled treasure vault, or just another dead end?

Then it happened. In a moment that had everyone leaning in, a thick, heavy grab pulled up something that didn’t belong. Old wood. Very old wood. So old, in fact, that when tested, it sank immediately—a sign that it had been underground for a very, very long time.

And then came the gypsum. Another indicator they had likely breached the legendary solution channel—the natural cavern believed to have been exploited by whoever constructed the original money pit.

The excitement was palpable. Rick Lagina’s voice shook as he spoke: “I believe that we are in the area of the original money pit.” And when Rick believes, you know something serious is happening.

But as with every story on Oak Island, no great discovery comes easy.

Just as they were making progress, disaster struck. The casing began to bind. The equipment started to fail. The grab couldn’t advance. The shaft threatened collapse. For a moment, all that momentum and all that hope teetered on the edge of being swallowed whole by Oak Island’s unforgiving depths.

Still, the team didn’t falter. No, they adapted—switching to the airlift method, a high-pressure technique that sucks up sediment and objects from deep underground. They prepared to scour the base of the solution channel. If anything was down there, it was coming up.

And make no mistake, friend. This wasn’t a desperate measure. This was surgical precision—a final strike, a last push for glory.

The deeper the team digs, the more ancient the puzzle becomes. With blacksmith Carmen Le dating the pickaxe to the 1500s, and the artifact’s metallurgy confirming high levels of potassium, sulfur, and magnesium impurities consistent with pre-1700 smelting techniques, the evidence is stacking up.

And here’s where things really get interesting.

The date range aligns with the era when the Knights of Malta—an elite Catholic military order with ties to the Templars—were active across Europe and the Mediterranean. Could their ships have reached the shores of Nova Scotia? Could they have carried treasure, secrets, or holy relics across the Atlantic and buried them in the treacherous soils of Oak Island?

We’ve long heard whispers about the Templars, Freemasons, and now even the Knights of Malta. And suddenly those whispers are becoming shouts.

This isn’t just speculation anymore. This is evidence. Hard, cold, iron evidence straight from the depths of a collapsed tunnel over 180 ft underground.

As Rick, Marty, and the team prepare for what might be their final dig of the season, the atmosphere is thick with hope and trepidation. Winter is coming. The window is closing. But the mystery—the mystery is cracking wide open.

The last thing we see in episode 24 is an air of determination. Rick quietly declares, “Tomorrow could be the day.”

The team is exhausted, caked in mud, and wrung dry by the relentless grind of the dig. But they believe more than ever. They believe they are close. Close to history. Close to truth. Close to treasure.

It’s no longer a question of if. It’s a question of how soon.

As dawn breaks over the windswept shores of Mahone Bay, the Fellowship of the Dig stands poised on a razor’s edge. Each breath a blend of anticipation and reverence.

What they’re doing isn’t just excavation. It’s resurrection. And every new artifact unearthed beneath the island’s surface is like another heartbeat in a body thought long dead.

That ancient pickaxe fragment—it wasn’t just metal. It was memory, forged by hands that may have been part of a sacred mission centuries ago.

And while skeptics may scoff, those who’ve followed this odyssey know the truth is often stranger and deeper than fiction. The depth at which these items are being found, combined with their pre-industrial age craftsmanship, screams authenticity.

We’re not talking about misplaced miners’ tools from the 1800s here. This is the gear of pioneers—perhaps guardians—who carved through rock not for gold, but for legacy.

There’s a weight to that kind of discovery, friend.

Imagine knowing your shovel is brushing against the same soil where a 16th-century engineer may have stood, driven by a mission cloaked in secrecy.

The wear on the pickaxe. The folds in the grain. The mineral content embedded in its fracture. All of it is whispering the same thing: I was here long before the treasure hunters came.

And what if that ancient tool wasn’t just for tunneling? What if it was a marker? Proof of a deeper network of tunnels—perhaps even chambers that housed something far greater than material riches? Religious relics. Scrolls. Secrets guarded by the most secretive orders in human history.

With every foot the team descends, the louder those possibilities grow.

Yet even now, Oak Island resists.

The solution channel—the underground cavern that may very well be the treasure vault—has welcomed the team with both promise and peril. Progress slows. Cavities collapse. Machinery groans under the pressure. It’s as if the island itself is alive, determined to protect what lies buried.

But the team doesn’t flinch.

No curse, no cave-in, no unseen hand has ever broken the will of Rick, Marty, or the fellowship. They know the deeper struggle is not with mud or metal, but with time.

That’s what this episode truly underscores: Time.

Time is the enemy and the prize. The seasons are closing in, and the brutal Nova Scotian winter threatens to ice over progress. But the time they are unearthing—centuries of it—is revealing new truths.

The past is calling. And Oak Island is answering—loudly.

And what happens next, friend, could be the turning point we’ve waited years—no, centuries—for.

If that airlift works—if the solution channel spills its secrets—then history may well be rewritten before the snow falls. Not by textbooks. Not by scholars in ivory towers. But by a ragtag group of believers with steel boots, dirty gloves, and a fire that no mystery can extinguish.

So stay tuned. Stay ready.

Because this isn’t just another episode.

This is the final approach—the curtain call of a centuries-old enigma.