A viewer working through Oak Island on a streaming service will meet at least six different show titles, several of which carry the same episode names. The main series has been running for over a decade, and for most of that time it has not been the only Oak Island programme on the schedule. Around it sits a cluster of companion programmes and spin-offs. Some are separate series with their own casts and their own subjects. One is the main show rebroadcast with captions. The catalogues rarely distinguish between them.
What follows is an account of what each of them is, when it aired, and whether it contains anything the main series does not.
Drilling Down
The oldest and longest-running of the companions is not a run of specials at all. The History Channel carries The Curse of Oak Island: Drilling Down as a separate show with its own catalogue page and roughly 55 episodes, and the television databases assign it its own series identifiers and its own per-season numbering.
It began on 10 November 2015, the night season three premiered, billed as a companion to that season and as an introduction for viewers arriving late. The format has not changed much since. Matty Blake sits with members of the dig team in a studio and works through what a particular episode showed, usually with a guest, sometimes with a theory being pitched directly to Rick Lagina and Marty Lagina.
The reason viewers experience these as scattered specials is scheduling. Drilling Down has aired at 8:00 PM ahead of the main episode, at 10:03 PM after it, and in weeks with no main episode at all. Nothing in the on-screen presentation signals that it belongs to a different series with a different episode number. The most recent instalment, A Treasured Fellowship, aired 12 May 2026, a week after the season thirteen finale.
For anyone tracking the search rather than the drama, Drilling Down is often the only place a laboratory result or a survey finding gets more than forty seconds of explanation.
Behind the Dig
Behind the Dig was a shorter experiment. It ran five episodes between 13 November and 18 December 2018, at roughly 21 minutes each, with Matty Blake going behind the scenes of the week's episode as it aired. It has its own series record in the television databases, it is listed as ended, and it has not returned.
Its titles are the problem. Rick's Big Bang Theory, Gold Rush, Depth Perception, A Legacy Revealed and Homecoming are the titles of the season six episodes they accompanied, which means that in most listings the two are indistinguishable. A viewer scrolling a streaming catalogue sees Gold Rush twice and assumes a duplicate.
Digging Deeper and the Enhanced Rebroadcasts
This is the one that most needs correcting, because almost every catalogue gets it wrong.
The Curse of Oak Island: Digging Deeper is listed as a series in its own right across the major aggregators, with entries running to eleven seasons and its own IMDb title. It is not a series. It is the main show rebroadcast with additional information and previously unseen footage added, which is why its episode titles and synopses are identical to the main episodes, season by season and line by line.
The network's own broadcast schedule shows the mechanism plainly. Fingers Made of Stone aired as episode 610 at 9:00 PM on 22 January 2019. The Digging Deeper version of Fingers Made of Stone aired at 8:00 PM on 29 January 2019, as the lead-in to the following week's new episode. Same content, one week later, one hour earlier, with captions.
The practical consequence for viewers is an inflated count. Anyone assembling a watch list from a streaming catalogue that treats Digging Deeper as a parallel series will find themselves scheduled to watch every season of Oak Island twice.
The Countdown Specials
Between 2019 and 2023, The History Channel filled the October gap before each premiere with clip-show countdowns. October 2019 brought four of them under a Top 25 banner, covering finds, theories, moments, and moments viewers had not seen. October 2021 repeated the pattern as a Top Ten, adding Templar ties and signs of buried treasure. October 2022 and October 2023 each carried four more, running to Portuguese connections, swamp revelations, ancient structures and Money Pit discoveries.
Some of these carry production numbers inside the main series block rather than a separate one, which is a fair indication of how the network filed them internally. Editorially they are recapitulation, occasionally carrying a fresh interview segment and no new fieldwork.
Alongside them sit a handful of one-offs that resist categorisation: The Journey So Far on 7 November 2017, The Templar Connection on 13 February 2018, A Family Album on 27 February 2018, and the First Look previews that preceded the ninth and tenth season premieres.
The Curse of Civil War Gold
The first true spin-off arrived on 6 March 2018 at 10:00 PM, announced as a six-episode series. Its premise was that Marty Lagina, having become a man to whom treasure hunters bring their theories, had been approached with one worth pursuing.
Kevin Dykstra, a Michigan native, had spent seven years pursuing a claim that Union soldiers from Michigan seized Confederate gold from Jefferson Davis in 1865 and that a railway car carrying it ended up on the floor of Lake Michigan. The evidentiary basis was a deathbed statement attributed to a lighthouse keeper in the 1890s. The format placed Marty Lagina in the position of the sceptical investor being asked to fund a sonar survey of about a hundred square miles, which gave the series its recurring tension. Gary Drayton joined the team on the strength of his metal-detecting work on Oak Island.
It ran two seasons and sixteen episodes, ending 2 July 2019. Robert Clotworthy narrated, as he does the main series. No Confederate gold was recovered.
Beyond Oak Island
Beyond Oak Island premiered on 17 November 2020 with an episode called Pirate Treasures, and ran three seasons and 28 episodes to 2023. Matty Blake hosted, Robert Clotworthy narrated, and Rick Lagina and Marty Lagina appeared across all 28, generally from Michigan rather than in the field.
The premise inverted the parent show. Instead of outside experts coming to Oak Island, the Oak Island team went out to other people's hunts: Jean Lafitte's silver in East Texas, Robbers Roost in Utah with a descendant of Butch Cassidy, the French vessel La Trinité off Florida, the Whydah wreck off Cape Cod, Poverty Island in Lake Michigan, the Sam Bass caches in Texas. Gary Drayton appeared in seven episodes, usually as the man sent to swing a detector over someone else's ground.
Speaking to TV Insider at launch, Rick Lagina framed the series as a way of passing on what the team had learned, to share experience. The series has not returned since 2023.
Tales from Oak Island
The most recent spin-off is also the most useful to anyone reading this site. The History Channel announced Tales from Oak Island on 25 October 2024 alongside the twelfth season of the parent series, and premiered it on 19 November 2024 at 10:00 PM, one week after the season twelve opener. Eight episodes aired, closing with Booby Trapped on 25 March 2025.
The format is documentary rather than observational. Each episode takes a single subject and works through it with archival material and contributors rather than following an excavation. The first episode, The Article, is built around the 1965 Reader's Digest piece on the Money Pit that drew Daniel Blankenship into the search. The Legend of Samuel Ball examines the formerly enslaved man who became one of the island's landowners. Hedden's Hunt covers Gilbert Hedden's work in the late 1930s. The remaining episodes address the lead cross, a 1746 ship's log and a French admiral, and the question of whether the Money Pit was engineered with deliberate defences.
Robert Clotworthy narrates. Credited on-screen contributors include Marty Lagina, Tony McMahon and Corjan Mol.
Of everything the franchise has produced outside the main series, Tales from Oak Island is the only programme built on documents rather than machinery, which makes it the closest thing to a filmed research summary. No second season has aired since March 2025.
Shows Often Mistaken for Spin-Offs
Recommendation algorithms have created the impression of a shared universe that does not exist.
The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, which premiered 31 March 2020, is narrated by Robert Clotworthy and appears beside Oak Island in most recommendation panels. The programmes share a narrator and a genre. They do not share a cast or a subject. The single point of contact is an episode of Beyond Oak Island in which Marty Lagina looks into a fellow energy entrepreneur's Utah ranch and a claim connecting it to Montezuma's treasure.
Lost Gold of World War II, which premiered 19 March 2019 and follows John Casey's search in the Philippines for the wartime gold associated with General Tomoyuki Yamashita, has no Oak Island personnel at all and comes from a different production team entirely. Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch and Beyond Skinwalker Ranch belong to the same programming category and to no part of the Oak Island story.
Where Each Programme Fits
The companion programming exists because the audience wants more than a single season can hold. Filming runs through one Nova Scotia summer, and the main series carries roughly 25 episodes out of it. A great deal of what the team does on the island, and much of the laboratory and archival work that follows, needs more room than a 42-minute cut allows. That material moves outward into the companions, and the spin-offs carry the subject through the months when the island is quiet.
Viewers who want to follow the search itself have a reasonably clear order of priority. Tales from Oak Island carries the documentary and archival work. Drilling Down carries the technical detail the main edit has to compress, and is often the only place a laboratory result is discussed at length. The countdowns and Behind the Dig are made for viewers who want the story retold rather than extended. Digging Deeper is the main series itself, presented with additional context.
As of August 2026, both Beyond Oak Island and Tales from Oak Island are dormant, and the franchise consists of the main series and Drilling Down. Whether that changes when season fourteen begins in November has not been announced.
Sources
Network listings and press announcements
- The History Channel, programme pages for The Curse of Oak Island, The Curse of Oak Island: Drilling Down, The Curse of Civil War Gold, Beyond Oak Island and Tales from Oak Island, history.com.
- The History Channel press announcement, "Season 12 of The Curse of Oak Island (November 12) and New Series Tales From Oak Island (November 19) to Premiere on The HISTORY Channel," 25 October 2024, via TheFutonCritic.
- The History Channel press announcement for The Curse of Civil War Gold, 20 February 2018, reported by BroadwayWorld.
Broadcast schedules
- The History Channel weekly broadcast schedules, January 2014 to May 2026, covering original episodes, Drilling Down, Digging Deeper, Behind the Dig and specials.
Series records and episode data
- IMDb, series records for The Curse of Oak Island (tt3455408), The Curse of Oak Island: Drilling Down (tt5233094), Beyond Oak Island (tt13354560), The Curse of Civil War Gold and Tales from Oak Island (tt34279677).
- TheTVDB, series records for The Curse of Oak Island: Drilling Down, The Curse of Oak Island: Behind the Dig (series 377720), Beyond Oak Island and Tales from Oak Island.
- TVmaze, episode guides for The Curse of Oak Island: Drilling Down (show 7994), The Curse of Oak Island: Behind the Dig (show 39973) and Tales From Oak Island (show 80140).
- Rotten Tomatoes, season listings for The Curse of Oak Island: Digging Deeper and Tales From Oak Island.
- Wikipedia, "List of The Curse of Oak Island episodes" and "The Curse of Civil War Gold," consulted August 2026.
Press coverage
- TV Insider, "Beyond Oak Island Uncovers New Secrets in History Spinoff," 17 November 2020, interview with Rick Lagina and Marty Lagina.
- Asian Journal, "New History Channel series follows legendary World War II treasure in the Philippines," 19 March 2019.
