‘Ozark’ Series Finale Recap: The Way of the World

“World doesn’t work like that.” —Mel Sattem

“Since when?” —Wendy Byrde

It’s funny, in retrospect, how clearly and how early Ozark laid out the mechanics of its endgame. Back during the final season’s first half, I wrote this:

“Ozark has a grim view of our country, and that may be its strongest characteristic. In Ozark’s world, everyone’s a grifter, everyone’s constantly hustling, everyone’s on the make and on the take.”

I also wrote this, regarding disgraced cop and private eye Mel Sattem:

“I enjoy this kind of loose-cannon, wrench-in-the-works character, and I wonder how long it will be before his investigation bears bitter fruit. After all, virtually everyone he’s talked to is a liar under the surfaces. How hard will he scratch and dig before he hits paydirt?”

And where do things wind up, when all of Ozark is said and done? With Mel Sattem confronting Wendy and Marty Byrde over the murder of Wendy’s brother Ben, announcing that he’s already left the job they got him back on the Chicago PD because he couldn’t stand the idea of creeps like them winning. “You don’t get to be the Kochs or the Kennedys or whatever fucking royalty you people think you are,” he says. “World doesn’t work like that.”

“Since when?” Wendy shoots back.

Then Jonah and Charlotte appear, Jonah pulls a gun, the screen cuts to black, and Jonah shoots Mel Sattem to death.

So yeah, in the end, Ozark’s America is a land of grifting, thieving, hustling, murdering scum, and that loose cannon Mel Sattem’s death proves just how bad it’s all gotten. The children Marty and Wendy have ostensibly spent the past four seasons protecting are now just as filthy as they are—and with their Family Foundation riding high and their deal with the FBI and Camila Elizondro intact, no one will ever stop any of them. 

How’s that for a happy ending?

This bitingly cynical final hour ties off some, if not all, of the show’s loose ends, from minor characters on up. At Marty’s insistence, Ruth pulls a gun on Nathan and forces him to tell Jonah and Charlotte the truth—that he wants them to come back home with him not out of any particularly love for them, but to humiliate their mother. Hapless Sam Dermody goes back to North Carolina with Nathan and his girlfriend Annalise instead, the better to pursue his newfound faith (and, it’s implied, Annalise). Wendy extracts herself from her promise to help Senator Schafer rig the vote in key swing states. Rachel’s murder of Navarro hitman Nelson is successfully covered up by her and Ruth. Navarro himself is murdered at his sister Camila’s behest. Claire Shaw is the person who finally gives up the goods about Ruth’s murder of Camila’s son Javi, though she does have the decency to cover for Marty and Wendy’s role in the killing while she does so. Even on a metaphysical level we’re granted some closure: Ruth and her surviving cousin Three camp out on the top of her trailer while visions of their slain relatives Wyatt, Cade, Russ, and Boyd camp out below them. 

And oh yeah, Camila shoots Ruth to death.

Look, I harbored no illusions as to whether Ruth was going to make it out of this series alive. On a show like this, you don’t portray someone’s growth from small-time crook into rich casino maven without also portraying their inevitable collapse. Particularly given the success of actor Julia Garner in winning over the audience, you almost have to kill off her character just to tug on the heartstrings. In the end, I really didn’t see any other way out of this for her except in the ground.

Yet a few things don’t quite ring true. We’re supposed to buy that Marty and Wendy are deeply upset by the news that Ruth is going to be killed, and for what it’s worth I think they actually kind of are. But in this episode alone, Marty threatened Ruth’s life in order to get what he wanted, i.e. prying Jonah and Charlotte out of Nathan’s clutches. (One last Ozark-standard ultimatum for the road!) 

What changed between then and now? If the answer is nothing, then to what do we chalk up Marty’s earlier willingness to murder Ruth? Rank hypocrisy? Or was his threat mere bluster that he never actually believed he’d need to go through with?

Either explanation would make sense, but there’s still a nagging feeling that the show simply tweaked Marty and Wendy’s emotions in the moment because it made for better television. Hell, even Ruth herself seems to forgive Marty for threatening her, smiling and chatting with him later in the episode. Did the show itself forgive him too?

Then there was the car crash sequence. Ozark’s Season 4 premiere used it as a cold open flash-forward, to create suspense as to when the crash would happen and what the fallout would be. The answer to the latter is, well, nothing. No one is killed, no one is even injured, everything proceeds according to plan. It amounted to a pretty chintzy sleight-of-hand—a far cry from, say, the cold-open flash-forwards that dotted Breaking Bad’s incredible second season, and its “737” “Down” “Over” “ABQ” sequence of events.

Wendy, in conversation with Navarro cartel priest Benitez (an intriguing character who winds up not amounting to much; the returned Rachel is another case in point), says their survival in the crash was not a warning from God, but a blessing. Perhaps that’s right, and the God of Ozark is an unjust and unloving one. If you think back to the whole early-season storyline with Pastor Mason Young and his hot-potatoed baby Zeke, well, it all scans. But Zeke himself is a non-factor in these last few episodes, shunted to the side after Ruth rescues him from the Snell murder scene, and…I dunno, it just doesn’t quite line up, for me.

And the same is true of the villains of the piece. In the end, Omar, Felix, and even Camila are fairly generic cartel gangsters. A comparison to the world of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, with such similar but far more memorable characters as the ice-cold Gus Fring and the perpetually grinning Lalo Salamanca, do the show no favors. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Wendy spent most of this final season as a sort of antagonist within the family; the story simply needed the juice.

But in the end, I enjoyed the bulk of my time in Ozark’s world. Clearly positioned as Netflix’s answer to the canonical prestive-TV crime dramas, it succeeded in creating a visually distinct world peopled with compellingly broken characters. With the exception of a Ben Davis here and a Ruth Langmore there, it never quite held the incandescent power of those earlier shows in its hands. But I appreciate the boldness of its core performances—Jason Bateman as the perpetually scowling Marty, Laura Linney as the crescendoingly dangerous Wendy, Julia Garner as the raw nerve that was Ruth Langmore. And I respect its bleak outlook, never bleaker than here in the finale—a view of a fallen world. Welcome to Ozark Country, population: us.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.