Yahoo News Where Did ‘Ozark’ Leave Off? Everything to Know Before the Final Episodes Hit Netflix
[Editor’s Note: The following article contains spoilers for “Ozark” Season 4, Part 1 and the preceding seasons.]
“Ozark” is coming to an end. After bursting onto Netflix back in July 2017, the Byrde family will say goodbye on April 29, 2022. The streaming service premiered the first half of Season 4 back in January, and the final seven episodes will debut in just a few short days.
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In case your memory is as wrecked as ours and Part 1 already feels like a distant, fuzzy memory, IndieWire has put together an “Everything To Know” guide for the final season, in the hopes of refreshing our collective memories. After all, with stakes this high, it’s best to be as prepared as possible before the ultimate end arrives.
Created by Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams, with Chris Mundy serving as showrunner, “Ozark” tells the story of Marty and Wendy Byrde (Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, respectively), a married couple living in the Chicago suburbs with their two children, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner). Life appears normal to the point of tedium — he’s drifting through life, she’s seeking thrills through an affair — but the two seemingly average parents have secretly agreed to launder money for a Mexican drug kingpin. Unsurprisingly, that choice proves costly, and when cartel members come calling — demanding restitution for money stolen by Marty’s business partner, Bruce (Josh Randall) — the frightened husband and father cooks up a quick scheme to make back the cash by moving to Missouri and setting up a bigger cleaning operation in the Lake of the Ozarks.
Their grand plans move quickly, as the Byrdes buy a motel, strip club, funeral service, and more as covers for laundering drug money. Soon enough, they escalate their operation and establish a riverboat casino, before Wendy pursues even more ambitious political control across the greater Midwest and beyond. But there are plenty of hiccups along the way. The Snells run a local heroin farm and don’t take kindly to another illicit operation drawing eyeballs to their territory. The FBI soon takes notice of the sudden influx of cash to the region, and various agents make their presence known to the Byrdes. Meanwhile, the cartel wants more money via quicker turnarounds, and the pressure mounts on the Byrdes to deliver impossible sums at record speed, all without getting thrown in jail or taken out by rivals.
And all that doesn’t even touch on Ruth Langmore, played by two-time Emmy winner Julia Garner. A scheming townie who first plans to steal Marty’s seed money, Ruth soon befriends and works for the Byrde family, helping out with various local businesses and smoothing over beefs with various local roughnecks. By Season 4, she’s both alienated from her former employer and central to his hopes of escaping, so let’s dig in with where things stand entering the final episodes.
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