Let's just go ahead and say it: the final 7 episodes of Ozark are not the ending the show deserved to go out on. This isn't to say it's an inherently bad string of episodes. The filmmaking and performances are as top-notch as they've ever been; there are some legitimately fantastic episodes; the final scene is a wonderful coda for the show to go out on. But as a complete package these episodes just don't stick the landing as a show of this caliber had ought to.
What's confusing about this is that the odds were totally in the writers’ favour. Creator Chris Mundy and Co. had penned a terrific half-season prior culminating in a lights-out mid-season finale. All they had to do was keep the momentum going. But in the words of Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), they couldn't "take the fucking victory."
There are quite a few flaws that hold this season back. The best way to handle this is by carefully dissecting them one by one:
Season 4 Part 2 opens up with one of the best episodes Ozark has ever done. "The Cousin of Death" picks up immediately after the mid-season finale with Ruth (Julia Garner) driving to Chicago to exact revenge on Javi Elizondro (Alfonso Herrera) for murdering her cousin Wyatt (Charlie Tahan). Once she arrives, she gets cold feet. Marty, Ruth's quasi-adoptive father, almost manages to talk her out of it. Ruth's grief and vengeful contemplation are poeticized through Nas' debut masterpiece Illmatic–an album she appears to have on replay while she figures out what she's going to.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">this is a textbook example of how to use licensed music in a show properly <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Ozark?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Ozark</a> <a href="https://t.co/4KJRG1J72z">https://t.co/4KJRG1J72z</a></p>— not jared leto (@marshall_jared_) <a href="https://twitter.com/marshall_jared_/status/1520045177422942211?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 29, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The prominent use of Illmatic is an excellent choice in both writing and music supervision. From her introduction in Season 1, the show has established an intense spiritual connection between Ruth and rap music. This isn’t just someone who appreciates good music and it’s not your typical white boy cultural appropriation either. Ruth feels the music and it makes total sense. Sure, Ruth may not experience any of the racial issues many of her favourite musicians talk about in their music, but she sure as hell understands the plights of poverty that Nas discusses in painstaking detail.
This carefully fleshed-out musical relationship leads to a chance encounter in a diner between Ruth and another one of her icons, Run the Jewels’ Killer Mike. In less capable hands, Mike’s self-played cameo could have been corny and misplaced. But it leads to a philosophical conversation about Nas’ music in which Ruth articulates the trauma of her upbringing. It’s a wonderful exercise of allegory which in turn gives Ruth the impetus to finally carry out her revenge.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">killer mike's cameo in ‘ozark’ talking with ruth about ‘illmatic’ is 🔥<a href="https://t.co/0tEY4lBj9l">pic.twitter.com/0tEY4lBj9l</a></p>— Genius (@Genius) <a href="https://twitter.com/Genius/status/1520128569447526401?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 29, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
It’s an excellent hour of television, but it rings a bell that can’t be unrung. Ruth’s arc reaches its completion in this episode. She comes to an understanding of her power which, due to her class status, is a total lack of power. She knows she isn’t in a position where she can make a move against the cartel and she does it anyway because Javi deserves to die. She obtains justice in a power vacuum where justice is punished. This transgression will only end one way: Ruth’s death.
The problem is that it takes five episodes to reach that point. Be honest with yourself… did you really think Ruth was making it out alive after she killed Javi? Of course you didn’t. It doesn’t comply with the show we’ve been watching. “The Cousin of Death” is the catalyst that sends the show spiralling to its climax, but we don’t get that climax until the final episode.
Up until “The Cousin of Death,” Ozark has never been a show you can predict in terms of plot progression. Characters who seem instrumental to the show’s mechanisms can be wiped off the board in the blink of an eye (See Season 1 finale “The Toll"), the plot will back itself in a corner just to weave its way out and expand. After “The Cousin of Death,” the whole show becomes written out for you.
When Javi gets off the phone with his mother, Camila (Veronica Falcón), it becomes clear that she’ll be the one who will carry out revenge on Ruth—so she’s not going anywhere. Because of a flash-forward at the beginning of the season (more on this later), we know the Byrdes are safe until the point of a spontaneous car crash—which it turns out will occur in the series finale. The only character whose fate is in question is Ruth and it’s clear exactly how this situation will play out. The show sucks narrative tension completely out of the writing.
The predestination of events isn’t always a bad thing when it comes to television. A show that is also ending in two parts this year, Better Call Saul, has shown that writers can use set-in-stone events to subvert the viewer’s expectations. But Ozark doesn’t do that. Instead, it removes all tension from a series that has thrived on suspense and delays the inevitable to the point that once the show finally does reach its conclusion, it feels like too much waiting has taken place for it to have its full effect.
The episodes between “The Cousin of Death” and the series finale don’t feel like necessary moments of story progression. They feel like shoddy obstacles that keep us from getting where we need to go. For example, I understand that the writers may feel that watching Ruth wash herself clean of the Byrdes’ dealings and getting her criminal record expunged may have added to the tragedy of her demise, but we didn’t need to be told what a great life Ruth could have made for herself if it wasn’t for her circumstance. We’ve spent four seasons with this woman, we understand why she’s a tragic character. At this point, it just feels like the writers are whacking us over the head with a subtext mallet (more on this later).
The only necessary writing between these episodes is developing the show’s new antagonist, Camila, and that leads to the half-season's next problem.
Using a show’s final season to introduce important new characters is a risky play. Sometimes it pays dividends, I don’t think anyone would consider the introduction of Jesse Plemons’ childlike menace Todd Alquist to the final season of Breaking Bad a detriment, but they’re generally introduced early on to maximize characterization without taking away from plot lines already in play.
Camila is technically introduced in Season 4 Part 1 of Ozark, but I only know this because I took the time to look it up before writing this piece. All meaningful characterization takes place in the latter half of the season. That’s a serious problem when there are only seven episodes of the story remaining. It makes the character feel shoehorned into the end game; which is a shame considering Falcón is doing some seriously skilled work with the character. It leaves me wondering why she wasn’t built upon earlier in the season. It feels like wasted potential.
Two other characters that rise to prominence this season are Wendy’s father, Nathan Davis (Richard Thomas), and the returning Rachel Garrison (Jordana Spiro). Both performances are terrific but unfortunately feel cluttered and redundant in service to the story.
Take Nathan for example. In the half-season’s worst subplot, Wendy (Laura Linney) gets caught in a custody battle for her children with Nathan, causing her to relive years of abuse and sending her spiralling out of control. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s some good material here. Thomas turns in a phenomenal performance and plays well off of Linney; one scene in particular where Wendy starts childishly begging at Nathan’s knees on courthouse steps cleverly mirrors a tearful exchange Ruth had with her father in Season 2. However, the plotline fails to service the themes in any meaningful way.
What exactly do we learn from Nathan’s introduction? That Wendy is a bad mother? We’ve been down this road already when Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) tried to emancipate herself back in Season 2. It’s a well-known fact that the Byrdes are evoking irreversible damage to their children. Watching 14-year-old Jonah (Skylar Gaertner) become a full-on money launderer speaks a whole lot more to bad parenting than a needless custody battle. Hell, the final scene where Jonah commits murder to protect his family does a better job at this. The plot point doesn’t even cause any real dramatic tension because we’ve already seen a flash-forward of the Byrdes driving together happily in an SUV (this flash-forward fucking sucks, folks, and it will be coming up later)! It just comes across as the narrative running in circles.
How about Rachel? Because it was wonderful to see the character come back, but what purpose did it serve? Her character only exists as a) an accessory to Ruth’s plot progression and b) a reminder of the havoc Marty and Wendy’s actions have wreaked on the Ozarks' socio-economic climate. In regards to the former, it feels like a lazy way of bringing back an old character. As for the latter, once again, we know! The audience has spent an entire series watching the Byrdes exacerbate the economic problems of an impoverished community to better the rich and powerful. If you continuously hit a viewer over the head with subtext, it ceases to be subtext and comes off as you treating the audience like they’re stupid.
So much wasted time is spent on characters who either don’t need it or should have had it earlier that it takes away from characters who should be indulging in more screen time. Agent Maya Miller (Jessica Frances Dukes) has been one of Ozark’s later season's best additions and is almost nowhere to be seen in these last episodes. Or how about Frank Jr. (Joseph Sikora)? Ruth and Frank’s relationship organically went from trying to have the other one murdered to an unlikely touching friendship. Yet again, he feels like a total ghost. The show throws too many new players on the board and messes with a game that was ticking just fine without them. It’s a major reason why many of these final episodes feel so extraneous.
I’ve been beating around the bush with this one, but this flash-forward may go down as some of the worst writing on television this year. I’ve touched upon how it squanders any potential tension concerning the Byrdes, but it’s also a purposeless red herring. Nothing becomes of it. No one dies. It contributes nothing to the plot.
There’s nothing wrong with the event itself. The metaphor is sound: the Byrdes are in such a position of power that only an act of God could take them out and even that they rise above. They are essentially the polar opposite of Ruth. Marty and Wendy can decide who lives or die with a phone call to the FBI where Ruth can’t even avenge her cousin without facing repercussions. The sequence itself is a neat artistic flourish—the flash-forward to the sequence however places a false sense of importance that leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you finally get to it.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the writers are punishing the viewer for thinking that people like this would ever face any meaningful consequences—cosmic or otherwise. In a better season, I might be sold on this little soirée with the metaphysical… but that kind of liberty has to be earned and, I’m sorry, I’m just not buying it.
Marty and Ruth’s relationship has always been a major highlight of this show and it has always seemed to abide by a particular equation: Marty and Ruth work together, Marty’s lack of loyalty repels Ruth away from him, something happens in Ruth’s life that brings him back in her good graces, then another betrayal happens that draws them even further apart. Up until now, the dynamic has worked. But Wyatt’s death changed everything. This should have been the final transgression that severed the bond entirely.
Yet by the end of the series, the cycle has repeated itself one final time in Ruth helping Marty reunite his family before Marty’s actions get her killed. Now it could be argued that this is the point; Ruth’s constant desire to find a father in Marty leads to her inevitable demise. But it’s just another example of something that was already perfectly articulated by the mid-season finale and is just being stretched out to bide time until the conclusion. Once again, the series is running in circles.
The final key flaw that sets this ending back is the strange choice this half-season makes to give Marty a Heisenberg-esque transformation. The intention makes sense: in one of the half-season’s best scenes, Wendy lambasts Marty for constantly pretending to be “the good guy” in an inherently evil business. So the writers give Marty a half-season arc where he finally accepts his role in the world.
But the writers equivocate. They want to give Marty some edge yet seem to be scared of turning us against him. What exactly does Marty do this season that makes him so bad?
None of these actions truly sell the “Marty accepts his role” arc the show is trying to throw at us. Marty giving Jonah the nod to shoot Mel is a fine conclusion to such an arc, but it feels like a punctuation mark without a sentence to support it. It’s baffling why the writers seem so afraid to turn us against Marty. This show exists in a genre that has given us the likes of Tony Soprano, Walter White, Barry Berkman, and Don Draper. These are the writers who wrote Wendy Byrde!
No move shows the writers’ failure to commit to this arc like the choice to have Clare Shaw (Katrina Lenk) give up Ruth to Camila in the series finale. Some would say that Marty’s failure to protect Ruth is what gets her killed and this is an absolutely correct assessment. What has made Marty stand out from traditional television anti-heroes throughout the series is his ambivalence. Marty’s evil does not come from being a violent man nor does it come from his narcissism. Marty’s evil has always come from knowing the right thing to do and his inability to act on it.
Before this half-season, Marty refusing to save Ruth would have been a perfect ending to his character arc. But the writers complicate matters by this foolish play to bring Marty to the “dark side” when he already gave into darkness when he agreed to launder money for the cartel. It takes what could have been a satisfying ending and lessens it by adding too much to the soup.
And that’s the true sin of Ozark’s final season. It’s just too much. Too many episodes. Too many characters. Too much repetition. Too many alterations. Ozark is one of the best series Netflix has ever produced. This final season should have been a slam dunk. Instead, it left me staring at the screen thinking “goddamnit, you were so close.”
Let's just go ahead and say it: the final 7 episodes of Ozark are not the ending the show deserved to go out on. This isn't to say it's an inherently bad string of episodes. The filmmaking and performances are as top-notch as they've ever been; there are some legitimately fantastic episodes; the final scene is a wonderful coda for the show to go out on. But as a complete package these episodes just don't stick the landing as a show of this caliber had ought to.
What's confusing about this is that the odds were totally in the writers’ favour. Creator Chris Mundy and Co. had penned a terrific half-season prior culminating in a lights-out mid-season finale. All they had to do was keep the momentum going. But in the words of Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), they couldn't "take the fucking victory."
There are quite a few flaws that hold this season back. The best way to handle this is by carefully dissecting them one by one:
Season 4 Part 2 opens up with one of the best episodes Ozark has ever done. "The Cousin of Death" picks up immediately after the mid-season finale with Ruth (Julia Garner) driving to Chicago to exact revenge on Javi Elizondro (Alfonso Herrera) for murdering her cousin Wyatt (Charlie Tahan). Once she arrives, she gets cold feet. Marty, Ruth's quasi-adoptive father, almost manages to talk her out of it. Ruth's grief and vengeful contemplation are poeticized through Nas' debut masterpiece Illmatic–an album she appears to have on replay while she figures out what she's going to.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">this is a textbook example of how to use licensed music in a show properly <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Ozark?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Ozark</a> <a href="https://t.co/4KJRG1J72z">https://t.co/4KJRG1J72z</a></p>— not jared leto (@marshall_jared_) <a href="https://twitter.com/marshall_jared_/status/1520045177422942211?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 29, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The prominent use of Illmatic is an excellent choice in both writing and music supervision. From her introduction in Season 1, the show has established an intense spiritual connection between Ruth and rap music. This isn’t just someone who appreciates good music and it’s not your typical white boy cultural appropriation either. Ruth feels the music and it makes total sense. Sure, Ruth may not experience any of the racial issues many of her favourite musicians talk about in their music, but she sure as hell understands the plights of poverty that Nas discusses in painstaking detail.
This carefully fleshed-out musical relationship leads to a chance encounter in a diner between Ruth and another one of her icons, Run the Jewels’ Killer Mike. In less capable hands, Mike’s self-played cameo could have been corny and misplaced. But it leads to a philosophical conversation about Nas’ music in which Ruth articulates the trauma of her upbringing. It’s a wonderful exercise of allegory which in turn gives Ruth the impetus to finally carry out her revenge.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">killer mike's cameo in ‘ozark’ talking with ruth about ‘illmatic’ is 🔥<a href="https://t.co/0tEY4lBj9l">pic.twitter.com/0tEY4lBj9l</a></p>— Genius (@Genius) <a href="https://twitter.com/Genius/status/1520128569447526401?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 29, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
It’s an excellent hour of television, but it rings a bell that can’t be unrung. Ruth’s arc reaches its completion in this episode. She comes to an understanding of her power which, due to her class status, is a total lack of power. She knows she isn’t in a position where she can make a move against the cartel and she does it anyway because Javi deserves to die. She obtains justice in a power vacuum where justice is punished. This transgression will only end one way: Ruth’s death.
The problem is that it takes five episodes to reach that point. Be honest with yourself… did you really think Ruth was making it out alive after she killed Javi? Of course you didn’t. It doesn’t comply with the show we’ve been watching. “The Cousin of Death” is the catalyst that sends the show spiralling to its climax, but we don’t get that climax until the final episode.
Up until “The Cousin of Death,” Ozark has never been a show you can predict in terms of plot progression. Characters who seem instrumental to the show’s mechanisms can be wiped off the board in the blink of an eye (See Season 1 finale “The Toll"), the plot will back itself in a corner just to weave its way out and expand. After “The Cousin of Death,” the whole show becomes written out for you.
When Javi gets off the phone with his mother, Camila (Veronica Falcón), it becomes clear that she’ll be the one who will carry out revenge on Ruth—so she’s not going anywhere. Because of a flash-forward at the beginning of the season (more on this later), we know the Byrdes are safe until the point of a spontaneous car crash—which it turns out will occur in the series finale. The only character whose fate is in question is Ruth and it’s clear exactly how this situation will play out. The show sucks narrative tension completely out of the writing.
The predestination of events isn’t always a bad thing when it comes to television. A show that is also ending in two parts this year, Better Call Saul, has shown that writers can use set-in-stone events to subvert the viewer’s expectations. But Ozark doesn’t do that. Instead, it removes all tension from a series that has thrived on suspense and delays the inevitable to the point that once the show finally does reach its conclusion, it feels like too much waiting has taken place for it to have its full effect.
The episodes between “The Cousin of Death” and the series finale don’t feel like necessary moments of story progression. They feel like shoddy obstacles that keep us from getting where we need to go. For example, I understand that the writers may feel that watching Ruth wash herself clean of the Byrdes’ dealings and getting her criminal record expunged may have added to the tragedy of her demise, but we didn’t need to be told what a great life Ruth could have made for herself if it wasn’t for her circumstance. We’ve spent four seasons with this woman, we understand why she’s a tragic character. At this point, it just feels like the writers are whacking us over the head with a subtext mallet (more on this later).
The only necessary writing between these episodes is developing the show’s new antagonist, Camila, and that leads to the half-season's next problem.
Using a show’s final season to introduce important new characters is a risky play. Sometimes it pays dividends, I don’t think anyone would consider the introduction of Jesse Plemons’ childlike menace Todd Alquist to the final season of Breaking Bad a detriment, but they’re generally introduced early on to maximize characterization without taking away from plot lines already in play.
Camila is technically introduced in Season 4 Part 1 of Ozark, but I only know this because I took the time to look it up before writing this piece. All meaningful characterization takes place in the latter half of the season. That’s a serious problem when there are only seven episodes of the story remaining. It makes the character feel shoehorned into the end game; which is a shame considering Falcón is doing some seriously skilled work with the character. It leaves me wondering why she wasn’t built upon earlier in the season. It feels like wasted potential.
Two other characters that rise to prominence this season are Wendy’s father, Nathan Davis (Richard Thomas), and the returning Rachel Garrison (Jordana Spiro). Both performances are terrific but unfortunately feel cluttered and redundant in service to the story.
Take Nathan for example. In the half-season’s worst subplot, Wendy (Laura Linney) gets caught in a custody battle for her children with Nathan, causing her to relive years of abuse and sending her spiralling out of control. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s some good material here. Thomas turns in a phenomenal performance and plays well off of Linney; one scene in particular where Wendy starts childishly begging at Nathan’s knees on courthouse steps cleverly mirrors a tearful exchange Ruth had with her father in Season 2. However, the plotline fails to service the themes in any meaningful way.
What exactly do we learn from Nathan’s introduction? That Wendy is a bad mother? We’ve been down this road already when Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) tried to emancipate herself back in Season 2. It’s a well-known fact that the Byrdes are evoking irreversible damage to their children. Watching 14-year-old Jonah (Skylar Gaertner) become a full-on money launderer speaks a whole lot more to bad parenting than a needless custody battle. Hell, the final scene where Jonah commits murder to protect his family does a better job at this. The plot point doesn’t even cause any real dramatic tension because we’ve already seen a flash-forward of the Byrdes driving together happily in an SUV (this flash-forward fucking sucks, folks, and it will be coming up later)! It just comes across as the narrative running in circles.
How about Rachel? Because it was wonderful to see the character come back, but what purpose did it serve? Her character only exists as a) an accessory to Ruth’s plot progression and b) a reminder of the havoc Marty and Wendy’s actions have wreaked on the Ozarks' socio-economic climate. In regards to the former, it feels like a lazy way of bringing back an old character. As for the latter, once again, we know! The audience has spent an entire series watching the Byrdes exacerbate the economic problems of an impoverished community to better the rich and powerful. If you continuously hit a viewer over the head with subtext, it ceases to be subtext and comes off as you treating the audience like they’re stupid.
So much wasted time is spent on characters who either don’t need it or should have had it earlier that it takes away from characters who should be indulging in more screen time. Agent Maya Miller (Jessica Frances Dukes) has been one of Ozark’s later season's best additions and is almost nowhere to be seen in these last episodes. Or how about Frank Jr. (Joseph Sikora)? Ruth and Frank’s relationship organically went from trying to have the other one murdered to an unlikely touching friendship. Yet again, he feels like a total ghost. The show throws too many new players on the board and messes with a game that was ticking just fine without them. It’s a major reason why many of these final episodes feel so extraneous.
I’ve been beating around the bush with this one, but this flash-forward may go down as some of the worst writing on television this year. I’ve touched upon how it squanders any potential tension concerning the Byrdes, but it’s also a purposeless red herring. Nothing becomes of it. No one dies. It contributes nothing to the plot.
There’s nothing wrong with the event itself. The metaphor is sound: the Byrdes are in such a position of power that only an act of God could take them out and even that they rise above. They are essentially the polar opposite of Ruth. Marty and Wendy can decide who lives or die with a phone call to the FBI where Ruth can’t even avenge her cousin without facing repercussions. The sequence itself is a neat artistic flourish—the flash-forward to the sequence however places a false sense of importance that leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you finally get to it.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the writers are punishing the viewer for thinking that people like this would ever face any meaningful consequences—cosmic or otherwise. In a better season, I might be sold on this little soirée with the metaphysical… but that kind of liberty has to be earned and, I’m sorry, I’m just not buying it.
Marty and Ruth’s relationship has always been a major highlight of this show and it has always seemed to abide by a particular equation: Marty and Ruth work together, Marty’s lack of loyalty repels Ruth away from him, something happens in Ruth’s life that brings him back in her good graces, then another betrayal happens that draws them even further apart. Up until now, the dynamic has worked. But Wyatt’s death changed everything. This should have been the final transgression that severed the bond entirely.
Yet by the end of the series, the cycle has repeated itself one final time in Ruth helping Marty reunite his family before Marty’s actions get her killed. Now it could be argued that this is the point; Ruth’s constant desire to find a father in Marty leads to her inevitable demise. But it’s just another example of something that was already perfectly articulated by the mid-season finale and is just being stretched out to bide time until the conclusion. Once again, the series is running in circles.
The final key flaw that sets this ending back is the strange choice this half-season makes to give Marty a Heisenberg-esque transformation. The intention makes sense: in one of the half-season’s best scenes, Wendy lambasts Marty for constantly pretending to be “the good guy” in an inherently evil business. So the writers give Marty a half-season arc where he finally accepts his role in the world.
But the writers equivocate. They want to give Marty some edge yet seem to be scared of turning us against him. What exactly does Marty do this season that makes him so bad?
None of these actions truly sell the “Marty accepts his role” arc the show is trying to throw at us. Marty giving Jonah the nod to shoot Mel is a fine conclusion to such an arc, but it feels like a punctuation mark without a sentence to support it. It’s baffling why the writers seem so afraid to turn us against Marty. This show exists in a genre that has given us the likes of Tony Soprano, Walter White, Barry Berkman, and Don Draper. These are the writers who wrote Wendy Byrde!
No move shows the writers’ failure to commit to this arc like the choice to have Clare Shaw (Katrina Lenk) give up Ruth to Camila in the series finale. Some would say that Marty’s failure to protect Ruth is what gets her killed and this is an absolutely correct assessment. What has made Marty stand out from traditional television anti-heroes throughout the series is his ambivalence. Marty’s evil does not come from being a violent man nor does it come from his narcissism. Marty’s evil has always come from knowing the right thing to do and his inability to act on it.
Before this half-season, Marty refusing to save Ruth would have been a perfect ending to his character arc. But the writers complicate matters by this foolish play to bring Marty to the “dark side” when he already gave into darkness when he agreed to launder money for the cartel. It takes what could have been a satisfying ending and lessens it by adding too much to the soup.
And that’s the true sin of Ozark’s final season. It’s just too much. Too many episodes. Too many characters. Too much repetition. Too many alterations. Ozark is one of the best series Netflix has ever produced. This final season should have been a slam dunk. Instead, it left me staring at the screen thinking “goddamnit, you were so close.”
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