The following story contains heavy spoilers for Ozark Season 4, Part 2.
In total, the entire run of Ozark was less than five years. Maybe it was because of how rapidly the show’s plot evolved from season to season, or maybe it was the nearly two-year, likely pandemic-related break between the show’s third and fourth seasons, but it feels like we’ve been keeping up with the criminal happenings of Marty and Wendy Byrde (Jason Bateman and Laura Linney), their children Charlotte and Jonah (Sofia Hublitz and Skylar Gaertner) and their enterprising associate Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner) for, well, just about a lifetime. And at the end of the day, when Ozark came to a conclusion, it’s the length—and value—of a lifetime within our world that the show is ultimately about.
There’s a lot to talk about with regard to the final season of Ozark, with the plot twists that come—Ruth kills Javi in the first episode after a pep talk from Killer Mike—and the character evolutions we see over time. But for the purposes of this story, we want to talk about the very end of the show. We want to get into what those final plot twists and turns mean, and what Ozark could be trying to say.
Ozark is a show that’s never shied away from what it’s had to say about the dark, dreary, and unfortunate way that the world works. There’s no changing in this world we’re in; there’s no reinventing yourself. You are who you are, and the systems in place will always protect the status quo. And as much as we might root for something different, you can’t change the inevitable.
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The ending of Ozark is ultimately a story of who power structures protect, and who they don’t.
In Season 4, Part 2 of Ozark, Ruth essentially becomes a co-lead character with Marty and Wendy. After the tragic end new cartel boss Javi Elizonndro (Alfonso Herrera) brought to Ruth’s naive and intellectual cousin, Wyatt (literally no one mourns Darlene Snell for even a second in these final episodes, which is hilarious and fitting), Ruth spares no time in hatching a plan to seek vengeance. And this sets up the rest of the season, as, in a surprising turn, Ruth gets her vengeance—at the end of the second half of the season’s first episode. We all thought Javi would be the “big bad,” right? Not so much.
And while Marty and Wendy warned Ruth that as badly as she wanted this vengeance that it wouldn’t end well, she needed to do it. She needed the release. And she got it .
For a while after this cathartic moment, things seem to be going Ruth’s way. We forget about the danger she put herself in; since Wyatt and Darlene got married before their death, Ruth becomes the owner of Darlene’s land and all her holdings. Suddenly, Ruth isn’t just an enterprising, scrappy upstart anymore: she has legitimate money and potential. She has the chance to make a new life for herself, and that’s something she smartly tries to pursue.
But Ozark has always told us one thing: Marty and Wendy Byrde do not get hurt in this game. And neither, at large, does the cartel. Sure, Javi and Omar can get taken out, but some of these bodies are just too big to be defeated.
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At the end of the season, even when Ruth seems to be close to home free, she’s really not. It’s an absolute heartbreaker to see the potential she worked so hard for—her criminal record expunged, legitimate business prospects, money in her pockets—squandered. That’s because Ozark makes the case that the powers that run the world will never be taken down. When Camila (Javi’s mother and Omar’s sister) presses Clare (the leader of the mega pharmaceutical corporation/family), she folds like a house of cards. She doesn’t care about protecting Ruth; she cares about her status quo. In this world, a status quo isn’t broken so easily.
Ruth pays the price for getting the revenge she 100% deserved. Did she deserve to die? Most Ozark watchers would clearly give a resounding no to that one. And they are right. But as soon as she went against what Marty and Wendy told her would happen, she sealed her own fate. Just as no one—Marty, Wendy, or anyone—had a chance to stop Ruth from enacting her own vengeance and perseverance on Javi, no one was going to stop Camila from her own vengeance on Ruth. Especially not with the power of a drug cartel behind her. Despite how much Ruth tried to fix herself up, she wasn’t going to escape the Final Destination type of ending she had carved out for herself. Because you can’t escape what’s coming in this world.
And this was something that Ruth, all along, had understood. She tried to change the ending of her story, yes, but she always understood her place in the world: she was a Langmore. In that moment when she pictured all of her fallen family members in the trailer park, it kind of showed that even she subconsciously knew that her time could be coming soon. When Camila came for Ruth, she didn’t cower—she stood tall, and told Camila to fuck off, and that Javi deserved exactly what she got. Ruth knew how the powers in this world work, and she made sure she stood her ground until the very end.
It’s the same way at the very ending of the show. When Mel Sattem returns to the Byrdes’ home to tell them that they can’t keep getting away with what they do, it should be the end of them. They should be headed to prison. Wendy deserved comeupppance for what she did. Marty isn’t as sociopathically evil as Wendy turned out to be, but at the very kindest reading he’s still 100% an enabler. And Mel thought he had the chance to take them down for good.
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But in the same way that Ruth—a girl from a trailer park who dared to think she could make more of herself—wasn’t going to last in this world, neither was Mel. Mel was a disgraced cop; someone whose worst crime was himself becoming a victim of drug addiction. He wasn’t ever going to come out on top in this world, where the Byrde family have now usurped all the power and all the money in the world. They’re people who win. Just like the cartel, and Big Pharma—these are bodies who don’t get taken down. They scheme, they maneuver, and they pursue. And people like Ruth and Mel don’t stand a chance.
You can view the final scene of Ozark as something of an exact foil to one of the most memorable scenes in Ozark‘s very first episode: when Marty Byrde talked his way out of a room with the cartel right after his partner, Bruce, was shot in the head about a foot away. When Marty was the one with a gun pointed at him, he found his way out. Five years and a whole lot of money laundering and maneuvering later, and Marty wasn’t the one with a gun being pointed at him—Mel was. And who was pointing the gun but Jonah Byrde. Jonah’s not a stand-in for the cartel, but at this point, he may as well be. The final “good” person in the Byrde family, the second he embraced his family’s ways, he became just as untouchable as his corrupted parents. And when facing those kinds of powers, someone like Mel just doesn’t stand a chance.
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