'Ozark' Season 4, Part 2 Will Arrive In April
Major spoilers for Ozark season 4 below.
We always knew it could be Ruth Langmore who’d blow apart the Byrdes’ money-laundering operation in Netflix’s twisty crime-thriller Ozark. But as the final episode of season 4 part 1 reveals, Julia Garner’s Ruth—at times a friend to the Byrdes, at times a foe—has finally reached her point of no return. The finale is on the horizon, and we can expect plenty of scorched earth in its wake.
In previous seasons, Ruth’s been the victim of torture. She’s lost a man she loved: Ben, Wendy Byrde’s brother. Now she's lost her cousin, Wyatt, callously murdered by the incoming Navarro cartel boss, Javi Elizondro, for his association with the unhinged heroin queen Darlene Snell. Is the Byrde family directly to blame for Wyatt’s death? We can take turns pointing fingers later, but the danger’s still evident: Ruth is on the hunt, and she has nothing left to lose. If the Byrdes really believe they can leave their laundering days behind them in favor of a squeaky-clean career in Chicago, running the charitable Byrde Foundation off of Shaw Medical money, they’ll have to contend with a furious Langmore first.
Thankfully, there’s plenty of story left before we bid goodbye to one of Netflix’s most persistently intriguing originals. Here’s what we know about Ozark season 4, part 2.
When will Ozark season 4, part 2 premiere?
We needn't wait long to see the Byrdes’ final chapter: The second half of season 4 is set to arrive April 29, 2022. The speedy release date will likely come as little surprise to attentive fans, who might have noticed Jason Bateman (Marty Byrde) reveal during a January interview with Jimmy Kimmel that the date was not “yet announced, but it’ll be kinda soon, I think.” It’s also likely Ozark’s creators were gunning to get the final season into Emmy contending for 2022; they’ll need to have aired the full season by May 31 in order to meet eligibility standards.
On February 23, Netflix released an eerie teaser for part 2. Watch the full clip below.
Will season 4, part 2 be the Ozark finale?
This next chapter will be Ozark’s last. In June 2021, Netflix first revealed that season 4 would be split into two halves, each seven episodes long, to encompass the entire final storyline. Said Bateman, “A super sized season means super sized problems for the Byrdes. I’m excited to end with a bang(s).”
In an interview released shortly after part 1 dropped on Netflix, Ozark showrunner Chris Mundy revealed further insight into why part 2 will end the show. “Jason has talked since the beginning about making sure we didn't overstay our welcome,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “And because we're so serialized, we needed to stay emotionally true and not feel like we're just putting them in the same old situation again. So somewhere in the five-season range felt right. If we went on anymore after that, we'd be vamping.”
What will part 2 be about?
Part 1 leaves numerous questions to be answered in Ozark’s final seven episodes. A few to consider:
What will Ruth do, now that she knows who killed Wyatt? Will she survive going up against the cartel?
Will Jonah, Marty and Wendy’s son, continue to rebel against them?
Now that Charlotte, their daughter, seems to have adopted the family business as her own, where will that lead her?
Will the Byrdes all survive, and if they do, will they stay intact as a family? Will Wendy and Marty’s marriage last?
What about Ben? Will Wendy continue to use her deceased brother as a pawn in her “good PR”?
As the private investigator introduced in part 1 continues his hunt for the Navarro lawyer Helen Pierce’s body, what else will he uncover? Will he find out what happened to Ben?
Part 1 kicked episode 1 off by foreshadowing a sudden car crash. When will we see that accident in part 2, and what will come of it?
Will the Byrde Foundation come to fruition as Wendy envisions it, or will her past crimes come back to haunt her?
What will Javi do as the new head of the Navarro cartel? And what about Omar Navarro, still sitting in a cell?
Now that Darlene’s death creates a vacuum in the Ozarks, might someone step in to fill her place?
Will the temporary new sheriff learn what happened to the old one?
The Ozark creators seem confident these questions will all be answered—and the brewing family conflict of the previous three seasons will come to a dramatic (but, hopefully, satisfying) conclusion. Navarro, in particular, will still be making moves from prison, Mundy warns: “He certainly won't trust the Byrdes, but they're a necessary evil in his life. So we obviously wanted him to be as pinned down as he possibly could be, but you haven't seen the last of him, for sure.”
As for Wendy, Mundy hints her guilt will play a substantial role in part 2. She's still wrestling with the death of her brother, whom she's now—falsely—referring to as a drug addict to anyone who will listen. “Wendy, a lot of season 4, it's incremental in the first seven and then it gets more pronounced in the back seven, is really starting to question whether or not she's lost a grip on reality,” Mundy told EW. “Through grief and guilt, is she truly kind of losing her mind? Or is she sort of able to teach herself the lie, and rehearse the lie enough, so that suddenly she believes the lie and the world believes the lie?”
In an interview with ELLE, actress Laura Linney addressed one question fans have been asking since season 1: Can Wendy and Marty's marriage survive? “She does love Marty,” Linney said. “I think their relationship goes through many different incarnations, and they are bound to each other, and they’re sort of all they have.”
But as Wendy continues her reckless spiral in season 4, it could throw her relationship with her children into further jeopardy. “Every decision, every action that Wendy takes is with the intention of keeping her family together and safe,” Linney said. “So if [Jonah] rebels against that, it betrays everything and exposes Wendy to the truth that is hard to see. So when the [kids] are out of line, it disrupts her entire map. It throws her compass off. And she can’t justify her behavior.”
Even with Wendy's inevitable breakdown looming, I'd put my money on Ruth as part 2's one-to-watch: It’s always those we underestimate who end up with the most power.
This post will be updated.
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