Warning: the following contains SPOILERS for Ozark.
Ozark’s Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney) will finally drop the charade and fully embrace their role as the true villains of the series in Ozark season 4. The first part of Ozark’s 4th and last season is slated for release on Netflix on January 21, 2022. It’s been nearly 2 years since the shocking Ozark season 3 finale, in which Mexican drug kingpin Omar Navarro (Felix Solis) orders the death of his consiglieri Helen Pierce (Janet McTeer) and covers the Byrdes with Helen’s blood and brain matter – essentially baptizing the Byrdes into the Navarro cartel.
Ozark season 3’s final episode reveals that the Byrdes’ suspicions about Helen wanting to kill them are in fact true, as Helen is shown forging papers to make Marty seem like a rat to Omar. However, Ozark season 3 also reveals that Omar is able to closely monitor the activities of those close to him. And since the Byrdes have become indispensable to the drug kingpin’s long-term plans, Helen’s actions only led to her own execution in front of the Byrdes.
Ozark season 4, because of these factors, begins with the Byrdes being in the perfect position to replace Omar Navarro as the main antagonist in the acclaimed antihero crime series. Moreover, Ozark’s season 4 teaser trailer also reveals that Marty and Wendy’s past actions will be catching up to them during the next season. The trailer recaps all of the key events that have set up the Byrdes as the show’s real villains in season 4. This includes harrowing reversed scenes of Helen’s execution, Buddy Dyker (Harris Yulin) burning down the Langmores’ opium fields, and other crucial events from the first to the third season. Juxtaposed with these scenes is a reverse car crash involving the Byrdes, along with the words, "No ending is reached by accident." Apart from reminding viewers why Ozark became one of the biggest television shows of 2020, these words allude to the not-so-innocent choices that the Byrdes have made in order to gain power in the guise of just survival. And in season 4, the culmination of these choices will put the Byrdes in the position to get rid of not just Navarro, but possibly also the Snells, the Langmores, or anyone else who threatens their family.
As Marty himself explains during Ozark’s pilot episode, “Money is not peace of mind. Money is not happiness. Money is, at its essence, that measure of a man’s choices.” While it’s true that the Byrdes are being forced at gunpoint to launder millions of drug money for Omar, they’ve essentially now embraced their roles as major decision-makers for the Navarro cartel. And as the Byrdes are at the point of no return, they’re unlikely to take any asylum deals with the FBI or end up like Helen Pierce. Although Omar has been a drug kingpin for years, the Byrdes very quickly learned the ropes of the business during their relatively much shorter time in the game, which means that the Byrdes could conceivably outsmart Omar.
Ozark season 4: Part 1 will be comprised of 7 episodes, while Part Two, which will come out sometime in late 2022, will have 7 episodes as well. That’s a total of 14 episodes for Ozark’s 4th and last season. And this is more than enough time to set up the fall of the Navarro cartel at the hands of the Byrdes.