Ozark explores many weighty topics: family, power, loyalty, betrayal. More than anything else, though, it’s about money, about who has it, and who will do what to make sure that they make more of it.
It’s difficult to say who has the most money without access to their fictional bank accounts and caches of money, but Ozark introduces plenty of characters with piles of it. Some of them are wealthy from the beginning and others, such as Ruth, slowly gain their riches; the only way to compare them is to look at their lifestyle and the power they wield through their money. When there’s sometimes as much as $50 million at stake, it becomes a matter of life and death.
Jonah Byrde
Jonah has always stood in the shadows of both his parents and his elder sister. With each season, however, he’s shown that he’s truly a member of the family, as he starts using his internet savvy to make money through various schemes, including becoming a gold farmer.
Clearly, he has his parents’ sense for how to take advantage of a good opportunity, but it remains to be seen just how far he’ll be willing to go to become even richer.
Rachel Garrison
Rachel is one of the more unusual characters to emerge out of this series. Though she worked with Marty for a time, she ultimately stole money from him, ran away, and then began a downward spiral- during that time, though, she was still one of the richest characters in the show, since she’d managed to steal a hefty amount from Marty. She uses this money to get away from the small town that has been something of a prison for her. Unfortunately, she soon learned that money doesn’t buy happiness as she uses the large amount of money to buy drugs, leading to a tragic downward spiral.
Ruth Langmore
Ruth is another breakout character, not least because she's one of the few genuinely likable characters in Ozark. A young woman who begins the show as a down on her luck member of the Langmore family, she gradually claws her way to success through her alliance with Marty. By the time that the third season ends, she’s not only managed to become a key part of the Byrdes’ empire, but in becoming such a key has amassed quite a lot of money of her own. Among other things, she starts dressing better and more professionally, showing how her increased wealth has transformed her sense of herself and the way she presents to the world. Regardless of what happens in the forthcoming season, Ruth will know how to purvey her money into more success and stability for herself.
Eugenia Dermody
Though she only appears for a brief time, Eugenia Dermody is a wealthy character, and in fact her money--the staggering sum of $900,000--proves very helpful for Marty and Wendy as they set out to launder money for the cartel. It’s very clear that she has a formidable hold on her son, Sam, the real estate agent that the Byrdes utilize when they first arrive in the Ozarks. She shows that she is one of those wealthy people that believe that her money gives her authority over everyone, including and especially her son.
Marty And Wendy Byrde
When the series begins, Marty and Wendy don’t have a huge amount of money. From all appearances, they’re comfortably upper-middle-class. However, as the series progresses and they get drawn further and further into the realm of crime and the cartel, they also start to make their own piles of money.
However, the richer they become, the more their marriage, and their love for one another, begins to unravel. In the end, it didn't help that they're two of the smartest characters on Ozark- it relentlessly shows the toxic influence that wealth often has on those who have it. Though they’re generally very good at not making an ostentatious show of their money, they become noticeably more confident and affluent as the series goes on, to such a degree that Wendy is able to offer Cade half a million dollars to leave town.
Frank Cosgrove
Though he appears to be a blue-collar guy on the surface, it quickly becomes clear that Frank Cosgrove, like many of the other characters that Ozark introduces, is someone of both means and power.
As the head of the Kansas City mafia, he has a lot of power and influence and wealth, and he wields it with ruthless efficiency when the need arises. He has enough wealth to have given him a blind spot in his son, who lacks his father’s acumen and often gets himself in trouble with his father’s money.
Jacob And Darlene Snell
Among the many characters that Wendy and Marty meet in the Ozarks, the Snells are among the most dangerous. It’s difficult to say whether Jacob or Darlene is the more ruthless, but their partnership has clearly been very productive for them, and it’s allowed them to amass a significant amount of money and influence in their little enclave. Like Novarro and Wilkes, they are zealous about protecting their wealth and influence, which Marty and Wendy learn the hard way. What’s especially striking about the Snells is that they don’t show off just how rich they are and they are so used to enormous amounts of money that they hardly bat an eye when Marty and Wendy pay them $700,000 of the cartel’s money.
Helen Pierce
Though at first she was a relatively minor character, in the third season she becomes ever more entwined with the lives and fortunes of the Byrdes. Though it’s never explicitly said just how much money she has, the fact that she’s both a lawyer in Chicago and that she’s become so intimately connected with the cartel suggests that she has quite a lot of it, and the fact that she is able to give her daughter a first-class education further confirms her wealth. Her care and attention for her child, furthermore, shows that having more wealth isn’t always a completely corrupting influence in the world that the series creates- but when it's all tied up with the other terrible things she did, it didn't make fans hate Helen any less.
Charles Wilkes
In some ways, Charles Wilkes is Novarro’s counterpart in the United States. He has a tremendous amount of money at his disposal, which means that he wields great power over the politicians whose campaigns he decides to bankroll. He lives in a very nice house, though it’s the kind of dwelling that doesn’t rely overly much on ostentation to convey how much money he has. More importantly, his influence over the state government--essentially controlling what bills get passed and which don’t--shows not only how much money he has but how willing he is to use it to exert his influence.
Omar Navarro
As the leader of the drug cartel that employs Marty and Wendy, Omar Navarro clearly has an enormous amount of wealth at his disposal--certainly over $50 million, since that’s the amount that he has the Byrdes launder for him at one point--so much so that he can afford to hire high-powered lawyers in the United States. That money brings with it a tremendous amount of power and influence, and he’s so influential that the men and women that he employs will kill anyone that he says without asking a question or protesting. For Novarro, wealth and power go hand in hand.