Hey guys, Pete here. Today I'm going to do an Ozark season 3 ending explained video.
I just binged through the third season of Ozark on Netflix and was pleasantly
surprised with how much I enjoyed it. I had mixed feelings about season 2. it had
some great moments and some good things going on, but there were also some things
that I didn't think we're working. I was still interested in where the story
would go though and I think season 3 turned out to be a much stronger
offering. Before we start this is your SPOILER WARNING. This video will spoil
everything that's happened in all three seasons of Ozark. If you're not caught
up through season 3 episode 10 this video will not be for you.
Ozark season 3 picks up 6 months after the season 2 finale. The cold-open takes
place in Mexico where a horrific bombing occurs. later we get context that it's an
act of war in a conflict between the Navarro cartel, who Marty washes money
for, and their rivals the Leguna's cartel. this conflict is something that Wendy
will see as something she can use and that drives a wedge between the birds in
the first half of the season. before we get into where things end in season 3
let's look at where everyone starts out at in the beginning.
Marty Bird is stuck. He managed to save his skin by getting the casino project
approved, but things aren't good in his marriage with Wendy.
While this has always been an unhappy marriage since we met them, things are
worse now because he blames her for further entangling the family with the
cartel after shutting down his plan to take them on the run. By using the
cartels henchmen to kill Ruth's dad Cade Langmore, who had it coming to him for
what it's worth, she jumped in with both feet and decided to embrace the
lifestyle rather than leave it behind. In the beginning of season 3 Marty is
shooting down Wendy's plans for expansion. He makes his objections known
to her, but he also works behind the scenes to undermine her efforts and that
includes bribing a local couples therapist to take his side when they
visit her. They're doing this for the marriage, they're doing this for the kids.
they promised the kids that they would see this therapist. Sue the therapist
turned out to be a fun new character, but she meets a terrible and just like so
many people who meet the Byrdes in this story. At work at the casino he's trying
to continue to launder the cartels money, but he's under pressure
because of agent Evans. the ex-boyfriend of agent Petty who the feds they think
that Petty was killed on Marty's orders. we know that it was actually Cade who was
responsible for that but the authorities think that Marty was behind it.
Wendy does see an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos surrounding the
Navarro cartel who are at war. she thinks that she can expand their operations
into legit hotels and casinos setting up a stream of perfectly legal income on the
side that cartel chief Omar Navarro can leave behind for his children if he
meets an unfortunate end. she does this working with Helen Pierce who's been
getting waterboarded by the cartel goons, we saw that in an early scene of hers, to
make sure she's still being loyal, and Helen arranges for Wendy to have a
face-to-face sit-down with the boss. In the end he approves the plan which puts
Wendy on the hook for all that she's promised him beyond just laundering the
cartel's money. Helen and Wendy look like they're on the way to becoming powerful
allies running things behind the scenes for the cartel and Helen even relocates
to lakefront property for the summer to be closer to the casino and to the Byrdes.
the third key player and my personal favorite is Ruth Langmore the local
small-timer that has elevated herself all the way up to being an essential
member of the Byrde's operation. she's been attempting to pay for Wyatt her cousin
who's estranged from her she's trying to pay for his college he knows that she
killed his father so he doesn't want anything to do with her or her money. he
gets himself locked up and he won't even take her money to be bailed out. that
brings him in contact with Darlene Snell the local psychopath who killed her
husband at the end of season two. she got in trouble because she's going around
being Darlene, she slashed the tires of one of the moms that was in her
parenting class, and when she overhears that Wyatt won't take Ruth's money she
decides to bail him out instead. With that out of the way we can go to the
ending of Ozarks season 3. We can look at the major characters and where they end
up while working backwards to fill in the details of how they got there.
The one thing that stands out about the finale is that it ends in a
way that feels like a cliffhanger to establish a fourth season rather than an
open-ended series finale that leaves you thinking about what's gonna happen to
these characters. I think at least the writers are planning on doing a fourth
season, I guess it all depends if Netflix decides to pick it up again but that's
the feeling I got at the end which I think will make a lot of people happy.
Marty and Wendy managed to survive one more time, but they find themselves way
deeper into their association with the cartel. And, they also have to make a big
sacrifice, they have to sacrifice the life of Wendy's younger brother Ben.
meanwhile everyone else, all the other criminal elements here in town, end up
together in opposition to the Byrdes including Ruth who has finally had
enough of Marty. she teams up with Darlene so now we have team Byrde and
team Snell and team Snell includes the Langmores and the Kansas City mob.
coming into season 3 the real value that Marty and Wendy had was that they could
present themselves as upstanding citizens and operate as such. I had the
feeling as season 3 was progressing that this is going to be harder and harder
for them to do in the future. because they started out not trusting each other,
Marty was going behind Wendy's back, he was spying on her, he got caught for that
when she called Navarro, and that sent him down to Mexico which caused a
cascade of problems. Wendy tried to further their standing
doing what she was doing working closely with Helen,
but eventually Helen starts to lose patience with the deal. as they push
through and get a second casino that brings the FBI in on a warrant and puts
this new agent Maya Miller right inside Marty's office. making things much more
difficult as far as laundering the Navarro money. The real problem that
presents itself though is Wendy's younger brother Ben.
We've had some mention of him in the past we knew there was something going
on with his mental health. they were worried that maybe Jonah had problems
and that's what we first heard of him. we learned that he is bipolar. he shows up
on the run from a bench warrant and a I have to mention his introduction scene
was pretty amazing. I knew her brother was gonna be involved
in the season so I figured out as I was watching that this crazy teacher was
probably her brother. I thought that was a fantastic introduction to the new
character. either way he ends up at the casino. they can't keep their criminal
activity hidden from him. things get much worse in my opinion whenever he falls in
love with Ruth because, you know, Ruth needs some good stuff in her life, and we
all see that this didn't turn out that way. Because while he may be a strange
character he does seem to be alright until he wants to become intimate with
her, his meds are messing things up for that so he decides to go off of them, and
of course that leaves everything ending in tragedy. the lead-up to his death the
situation with him and Wendy it's definitely the emotional high point of
the season. It's heartbreaking. the turning point of things of course was that
cascade of events I mentioned first he falls for Ruth then he sees Marty get
abducted by Navarro's men which led to him finding out exactly what was going
on who they work with what they do he became more unhinged as he's off his
meds he shows up and he ruins a charity event making a public spectacle and they
have to have him committed but Ruth is able to through Wyatt and Darlene get
him out and then things go completely off the rails. as if all of this wasn't
enough from that point Ben just continues to dig his own grave
he leaves the Snell farm where he was hidden out he makes a public appearance
at the casino to tell Ruth that he loves her that puts him on the radar of the
cartel goes to Helen's house and this is basically the thing that he can't take
back he tells her daughter the truth of what she does how she works for a
Mexican drug lord. that pretty much seals his fate. Wendy tries desperately to
figure out another option as they drive across the country trying to figure
something out. Wendy realizes that she has to give him up, she sees this in all
their little interactions that she can't trust him, and so she leaves him alone
after they eat and Helen's personal hitman Frank Nelson he shows up and
takes care of Ben. there's a lot of implications to Ben's death. Jonah now
hates his family. initially he sees it as Helen killing his uncle that sends him
over to Helen's house to try to shoot her and she tells him the truth that her
mother signed off on it. Ben showing up at Helen's house ended Helen's trust in
the Byrdes and then she goes to make a move on them, and it's also finally the
thing that pushes Ruth away from the Byrdes. as mentioned it was really
emotional, the actor Tom Pelphrey who plays Ben did a masterful job. I really
liked the performance in the episode 9 opening where he's talking to the taxi
driver, and really just every step of the way as we watch Ben spiral down. Marty
does step up to comfort Wendy in the situation they seemed to become a little
bit closer. but either way, Wendy killed her brother and she's never gonna be the
same. based on what we see from Jonah at the end, he's firing shots into the plate
glass window, he's losing his mind, the family's never gonna be the same. Helen
had come there to do her job and it looked like things were gonna go well.
when things started to turn we saw her go behind Wendy and Marty's back talking
to Navarro getting things set up. she got her name added to the gaming license so
she could take the casino away. she went to the FBI with a fake confession saying
Marty was gonna turn state's evidence. and she even got Ruth to agree to come
work for her if Marty and Wendy were out of the picture. she wasn't doing this on
her own. like a good soldier she was getting approval from the cartel. Marty
and Wendy understood that she was doing this behind their back and they realized
that the only way that they could make it out alive was to make themselves more
valuable to Navarro than she was. they come up with a plan that Marty can use
the FBI to intervene against the rival cartel since they hit the truck in the
US the FBI could use that to go after them in Mexico.
Jonah getting a drone pays off as we see that stills from his video that he took
with Ben can be used as evidence to put things into motion. it works because
Marty and Wendy helped him win his drug war
Navarro chooses them over Helen. they arrived in Mexico for their meeting
Helen's planning on showing him the evidence that Marty is working behind
his back, and she's promptly dispatched with a shot right in the head right in
front of the Byrdes which is followed up with him saying, "Today is our beginning."
Helen is out of the way and Marty and Wendy are now truly owned by the cartel.
it was their only way to get out of the situation but now they have a whole new
problem in that there's no way they can escape being under his control. the
family is in bad shape as a result as mentioned Jonah is furious. I'm sure that
will transfer over to Charlotte as well since they talk about everything
together. this season made a big point of that. losing Ruth from their side is a
big loss. she has every reason to leave. they killed her father, who arguably
brought it on himself, but she was truly in love with Ben. it was one thing that
she finally had in her story that was positive until it went bad, and they also
didn't stand up for her when she had this "untouchable" status when Frank jr.
beat her up and put her in the hospital. that really does leave the door open for
Darlene to move in and take care of that situation and earn Ruth's trust. I think
in a lot of ways it shows where Marty's limitations lie in this situation. he has
reason not to go to war with the Kansas City mob, that makes sense, but even if
it's just in a symbolic way I feel like he needed to come to Ruth's side there.
and then with Ben, it's just too much. there's no way she can come back
and work for them and act like nothing's happened. I thought the scene where they
are in the crematorium was another moment where you're just like Marty be a
human being come on man do something. yeah you had to do that, that was the
thing that had to happen because you have to protect your family and your
business and everything else, but there's human costs here and you're not showing
any human emotion. Ruth has killed her uncle's, has lost her father, and now has
lost the love of her life all for just meeting Marty and falling under his
influence. she's not innocent by any means. she was a criminal before the
Byrdes came into her life. she met them because she robbed them and she put that
out there to Ben outside of her trailer. that coupled with the exchange at the
office where Wendy says it was her fault for getting him out of the mental
hospital is a great example of where Ozark is really good. no one's entirely
innocent and no one is completely to blame. most of the bad things that occur
do so because they're trying to solve immediate problems that have real
consequences that are sitting in front of them. this exchange at the office,
it's a powerful moment that is probably only overshadowed in its emotion by the
scenes that lead up to Ben's demise. Ruth knew what she was getting into but she's
also shown her loyalty to the Byrdes over and over. now she's over on Team Snell,
it's very strange how all of this played out. I thought Darlene, I thought they
dialed her character back a bit to make it a little bit better. she was a little
bit over the top in season two. while she's still a psychopath and dastardly
as anyone I felt like it was a little bit easier to watch her this season.
It's strange that Wyatt has hooked up with her, will be interesting to see where
that goes. Darlene saw the chance to rebuild the
heroin business and create a new family of locals against the Byrdes. she made
that symbolic gesture she went out there and got revenge for Ruth by shooting
Frank jr. and she brokered the deal with the
Kansas City mob to actually put things to bed, get the business going. and now
with Ruth and Wyatt on her side she's got things in place to be a real problem
for the Byrdes again going forward. the way it looks now after that cliffhanger
they've got a lot of problems in front of them for season four. when you take
Ruth and Helen out of the picture it seems probable that Marty and Wendy will
have to really become an alliance. the kids are probably going to be against
them, the Langmores and the Snells are definitely going to be against them. the
cartel is certainly going to up what they need, they always do, that's going to
put pressure on them. the FBI is still in the picture and they're all going to be
feeling the loss of Ben once things settle down. so it was a pretty good
season overall some other random parts I liked I always liked the music in Ozark
I think it's been solid all the way through. some really good musical moments
in this season. Wendy's dream with the REO Speedwagon and killing Marty was
pretty cool. I did really enjoy the scenes
with the therapist and watching them try to sort things out I mean that's what
this series has always had is that there's always been this pressure
there's always a time pressure this thing they got to do they're always
moving to the next thing that they have to do just to stay alive a little bit
longer one of my favorite parts of season two was when Wendy was talking to
Mason about how good and evil the two paths are never that clearly marked you
know you don't make those decisions that way it's usually when you just have to
do the next thing to get through the thing that you're in that you find
yourself going down this evil path this is a pretty great example of that with
Ben having to be sacrificed and for all that they went through in this season
they're exactly in the same place that they were when it started they've got to
wash money for the cartel and if they come up short or do anything
that doesn't please the cartel they're a hundred percent expendable so let me
know in the comments what you thought what are you hoping to see in season
four what were your favorite parts of season
three did you think it was better than the previous season or did you like
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will talk to you soon