(Plentiful spoilers from Netflix’s Ozark Season 3 will be found below.)
The final season of Netflix’s Ozark is upon us, but there’s a catch: it’s a supersized season, but only the first half is streaming so far. The final seven episodes should arrive later this year, but for now, we’re left at a climactic point with Julia Garner’s Ruth Langmore about to head straight towards Omar Navarro successor Javi Elizondro.
Javi might be a dead man soon (just like the two people he killed, Darlene Snell and Wyatt Langmore, in Episode 7), even though Marty warned Ruth away from harming Javi. She’s got every reason to feel vengeful (given that Wyatt is her brother and the last soul she feels connected to on Earth after losing Ben), and there’s little reason to believe that Ruth will listen to Marty. After all, Marty largely turned his back on Ruth after refusing to act upon the perpetrators who beat the holy hell out of her in Season 3. Also, Ruth and Marty are no longer really in business together.
Will Ruth make it out of her path of vengeance alive, though? She’s crafty enough to recruit some new helpers to go up against the cartel, but the bigger challenge is this: will these guys be at-all competent? If it was possible for Ruth to clone herself, then it’d be a no-brainer Ruth victory, but she’s going to have to regroup, cool it for a bit, and plot things out. My hunch is that Ruth doesn’t die, especially at the hands of the cartel. She needs to be the hero of this story who makes it out alive.
What I do wonder about, though, is if Marty will attempt to act upon this:
Is Marty stupid enough to try and kill Ruth? She and her shotgun would mop the floor with him. Wendy, perhaps, could try to take the situation into her own hands, which would be a finally-fatal mistake on the Byrde matriarch’s behalf.
Yes, I am a little bit worried about Ruth. She doesn’t have anything to lose at this point, other than trying to stay alive for Baby Zeke’s sake. Maybe that will be the ultimate saving grace here for everyone. Ruth should survive, take casino boatloads of money with her, and buy a nice house for herself and Zeke.
‘Ozark’ is currently streaming (Season 4, Part 1) on Netflix.