(Plentiful spoilers from Netflix’s Ozark Season 3 will be found below.)
Netflix’s Ozark Season 4, Part 1, recently landed on the streaming service with an eye toward the finish line. All of the main characters are now poised to end the show with a bang, and there’s a strong likelihood that not everyone will make it out alive (Marty will hopefully die, if there’s any poetic justice in this world), but let’s circle back to who died in Part 1. After all, these two big deaths should reverberate throughout the show (especially where the electrifying Ruth is concerned) while setting up the final act for a showdown, so let’s discuss.
Two characters, Darlene Snell (the cocky hillbilly drug dealer who edged into heroin, angering the Navarro cartel) and Wyatt Langmore (who’s perpetuating the Langmore curse by being with Darlene), met their (rather shocking) end in Season 4, Episode 7:
As reflected in the above screencap, Javi shot Darlene first, and then he went for the stunned Wyatt, for no other reason than to eliminate a witness. “Sorry, whoever you are,” Javi declared while also shooting Ruth’s other brother in the head.
Where this immediately goes from here, one can guess: Ruth will get her revenge. Javi, who doesn’t know what’s headed his way, is the successor to Navarro’s throne while he languishes behind bars. Darlene was definitely the sole target here, given that she had been warned not to deal heroin. And Wyatt got pulled into the middle of this scene because he decided to marry Darlene to keep Child Protective Services from taking baby Zeke into custody. This marriage, of course, upset Ruth because she had planned on running away with her slightly older (but definitely not wiser) brother.
Following the double murder by Javi, Ruth stumbles onto the scene, and the rest of her world crashes down around her. She heads straight to the Byrde family home, where she threatens the hell out of Marty over who killed Wyatt. Jonah (who money laundered with Ruth for several episodes) steps up and is happy to provide that information, and so, the scene is set for Ruth to plot out her vengeance.
Following the Wendy-sanctioned murder of Ruth’s true love, Tom, at the end of Season 3, Ruth theoretically has nothing to lose after Wyatt’s death. So one can expect her to take some wild risks while going after Javi, but at the same time, she’s been the smartest one on the show for a few seasons already. Whatever the case, her path will be an emotional one, but we still don’t know one thing: What happened to baby Zeke?
‘Ozark’ is currently streaming (Season 4, Part 1) on Netflix.