Warning: This article includes spoilers forOzarkseason 4.
Ruth, we’re with you: F—!!!!
After the accident, we pick up in the aftermath of Helen’s death in theseason 3 finale.
Lisa Emery as Darlene Snell and Charlie Tahan as Wyatt Langmore in ‘Ozark’.NETFLIX
Wow, that’s only the first 10 minutes of the premiere and there’s a lot left.
Let’s just speed through the major points for our heavy hitters.
This causes problems for Marty and Wendy, who aren’t Javi’s favorite people.
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Instead, Wyatt decides to make Darlene his wife and Zeke his son.
Fresh off of their wedding, newlyweds Darlene and Wyatt return home to find Javi waiting for them.
He says they told her stop selling heroin and she didn’t listen, for which she apologizes.
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Too little too late, as Javi shoots her dead.
Javi kills him as well.
If you want to stop me, you’re gonna have to f—ing kill meeeeeee!"
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You get all that?
For more spoilers,read our postmortem conversation with Javi actor, Alfonso Herrera.
Now here we are with an extended, split, fourth and final season.
What went into that decision?
CHRIS MUNDY:Jason has talked since the beginning about making sure we didn’t overstay our welcome.
So somewhere in the five season range felt right.
If we went on anymore after that, we’d be vamping.
But we also needed plenty of room to tell the story in a way that did it justice.
So it was a matter of, “How can we build on everything we’ve got?”
And what storylines do we need?
What characters do we need?"
That just came out of discussions in the room at the very beginning.
Same thing with the character of Mel (Adam Rothenberg), the private detective.
That was really a product of me saying, “It’s kind of like theTell-Tale Heart.
This thing is ticking, he just keeps coming back.”
And Helen’s out there.
The Byrdes know what happened to Helen, but no one else does.
There’s got to be some answer for that.
And we thought we could have fun with both of those things.
So a lot of it is just that.
While we still haven’t reached that part of the timeline, why did you want to start there?
Yeah, obviously, we’ll catch up to that.
This idea of legitimacy is really interesting.
I mean, the Byrdes have the face of legitimacy, but they’re just as guilty.
He obviously has the face of illegitimacy, but he wants the same things as them.
For Navarro, he’s a survivor.
He certainly won’t trust the Byrdes, but they’re a necessary evil in his life.
I mentioned Javi, played so charismatically by Alfonso.
He kills Darlene and then Wyatt, who we thought for maybe a second would be spared.
Why did this feel like the best route for the show in propelling you into the final seven?
Even when he does all this stuff, there was a real joy that Alfonso played Javi with.
I’m just so impressed by him.
We almost state it in code and then you see it.
But it was right there from the beginning, he said it, he was going to do it.
And so we just wanted to make good on that, and in Javi’s character.
Obviously, that character has been through a lot in our four seasons on the show.
Or am I looking at not getting revenge, which I might not be able to live with?"
And so, Wyatt was kind of collateral damage, to Darlene, but also story-wise.
It was the only thing that could possibly lay Ruth that low.
And then Julia delivered on that emotion, so much at that end.
[Laughs] Yeah, we actually worried about it a little bit, too.
We were like, “Jesus Christ, are there just too many bodies?”
What inspired you to stage that sequence of events in that way?
And you kind of know what that scene looks and feels like.
It’s something that you’ve seen and felt before.
We wanted to have her brain going.
You get all the rage, but at the same time the wheels are spinning.
And that just felt more interesting than just the pure grief that we would have seen at those bodies.
The end of episode 7 paves the way for an inevitable Ruth and Javi showdown.
Those are two characters who have yet to meet, right?
No, they haven’t.
That’s the path we wanted to set.
We wanted to take our time to live just in that.
So it’s more like a straight hour of one intense thing rather than multiple intense things.
How do you view her actions?
Is she trying to cope with what she’s done, or has she fully lost it?
Through grief and guilt, is she truly kind of losing her mind?
We wanted to really play with that question a lot.
Hopefully we do it well.
Because that was a big f—ing lie!"
Marty still has this dream of them as a normal family in some way.
They’re terrible, terrible parents, but I do think they love their kids.
But it’s just a lie.
So I think looking back to that moment was really important.
It’s almost like he wants to blink and reset.
First scene up, first day.
So there’s something that felt really good about that, too.
What did you love about getting to flip that character completely from where he was last season?
Precisely what you said.
It’s really nice.
There’s a world in which he and Ruth should really respect each other.
They’re both brash, they both have an ego, they both are kind of funny.
There’s justice in that and I need to take a look at myself."
And we just thought it was interesting.
He basically says, “It must have really chapped you that they didn’t kill me.”
The final tease really comes down to Marty and Wendy.
And so, to me, I really think the back seven is pretty intensely about marriage and family.
And Ruth is an extension of that family.
