“I think they’re dragging a curse around behind them.”
Warning: This story contains spoilers forOzark’s final season.
Sounds kind of like karma to us and showrunner Chris Mundy would agree.
Julia Garner in ‘Ozark’.Netflix
“I think they’re dragging a curse around behind them,” he tells EW.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you know Ruth’s fate?
Is that something that you saw for the character all along?
Julia Garner and Laura Linney in ‘Ozark’.Netflix
When did that come into play?
CHRIS MUNDY:No, it sort of developed over time.
Or are you trying to tell the story the way the story would actually play out?
Julia Garner as Ruth Langmore.Steve Dietl/Netflix
So that became the debate, basically.
And what were the other things you considered doing?
There was a lot of talk on that.
But going into the final season, the idea was that Ruth would come out the other side.
When we spoke for EW’sAround the Table, your actors sort of joked about you being the Grim Reaper.
This is what we’re going to do?"
There’s Julia and then there’s Ruth, and both Julia and I love Ruth.
I just said, “It’s going to go really dark.
Just keep in mind that this is about to go really dark.”
And I’m like, “Yeah.”
Her final line was such a perfect Ruth moment.
But did you guys consider giving anyone else the proverbial ax?
We talked about everything.
We talked about every iteration imaginable, and there were writer pitches on Marty deaths and Wendy deaths.
I don’t think we ever talked about either of the kids.
So it always had to make sense logically, but also emotionally inside the world we were building.
So we kind of talked about it.
We talked about everyone.
Do you feel like the Byrdes won, essentially?
Do they ever really get out of this?
I think they’re dragging a curse around behind them.
So you could say they won on one level because they did.
They’re going to ride off into the sunset.
And I did think it was interesting too, to not actually show Jonah pulling the trigger.
In doing that, did you guys want it to be sort of open-ended?
No, I actually didn’t.
Yeah, absolutely, it’s not supposed to be ambiguous in that way.
It’s supposed to be Mel got it.
For sure, 100 percent.
It’s just, we didn’t want to live in the aftermath of that violence for long.
Then where do you go from there?
At what point, then, do you take it through that act?
Do you then go to the crematorium?
What do you do?
We didn’t want to wallow.
We wanted to be out.
That’s the end, and we wanted to be gone.
That felt really clear.
The gun was on Mel.
I took it as, Mel is now dead.
They have another body to bury, and their problems continue.
That’s exactly right.
You got it exactly the way we intended it.
Have you gotten to see fan reactions so far?
Have you looked at that?
I’ve peeked a little, and my wife will be like, “Do not look.”
So I’ve seen a little.
It seems there’s a mixture, which is kind of what I expected.
So it feels like there’s been a little bit of both.
I don’t know.
You probably know better than I do.
Yeah, for sure.
There were two separate things, that were two verydifferent[things].
One was trying to be surprising, and yet feel inevitable…
Which is something we always kind of strived for.
That had to have been the ending."
Did they deserve to be punished for the things they’ve done or not?
So that was a big [conversation]…
I was surprised how spirited that debate was inside our little gang of people.
Yeah, and it seems to me that you guys landed more on the latter end of that spectrum.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah, I think so.
I think that’s totally accurate.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
