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 those better please like this video if
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first time here thanks for watching I will talk to you soon
