Saying goodbye is never easy, and it’s been particularly difficult for fans of the Netflix crime drama Ozark to bid farewell to a beloved show. From the Lickety Splitz to the Lazy-O Motel, from the Langmores to the Byrdes, it’ll be tough to let the characters and places of the Missouri Ozarks go.
But due to the nature of the show Ozark, fans have had to learn to accept sudden departures. After all, when the family business is laundering money for a powerful Mexican heroin cartel, things are bound to get bloody.
And the writer’s over at Ozark have never had trouble 86-ing some beloved characters along with a few who had it coming. Just when viewers might have thought a favorite character was insulated from a toe tag and a body bag, they’d go from living and breathing to dearly departed.
Now that viewers have had some time to process the sting of the series finale that hit Netflix back in April, perhaps it’s time to revisit the bitter ends of a few fave characters who never even had a chance to make it to the final season.
(This post contains spoilers for anyone who has not watched any episodes of Ozark. But it is spoiler-free for anyone who has not caught up with Season 4 just yet.)
Helen Pierce
Cartel lawyer Helen Pierce wasn’t the most beloved character, but she was a tenacious and ambitious woman who was unafraid to embark on a career path dominated by machismo and bravado, and for that she deserves her due. But perhaps it was that ambition that led to her untimely end.
Rightly realizing that a series of events had led to a situation where it was either going to be her or the Byrdes in a shallow Mexican grave, Helen plotted carefully to secure her safety. She obviously believed she’d covered her bases and delivered the Brydes to cartel leader Omar Navarro on a silver platter. But Navarro had other plans for his empire that did not include the Chicago lawyer.
Callous and unflinching, the cartel leader had her shot in the head point-blank, inches away from the Byrdes. The brutal public execution just feet away from a child’s birthday party was a message to Wendy and Marty: “If you thought anyone was untouchable, you were wrong.” Though shook by the carnage at first, the Byrdes easily slid into the cartel vacancy left by Helen’s death.
Mason Young
Innocent bystander and preacher-of-the-lake Mason Young played an unknowing role in the Snell’s drug distribution in Season 1. Well-intentioned but inflexible and too idealistic for his own good, Mason just would not play ball with the unpredictable Snells. His naïveté was to his own detriment as it led to the death of his wife and nearly the death of his infant son.
The Snell’s let him live, but they left behind a broken man. No longer able to take his sermon to the lake, in Season 2, Mason resorts to street preaching. It’s there that he runs into the Byrde’s again, leading to a rollercoaster arc that culminates in his death. No, it wasn’t the Snells who eventually ended this preacher’s time on earth. Shocking everyone, it was Marty who sent him to meet his maker. Though the death was accidental and more or less self-defense, it was a tragic end that’s hard to forget.
For fans concerned with the “themes” or “lessons” of the show as a whole, it’s also a moment when the writing really begins to hammer home what is the ultimate takeaway from the crime drama, especially for those who have seen the finale. And that takeaway is: Wherever the Byrdes go, destruction follows, and even the pure of heart are not insulated from becoming part of the trail of the dead they leave in their wake.
Jacob Snell
Never have a couple been so meant for each other as Jacob and Darlene Snell. This poppy-growing drug-dealing couple were just two ambitious, stubborn, unhinged, impetuous peas in a pod. The only way in which they differed was one was just a bit more impulsive than the other, with Darlene having a hair-trigger that left Jacob to clean up her messes with attempts at rationality and reason. And it was that difference that led to Jacob’s bitter end. Very bitter, like cyanide-bitter.
These two were so in sync that they’d actually planned to kill each other on the same morning, but Darlene, always a bit quicker on the draw, just got to it first. Jacob planned to knife his beloved to death on a serene morning walk, but he never got the chance before he began feeling the effects of the cyanide Darlene had dosed his morning tea with. Though twisted, this was perhaps one of the easier to digest deaths of the show; the serene and accepting look on Jacob’s face as he passed indicated he was relieved to just be done with all the chaos and happy to finally be at peace.
Buddy
Jonah’s best friend and everybody’s favorite morning streaker, Buddy was something like the heart of the show for the first two seasons. From the first episode, fans knew that Buddy’s demise was a given, yet that didn’t take away the sting when it eventually occurred.
For those who don’t remember, Buddy was the elderly gentleman who sold the Byrde’s their lakeside mid-century home, a steal of a deal that came with one stipulation: that Buddy who was on his way out anyway be allowed to live in the house’s basement until he kicked the bucket.
Buddy was a veteran with some crime-family ties of his own. Hard as nails even during his convalescence, Buddy often served as a sounding board and assistant to the Byrde family schemes. In fact, Buddy passed peacefully of natural causes in Wendy’s passenger seat after helping her in a scheme to torch the Snell’s poppy crop, a loyal friend til the end.
Though Buddy had clearly seen some shit in his day, he still had a strong moral compass and an instinct for when a deal smelled off. Upon multiple watches of the series, it becomes clear that Buddy’s death in Season 2 served as a catalyst for the Byrde family to begin to venture off course and morally lose their ways.
Jonah and Wendy in particular became untethered after Buddy’s passing. Both characters had a values system that was flexible to say the least, but still both were mostly good-intentioned. After Buddy passes, however, both begin journeys that lead them further away from these initial core values, further away from valuing life and recognizing the humanity in others. Wendy’s journey is perhaps the most painful to watch, a journey that leads her to a place where she doesn’t put up much of a fight before selling out a close relative to the cartel.
Ben Davis
Wendy’s younger brother Ben comes to the Ozarks in Season 3 looking for refuge from some legal trouble back home. Like Mason, Ben is kind, naive, and idealistic. He’s also dealing with untreated Bipolar disorder which tends to make people very honest and straightforward, and the secrecy of his big sister’s new crime-filled life is too much for the erstwhile Ben to bare.
His inability to keep secrets and just lay low begins to put everyone’s lives in danger, from the Byrde family itself to Helen and her family and even the Langmore’s. Wendy tries to troubleshoot the situation a few times to take Ben and his very loud mouth off the cartel’s radar, but at some point she begins to see the writing on the wall: Ben is never going to stop talking about what he knows about Wendy’s family, Helen’s involvement, and the Navarro cartel.
Eventually, Wendy is forced to hand over her own brother to the cartel for execution. She does seem conflicted as the realization that it’s either him or her family slowly comes to her, and she does seem devastated during and after making the call. But Laura Linney’s performance is brilliantly subtle in a way that leaves viewers wondering just how distraught this character who is slowly inching toward Lady MacBeth territory really is at the death of her unstable brother.
Ozark Deaths That Didn’t Make the List
Both parts of Ozark Season 4 (now streaming on Netflix) have their fair share of new deaths for fans to mourn and discuss. But for us at STW, we’re still processing and it’s just #toosoon!
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