The Ozark Season 4 Theory That Could Spell Trouble For Wendy
Beyond the money laundering schemes and cartel politics, the Netflix original series Ozark is a show about people who are drawn to danger. Like Breaking Bad before it, the characters are seemingly ordinary people who begin to wade into a life of crime, only for an undercurrent to drag them out into deeper waters. Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) is our introduction to this dynamic, but you could easily make the argument that it's his wife, Wendy (Laura Linney), who has emerged as the real Walter White (Bryan Cranston) figure of the series.
As Wendy has become more involved in Marty's criminal enterprises, her appetite for power has only grown. In season 3, this culminated in her decision to help facilitate her own brother's assassination to protect her standing with the cartel, a dark deed she was repaid in kind for when Omar Navarro (Felix Solis) killed his former right-hand-woman, Helen (Janet McTeer), and welcomed the Byrdes into his inner circle. Although we see moments of moral and personal struggle within Wendy, it's clear that heading into the fourth and final season, she's not just wading in the shallows of the criminal underworld, she's now swimming in the deep end.
According to one theory for how her story might wrap up in Ozark's final season, her decision to get herself in deep may have been the beginning for the end of the Byrde family matriarch. One Reddit user took to the Ozark subreddit to discuss how a detail from Wendy's past could spell trouble for her future.
The events of Ozark aren't Wendy's first brush with crime
In a Reddit thread titled "Theory about S4," user ginger2020 laid out a theory of what direction they think the character of Wendy will take Ozark's final season. For them, it's all connected to something Wendy once told Marty about her past. They began by writing, "In one of the episodes, Wendy talks about how she would break into people's houses and mess with furniture/pictures, and dye milk when she was young."
They are referencing a moment in the season 1 episode "Kaleidoscope," a flashback that shows the Byrdes before they pulled up stakes and moved to Missouri. While experiencing a bout of severe depression brought on by a miscarriage and an inability to find work in her field, Wendy tells Marty about her former breaking and entering habit. She says she never stole anything other than a few beers from the fridge, but that she got a thrill out of messing with items around the house she knew would be noticed by the owners later.
In ginger2020's estimation, that desire for power, wherever she can get it, will come back in full force in the final season. They wrote, "After the events of S3, I predict that the death of her brother will cause her to spiral and her habit (and other destructive tendencies of her past she alluded to) are going to be her undoing in the final season."
To that point, we've already seen signs in season 3 that Wendy is starting to get in over her head, thanks to her old habits, and the show even made a direct callback to her days as a mischievous home invader.
Season 3 of Ozark had a major callback to Wendy's past
In the premiere episode of season 3, "Wartime," we get a significant reference to Wendy's history of petty crime. The episode sees Wendy going rogue to pitch a plan to Navarro to expand his cartel empire by purchasing an above board casino to both increase cash flow and provide a legitimate asset to leave to his children. Their meeting happens in Chicago, and when it's over, Wendy takes a walk down memory lane by visiting the former Byrde family home.
After breaking in, Wendy drifts through the house aimlessly. She ends up in the bedroom of one of the inhabitant's children, where she tenderly makes the bed. But after stopping to sit on it for a moment, she then goes into chaos mode. She rips the blankets off the bed and goes downstairs to help herself to a beer from the fridge. Just as she admitted to doing in the past, she then puts blue food coloring in the milk and turns the family photo above the mantel upside down before walking out of the house, leaving the front door open.
That clue that she was again taking pleasure in wielding power as a force of destruction in someone else's life was the viewer's introduction to a season that saw Wendy getting in deeper with the Navarro cartel. Now that Navarro responded to her actions by welcoming her and Marty into his inner circle, it appears she will have little choice but to further embrace that destructive side of herself. This time, it may be the thing that finally sinks her.