Wendy's Biggest Tell According To Ozark Fans

With "Ozark" having wrapped a breathless, bloody run on Netflix, many fans are still reeling at the way things ultimately went down for not only Marty and Wendy Byrde (Jason Bateman and Laura Linney), but every single character who entered their orbit. Given their ties to a fearsome drug cartel, the Kansas City mob, a few shifty FBI agents, and a faction of crime-loving Missouri locals, that list of characters naturally features some very, very bad people. 

It's a testament, then, to both the character of Wendy Byrde and Linney herself that the over-ambitious matriarch of the Byrde family is seen by some "Ozark" fans as not only the most consistently intriguing character of the series, but also the most dangerous. In fact, some believe her to be the true villain of the show, if not one of the best in recent television history. If nothing else, Wendy is frequently the series' most effortlessly manipulative character. And according to some Reddit fans, it was easy for the viewer to tell when Wendy was working some of her shamelessly manipulative magic. This is Wendy's biggest tell, according to "Ozark" fans.   

Throughout the series' four-season run, Wendy Byrde sort of became renowned for being a world-class gaslighter. And according to a recent Reddit thread, there is one way to know for certain that Wendy is up to no good. That was clear in the thread's opening post, which boasted a meme of Wendy fronting a kind face, a hand raised in faux innocence, and with the accompanying words: "How to predict gaslighting from Wendy with 100% accuracy."

If you watched "Ozark" from day one, you know that combo of body language typically signals that Wendy is, indeed, working some shifty angle or another. And series fans promptly began chiming in with comments confirming as much. That includes u/ialwayspay4mydrinks, who noted that even a seemingly innocent smile from Wendy can foretell duplicity. "Her smile!" they wrote, "Everytime she has that [smiley] face I just know she's done/doing something shady af."

One mystery user further expounded on Wendy's body language tell, commenting, "The schmarmy smile with her head cocked to the side....Oof." Meanwhile, another user noted that anytime Wendy started with the hand gestures, bad things were about to happen. "When she does the puppy eyes and starts making hand gestures.. someone finna die," they said. 

As for u/raydavinci, they had nothing but praise for Laura Linney's Machiavellian theatrics as Wendy, stating, "Mind trick, verbal lies, sweet emotional expressions such as smiles where has bogus intention behind it on the appearance, psychological manipulation, turn other people's vulnerabilities and weakness into her own advantage and gains from that. Really like Laura's theatrical performance ..." 

And so it seems that as much as "Ozark" fans have remained wary of Wendy Byrde, they also really enjoy watching her work.