Way back in Season 2 of Ozark, Showrunner Chris Mundy realized how he wanted the show to end. It would be a pointed statement about capitalism and power in America. A statement that, really, the entire series was building toward.

But knowing the show’s ultimate destination didn’t make getting there any less daunting. In the ensuing two — or by some counts, three — seasons, Mundy and his team of writers attempted to thread a tricky needle: To both signal where things were headed while also sustaining the element of surprise. 

In the series’ final half season, audiences will decide how successfully they pulled it off. “I think we are all aware that no matter what’s in those final seven [episodes], the last one is going to be the one that we get judged on,” Mundy says. “So I think we were all a little bit nervous about that.”

Laura Linney and Showrunner Chris Mundy Discuss a Scene From 'Ozark' Season 4

But if there’s one thing Mundy isn’t worried about, it’s the finale being polarizing. In fact, he welcomes dissent. “We wanted [the end] to be like, ‘Oh my God, wow. Yes.’ And then, ‘Wait, why am I cheering for it?’ ” he says. “We wanted both things, and hopefully people are as happy as they are mad. If that’s the case, then we did it right.”

Tina Rowden/Netflix

In a recent video interview with Tudum, Mundy discussed writing the finale, what he wanted viewers to come away with and how Laura Linney elevated the series. 

In writing the finale, did you [and your staff] study other prestige TV shows and learn anything from them? Were those other shows’ endings in your mind at all?

No, not specifically. I mean, other shows’ endings were in our mind just in that you want to end it well. And, actually, I like all the last 14, but I like the last seven more than the first seven. Which should be the case if you’re building it right. But I think we are all aware that no matter what’s in those final seven, the last one is going to be the one that we get judged on. The first six could be great, and if they don’t like the last one, then it’s trouble. We were just aware that there was a tiny bit of good pressure.

I’ve read that you roughly knew the place you wanted to end the show by the second season. Why did you want to end it there? 

Well, I just knew that it kind of was what we were building to. We opened Season 2 with Marty and Wendy at a big fundraiser gala and they’re in black tie. We wanted that to be kind of a startling thing, because they’d been sort of on the run and everything was down and dirty in the first season. So it was kind of, “Wait, how do we get here?” And it was pointing in the direction that we were going to eventually lead them.

It’s where they start talking about running away to the Gold Coast. But then at one point Wendy makes reference to basically them being the Kennedys. [Marty]’s like, “Wait a minute.” She’s like, “What do you think bootlegging was?” The myth of the Kennedys was Joe Kennedy was a bootlegger and now they’re this. It’s like, “No one cares.” And so she layers it in there, and then in the first episode of Season 4, she very pointedly says to Jonah, “You need to grow up. This is America. No one cares where your fortune comes from. In two election cycles, it’s going to be some myth at some cocktail party.” We tried a lot of times on the show to tell people where we were going but hopefully have them still be surprised when that’s where we went.

What do you think the final moment of the show says about power and wealth in America? I mean, I think it’s everything that Wendy said in [the first episode of Season 4.] I think it’s like, “This is America. No one cares how you got your fortune.” And in this strange way, these myths that get built up become some kind of strange clout almost. And so I think it’s deeply cynical but can be true too. And I don’t think everyone has to believe it. I think they have to believe that Wendy believes it. And then from there they can make the decision of whether or not they are totally down with what she’s saying.

Laura Linney as Wendy ends up being the most complicated, and in some ways central, character of the show. How did Linney put a stamp on Wendy and change your initial conception of the character? Well, that was the character that we really worked on the most from the very beginning because it was a little less defined in the first episode. So, I mean, I remember sitting with Laura and going through everything about where we think she’s from, and we switched it from this town in Virginia to Boone, North Carolina, because she has family in Boone and knows [the culture.] And we really just started walking through everything about it.

Laura is so good and so detailed in her preparation, and has that deep theater training and Juilliard training. And so she’s really happy to do all that building, and that’s so much fun for a writer. You could geek out on every little detail. I remember Laura saying to me early, “Oh, even if I just want a scene where I take my shoes off and I feel the dirt underneath my feet in the Ozarks, that’s me leaving Chicago and going back to my old self and my new self.” And there would be tiny little things like that that you could just use as a building block that were really helpful.

Tina Rowden/Netflix

Linney directed the 11th episode of this season. What did she bring as a director? I mean, you saw it, right? She killed it. What she brought to it was the same level of detail that Laura brings to everything. Laura goes through the script as an actor every day — not today’s scenes, but the whole script. And she charts the entire script from the second she gets it. So she did that: She and I went through it over and over again just to find the emotional parts. It ends with that big fight, Marty beating the guy up in traffic and finally kind of exploding. And she would go through the scenes and mark them on their tick, then tick and then boom. 

And if you look at the acting performances in that episode, they’re just incredible across the board. I mean, our cast is so good, but also all Laura’s acting is going into that, too. And so it’s just a really thoughtful episode. It’s fun and weird and funny and violent. I thought she did the most amazing job.

You started writing the show before Donald Trump was elected. But did the results of the election and the events that followed impact what came next in the show? I’m sure they did. Not absolutely consciously, but in the way that they kind of affected us in the last years. We wrote the last season more or less over COVID, too. So there’s all sorts of things that come into it. If anything, it really crystallized some of the underlying themes. We were always writing about a family, and we were always writing about whether or not they could stay together. But the deeper in they got, and especially after Ben died, it’s like, “If we don’t get out and succeed wildly then we did all this stuff for nothing.” So it was like [Wendy] pitched it to this huge political ambition in order to give it meaning. 

And I think as it became clearer that people were divided in a lot of ways, I’m sure that really factored into our storytelling. But we didn’t talk about it. We weren’t doing it intentionally to comment on that. I sort of believe that you need to let the characters be themselves and then people can take from it what they want.

Steve Dietl/Netflix

Was there one loose thread that was hardest to tie up in that final season? Not so much. We always tried to know everything that was out there in the world and try to take it as a strength and not a weakness and write toward it. I mean, there are tons of loose threads in the show, in that there are police investigations that are just not happening on screen. We started saying it from the beginning in Season 1, “There is a whole show that could be built around Gary flying off of the 80th floor of a building and then that’s an investigation.” There are a lot of bodies in our show where there would be a task force [investigating] at this point.

Were there any decisions you made toward the beginning that toward the end you regretted just so you could have pursued a different path? No, I don’t think so. I really feel good about the decisions we made. 

The number of people that we lost on the show — sometimes I miss having Buddy on the show. But I think he died at the right point, almost when you weren’t thinking about it and in this kind of heroic way. I miss having Agent Petty on the show, but if he’d been in for a third season, it just would’ve been like, “How are you not breaking through this case?” He sort of needed to go, but I miss Jason Butler Harner, who played him. And same thing with Russ’ character. But we were pretty brutally strict with our plot in terms of what the large vessel of the show needed. 

I mean, the perfect example is Wyatt’s death. We went into the final season, and I did not think Wyatt was going to die. I thought he was one of the only people that was going to come out with a happy ending because he’s one of the pure souls in the show. And really, we needed that to happen to affect Ruth in the way it did. So we did it, and then suddenly Charlie [Tahan] is not around for the last few episodes, which is lousy — although I guess he’s in the last one. 

Are you somebody who wants to stay in this world, or are you interested in doing new things after this? That’s kind of a trick question. I love this world. But it was really important to me, and all of us who were making the show, to have it be complete and not do anything that would be tilted toward this being set up so we could stay in this world. 

If [a spin-off] could happen on its own, then great, because it’s a world that I really love. But we did four — kind of, five — seasons, 44 episodes. And I want them to feel like a whole, not like they were built to go somewhere else. But it’s been the last six years of my life, and it’s been a lot of fun. So doing more inside this world would almost certainly be a blast.

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