Warning: Spoilers for Ozark Seasons 1 and 2 ahead.
We might not know exactly when Ozark Season 3 drops, but we do know that when it does it’s going to pick up after a time jump and it’s going to be messier than ever before. Oh, and you can expect to see a lot of the riverboat.
Speaking with Deadline, Jason Bateman, who won an Emmy for Best Drama Directing for his work on the show, said, “The riverboat casino that you see last season, in fact, goes into operation. We pick up six months later from the end of the second season.
“The casino is up and running and provides us with more opportunities both positive and negative. Some of that is temping and some that are calming. Ultimately it all affects the family.”
Interesting to hear that there’s anything “calming” coming.
Season 2 of Ozark focused heavily on starting the casino and ended with Bateman’s Marty Byrde learning that his wife Wendy (Laura Linney) orchestrated the death of Ruth Langmore’s (Julia Garner) father Cade (Trevor Long).
A lot can happen in six months. For instance, what happened to baby Zeke, is he still stuck with Darlene Snell (Lisa Emery), who killed her husband shortly before gaining custody of Zeke.
Will Ruth have found out what happened to her father?
Ozark showrunner Chris Mundy, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter in August, revealing Ruth’s allegiance is 100 per cent with the Byrdes, at least at the beginning of Season 3.
“Going into Season 3, we see her very much wanting to be a member of the Byrde family. However, as she gets deeper and deeper into the enterprise, she starts to wonder if being a Byrde is the best thing to be,” he said.
Mundy also teased what was coming to Marty, and it isn’t good, “Marty is on a slippery slope, but he’s not all the way down yet.”
He also spoke to Variety about Wendy’s decision to trick Cade with $500,000 to leave town, only to have him gunned down as he drove off.
“Some of it was born out of the fact that we thought that was a decision Marty wouldn’t make, certainly at this point in time. I think Wendy’s better and this kind of stuff.”
“And one of the things we’re really focusing on in Season 3 is there’s this equal and opposite resentments in their minds, where Marty’s like, ‘I stayed with you, despite what you did,’ and she’s like, ‘I gave up part of my soul because you weren’t willing to do what needed to be done for this family.’ So that just felt like the right place to end.”
According to THR, Mundy also revealed that in Season 3 Marty and Wendy will have another major source of conflict in the form of Wendy’s brother.
“[They’ll be] dealing with outside forces. . . . [Such as Wendy’s brother], who we’ve hinted at the first couple years as having some mental illness in the past, so [her] big brother is going to be a very destabilizing factor.”
He revealed that he believed the show will go for five seasons, but he doesn’t have a set idea on how he wants to wrap up the show, adding, “There’s people that are in bigger chairs than mine who make those decisions.”
Sounds like Season 3 is going to be awesome!