Ozark Season 4 Car Crash Opening Scene Explained By Showrunner

Ozark showrunner Chris Mundy explained the opening car crash scene from the final season of the crime drama in a recent interview. Ozark premiered the first half of its fourth season on Friday with seven episodes out of a planned 14 to air later in 2022. The series stars Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, and Julia Garner, who won two Emmy Awards for her performance on the series.

Ozark follows the Byrde family, who set up a money-laundering operation in the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri for a Mexican drug cartel. There, they become entangled with local criminals and the mafia as they try to establish their businesses in the region. Ozark has received acclaim for its characters, tone, direction, and writing and has received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Drama Series.

In an interview with TVLine, Mundy talks about the season 4 opening. The scene, which takes place in an unspecified time in the narrative’s future, the Byrdes are seen in an intense car crash, their vehicle flipping several times. The scene then cuts back to the show’s current timeline. Mundy says the ambiguity of who survives the crash was intentional, hinting at the events to come later in the season. He goes on to say he wanted to emphasize the unease the show’s tone is infused with so that viewers will be ready for the series’ final episodes. Read Mundy’s quote below:

“There’s a feeling on our show all the time where anything can happen at anytime, and I like that unease. We felt like people might be confused for a split second, but then when the [action cuts immediately] to Mexico they’d realize [it was a flash-forward]. But we didn’t want to do any more of the math for them.”

This jarring opening for Ozark‘s final season sets up the ultimate climax of the story. Though dialogue in the scene is sparse, it indicates that the Byrdes are close to getting out of the laundering business for good, with the family reunited for the scene, which is surprising given the splintering of the family throughout season 4’s first half. Mundy says that this was also on purpose and that even though things may seem fine on the surface, things may not be as they seem.

Ozark has grown into one of the sharpest written, most well-realized shows on television, with three-dimensional characters and plenty of twists. Though it’s unfortunate that the show’s creators have decided to split the final season into 2 parts – an oddly common practice for prestige dramas with The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad doing the same – fans still have another seven episodes to look forward to before the show wraps. With Ozark‘s final season underway, it’s shaping up to be as exciting and as everything that’s come before it.

Source: TVLine

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