Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for the finale of Ozark.The hitNetflixseriesOzarkhas, for better and worse, perpetually had a lot going on. Throughout the many twists and turns that kept us on our toes, there was always a sense that things would end badly for the characters. Central to this was Ruth Langmore, the foul-mouthed heart and soul of the story. Played with a sense of grace and gravitas by a revelatoryJulia Garner, she began as one of the most troubled characters yet managed to be one of the sole people to cling to her humanity in a world where that was in short supply. By the time the story reached its gruesome and grim denouement, Ruth was also one of the few main characters to meet her untimely end. At the conclusion of the final episode, fittingly titled ‘A Hard Way to Go,’ she was unceremoniously gunned down byVeronica Falcón’s coldCamila Elizonndro. It was payback for Ruth killing her son, Javier (Alfonso Herrera Rodriguez). This was itself for when he killed Ruth’s cousin Wyatt (Charlie Tahan), the beginning of a final descent into violence that swallowed up the entire existence of everyone in its path.
It was a tragic end, though a fitting one in keeping with the show’s central theme about how callousness and cruelty are what is needed to come out on top. Ruth had spent much of her final days on this Earth trying to make peace with her and her family’s sordid past in order to find a future that wasn’t defined by more bloodshed. She puts in the work to get her criminal record expunged, takes control of the casino from the Byrde family, and even sets out to build the dream house she talked about with Wyatt. Complete with a pool, Ruth is doing everything she can to get on a better path in the hope that she will be able to live a life free of peril. For a moment, we almost believe it is possible. This only ends up being wishful thinking, an aspirational hope for the show’s most dynamic character that we want to see get away from this all. Such an ending would not have been a truthful one, even as it would have been nice to see Ruth ride off into the sunset and leave it all behind. It is all made explicit in the final scenes that this just isn’t how the world works. Even when the show struggled to find its footing through many of these messy final episodes, it was in Ruth’s fraught final moments that something more impactful was realized in what it revealed about our own world.
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Much of this is due to Garner’s incredible performance as she constantly challenged preconceived notions held about her character. When we first met Ruth, she was having to steal and scrap to survive in a world that has left her behind. When she attempts to take fromJason Bateman’s Marty Byrde, it seems like she is being positioned as an antagonist to our main character. Instead, Garner brings a real sense of compassion to the character and ensures we can’t help feeling dread thinking back on how that meeting would end up completely ruining her life. The forces of chaos that Marty would bring into her life took everything from her, a succession of immense, unimaginable losses that would be enough to completely destroy even the strongest of people.
Yet, with her grit and determination, Ruth endured it all. She did this while still holding on to flickering compassion in an increasingly dark world. This makes it all the more tragic that this isn’t enough, a testament to just how broken and bleak the world can be when ruled by selfish people. Against the odds, Ruth became the best of an increasingly unredeemable group of people. Death was always barrelling toward her and she did everything she could to make the most of her life while she still had it. This all was for naught in the end as she died alone and betrayed, a sacrifice at the altar of the Byrde family’s depravity. There are no happy endings when the world has been thrown so completely out of balance and the finale ofOzarkreflects that. The annihilation of Ruth was this final nail in the coffin that disavowed any notion that true salvation was possible when the cards are stacked against you so completely and comprehensively. It was as true as it was tragic.
This may be a hard pill to swallow, but the world ofOzark,like our own, is not a kind place that rewards people trying to do the right thing. No matter how committed Ruth was in her attempt to start fresh, the world was not built for people like her to get second chances. Saddled with generational poverty, criminalized for surviving, and relegated to the margins, she was left with limited options to get by. That Ruth managed to do that for quite a while through her own resourcefulness is something she shouldn’t have had to do even as it is remarkable she did. Yet she could only escape death for so long as the characters who run her world determined she was disposable for her own ends. It is a rude awakening to witness Ruth’s search for a last chance at salvation be just within reach only for it to be dashed away at the last possible moment. It serves as the most honest part of a story that is often extreme in its plot machinations, grounding the show’s final episodes in her emotional growth and the eventual realization that the world is not a place that will let her off so easily. It is truthful as it is devastating, making Ruth’s eventual fate a gut-punch of a conclusion that still speaks volumes about who is allowed to survive in a harsh world built upon her destruction.
