(Plentiful spoilers from Netflix’s new season of Ozark will be found below.)
In Ozark Season 4, Part 1, Marty Byrde’s still scrambling to dig himself out of drug lord Navarro’s shackles, so that his family can return to Chicago and their formerly ritzy life. Marty does find out that (at least for now) he can’t go home, and one of the bigger twists of this season is that the most dangerous threat is no longer coming from the outside world. Instead, Marty’s almost-former right-hand-gal, Ruth Langmore, has enlisted Marty and Wendy’s son, Jonah, who’s now a money-laundering chip off the old block.
Jonah is all too happy to stick it to his parents and climb aboard with Ruth’s master plan. In turn, she’s awfully impressed, too, because he’s able to write scripts that send small amounts of money to randomized bank accounts. These are virtually untraceable transactions, given that Jonah whipped up an intricate network of billions of accounts, all by his lonesome. Ruth is definitely the brawn (and the mouth) in this team-up with Jonah being the brains of the operation.
Unfortunately for Jonah, however, this message popped up on his computer screen.
As the message indicates, one of Jonah’s randomized accounts was reported for “suspected fraudulent activity.” At Ruth’s urging, Jonah calls in Marty, who’s not at all worried. He knows how to fix this sort of situation, and it takes Dad only a few minutes to reverse the deposit chain and delete that flagged account. Problem solved?
Not quite. There’s the mystery of who flagged the account. Marty may or may not be aware of Wendy being capable of doing so, but he doesn’t seem to be worried and attributes the flagging to a “third party.” Jonah is spooked, but then he has a run-in outside Ruth’s motel room and learns that Wendy had stopped by for an unsolicited visit.
Yep, Wendy was serious when she suggested that she wants her son to be arrested. That might seem harsh and difficult to believe at first, but hey, Wendy also gave the greenlight for the cartel to kill her brother, Ben. Wendy’s peeved that Jonah’s defied her orders to quit helping Ruth. She’s pretty sure that he’d serve no jail time (as a minor) if busted, and she wants both Jonah and Sofia to return to Chicago with her and enjoy happy-family life again. Of course, that mysterious car crash suggests another wrinkle in Wendy’s plan, but that’s a mystery that won’t be solved until future episodes.
‘Ozark’ is currently streaming (Season 4, Part 1) on Netflix.
