Ozark 's Jason Bateman Reveals Where He Thinks Wendy and Marty Byrde Are Now

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As far as Jason Bateman is concerned, Ozark went out on a good note.

All four of the Byrde family members—Marty (Bateman), Wendy (Laura Linney), Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner)—made it out alive in Ozark's season four finale, an ending that truly nobody saw coming. After all, the Byrdes had been tangled up in cartel fights, undercover operations and drug deals gone awry.

Nonetheless, in an interview with Variety, Bateman described it as a "happy ending," albeit one with a "smudge on it."

"There's something sticky about it," he explained. "Because once we fade to black, we see that they got away with it but at what cost?"

By the end, Jonah and Charlotte have become accomplices to their parents' crimes, a fate that no one would wish on their kids. Yes, there's the hope that this killing will allow the family to pursue a more altruistic lifestyle, but no guarantee that will ever happen. As Bateman said, they are leaving viewers with the Byrdes "trusting the ends will justify the means, but we're not sticking around for the ends; we are leaving right at the means."

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The ending left fans questioning whether the Byrdes will be able to move on from their criminal enterprise, a.k.a. the Navarro cartel. Bateman acknowledged that Marty and Wendy's dealings with drug dealers and corrupt officials forced them to stay together after Wendy cheated, but now that they're seemingly moving on, Bateman said, "They can get back to their marriage."

Jason Bateman
Tina Rowden/Netflix

He continued, "If the cameras stuck around for the next year or week or month, that's when you'd see them dig into it. What's left there?"

And frankly, Bateman thinks that if the show continued for another season, there wouldn't be much hope for the Byrdes in general. As he said, "They'd either be dead or in prison. It's good for them that the camera shut off now."

That being said, Ozark is a fictional series, so there's always the possibility of returning to these characters. Bateman noted that he enjoyed working on a "positive" set like Ozark's and would return "in a second," adding, "What we had just doesn't happen often."

For now, Bateman is focused on directing his next film, currently titled Project Artemis, which stars Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans.

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