‘I am in blood,” said Macbeth, “Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” In Ozark, Wendy and Marty Byrde are equally deep in blood. Indeed, the current and final season began late last year with the couple in the bathroom of a Mexican drug baron’s pretentious estate washing blood spatter they caught in their faces when the cartel’s lawyer (played by Janet McTeer) was terminated for doublecrossing them. Which, as anyone can tell you, is always a mistake.
But what makes Ozark compelling right to its bitter end is that the Byrdes rage furiously against their fate in a way that Macbeth does not. Popular culture in general, and crime dramas in particular, are littered with corrupted, blood-spattered souls who look into the abyss and imagine they are exceptions and that it will not consume them.
