Will there be an ‘Ozark’ spinoff series or movie?

One of the greatest drama series of the last five years has ended, with Netflix dropping the last seven episodes of Ozark. Ozark was a drama series led by Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, and it ran for four seasons with a total of forty-four episodes. The series followed the Byrde family as Marty, who was played by Bateman, moved his family to the Ozarks to launder money for a drug cartel. The series debuted its final episodes only recently so fans are wondering, will there be any more Ozark?

Will there be more Ozark?

Unfortunately, there are no current plans to have any more Ozark with season four marking the final season. There are also no plans for a spinoff with either another series or a movie, so sadly it seems that this is where the tale of the Byrde family will end. But, did the series leave it open for more storylines to tell? Could the show possibly take the route of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and maybe produce a prequel? Let’s unpack all the possibilities for a spinoff of Ozark and just what one might entail. 

Warning: The following contains spoilers for the final season of Ozark.

How did Ozark come to an end?

The final episodes of Ozark saw the Byrde family reuniting as Jonah had been somewhat on the outs, opting to spend his time at the motel rather than at home. In the last few episodes of the series, primarily after the family survived a car accident together, Jonah seemed much warmer to his parents as the family prepared to regain some semblance of a normal life. 

The cartel experienced major shakeups in the final season, alongside the FBI’s case against them. Javi was killed by Ruth because he killed Wyatt and so the Byrdes retreated to Omar Navarro, in an attempt to patch up their deal with the FBI. But Navarro was showing weakness by being in prison, and so Marty needed to go to Mexico to prove that Navarro was still in control.

While in Mexico, Marty did assert himself, proving that Omar Navarro had sent him and could still wield some influence even though he was imprisoned. Because even after an assassination attempt in prison through Marty, Navarro still managed to maintain control. What neither of them had accounted for was that since Navarro had told Marty to tell the cartel that Omar had ordered Javi’s death, Javi’s mother and Omar’s sister Camila Elizondro suddenly had the motivation to move against her brother. 

The final steps of the cartel storyline saw Camila, Ruth, the Byrdes, and the FBI sit down in a meeting to talk through how the FBI would bring the cartel down using Camila as the head of the cartel. Omar was killed as he was being transferred, something that was seemingly set up at the meeting, or at least by several people who were in attendance. Camila took over the cartel and with her newfound knowledge that Ruth killed Javi, she killed Ruth as revenge. 

Everything seems to work out well for the Byrdes even though Marty and Wendy seemed to be a little broken up about what they can only assume happened to Ruth until they are greeted by Mel Sattem, the disgraced cop-turned-private investigator who was hired by Helen Pierce’s ex-husband to investigate what happened to her. Sattem launched his investigation and increased his scope when he found certain things about the Byrde family fishy. 

Sattem had found out that Wendy’s brother Ben had gone missing and so he started investigating the Byrde family. He eventually found out that the family had connections to a drug cartel and assumed that somehow Ben had been killed. Throughout the season he figured out that a goat cookie jar that Ruth owned contained something other than cookies, especially when he saw it in the possession of Jonah Byrde.

Mel Sattem broke into the Byrde residence and found the cookie jar, which contained Ben’s ashes. Sattem confronted the Byrdes and threatened to take his evidence to the police. Unfortunately for him, Sattem did not think of the implications of threatening to send people who were in bed with a drug cartel to prison, people who had done downright illegal things throughout the series. After all, Wendy sacrificed her brother to make sure her family was safe. 

In the last moments of the series, young Jonah Byrde pulled a gun on Mel Sattem, with the screen going to black as you hear the sound of a gunshot. So the series ended somewhat akin to how The Sopranos ended, which would be a shame, only because the series was so unabashedly nonchalant about killing people off, so not showing the final death seemed like a cop-out. But does this ending leave anything open for a potential spinoff of Ozark?

What would an Ozark spinoff look like?

If you were to pitch a sequel to Ozark there would not be many avenues you could take. For example, Ruth is dead, and so are Sattem, Ben, Helen Pierce, Javi, and Omar Navarro. Sure, Three Langmore is alive, so maybe we could see a movie akin to El Camino, where Three hunts down his sister’s killer. A spinoff with the cartel would also be a bad idea because the FBI will presumably shut them down for good after Camila’s cooperation. 

The Byrde family also managed to make it out alive, but any spinoff for them seems unlikely as the business with the FBI will bring down the cartel, unless Wendy Byrde ran for political office. We could see her maneuver politically as she did throughout the series, this time on a larger scale. Of course, Marty would need to cease illegal activities, but what if he and Jonah were just too good at money laundering and needed to get back into the game? Or Wendy might need seed money to get into the political landscape in the first place, so she forces their hand. Either way, a spinoff like that has some potential. 

Prequels could also work. Surely the Snells got up to other kinds of trouble in their youth, before any cartels got involved. A Langmore prequel could also be interesting, maybe seeing the three Langmore brothers in their youth, before they had any kids or got into the trouble that they had a reputation for during Ozark. It seems that because Ozark told such a complete story it would be quite hard to tell a compelling story in a spinoff. Hard but not impossible. 

So even though a spinoff of Ozark is quite unlikely, these have been some directions a sequel, prequel or spinoff could take. Let’s hope to see the Byrde family again one day, maybe later rather than sooner, giving the amazing series some time to appreciate, and time for the audience to miss it.