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Ozark Season 4 Ending: Julia Garner Says Ruth's Ending Felt Like Her Own
Ozark star Julia Garner recently explained in an interview that her character Ruth Langmore's death in the season 4 finale felt like her own.

Ozark star Julia Garner recently explained that Ruth Langmore’s death at the end of season 4 felt like her own. Premiering in 2017, Ozark follows Marty Byrde (Patrick Bateman), a financial advisor that was inadvertently thrust into the criminal underworld as a money launderer for a big Mexican drug cartel. After convincing one of the cartel’s lieutenants that the Ozarks is an excellent place to clean dirty money, Marty relocates his family to central Missouri to begin their criminal enterprise. The Netflix drama series instantly became a critical success, garnering dozens of award nominations over its five years, with Garner winning two Emmys for her portrayal of Ruth.

Shortly after arriving in the lakeside community, Marty encounters town local Ruth and soon realizes that she is far more capable and intelligent than the rest of her criminal family. Marty hires her to help run his businesses and, throughout the run of the show, Ruth becomes a crucial part of his money-laundering operation. Unfortunately, in Ozark season 4, Ruth found herself as part of the Byrdes’ collateral damage, losing her cousin Wyatt (Charlie Tahan) at the hands of Javi (Alfonso Herrera), the nephew of cartel leader Omar Navarro (Felix Solis). In a swift act of vengeance, Ruth tracks down Javi in Chicago and murders him in cold blood. Unfortunately, this purely emotional reaction led to her own demise in the Ozark season 4 finale when Javi’s mother Camilla tracks her down and shoots her in cold blood at her lakeside home.

Garner recently sat down with Time and shared details about her intimate relationship with her Ozark character. When asked about Ruth’s final scene in the show’s final episode, Garner explained that her character felt more like a ghost of who she was. This led to Garner feeling like Ruth’s death was her own. Read what the actor had to say about that moment below.

“It felt like I was dying. My death was also the last scene of Ozark. I think the last shot we did was me on the ground. I really do think Ruth died when Wyatt died. I think her body was just here. She wasn’t going to voluntarily quit life, but I think she was so dead inside that if given an opportunity to die, she wouldn’t say no. In the end, it’s not her going over to death, it’s death coming over to her. By the end of the season, she didn’t care about living. She did what she needed to do, she killed Javi, and after that mission, she was like a ghost.”

Ozark season 4 part 2 explored more of Ruth’s past growing up on the small trailer-packed Langmore lakeside property. Flashbacks provided insight into both Ruth and Wyatt’s tough upbringing with their parents and how they both comforted each other at night by escaping to the top of a trailer and sleeping under the stars to escape the pain. Javi killing Wyatt was like Javi killing a part Ruth. According to Garner, Ruth would never be the same following her cousin’s death. She had one reason to live, and that was to kill Javi. After that moment, Garner explains that Ruth was just going through the motions of life until death finally caught up with her.

Although Garner explained that Ruth no longer cared about living, her final scene showed surprise and fear when Camila confronted Ruth. Both surprise and fear indicate a feeling of self-preservation, that for a moment it seemed, Ruth did not want to die. Prior to her death, Ruth had her criminal record expunged in an attempt to go clean. Ruth’s death reveals a cold, hard truth of the series – that the Byrde family will likely get away unscathed with anything they do while those around them are subject to the consequences of their increasingly amoral actions. Bateman, the director of the Ozark season 4 finale, previously explained that Ruth underwent “fear and realization of what was coming,” indicating that perhaps she wanted a chance for her life to mean something more. However, staring down the end of a gun barrel, Ruth quickly accepted her fate, goading the new cartel head, and dying on her back, looking up into the stars as she did with Wyatt.