‘Ozark’ Season 4 Is ‘More Intensely About the Family,’ Showrunner Chris Mundy Teases

thewrap.com:

“Ozark” has always been a show about a family trying to stick together under the most extreme circumstances. But for the Netflix series’ final episodes, showrunner Chris Mundy wanted to make the series become even more about family.The fourth and final season of the show is being split into two halves of seven episodes each, and the first batch – dubbed “Ozark” Season 4 – Part 1 – debut on Netflix Friday, Jan.

21. Speaking with TheWrap recently, Mundy revealed that as he and the writers began plotting out the show’s endgame, they wanted to focus in on the Byrde family. “We really wanted to circle back in on ourselves and have it become more intensely about the family as we go forward,” Mundy said. “I mean, to me the show – for all the crazy situations and death – is most itself when we’re at the Byrdes’ dinner table and they’re having what would be mundane family conversations, yet they’re so crazy because it’s this extreme situation.

And so to me that’s kind of the heart and soul.”The relationship between Jason Bateman’s Marty and Laura Linney’s Wendy is central not only to the series, but to how the writers plot out each season’s story. “We always break the show in terms of the marriage,” Mundy said. “So to me, the more we go forward, it’s more about the family and Jonah’s place in the family and Ruth figuring out her place in the Byrdes’ life, what she wants, are they the enemy or are they the people that kind of pulled her up?”As for Marty and Wendy’s relationship in Season 4, which picks up immediately after Helen was murdered by Navarro right in front of them, they begin the season closer than ever… at least at first. “There’s sort of the moment where in the finale of Season 3, when Marty basically talks Wendy into.