‘Ozark’ series finale: Explaining Jonah’s actions in last scene

nypost.com:

Note: Spoilers ahead.“Ozark” ended its four-season run with Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner) dead and the Byrde family intact — just barely — as 14-year-old son Jonah (Skylar Gaertner) joined the show’s long list of cold-blooded killers.Or did he?In the show’s final scene, reminiscent of that WTF? “Sopranos” series ender, Jonah aimed a shotgun at pesky private investigator Mel Sattam (Adam Rothenberg), who broke into the Byrdes’ lakefront house to steal the ceramic-goat cookie jar containing the ashes of Wendy’s (Laura Linney) unstable brother, Ben Davis (Tom Pelphrey), contract-killed by his sister in Season 3.Sattam told Marty (Jason Bateman) that his crematorium did a subpar job burning Ben’s body and that he had enough DNA evidence (bits of teeth and bone) to prove that Ben was murdered.

Jonah emerged from the shadows, pointed the shotgun at Sattam and the screen suddenly cut-to-black — the silence shattered by a shotgun blast that left Mel’s fate and Jonah’s intentions open to interpretation.Gaertner, 18, answered a few questions from The Post about the shocking finale and how Jonah evolved over the four seasons since “Ozark” premiered in 2017.Did you know how it would play out for Jonah going into Season 4?Well … not entirely.

At the start of filming for Season 4, I talked to our showrunner Chris Mundy about some of the broader themes and character interactions that would be central to Jonah’s arc.

So I knew about his relationship with his grandpa [played by Richard Thomas] and where the conflict with Wendy was headed. But there was still plenty of information that was left out, so I was probably just as shocked as the audience was when I would discover the major deaths or plot twists as the scripts came out.