Ozark season 3 – explaining Wendy's bizarre behaviour
Ozark season 3 spoilers follow.
In the first episode of Ozark season three, Wendy takes a business proposition to Omar Navarro behind Marty's back.
She wants to expand the business, taking some of their eggs out of one basket and splitting them across other legitimate, legal baskets.
The purpose of that is to diversify their revenue streams so that if the worst happens – death or the confiscation of their illegal assets by the FBI – there will be some money left for their own children and Navarro's, safeguarding their futures.
Following that meeting, she visits the old Byrde house in Chicago. Wendy slips inside after its new occupants go out for the evening and makes a little mischief, helping herself to a bottle of beer, putting food colouring in the milk and flipping a photograph of the family who lives there upside down.
Wait, what? Or more importantly, why?
That scene is a direct callback to Ozark's first season (episode eight, to be precise) when Wendy tells Marty that when she was a kid, she used to break into other people's houses.
"I wouldn't take anything," she said. "I'd have a beer or two, so I guess I did take those... I'd move picture frames around. I'd turn toothbrushes upside down. I'd put blue food colouring in the milk."
After a moment of quiet, in which Wendy walks around her old home, taking it all in and making up one of the kid's beds before sitting on it, the music changes. It hits its stride and with that, her quiet introspection shifts and she gets to work, helping herself to a beer, putting food colouring in the milk and turning a family photograph on its head.
Season three is, in many respects, the Wendy show. The Byrde matriarch, for the most part, looks comfortable in their precarious lifestyle, taking a leading role in the business, hell-bent on expansion.
Her behaviour is deeply unsettling at times, Wendy willing to do whatever's necessary to get the job done – qualities shared by the likes of Navarro himself.
Her actions in the family's former home reflect that.
Wendy is rebellious and sneaky. She feels powerful, at liberty to do what she wants – and given that her career in politics hit a wall long ago, you can sense that she is now regaining a part of herself, hungry to stretch her wings after years of being cooped up at home.
Back in season one when Wendy explains to Marty what compelled her to pull pranks on her neighbours, it wasn't just because she could, or because she felt like it. She was resentful.
"It was so liberating [to be in someone else's house], just feeling like someone else," she said. "And then I'd be hit with the hard reality that I didn't belong there. I just didn't belong there and so I'd act out a little bit."
When Wendy returns to Chicago, she quickly realises that the house she once called home is no longer her domain. She doesn't belong there. Her life has moved on and her priorities have changed.
But this time when she pours food colouring into the milk and flips the photograph, there's no bitterness or deep-seated sadness, only acceptance.
Wendy has hardened.
That sensation of not belonging also haunted her in season one. Not only had her career ambitions stalled, a car accident had forced her to miscarry, in turn her depression deepening to the point where she felt alien to herself and unable to look after her children.
In that moment with Marty, she describes feeling "like a fraud", unrecognisable to herself.
But that is no longer the case.
You get the sense, particularly in the early stages of season three, before the situation with Ben escalates, that she has never felt more at home, even though she's living on a knife-edge.
But following the death of her brother, in which she played a significant role, will those old feelings begin to creep back in season four? Or will Wendy slip further into the darkness?
But with two more seasons potentially on the cards, according to showrunner Chris Mundy, expect plenty more twists and turns in this tale yet.
Ozark seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Netflix.
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