If you enjoyed Marty’s descent into life-or-death criminality in season 1 of Ozark, you’ll be happy to know that season 2 sees pretty much every character forced into that same moral gray area (AKA the danger zone). Between pressures and threats exerted by the FBI, the cartel, the MO mob, local lowlifes (e.g., Cade Langmore), and corrupt politicians, the Byrdes and their business partners are in and out of tight spots in their single-minded pursuit of opening a casino.
Marty may have justified everyone's season 1 positions with his "people make choices; choices have consequences” line, but not so anymore. This time around, the panicked, reckless, never-ending problem-solving has worn Marty down, and the weight of the pain he's caused to associates and family alike is building every day. It’s like he’s run out of patches, his boat is sinking ever faster, and he’s ready to risk just swimming to shore (or the gold coast, as it were); this time, the ramifications of his choices are finally weighing him down.
This “sinking ship” metaphor can be aptly applied to many aspects of these episodes, since this season basically explores how each character navigates in an ever-darkening, amoral environment—will they sink or swim? And when Ozark’s sophomore season was lauded for letting the women take the reins, they weren’t kidding around. Wendy Byrde, Darlene Snell, and Ruth Langmore all come into their own this season—each uses her savviness and determination to usurp the (male) head of her respective family, for the good of the rest of her kin. Wendy uses her political know-how to keep the casino bill alive, and with it, her family; Darlene resorts to various poisonings in her quest for a child (and the land to raise it on); and Ruth finally realizes that she doesn’t need her father’s approval, and so spurns his demands (and the cartel’s threats) in order to focus on sending her cousin to college. Also adapting well to his season 2 situation is Marty’s son Jonah, who takes after his father in his matter-of-fact illegal acts, setting up bank accounts and laundering money like a pro.
Then there are those who don’t take so well to their various rock-and-hard-place scenarios, and seek only to escape. Marty, as stated above, is sidelined by his overwhelming guilt after killing Mason, frustrated by his wife continually “undermining” him (AKA taking care of business), and primarily focused on getting out of the Ozarks ASAP; Rachel, caught between being a CI and going to prison for stealing cartel money, frantically searches for a way out, both through drugs and desperate pleas; and Charlotte, Marty’s daughter, realizes the physical and psychological danger of her situation, and asks to be emancipated (going so far as to make plans to leave the Ozarks with Wyatt Langmore).
But the truth is, there is no escape. In the Ozark universe, once you’ve gotten in deep enough, no matter how innocent you started out, your soul is permanently stained. We saw the repercussions of criminal behavior wreak havoc on the lives of Rachel (manipulated by Petty, poisoned by Darlene), Ruth (tortured by the cartel), Charlotte (forced to decide to leave her family), and Wyatt (grieving the loss of his father…by Ruth’s hand). And yet, this show would suggest that either you get in deeper or you die. (Oh, and if you go too deep, you'll also die.) FBI agent Petty is killed by a desperate Cade during his farewell fishing expedition, and Cade is in turn shot by the cartel on his way out of town. Ozarks power couple and American sweethearts, the Snells, turn on each other, ending with Darlene poisoning Jacob, the man who had previously killed their protégé, Ash. The Byrdes, meanwhile, are directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of Buddy, Senator Blake, Mason, and Cade (to say nothing of their other crimes, notably blackmail). Of those, Mason was perhaps the most significant death, when you consider his fall from season 1; as the only objectively moral character, the preacher was completely undone by the loss (i.e., murder) of his wife, literally driven mad by his change of circumstance, by the wall of evil that rode in on Marty's coattails when he entered the Ozarks.
Funnily enough, in Ozark, the best you can hope for is someone who does bad things but doesn't feel good about it. That’s why Marty seems like the good guy this season; in between his small acts of kindness for Rachel, Wyatt, and Ruth, he clearly feels bad about all the death and pain he’s brought about (despite his frequent nonplussed expression). He knows he’s now "the bad guy," and even by the season finale, he hasn’t been able to come to terms with it.
But to return to the big picture, I must admit that I still marvel at the utter moral confusion that this show crafts so well. By the end of the season, no one has the moral high ground (which is exactly why everyone keeps getting blackmailed into doing worse deeds). Every decision is a catch-22; it’s one trolley problem after another: Marty gave Mason’s baby to (its mother’s killer) Darlene, who killed her husband, who killed Ash, who hid the body of cartel leader Rio, whose lawyer came to town and worked with Wendy to kill Cade, who killed Petty, who threatened/enabled Rachel, who wore a wire against Marty, who killed Mason, who threatened to kill Wendy, who blackmailed Wilkes, and on and on. Every person has to force another's hand to get anything worthwhile done, and if they don’t, it’s their head on a stake. It’s like these characters are standing in quicksand, and the only way to get to the top is to step on others' heads, and even then, they can't expect to maintain their position for long. In other words, seeing the world in a "either you're holding the gun, or you're running from the gunman” stance, as Wendy utters in the finale, is not sustainable.
As a final thought, then, I would say that aside from my proposed tagline above, this season most frequently made me question “once you've crossed the line, does it matter if you keep walking?” After all, one bad decision most often leads to many, many worse ones. Marty’s pre-season 1 decision to launder money, to just “move numbers around,” led him into a number of life-or-death situations, and now has caused him to commit the ultimate sin of taking a life. And it’s that sort of cause and effect that seems to be the series’ answer: that the longer you stay in the game, the more collateral damage you will cause. No matter how bad the situation gets for you, worse are the repercussions on those who are near to you; even as you scrape by one potential disaster, bystanders get caught up in its wake. This is true for Rachel, Marty, Ruth, etc.—a growing web of lies, pain, threats, precarious relationships, and leveraged trust. Whether you revel in your criminal enterprise, like Helen Pierce (the cartel’s attorney), Cade Langmore, or the Snells; fight against the circumstantial unfairness that has befallen you, like Charlotte Byrde or Ruth and Wyatt Langmore; or just try to keep your head above water, like Marty or Rachel, everyone will eventually get caught in a web of their own making.
Time will tell whether season 2’s marauding women (to say nothing of the less fortunate characters) can keep their heads above water in the season to come. For though the seas may have calmed, as viewers of this show know, another hurricane is always brewing on the horizon. One thing's for sure, though—no one's coming away unscathed.