Netflix’s Ozark season 4 part 1 saw the end of Darlene and Wyatt’s highly controversial relationship. Were they really in love despite the age gap?
Warning! Spoilers for Ozark season 4 part 1.
Wyatt and Darlene’s multigenerational relationship has been a hugely controversial aspect of Ozark, with many viewers wondering if their love had been real. In the shocking ending of Ozark season 4, part 1, both Darlene and Wyatt are abruptly murdered after their wedding. That bold decision means audiences will never know if Wyatt and Darlene were really in love and built to last or if the relationship was one merely of convenience. However, a closer read of the show reveals the truth.
Wyatt and Darlene are both introduced early on in Ozark, just after Marty Byrde and family arrive from Chicago, ready to build a cartel empire. Wyatt is Ruth Langmore’s cousin who gets involved with Charlotte Byrde and stays generally out of the criminal dealings in the show. Darlene, on the other hand, runs the local heroin circuit with her husband, Jacob, and establishes herself as an unpredictable murderess from Ozark season 1.
In Ozark season 3, Wyatt discovers that Ruth killed his father and moves in with Darlene, who has just murdered her husband and is in need of someone to work on her opium farm. Before long, the relationship turns sexual despite the many decades between them, and Wyatt and Darlene soon become a couple. While it may have seemed that Wyatt and Darlene’s relationship was one born of convenience, the pair shared a strange connection in Ozark that seemed to surpass that of their mutual gain and looked a lot like love.
Contrary to Ozark season 3, through which Wyatt’s character carries on blissfully unaware of Darlene’s capabilities, in Ozark season 4, part 1 Wyatt sees firsthand what Darlene is capable of when she murders multiple people with little conscience. Wyatt, being a pacifist and morally-sound person, decides to end his relationship with her, but, when he sees Darlene’s sorrow over her potential loss of Zeke, he is drawn to her once again, and instead proposes marriage. Wyatt cares about Darlene and, despite the raging threat Darlene is around everyone else, she is strangely vulnerable around Wyatt; Clearly, he brings out her humanity.
This could be easily dismissed with the assumption it’s merely because Wyatt is passive and non-confrontational, posing no threat to Darlene. However, Darlene could be controlling, treating Wyatt like a child, but she is not. Darlene does not infantilize Wyatt; in Ozark season 4, part 1 Darlene makes him a partner in her business, welcomes his family into their lives, and trusts him with the care of her child, Zeke. When Wyatt meets with Charlotte and hides it from Darlene, Darlene doesn’t demand he stop, she simply asks Wyatt not to lie to her, trusting him to make his own choices and asking only for honesty between them. Likewise, despite Wyatt being more passive, he decides for himself more than once that he wants to be with Darlene.
Wyatt and Darlene seem to share mutual respect, attraction, and even life goals in regard to business and the raising of their son. While their relationship is surprising, it also seems sincere, with both characters actively choosing to be in it. And though many might say they were doomed to fail, it may be that Wyatt and Darlene’s untraditional love in Ozark could have survived had they lived a more peaceful life. If they weren’t heroin dealers, Darlene wasn’t a murderer, and they hadn’t taken on a Mexican drug cartel, they might genuinely have lived happily.
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