The see-sawing union between Marty and Wendy is at its heart as Ozark deals with the fractured lives of a range of parents, children and siblings. The two-part, 14-episode final season gives us the volatile Navarros in Mexico, Clare Shaw (Katrina Lenk), the CEO of a family pharmaceutical empire built on opioids, and Wendy’s malevolent father (Richard Thomas, who, in another neat irony, once played the son of a classic American family in The Waltons).

As the events of the final season accumulate, it’s as if a vice is being systematically tightened. The sense of dread is almost suffocating as the suspenseful saga of greed, ambition, revenge and warring clans unfolds with the grim inevitability of Shakespearean tragedy. Appropriate, then, that Wendy should emerge through the series as a Lady Macbeth, but a modern incarnation with her own agency and ammunition. She doesn’t have to push her husband to do the dirty work: she coldly schemes, manipulating people and events to engineer the results she wants, sometimes even shocking Marty with her ruthlessness.

She obsessively works to a establish a multimillion-dollar foundation that she imagines will free the family of their obligations, while affording them the wealth, power and status that she craves. Almost until the end, she rationalises her actions as being in service of securing the family’s safety, including the sacrifice of her unstable brother, Ben (Tom Pelphrey), in the shattering penultimate episode of the third season.

The damaging consequences of Wendy and Marty’s actions are tacitly underlined through the recurrent depiction of family dinners, conventionally a unifying occasion on screen. But in the Byrdes’ house by the lake, which, in spite of its large windows, seems perpetually shrouded in shadow, conflict is always on the menu. Significantly, it’s at the dining table that Wendy tells a rebellious Jonah, “This is America: people don’t care where your fortune came from.”

Executive producer Jason Bateman is ostensibly the star of this show. He had a significant role in shaping it and directed four episodes in the first season, including the opener, as well as the series finale. But as he underplays his quietly calculating character, it’s the fierce and flawed women of Ozark who forcefully command attention.

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Julia Garner shines in a tour-de-force performance as shrewd, scrappy, plucky Ruth Langmore. It’s her death, at the hands of eye-for-an-eye black widow Camila (Veronica Falcon), that packs the emotional punch in the final episode. And it’s fitting that Ruth is wearing white when it happens.

There’s also Lisa Emery, who turns Darlene Snell into one of the scariest women ever to appear on TV. And Janet McTeer as the smoothly assured cartel lawyer, Helen Pierce, who meets her violent end in a shock twist at the end of the third season. In the fourth, Camila, the scheming sister of cartel boss Omar (Felix Solis), gradually emerges as a key figure, outwardly composed yet burning with ambition and hatred.

If there turns out to be a sequel – and the final sequence leaves the door open on that possibility – it would be fascinating to see what the future holds for Camila, Jonah and Charlotte. But for now, it’s bye bye to the Byrdes. Not exactly a fond farewell, given the circumstances, but they’ll be missed.