Season three of Ozark is in the works with filming taking place in Atlanta at the moment. The new series will be picking up six months after the events of the season two finale in which the Byrde family got their riverboat casino up and running. However, some fans are wondering why the villainous Jacob Snell (played by Peter Mullan) departed from the drama.
WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Ozark season 2
Jacob met a tragic end after he was murdered by his own scheming wife Darlene (Lisa Emery), who poisoned him with cyanide.
She killed him off after she was unhappy about his decisions involving the Byrde family.
Earlier in the season, Jacob had killed off Darlene’s surrogate son Ash (Michael Tourek), leaving her fuming and desperate for a child of her own.
The decision to kill the character off appears to be a creative one with Darlene now becoming a major player.
READ MORE: Ozark season 3 Netflix release date: Will there be another series?
She is likely to be a credible rival to Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney) in the third instalment after forcing the family to hand over baby Zeke as part of a truce.
Season two also featured an insightful scene depicting Jacob and Darlene meeting and falling in love in their youth.
The scene suggested Darlene had always held sway over Jacob with nothing changing over the years.
So, when Darlene bumped off her husband, it neatly closed their relationship and underlined the power play between the couple.
READ MORE: Ozark season 3 Netflix release date, cast, trailer, plot
Speaking about this flashback scene, writer Chris Mundy told Thrillist: “For us, we were really interested in the parallels between the Snells and the Byrdes as couples during this season.
“There’s no compromise in Darlene. In having the flashback to them as a younger couple, we see they were together for a long time, since they were really young. And she was sort of all-in the second they were together. And Jacob knew it.
“In a lot of ways, I think the drive he had was really helped by her. It always just makes sense that it was all as much hers as it was his, in a strange way.
“Especially because of how well Peter Mullan and Lisa Emery played them — even going back to season one — it was always a really loving relationship.”
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Mullan was wooed to take on the role of the drug dealer by Ozark’s creators even before the script was written.
Bateman told the Herald Scotland: “He blew my mind when I saw him in Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake.
“I was determined to get him. He was a big get for us. That was the [inspiration] that I used for this show, Top of the Lake, [because of] the way in which it was shot and paced and written and performed.
“I like that it’s got a 10-second title sequence so you don’t sit through credits before every episode.”
Writer Chris Mundy told the publication: “We had him in mind from the very beginning, to play our main threat, locally, and went after him, in a really aggressive way. I was a little starstruck.
“We wanted him so bad – we didn’t even have a script for him when we offered it to him. Thankfully, he said yes.”
Again, this suggests the character and indeed actor Mullan was a big coup for the Netflix series and the decision to kill him off couldn’t have been an easy one.
Mullan has gone from strength to strength since leaving the show with roles in TV series Mum, Cursed and film Marionette.
Ozark seasons 1 & 2 are streaming on Netflix now