Netflix’s Ozark was pulpy fun in its first seasons, but early on it suffered from a déjà vu problem. Too often, it felt like a serious version of Jason Bateman’s previous work in Arrested Development or a sweaty Breaking Bad retread, one that had hit the road and migrated eastward from the high desert of the Southwest to the rugged hills of the Bible Belt.

Like Walter White, Ozark’s Marty Byrde is an intelligent but selfish patriarch who drags his family into the moral muck of the illegal drug trade while trying to convince himself — and everyone else — that the ends justify the bloody means.

But by Ozark’s just-released final season, the show had evolved into something more than a neo-noir about a once ordinary upper-middle-class family that became key players in a Mexican drug cartel. As the Byrde clan grows in wealth and political stature, the familial drama takes a backseat to the societal kind — one that critiques the insidious ways that capitalism and political power work in America and the self-interested choices that elites make to keep climbing the ladder.