‘Ozark’ Actor Felix Solis Dishes On Omar Navarro’s Big Scene

We only heard whispers of Omar Navarro, Ozark’s main antagonist, in season one and two before meeting him in season three. Upon each early mention the name carried more weight and we grew more concerned for the Byrde family.

(**Season four, part two spoilers ahead.**)

Maybe we should have known then that it was Omar we should have been concerned for. Almost everyone in Ozark that crossed paths with the Byrdes either had their lives ruined or lost; Navarro was no exception.

The seemingly all-powerful drug lord was no match for Marty and Wendy after they teamed up with Omar’s sister Camila, who ultimately betrayed her brother by having him killed and taking control of the cartel.

The way Navarro met his demise was intriguing. It appeared a man on the inside was helping him escape during a prison transfer, only to realize it was a work. As Omar began to head towards what he perceived as freedom (at least for a split second), he heard the imposter cock his gun, noticing his was empty; then he was gone.

Actor Felix Solis, who played Omar for 23 episodes in the series, shared the process that went into creating his final Ozark scene.

“I think that the one thing that I wanted to make sure that I did was just focus on what the actual moment needed to be and not how it was going to be perceived and how it was going to be sort of taken in and analyzed or so on, viewed,” Solis told me. “It felt to me that the very basic action of I’m being taken somewhere and I don’t feel safe but I’d just been given an opportunity to go and I understand it and so I’m going, but it’s not what I think it is.”

Solis said they tried different takes with Navarro’s final scene, each displaying a different emotional reaction to the situation, and kicked the tires on things going down differently, including Omar taking out the hired the gun, until arriving at a conclusion that made the villain “100-percent human.”

“I didn’t personally want to try to do anything that was either judging the scene or the way the scene was going or putting an opinion on it rather than just go, ‘What is the most important thing that I need to do? My only responsibility as an actor is to the character I’m playing and so what is the simplest, [most] straightforward action that I need to be doing in order to get the story across right now?’ Felix said when asked why he thought Camila may have twisted the knife with the illusion of an escape.

“And I just focused on that. I mean, the way that it is viewed is interesting and fascinating to watch. Everyone will have a different opinion on how they think that went down.”

So, was Felix surprised he made it all the way to the final episode, give the nature of Ozark?

“To be very honest with you, I wasn’t,” Solis said. “I wasn’t surprised because, it’s going to sound a little… I wasn’t concerned whether I made it to the end or not. I was concerned that I continued to play the role that I had established and that I was continuously giving him that credibility, that complexity that to the very end, whether it was at the end or not at the end, I was just continuously making sure that I played him to the best of my ability and to the most complex and interesting way [that I could].

“One day at work, I went up to Chris (Mundy, executive producer/writer) and I was like, ‘Hey, should I extend my Airbnb stay or should I end it because it’s ending soon?’

“He was like, ‘It seems you should extend it.’ And I went, ‘Okay, great.’ That was really it. That was the only way that I approached finding out or was curious about it. It was really just — we had to logistically figure out whether I was going to continue to stay or not.”

It’s possible that given the highly-collaborative environment on Ozark’s set, that the false hope that Omar may escape derived from Solis’ input that fans wanted him to live.

“Well, we took some time to talk about it,” Felix said. “We took a lot of time to talk about it. We took time to discuss, to address, ‘What’s the most unpredictable way to do this?’ What is the most unexpected way to do this?’ And one of the things that I shared with both Chris and Jason Bateman was that in my journey throughout shooting this show, I had been approached by people, I have had unsolicited messages and so on and so forth that had said, ‘We want him to live. We want him to make it. We’re rooting for [Omar] to make it.’

“And I thought that was interesting, I thought I’m going to share that with this writer and this executive producer and this lead of the show, just so that they were aware there’s something in the fan base that’s saying we want [him to live].

“I didn’t say it to say, ‘Keep him, don’t kill him.’ I just said it to say, ‘This is the pulse of the audience that’s watching about this character that I’m getting.’ And I shared that with them. So we talked a little bit about what would happen if he did. What would happen if he didn’t, how do we play that he may, or there’s a feeling that he might, and then it ends up not and so on and so forth.”