Barry finale review: A pitch-black perfect ending

❘ Published: 2023-05-29T08:07:50

Bill Hader as Barry in the Episode 8 finale

HBO

The Barry finale is cruelly, hilariously unjust, and therein lies its genius; in other words, “oh wow.”

There’s a careful, well-observed brilliance to Barry’s bleakness that’s always felt perfectly measured even when it’s overwhelming. In the beginning, there were small, cheek-puffing moments specifically designed to disarm; for example, “Don’t pull that gun on me, man” and “Why did you say that?” in the first season.

As the show progressed, the ease with which Bill Hader and Alec Berg deployed death never lost its shock factor, but the horror of the space between the terror started to take precedence over light, particularly in Season 3. The fourth season has taken a similar emotional shape to the closing stretch of The Sopranos, with flashes of surrealism acting as harbingers of a reckoning; a bit like Succession’s ending today, there’s always been a gnawing sense of inevitability.

The endgame has never been as clear, but Barry’s finale pulls off an incredible trick: it gives us exactly what we want while leaving us to deal with the consequences, an echo of the show’s incisive torment. Spoilers to follow…

Barry finale is a three-way collision course

In the last episode, NoHo Hank tried to wipe out “The Raven” and his men for good… twice: once with “ultimate badass killers” who were sent back with their heads in boxes, and again with a singular rocket that soared right past the house. Now, he’s at the “give Fuches whatever the f*ck he wants” stage, and he has just the thing: Sally and John, who’ll act as bait for Barry.

When Hank phones Fuches to tell him, he says he’s “no interested in making peace”, but the sight of John gives him pause. He may be a ruthless crime lord, but he doesn’t look at the young boy with ill will – it sparks something in him that makes him change his mind, so he decides to head over to NohoBal’s headquarters.

Hank has a one-way bond with Sally over their love for Barry. “Let me guess, you were in a bad place and felt like he was the only one who could help you?” he says, with tiny hints of longing behind his eyes. “Good luck, I mean it,” he adds, but when Sally asks what’s going to happen to them, he doesn’t have an answer. “It’s not for me to decide.”

Meanwhile, after the last episode ended with his quiet, intense eruption, we catch up with Barry stomping down the teddy and toy aisle of a supermarket to the gun counter to CeCe Peniston’s ‘Finally’ – I’m sniggering to myself just thinking about it. He walks out like Nicholas Angel trotting into Sandford, armed with multiple high-caliber weapons as he casually walks past other non-plussed customers back out to his car.

Sally finds closure with herself

Sally is a complex case: she’s undoubtedly a terrible person, but the roots of her selfishness and hard demeanor are tragic, whether it’s her abusive ex-boyfriend, her gormless parents, or being sucked into Barry’s corrosive orbit. Mercifully, the finale allows her to come to terms with herself in an emotional scene with John. She explains how they’re fugitives and that his dad is a murderer, and she’s still traumatized by beating the biker assassin to death in Season 3.

“I deserve whatever happens to me, but you don’t… you’re a good kid, you’re a good person, but I’m not… I’m a bad mother,” she says, weeping, and John gives her a big hug. For the first time, she clutches him not just as a mum should, but as a person who deeply needed it; these truths may be uncomfortable for her to bear, but she’s found the affection of her son.

Alas, what if it’s too late? Hank hauls her out for his face-off with Fuches, but he demands to see John or he’ll walk. Grungy, heart-racing music plays over this scene, cut with brief glimpses of Barry racing to kill them all. When Fuches sees John, he changes tack with Hank. He confesses to being a “poser” who saw himself as a “mentor” to other men, but he “dropped the bullsh*t and accepted who I am: a man with no heart.”

He then confronts him over the death of Cristobal, offering to walk away if he admits to killing him, and how he must hate himself and, on some days, struggle to live with himself. Hank resists at first, but he crumbles under the weight of the memory. “He was the love of my life… it wasn’t supposed to happen,” he sobs.

There’s no tricks from Fuches: he just wants John. Hank’s sadness turns to anger. “The deal’s off, go f*ck yourself,” he says, and everyone suddenly starts shooting their guns at each other, causing them all to crumple to the floor in a flash of bullets. A few die, others are left writhing in pain, and some are left blind and/or deaf from a grenade. As morbid as it sounds, it’s one of the funniest scenes in the episode – what the hell did they expect to happen?

Fuches sees Barry one last time

Fuches grabs John and tells him he’s going to “take him back to his daddy”, while Sally, disorientated from the blast, calls out his name. Barry pulls up outside and says one last prayer: “Lord I’m going to die tonight. Please give me the strength to sacrifice myself so that my son can live a long and pious life, and that by doing this all my sins will be washed away and I will be redeemed in your eyes, and I’ll be able to sit next to you in my rightful place in the kingdom of heaven for all of eternity.”

Firstly, absolutely absurd: no sacrifice could ever make up for Barry’s misdeeds, and his reliance on religion as comfort is only because it’s a power that can’t hold him to account in the real world; he can guilt himself, but he can ignore the voices of pastors and podcasts unless he agrees.

Secondly, his sentiment is pointless, because John is alive and well. He runs over to his dad and they embrace in a hug, and Barry sees Fuches standing in the distance. They don’t say a single word: Fuches’ expression turns to the gentlest smile before he runs back into the darkness, and Barry looks wistful; for all of his flaws, he was a genuine father figure in his life, and with that last act of kindness, he’s gone forever. The Raven has flown away.

Then comes one of two breathtaking shots in the finale: Hank sits at the feet of Cristobal’s golden statue, riddled with bullet holes just as his corpse was on the street. With strained breaths, he reaches out to Cristobal’s hand and grabs it tight. Panic consumes him as he feels himself slipping away, and the camera pans out as his hand falls limp; he died with his soulmate.

Gene’s revenge

Sally and Barry hole up in a motel, and Sally confesses to going to Gene’s house. She tells Barry that he’s been accused of having a role in Janice’s death, with the District Attorney reopening her case after their sting operation in the previous episode. She says he should turn himself in and take responsibility, but he has an unbelievable response that’ll make you cackle: “I don’t think that’s what god wants for me.”

She rolls over and gives him the cold shoulder, and by the time he wakes up the next morning, she’s already gone with John. Meanwhile, Gene is torturing himself by reading headlines about his supposed crimes, with Warner Bros now reverse-peddling the “Justice For Janice” campaign and refusing to “work with murderers.” His son also told the Los Angeles Times: “I figured out my dad bought my house with drug money… so he shot me.”

As Tom tries to leave the house, Barry barges in and demands to see Sally and John, but they’re nowhere to be found. Tom manages to calm him down, and tells him that Gene is in a “desperate situation” and Barry is the only one who can save him and “do the right thing.”

Hader’s performance in this scene is phenomenal, navigating a stream of conflicting emotions: Barry ready to move on his fight-or-flight instinct, but the guilt is starting to seep out. What if Sally and John are better without him? What if he’ll find redemption by turning himself in? But just as he comes to his senses, Gene shoots him. Barry falls into a chair, taking a moment to grasp what just happened. As he stares down the barrel of the gun, he says, “Oh wow” before Gene puts a bullet in his head. The scene cuts to Gene sitting on the couch next to Barry’s body as blood drips onto the floor. It was too little, too late.

A crushing epilogue

Ha! You thought it was over, didn’t you? Not quite. The episode makes another time jump, and Sally is now a theater teacher at a high school. After another successful show, she has a short conversation with the new AP history teacher, who asks her if she’d like to go for a coffee or a drink. She doesn’t bother with the pleasantries. “No,” she responds, albeit with a smile.

Her son (now played by It’s Jaeden Martell) asks if he can stay at his friend’s house, but before he goes, Sally asks if the show was actually good. He says it always is, and she lets him go. On the drive back, Sally looks over at the flowers on her car seat and smiles – but these distractions are fleeting, and she’s still struggling to accept anything good in her life; perhaps she’s doomed to spend the rest of her days worried about what could catch up with her.

Jaeden Martell in Barry Season 4 Episode 8

The last scene delivers the show’s greatest punchline: The Mask Collector, starring Jim Cummings as Barry Berkman. It is stylized completely differently to the show, full of soapy, melodramatic dialogue and action, and it has a devastating closing note: Gene is serving a life sentence for the murders of Janice and Barry, while Barry’s body was laid to rest in a military cemetery with full honors.

Gene killed Barry just as he was ready to pay for his sins. In doing so, he not only lost his path to innocence but paved the way for the thing he dreaded most of all: a psychopath being glorified as a hero. John’s tearful admiration as the episode cuts to black is the ultimate chef’s kiss: even in death, Barry won.

Barry finale review score: 5/5

The Barry finale is perfect. Bill Hader has been operating on another level from everyone else for a while, and now we’re ready for the next stage of his career – starting now.

Barry Seasons 1-4 are streaming on HBO now. Check out the rest of our coverage below: