When Barry began, it was the punchline to a simple setup: a hitman walks into an acting class, then kills in every sense of the term. Co-creator and star Bill Hader was best known for his sketch comedy work on Saturday Night Live, while his partner Alec Berg had done stints on Silicon Valley and Curb Your Enthusiasm. At least to start, Barry largely built on those backgrounds, mining humor from its characters self-delusion. Haders title character wants to express himself, but also hide his true nature; his classmates and teacher all firmly believe theyre undiscovered stars. Even violent criminals like chipper Chechen NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) were largely comic creations.
But over three seasons, Barry has followed the its premise to increasingly darker depths. As Barry Berkmans body count continues to climb, his goal of redemption grows ever more unattainable. Its also undesirable for an audience thats watched him kill a fellow veteran, a dogged detective and countless more, and for characters whove come to see Barry for who he really is. The shows style has evolved along with its tone, skewing toward the surreal as events spiraled further out of control. The last time we saw NoHo Hank, he was in Bolivia, cowering as some unseen animal slaughtered his friends offscreen in a dreamlike scene of suspenseful horror.
In its fourth and final season, Barry continues this trajectory. Like Succession, another HBO series that will conclude its run on the very same night, Barry announced its end early, before new episodes had even premiered. The public knowledge that Barry is in its final descent frees the show to make dramatic, seemingly definitive moves, starting with where it picks up in the premiere: with Barry behind bars, after acting coach Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) and grieving father Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom) conspired to entrap him in last years finale. Barry has spent the entire series chasing absolution without true accountability. The latter, at least, has finally come to him.
Physically isolating Barry from the rest of the cast only emphasizes whats already been the case: Barry may be the shows namesake, but hes no longer its protagonist. In one midseason episode, he barely appears at all, a move that partly eases Haders considerable workload for the first time, he directs all eight installments, in addition to writing three while also underlining Barrys role as someone to be dreaded and feared, rather than rooted for. As Barry grows more estranged from his own humanity, hes capable of escalating acts of violence and evasion: slaughtering an entire monastery filled with adversaries in Season 2; embarking on an impromptu motorcycle chasein Season 3, beignet box in hand and escaping an entire army of would-be assassins sent by his former mentor Fuches (Stephen Root). In the fourth season, Haders performance is almost feral, playing Barry as a seething, self-loathing pit of rage. Hes less antihero, more supervillain.
Its up to other characters to fill the black hole at the center of the show, if not lighten its tone. Barry is so incapable of change even he seems to have acknowledged it: If I hadnt tried to understand myself, we wouldnt be here, he says in the premiere. Its more authentically tragic when Gene cant resist the attention hes earned by avenging his girlfriends death, or when Hank and his boyfriend Cristobal (Michael Irby) abandon their post-Bolivia idyll for yet another semi-legal scheme. (Fans of The Wire who recall Stringer Bells attempts to go legit may feel queasy when Cristobal voices a desire to do the same.) Barrys ex-girlfriend Sally (Sarah Goldberg) is essentially the series Job. After her career has gone up in flames, shes also the last main character to learn the full extent of Barrys crimes. The reveal gives Goldberg her latest opportunity to deliver what may be the strongest performance in a uniformly stellar cast, acting out Sallys panic as her unmoved mother orders from a drive-through. We no longer feel much pathos for Barry, but the show is acutely aware of his collateral damage.
Sally and Gene once anchored the side of Barry devoted to show business satire. Theres still some of that in this new season: Hank hires two hitmen who co-host a podcast, while CODA director Sian Heder makes a memorable cameo as herself. Now Im working with models in Halloween costumes fighting over a blue glowy thing, she sighs of the fictional follow-up to her Best Picture winner. I think when people see Mega Girls, theyre going to think, Whoever made that, made CODA. (One imagines Hader is especially attuned to such cautionary tales as he moves on from his own awards magnet.) But now that Barry has long since given up on becoming an actor, Hollywood is less the shows setting than its central metaphor. Its an industry built on the kind of illusions its characters construct for their own benefit, then attempt to sell to others.
Barry will always have good gags, many of them built on the visual mastery Hader has developed as a director. (Some of the best jokes are silent bits of slapstick, like a wide shot of a car swerving into a crash as the driver receives some bad news.) As Barry starts to cement its legacy, though, funny is only one adjective to describe its overall effect; eerie, melancholy, and gutting would be equally as accurate. The show continues to take risks through the eleventh hour, shifting gears halfway through the season in an audacious twist. But it also has a firm handle on what the story seems to call for in terms of its tone. Barry may be unable to acknowledge his own failings, but as it prepares to exit stage left, Barry knows exactly what it is.
Barry will premiere with two episodes on Sunday, April 16, with subsequent episodes airing weekly.