Editor’s Note: The below contains major spoilers for the series finale of Barry.“Oh, wow.” The final words of the ruthless killer turned mediocre actor turned delusional father Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) inBarrywere both his funniest and a precursor to the show’s best and darkest punchline yet. After being shot once in the chest by his former acting teacher and friend Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) right as he was pledging to turn himself in, he fell into a chair before looking up just in time to utter one last line reading before getting shot through the head. In many ways, it echoedthe conclusion of Season 3, where Barry had been right on the cusp of potentially redeeming himself before it was cut brutally short. There is a small hint of satisfaction to both, but it was still subsumed by a feeling of emptiness that was intentional. The almost cosmic joke was that, even after all this time supposedly spent trying to get on a better path with the repeated refrain of “starting now,” Barry was always only just one step away from the darkness.
However, it’sBarry’s series finale that makes everything else look like merely the initial setup to this last punchline. Simply and humorously titled “Wow,”the show denies any catharsis in favor of an unexpectedly comedic conclusion. Even on a night that had the spectacular series finale ofSuccession, itself the end of an era, what Hader managed to pull off withBarryproved to be its own fitting culmination to all the buildup. Though it wasn’t always as surefooted as it could have been throughout its finale, with the prior season still remaining the show’s best, it was all worth it for this glorious, absolute showstopper of a conclusion. While the last shot of both Barry and Gene is itself a magnificent one, framed as though they are both on a stage with an audience literally clapping, it is only the beginning of the end. The final sequence of events, removed from basically all that we had come to know up until now, pushes us off the cliff into humorous waters that we have always been right on the edge of being drowned in.Barryhas always been about skewering the way we extract stories from their genuine emotions to create hollow narratives, using the idea of “truth” as a cudgel until it shatters, and this was that on full display.
RELATED:Bill Hader Filmed That ‘Barry’ Series Finale Scene in Two Takes
‘Barry’s Series Finale Was the Show At Its Best
After cutting away from this intentionally anticlimactic final confrontation, Sally (Sarah Goldberg) has managed to start a new life for herself and Barry’s son John (Jaeden Martell) away from all the chaos. Years have passed, and she is now a theater director at a high school where she puts on a production that finally gets her the recognition she has been so desperate for. Yet she remains as insecure as ever, pressing John about whether the show was actually any good. When he offers her the praise she needs and then says that he wants to go over to a friend’s house that night, she agrees before heading home alone. She is unaware that her son is actually going to watch the movie that was finally made about Barry that, to put it lightly, is wildly and hilariously inaccurate. Known asThe Mask Collector, an already ridiculous title that sounds like it would be found in the bottom of a bargain bin after being sent straight to video, it sees actorJim CummingsplayingBarry and doing battle with the movie’s own faux version of Gene. Playing out with the most forced dialogue, it is the precise inverse of what actually happened and is the most scintillating sequence of all.
Anything and everything the series set out to do is sanded down to make a movie version that is hilariously empty. This culminates in making Barry into a martyr where, after he is depicted as having been gunned down by his malicious acting teacher, the end text informs us that he was laid to rest in the Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. It is a ludicrous redemption that may win over unknowing audiences just looking for an empty action film, but no one who actually knew him would buy it… right? When the episode cuts back to John, he begins smiling and appears on the edge of tears before the series also cuts to black. This was not the true ending of his father’s story, but it is the one that he has now become impacted by. It was one sickening closer that cut to how, despite all the ways we like to put stories up on a pedestal about revealing the truth of existence, they can just as easily obscure it and offer easy answers for us to fall into.
The truth for John, that his father was a bad person who was unceremoniously killed off right before he promised once more that he would actually do the right thing, may not be something that he would have accepted. For all the talk of stories being about authenticity, the supposed end goal that all the vapid characters were striving for, it was revealed time and time again to be just that: talk. All of them would sell the very concept of truth if it meant they could get a moment in the spotlight. Gene, who came back from hiding to supposedlyspeak up against the movie that he felt would misrepresent the story, rolled over as soon as he felt his image could benefit. Barry, who continually lied to himself and others in everything he did, ended up constructing an existence that was literally all a fake performance in the vein ofSynecdoche, New Yorkthough with all the life stripped from it. Sally, long the one we hoped would find some sort of salvation and truth, had only gained what she had after lying on stage to widespread acclaim. No matter how many times they said they as storytellers were trying to pursue some sort of transcendent or existential truth, they were all just hucksters looking to boost their own egos. It would be tragic if it weren’t simultaneously hilarious to see this all unfold. All of them were hypocrites and the show was about the journey to finally stripping away the vacuous pretenses they put forth to get to a more hauntingly humorous truth.
‘Barry’s Closing Scene Is A Final Poetic Punchline
This brings us back to John and the final story we are given glimpses of. The fact that he goes from initially seeming to be bored by the movie, with all its many canned lines and even more strained interpretations of what actually happened, to being moved by it, is the culmination of allBarryhad been playing around with. With each lie that has been told, be it on the various stages or off them in the cruel hellscape that was its Los Angeles, we were brought closer to a more grim truth about how dishonesty will endure more than anything. This movie, while the most dishonest and deceptive thing we’ve seen yet, will now be more real than who Barry actually was. He got his legacy despite never earning it. All one can do is laugh at the final realization that, no matter how much chaos the show faced, Hader really did it. By uncovering a clarity as cutting as it was comedic, he made a forgettable action movie the most frightening and funny finale to end on. “Oh wow” indeed.
