Editor’s note: The below contains major spoilers for the Season 4 finale of Barry.Bill HaderandAlec Berg’sdark comedy — “comedy” in the loosest possible terms —Barryhas closed its final curtains. Fittingly, so has some of its talented assassins, mobsters, and Hollywood bottom feeders. The series has pushed more toward being a drama over the years and this season has made it forward even further, from NoHo Hank’s (Anthony Carrigan) betrayal (justice for Cristobal) to Barry’s prison escape.
The whole series has raised questions about the ugliness of show business, violence, and whether people can change without consequences. The finale wraps all of those queries together and, as expected, some of the characters had to exit stage right. The journey to get there shone a light on the masks each performer wore through their lives and how they either took them off or stayed hidden. Here’s the final fate of the main cast.
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Barry Berkman: DEAD
Barry has never escaped the military mindset that forged him — he either turns to violence, or runs at a crossroads. He tried to leave his criminal life behind by taking acting classes and putting innocent people in danger, tried to go back to the acting class as usual after Janice Moss’s (Paula Newsome) death, tried to earn forgiveness from Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) by forcing a comeback, tried to win Sally (Sarah Goldberg) back through weak apologies rather than owning up to his mistakes. Barry never stops to either make amends or show accountability for his actions. The finale sends him down this path again. After narrowly escaping death, Sally raises the point of turning himself in to the authorities now that Cousineau has been framed for Janice’s murder, but Barry leans towards running. He says that God “spared” him that night and that because he lived now, he’s “been redeemed.”
No one buys that, especially Sally; Barry wakes up to his hotel room empty. He goes to Cousineau’s home to look for his family furiously, but he doesn’t see them, only Gene’s agent, Tom (Fred Melamed). Barry is furious at first but then listens as Tom pleads with him, almost out of breath. Tom asks Barry to turn himself in to save Gene. Barry first responds by asking if he’s seen a little boy but then reflects and finally decides to turn himself in — only for Cousineau to shoot Barry to death with Rip Torn’spropgun. Barry may have wanted to repent, but his time escaping accountability and his high body countmade prison time a light sentence for his life of violence.
Monroe Fuches: ALIVE
Fuches arrives at NoHoBal armed with his crew waiting for Barry. He forces Hank to bring out John (Zachary Golinger) or else he’ll walk. Then, an enlightening exchange: For most of the series, Fuches has been one of the slimiest people imaginable — forcing someone he treats as a son to be a pay-for-hire assassin, trying to get that “son” arrested when Barry leaves him, and then twice leaving opportunities to escape the criminal world because he wanted Barry dead.
He tells Hank, inone ofStephen Root’s finest performances in this series, that he thought he was noble, calling himself a “soldier” and a “mentor” despite letting others do the dirty work. Fuches even admits that he pulled the worst in people by “fostering their natural abilities” in trying to make people like Barry killers. The moment is a rare period of honesty and vulnerability from Fuches and follows his journey this season. He knows he’s done horrible things, and he is not changing; in many respects, the ridiculous “Raven” persona is more honest than his previous life.
Hank deflects and criticizes Fuches; Fuches thinks, feeling bad for Hank, and offers to leave him alone if Hank admits he killed Cristobal (Michael Irby), that he was scared, and that he put on an act. It’s a fatherly moment, one of the first we see Fuches try to teach someone without trying to gain something. Hank starts to do so and Fuches listens, but then changes his mind. Fuches shoots Hank, and then jumps on John to cover him from gunfire as Hank and Fuches’ gangs start shooting at each other. He gets up, covers John’s eyes, and helps the child outside, returning him to Barry. He stares at his former protégé and then nods before darting into the night.
Sally Reed: ALIVE
Sally escaped a violent partner once by escaping into the night; she does the same here. Once she realizes Barry won’t change, Sally bolts with John and leaves Los Angeles. Before that, Sally tells John the truth about her and Barry’s pasts for the first time. She cannot look at John when she says Barry murdered people but turns to her son when she admits that she killed someone, too. Sally accepts responsibility and says she deserves everything coming to her in tears. John then hugs her, the most affectionate moment between the two characters so far.
Sally clings to men like Barry to feel safe when these violent men are the ones who put her in danger. Thankfully, she finally sees thather feeling “safe” around Barry is nothing more than an act, and she leaves, but her future is still muted. Years later, she seems happy as a theater teacher but seems distant when a new teacher asks her out after a performance ofOur Town. An older John (Jaeden Martell) tells his mom he loves her, but Sally responds by asking, twice, if the show was good. She drives home alone, staring at flowers given to her following the performance, and then her smirk dissolves. Sally survived after she faced accountability for her actions with Barry, but the violence of her life remained even after his death
NoHo Hank: DEAD
Hank has hadseveral reflective moments throughout his swan song. He understands Sally’s predicament, relating to the need to feel strong and call in Barry’s darkness. It’s a moment of quiet acknowledgment that he, too, needed outside help to feel safe.
Unfortunately, that moment does not last. Even after Fuches details his epiphany of self-realization, Hank deflects, saying he’s nothing like Fuches. But Fuches understands Hank’s act and gives the Chechen businessman an out: by admitting he’s violent. Hank starts to do so, sobbing while saying Cristobal was “the love of his life” and, struggling to find the words, saying “I just wanted to be safe.” NoHo Hank starts to be honest with himself, like Fuches wanted, and nearly admits who he is, a coward hiding behind the violence to regain control following his near-death experience in Bolivia. But he shifts; as soon as John comes out, Hank shakes his head, pulls his tears back into his head, and tells off Fuches.
Hank sits at the feet of the Cristobal statue after getting shot. He looks up, seeing the golden statue of his lover now vandalized with bullets. His last decision is to grab the Cristobal statue’s hand firmly before taking his last breath. Hank came so close several times throughout the series to moving on, but his need for safety led him to deny his happiness in favor of masculine protection and back to violence. That denial cost him his love and, eventually, his life.
Gene Cousineau: ALIVE
Gene appears on the brink. He’s been framed for Janice’s murder and has nowhere to turn. He pulls out Rip Torn’s gun and stares with the door locked. Tom, his agent, seems to think it’s over and has his suitcase packed to bolt if Gene kills himself. Then Barry shows up. And Cousineau emerges when Barry offers to turn himself in and does what he failed to do years ago: kill Berkman. Gene sits on the couch with a blank, still expression with Tom calling 911. The film that Barry had tried to stop,The Mask Collector, is a revisionist version of events that reveals that Cousineau is serving a life sentence for the murders of Janice and Barry.
The former acting teacher’s finale took a sharp turn, but one where Gene does realize his role in everything, long after his behavior gets him shunned from the industry — the harshness with which he treated his acting students, not believing Barry’s story, letting Barry get away with Janice’s murder at first and accepting money from the killer, trying to profit off Barry’s arrest through a vanity project that was, well, a Vanity Fair profile. It takes Gene being charged with the murder of his former girlfriend to finally realize that his ego leads him to succumb to petty violence. Perhaps Cousineau has had a similar epiphany to Fuches and realized he was always rotten — but much like Hank ultimately choosing to give into violence, Cousineau lets his own ego get in the way and pulls the trigger, only to wallow behind bars for his choice.
