Who Is Going to Be Murdered in the ‘Barry’ Finale?

“So you’re a man of God now,” Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom) tells his captive, Barry (Bill Hader), at the beginning of the most recent episode of Barry. “You think because you’ve repented, you’re going to get to choose where you go after you die? You know where you’re going. And you’re afraid.”

Barry has funneled all of his life energy into religion, listening to preachy podcasts on his way to execute a hit on Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) and whispering prayers to himself as Jim threatens to cut his legs off. His ringtone is a church-y song that repeats words like “Hallelujah!” and “Jesus” over and over again, almost too on-the-nose, as if it were a parody of a real song Christians might sing in church.

But God can’t save Barry now—or ever, in fact. If God is real, He/She/It wouldn’t save killers like Barry. God would save someone like NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), a killer with remorse, passion, and fury over the death of his lover Cristobal (Michael Irby). Or maybe folks like Sally (Sarah Goldberg) and her son with Barry, John (Zachary Golinger), would be rescued. Even Cousineau, who accidentally shot his own son, might fit the bill of folks God would forgive.

Anyone but Barry, who is the only person praying to God at this point in the series.

But Barry’s prayers, somehow, work. In the show’s penultimate episode, “a nice meal,” Barry is awoken by sounds of scissors snapping, bones crunching, and other general torture noises—but they’re just noises. Jim has blindfolded and tied up Barry, hoping to get revenge on the hitman for murdering his daughter, Janice (Paula Newsome). Jim, however, hasn’t laid a hand on Barry. He’s only disoriented his prisoner enough to make him think Barry has lost his legs, that he’s bleeding out, and that he’s facing imminent death.

The blindfold forces Barry into hallucinations of his son, his wife, and Cousineau. Though Barry’s lines of dialogue are nearly incomprehensible, he mutters something about giving $250,000 to Cousineau. Jim presses him on the money. Why did he give a fat chunk of change to his acting teacher? Barry mentions some gobbledegook about covering things up, which is enough to convince Jim that Cousineau was in on the murder of his daughter the whole time.

Barry escapes from Jim’s grasp and heads right back over to Cousineau’s, where he plots to kill his old acting teacher for meeting with Warner Bros. to produce a movie about their twisted teacher-student relationship. Only, Cousineau is actually pushing back against the movie—he’s done everything except start a Change.org petition to keep it from happening. His current strategy: a viral Medium blog explaining why the movie disrespects his late girlfriend Janice.

In the beginning of this fourth season, we saw Gene struggle to keep away from the press regarding Barry’s story. Now, after eight desperate years, was anyone really expecting him to say no to Warner Bros.? A studio he would kill to work with? Begging and pleading him to make a movie with them? Fat chance. As soon as Gene hears that Daniel Day Lewis is in talks to exit retirement and star as his character, he retracts his Medium article and agrees to move forward with the movie.

That doesn’t help his case when Jim and the rest of the detectives involved with Barry show up at his door asking for answers about this $250,000. Maybe Cousineau was working with Barry all along? The $250,000 might have been to keep things quiet. Cousineau could have been in on Barry’s hitman act this whole time, and now, he’s profiting off the charade even more by signing a deal with Warner Bros. This isn’t true, and Gene attempts to defend himself, but he can’t convince Jim to believe anything he says.

“Gene, you are a great actor,” Jim says. Jim, do you hear yourself? You’re saying this to the worst actor on the planet. Gene could never create a performance as strong as the one he gives while trying to plead his case.

On what feels like the other side of the world (but is actually still Los Angeles), Hank and Fuches (Stephen Root) engage in a brawl for…what reason? Fuches wants to kill Barry, but Hank wants to stay on the down low. They both have the same desired outcome (Barry, six feet under), but they shoot rockets at each other, cut henchmen’s heads off, and send the hottest men to kill one another in a head-to-head showdown that feels pointless. But that’s what Barry does to people—he makes them kill recklessly and without reason. Hank ultimately secures the kill; or at least, he nearly does.

Elsewhere, Sally ventures off to Los Angeles after last episode’s horrific home invasion, where she seeks help from Cousineau, of all people. He’s too busy meeting with Daniel Day Lewis to offer her any help (brutal!), so she totes John over to his house, where she wanders around like a dazed victim of trafficking. (Essentially, that’s what she is.) She wanders up to a police officer to turn herself in, but his bloody eye—a shot that feels straight out of the horror movie Bill Hader should direct—distracts her so much that she walks away.

Watching Sally meander around a quiet neighborhood, on the brink of tears, holding her son by the hand while trying to grapple with her options—again, it feels like a horror flick. Everyone around her is a threat. Especially when NoHo Hank appears out of nowhere, pushing Sally and John into a car to use them as Barry bait.

Barry must either abandon his post to save his wife and child—and, most likely, die at the hands of Hank—or stay put to be safe and kill Cousineau. Obviously, he’s more likely to set forth on the former path. But is Barry ever that obvious? As we head into the series finale of Barry, the titular star has some choices to make. Even Barry’s beloved God couldn’t predict what’s coming next.

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