'There's Only So Long A Guy Can Get Away with This' - Season 4 To Be The End Of 'Barry'

Anthony Carrigan, the Emmy-nominated breakout actor who plays NoHo Hank on HBO’s Barry appeared on the “Hollywood At Home With The Creative Coalition” podcast and confirmed something that the show’s star and creator Bill Hader has been hinting at for a while – Season 4 of Barry will be its last. “This isn’t the final season, is it?” the host asked hopefully. “Yeah, it is,” NoHo Hank chuckled back. Thus we can officially declare that Barry is approaching the end.

Speculation about the show’s impending ending started with the Season 3 finale, which we will try not to spoil, but those who are caught up will understand why the series seems to be beginning to say goodbye. Although the black dramedy has proven to be one of the best additions to HBO’s impressive arsenal of thoughtful, shocking, and sickly funny shows, it’s probably best for everyone that Hader and his crew wrap it up before things turn sour – nobody wants another Dexter.

The first hint we got that the showrunners might be ready to pack up shop came shortly after the end of Season 3, when Bill Hader sat down with Vulture to dissect the finale, saying, “There’s only so long a guy can get away with this. I know I feel watching shows sometimes, ‘They’re trying to keep the thing going and now it’s getting ridiculous to keep the thing going.’”

For a show that somehow stays grounded in its own surreal world, it wouldn’t make sense for Barry to continuously evade repercussions while he single-handedly murders half of Los Angeles on his way to a successful acting career. The cat-and-mouse game Barry played with the police and the Chechen Mafia in Season 1 was so compelling because we actually didn’t know if Barry was going to get caught, or if his new life would survive brushes with the ghosts of his old one.

Season 3 dared to push this theme further than the show had previously ventured as Hader wisely reinforced the idea that this is a world with consequences. Barry might be the single most talented assassin-turned-actor in Los Angeles, but his insecurities, his pride, and his need to be loved will always be at odds with his grisly actions and gruesome past. Just because the show is named after Barry, doesn’t mean that he’s a hero, and Season 4 will no doubt be Barry’s comeuppance.

As history has shown us, there’s simply no way to write a show about a sympathetic serial murderer without a clear vision of where the narrative is headed and when the other shoe will fall. As much as we’d love to watch a serial killer version of Gilligan’s Island, sooner or later, the audience gets tired of waiting for them to get off the island, and a show with stakes as high as those on Barry would cheapen the product by delaying the inevitable long past the point of being as compelling, electric, and devastating as the first three seasons of Barry have been.

And please, Bill Hader, once you end Barry’s story, don’t come back ten years later and make us watch a show about how his estranged son is a hitman, too.