HBO’s dark comedy-drama Barry has always been, in some ways, a fish-out-of-water story, with Bill Hader’s titular hitman trying to reinvent himself as an actor in Hollywood. Season 4 of the show opened with Barry acclimating to yet another new environment—prison—after getting arrested mid-killing at the end of Season 3.
Some fans thought that the show might run out of narrative runway after Season 3, with Barry’s incarceration making sense as a conclusion to his story. But the show’s star and c0-creator Bill Hader wanted to explore the whole new complicated array of challenges that prison would present for the character.
“It was very much in the writing and the storytelling,” Hader told Variety. “I mean, a lot of people after last season were like, ‘Why are you doing another season? It should have just ended.’ But to me, there are still so many questions with the other characters, and with Barry — and there’s so many things unsaid.”
With the Season 4 finale having just aired on HBO, here’s what we know about where the show might go next.
Will Barry get a Season 5?
Sadly not. Hader has resolutely stated that Barry will end with Season 4.
“What happens in Season 4 is structurally radical in some ways, but it made sense for what I think the characters needed to go through, and what I think the whole show is always kind of headed towards,” he said. “You realize, well, we could pad a lot of stuff, and just make story. But if we’re going forward, it ends in Season 4.”
“I’ve always kind of seen each season as a movie. Like each season is two movies, or one four-hour movie. It’s like a giant story told in four parts,” he continued. “I’ve never seen it in terms of a TV show, I guess—even though it is a TV show. Even when we’re cutting right now, I don’t even think I’ve ever referred to it as the “series finale” when we’re working on the last episode. It’s just the end of the story, you know what I mean?”
Hader will continue working—and we can never rule out a Barry spin-off.
Hader told Men’s Health previously that his next professional goal is to make a feature film. “I’d like to make a movie,” he said at the start of the season. “I’d like to make something that’s an hour and a half, so that’s, like, the equivalent of three episodes, and just focus on that amount of time.”
He’s said that he’s got a number of ideas in the works, one of which is a horror movie. And anyone who’s seen Sally’s (Sarah Goldberg) numerous terrifying visions throughout Season 4 of Barry would tell you that Hader is more than up for that task.
And while there’s been no official word on any kind of spinoff, the character of NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) has been so universally beloved since the show began—including by Hader and company, as he was originally supposed to be killed off early in the show’s run—that it could be a possibility for a story that follows Hank (a la Better Call Saul) to continue the Barry story.
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
