HBO's Barry Cast Previews a 'Brutal' and 'Tragic' Revenge Plot in Season 3

It's been three years since Barry, Bill Hader and Alec Berg's Emmy-winning HBO black comedy, was last on TV, and by extension, it's also been three years since Barry, the titular reluctant hitman/wannabe actor, played by Hader, was on TV. Season 2 concluded explosively, with Barry going on a vicious murder spree after learning that his handler, Fuches (Stephen Root), betrayed him. In a seemingly blacked-out state of rage, he mowed down almost every member of the Chechen and Bolivian mobs who stood in his way, just moments after breathlessly swearing that he believed people are, in fact, capable of changing, echoing the words of his acting teacher, Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler). He'd seemed ready, finally, to put his sins behind him. He saw, however briefly, a world where he could become good, one where he walked away from the violent tendencies that have been haunting him since the beginning of the series. And then, well, he killed all those people. Now, as Barry heads into its third season, Barry is still searching for a way forward.

If you forgot about all of that, you'd be forgiven — among the many productions that COVID derailed, Barry is one of the final holdouts. Thankfully, the show doesn't waste any time getting right back to it, as Season 3 builds on the fragile groundwork laid out in Season 2, picking up not long after that chilling final shot of Cousineau sitting up in bed as he remembered what Fuches whispered in his ear: that Barry killed his girlfriend, Detective Janice Moss (Paula Newsome).

"[Cousineau] is feeling a tremendous loss," Winkler told TV Guide. "He is feeling a tremendous hatred. He is feeling, 'I don't know what to do with my sense of revenge. I don't know how to carry this out.'" 

In a show full of complex relationships, the one between Barry and Cousineau has always been its most reliably captivating. Out of necessity, Barry has been lying to Cousineau since the day they met, constantly walking the tightrope between his desire for Gene's love and guidance, and hiding who he is in order to get anywhere near it. Knowing what he now knows about Barry has left Cousineau in an impossible position going into Season 3 as he tries to figure out what to do with this new information.

In fact, all of Barry's relationships are in flux in these new episodes, as the people around him flail toward new beginnings while he's still deeply entrenched in the past, too caught up in it to focus on anything else. Several scenes find Barry vacillating wildly between maniacal optimism and explosive, terrifying anger at the drop of a hat, leaving him emotionally unavailable to anyone he wants to keep in his life. The target of many of those dramatic mood swings is his girlfriend, Sally (Sarah Goldberg), who still has no interest in trying to know Barry completely. If Sally was ever at risk of finding out about who Barry really is, she's certainly not at the beginning of Season 3, as she spirals deeper into her own self-absorption.

"They're two people who can't see each other at all," Goldberg said of the relationship. "Sally loves Barry because Barry thinks she's a star, and Barry has finally found the one person who's narcissistic enough not to realize he's killing people for a living." Still, Goldberg said, Sally and Barry can only sustain that pattern of willful denial for so long. "These are two very fascinating characters who both have their own moral corruption in different ways. We're seeing the walls closing in. A relationship based on projections has a shelf life."

Not helping their relationship is the focus Sally has turned toward her acting career, which is on an upswing as she develops, writes, and stars in a TV series based on her history as a survivor of domestic abuse. It's a progression from the monologue she performed in the Season 2 finale, though the cruel twist is, of course, that her newfound success is based on a lie: Sally was only able to capture the attention of an audience after switching the direction of her character mid scene, falsely portraying herself as someone who was able to stand up to her ex-husband. It's a development that Barry delights in, toying with the meta comedy of creating a TV show within a TV show, as well as the minefield of picking apart your own life for profit.

"The commodifying of her trauma is this slippery slope," Goldberg said. "I think she ultimately is kind of removed from her own experience as it becomes something that's moved into a more corporate space. She's removed herself a little bit in order to create something, whereas in Season 2, [she was] very much using her art to connect with her past. I think she's moving into a more distanced place with it." As an actor, Goldberg remarked, it's fascinating to play; as someone looking in from the outside, she said, "I think she could do with a great therapist."

Barry and Sally are each in a place where they're in conflict about their respective histories — while Barry would rather ignore his, Sally is using hers to establish herself without trying to connect with what that actually means. Goldberg's inspiration for Sally's arc in Season 3 was another HBO character clawing his way ahead as he works for the knife: Succession's walking Roman Empire allusion, Matthew Macfadyen's Tom Wambsgans. "Here's someone who's constantly bullied, and whenever he's in the position of being bullied, he's so vulnerable … and yet, when he gets just an ounce of power, he becomes the bullied who is the bully," Goldberg said. "I was interested in exploring that with Sally. Who do you become when you get a little bit of power?"

Nowhere does that mentality show itself better than in Sally's relationship with her own answer to Nicholas Braun's Cousin Greg, Natalie (D'Arcy Carden), who's settling into a new role as Sally's assistant. It's another dynamic that's shifting in Barry's third season, as Sally and Natalie go from acting classmates to boss and downtrodden employee; one of their early scenes together finds Sally passive aggressively instructing Natalie not to speak in meetings before sending her away to make her a snack.

"I think she does know she's being a little mistreated, but I think she's also mistreated in every area of her life," Carden said of her character. "I don't think she thinks this is even a detour. In Natalie's mind, she's killing it right now. She's taking it in, and more excited and happier about it than Sally is." Although Carden acknowledged that Natalie has "stars in her eyes for Sally," she aptly described her character as "kind of a dummy, but not a full idiot." She was interested in exploring how Natalie, like many of Barry's characters, has a strong sense of self-preservation. "Cousin Greg and Natalie are not so very different," she said. "They're like these weird little survivors."

The show's greatest magic trick has consistently been its ability to execute a delicate balancing act between the two halves of Barry's life. More than ever, those worlds threaten to converge as the series digs into the fallout of Cousineau learning about Janice's murder from Fuches. Fuches, meanwhile, survived the massacre and spends the first portion of Season 3 siloed, hiding himself from the spotlight of Barry's rage, only to re-enter the picture later, out for blood.

"This season is about revenge, and how [Fuches is] going to get that," Root said. "And it's in a couple of brutal ways that harken back to Season 1." In particular, Root found the uncertain coil of Barry and Fuches' relationship, which has always been based on power and control, to be at its most compelling this season. "I love the fact that it's going to come to a head, because there's no way that the two are going to reconcile. I don't see them coming to terms with each other, as Barry heads further and further into PTSD and illusions. … Barry's too damaged to ever go back there, and Fuches can't get beyond the fact that he's not doing what he wants him to do." Root praised the show's writing for being able to make such a complicated dynamic work, adding, "It is tragic. They really do care for each other."

Barry's murder spree has also put him at odds with the show's most well-meaning figure, NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan). Like many of the oddballs who populate Barry's universe, he failed upwards into his position, becoming boss of the Chechen mob through the sheer coincidence of being in the right place at the right time, and in Season 3, Hank is forced to be a leader as he tries to clean up the mess left for him by the person he once considered a close friend. "I think his blind confidence has gotten him very far," Carrigan said. "But he is becoming a little bit more self-aware, which is kind of funny, because up until this point, he's always just been pretty aloof."

Barry continues to be one of TV's best character studies as it grapples with the conclusion its hero believed he came to in last season's finale about whether or not people are capable of change, and with what it means to want forgiveness, and how doing so can infect every corner of a person's life. Crucially, after two seasons and almost three years away, Season 3 proves that the series is still capable of mining new territory, which even Winkler, who's been acting for over five decades, found to be a departure from anything he's done before.

"Because it was so intense, and so varied … I was like a pinball shooting all over the place," Winkler said. He expressed reverence for Hader and Berg's "very clear vision," and happily gave himself over to the dark direction his character was headed. "My professional career started June 30, 1970. From that moment until now, with every play, television, movie, this is the most dramatic material I've ever navigated."

It's become the trend for shows to wrap things up neatly in a bow after a handful of episodes, but Barry remains a series that seeks to tell a cohesive story over a long period of time, the kind we don't get very often anymore. It's also a show adept at rewarding its fans for their patience, and its madcap confidence in what it's doing makes the experience of watching Season 3 as deliciously tense as ever. And if you're grateful to have Barry back, the cast was just as grateful to return to it.

"None of us took it for granted," Goldberg said. "Everybody has a slightly new gear to their performance because of the absolute hysterical joy mania just to be back, and I think that filtered into the season."

Season 3 of Barry premieres Sunday, April 24 at 10/9c on HBO and HBO Max.

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