It's been a long walk downwards for Bill Hader's Barry Berkman.
While the HBO show itself has gone from strength to strength in its five-year run — even with a three-year hiatus between seasons 2 and 3 — its titular character has gone from sympathetic anti-hero to outright villain.
Co-creators Hader and Alec Berg have confirmed that the fourth season will be the last for Barry.
Here's a quick catch-up to bring you up to speed and what to expect from the final episodes.
Where can I watch season four of Barry in Australia?
Season 4 of Barry will premiere on Monday, April 17, on Binge and Foxtel, with episodes released weekly after.
Seasons 1 to 3 are available to watch on Binge and Foxtel now.
What's Barry about?
Originally credited as a comedy-drama, Barry has flipped to the darkest of black comedies over its three-season run.
The show follows Barry Berkman (Bill Hader), a veteran of the Afghanistan war who works as a hitman under the influence and tutelage of "family friend" Munroe Fuches (Stephen Root).
While doing recon on a hit on an enemy of the Chechen mafia, Barry happens upon the acting masterclasses of Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler).
A single Cousineau class convinces Barry that he needs to put his criminal history behind him, move to LA and become an actor.
And that's exactly what he does.
But not without complications from the over-controlling Fuches, aforementioned mafia — including a relentlessly sunny mobster named NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) — and a string of murders that continuously dog our protagonist.
The series has received overwhelming critical acclaim, garnering 44 Emmy nominations and nine wins — two of those for Hader's starring performance.
What happened in Barry season three?
*WARNING: SPOILERS*
OK, we're going to talk about season 3 but first we have to go back to the finale of season 2.
Otherwise, known as when all hell broke loose.
Barry has always had a shadow of darkness over it that was kept at bay by Hader's charming portrayal and a belief that, underneath it all, Barry was a good guy.
That was until the finale of season 2, when Barry — deadset on getting revenge on Fuches for spilling the beans to Cousineau about Barry killing his ex-girlfriend — guns down tens of NoHo Hanks's men in a ruthless bloodbath, many of which he was friendly with just scenes ago.
It's the moment Barry goes from anti-hero to villain.
As such, the central question of the series shifts in season 3 from "Is Barry capable of change?" to "Is Barry — and by association are the people that have been sucked into his vortex — worthy of forgiveness?"
Which is how we end up at the beginning of season 3 with Cousineau in the trunk of Barry's car with Barry begging his former acting teacher to forgive him for killing his former girlfriend.
Which is … a lot.
The whole season has a back-and-forth between Barry and Cousineau bartering forgiveness, which inevitably leads the former to resurrect the latter's infamously floundering acting career.
But Cousineau isn't the only character getting his wishes granted in the most monkey paw way.
Sally (Sarah Goldberg), the object of Barry's affection for two seasons, finally gets the TV show she so desperately craves but it comes at the cost of her personal truth.
She then loses all dignity after her show is dropped and she unleashes a tirade on a former employee that gets her cancelled.
And that's before a vigilante looking for Barry — and sent by Fuches — almost squeezes the life out of her and she brutally beats him to death.
Barry offers to take the fall for the murder and she immediately hops on a plane to her hometown.
NoHo Hank and his love — rival Bolivian gangster Christobal (Michael Irby) — are living in blissful unity. Just kidding, they get bombed, separated, smuggled to Bolivia and threatened with disembowelment via panther before escaping together in the dead of night.
In most TV shows, deaths that occur early on rarely have any overarching impact, but the season 1 death of Detective Janice Moss (Paula Newsom) hangs like a, well, corpse over the entire series.
Janice Moss is dead but she is certainly not forgotten.
Season 3 of Barry brought in Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom), the frighteningly intimidating detective and father of Janice — who is hell bent on figuring our what happened to his slain daughter.
Which is how we arrive at a moment where Barry, convinced that he's rushing to save Cousineau, finds himself surrounded by FBI agents.
Turns out Cousineau is a pretty good actor after all and his crowning performance has allowed the law to finally catch up with Barry.
What's in store for season four?
Barry is in jail. This much we know from the season trailer.
And unfortunately — in some capacity — Fuches is in there with him.
Even from prison, Barry is still trying to get his former acting teacher to forgive him, but Cousineau only seems interested in ridding his life of Barry.
We see Barry — with a concerning amount of facial bruising — threaten to "find" someone but whether that's Fuches, Jim Moss, Cousineau or someone else entirely, we don't know.
We do know that the final of the series will likely leave fans devastated.
Hader has kept very tight-lipped over how Barry's story will end, giving fans this small morsel in an interview with Variety.
"The last two episodes, while we were shooting, were not fun. It was very sad," he said.
With the entirety of the last season directed by Hader, the actor also said there had been a clear path to the end of the story since season 3.
"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," Hader said.
"You realise, well, we could pad a lot of stuff, and just make story. But if we're going forward, it ends in season 4."
