Barry’s 10 Best Plot Twists, Ranked

HBO’s Barry is one of the greatest shows on the air right now, but it’s tough to recommend it to friends, because the premise is hard to explain. On paper, the story of a contract killer who decides to become an actor doesn’t sound like it should work. But thanks to Bill Hader’s captivating lead performance and razor-sharp writing, Barry deftly balances its various genres and tones.

This show can flit between hilarity to match Arrested Development and nail-biting suspense to match Breaking Bad. In almost every episode, Barry drops a massive plot twist that rocks the foundation of the whole story.

10 Barry Shoots The Chechens

At the end of Barry’s pilot episode, Barry decides to go through with killing Ryan Madison, the actor who introduced him to Gene’s class, only to find that he’s already been killed. The Chechen gangsters who hired him are waiting in a car across the street, ready to kill him, too, but their gun jams.

Barry opens fire on the Chechens in clear view of their hidden lipstick camera, sealing his fate for the rest of the series, then flees the scene and orders tea at a diner while a police cavalry shows up.

9 Taylor’s Attack Strategy Backfires Instantly

When Barry meets a hard-as-nails slacker named Taylor at a party, he offers to give him a ride. Taylor finds Barry’s intel for the stash house raid in his glovebox and insists on working with him. While Barry wants to take an incognito approach to taking out the drug baron flying into an L.A. airfield on his private plane, Taylor’s approach is to drive right onto the runway, blaring music from his stereo.

Unsurprisingly, this strategy backfires instantly. As soon as they arrive at the airfield, the car is riddled with gunfire and Taylor is killed.

8 Ryan Madison Is Blamed For Barry’s Crimes

What brings Barry to L.A. is a hit on Ryan Madison, an acting student and personal trainer who’s been having an affair with a Chechen gang lord’s wife. Ryan is ultimately killed by the Chechens themselves, bringing Gene’s acting class into a police investigation.

Ryan is shown to be a nice guy, if pretty dim, but he’s remembered as a criminal mastermind as the cops unwittingly pin all of Barry’s crimes on an innocent dead man.

7 Barry Has To Kill Moss

Barry unwittingly gets into Gene’s acting class by confessing that he’s a hitman and having the speech mistaken for an improvised monologue. When Gene relays this story in the season 1 finale, Moss becomes suspicious.

Those suspicions are confirmed when she connects Barry to all the other players in the investigation via Facebook. As she takes Barry back to the cabin to formally arrest him, Barry grabs a hidden gun and kills her.

6 Sam Shows Up In L.A.

Sally digs into her past when Gene tasks all his students with coming up with a scene based on their own lives. She writes a scene about the night she walked out on her abusive husband Sam, but when she calls her old friend to get more details, she realizes she’s remembering the night wrong.

When Sam finds out she’s performing a scene about his history of abuse, he travels to L.A. to try to stop her. This plot turn significantly raises the stakes and forces Barry to confront his darkest impulses.

5 Loach Wants Barry To Carry Out A Hit

Throughout the second season of Barry, Fuches agrees to work with Loach and wear a wire in his conversations with Barry in the hopes of recording a confession. However, as Fuches is trying to escape from Loach, Barry shows up and climbs into his room, where he confesses to everything and Loach gets every word on tape.

It seems like it’s all over and Barry is about to go to prison, but it turns out Loach doesn’t want to arrest him; he wants to blackmail him into killing his ex-wife’s new boyfriend.

4 Ronny Is A Taekwondo Master

After the surprising revelation that Loach is more interested in getting his ex-wife’s boytoy killed than avenging his partner’s murder, Barry delivered its best episode by far: “ronny/lily.” The episode is filled with plot twists, like the revelation that Lily is an animalistic martial arts master or Ronny’s wheezing reappearance at the store. But the one that kicks it all off (no pun intended) is the revelation that Ronny is a taekwondo master.

Barry tells him he’s been sent to kill him, but he’s willing to take him out of state to stay with family instead. Then, while Ronny is packing, he reveals a trophy room for all his achievements as a fighter. This signifies the beginning of a very bad day for Barry.

3 Barry’s Killing Spree

Throughout Barry’s two seasons, the titular hitman and Fuches have a tumultuous relationship, but Barry always ends up going back to Fuches. That all changed after Fuches threatened Gene in the season 2 finale “berkman > block.”

As soon as NoHo Hank reveals that Fuches is in his gang’s hideout, Barry races down there and goes on a killing spree, shooting almost every gangster in his path – including his trusty mentee – on his way to Fuches, who ultimately escapes.

2 Hank’s Chechen Pin On Moss’ Body

NoHo Hank gives a Chechen pin to Barry to thank him for training an army of assassins for him. This pin comes in handy when Barry finds that Fuches has taken Gene to Moss’ body and called the cops.

At the end of the season 2 finale, it’s revealed that Barry tossed the pin onto Moss’ body so that the cops would blame the Chechens for her murder.

1 “Barry Berkman Did This.”

The penultimate episode of Barry’s second season ends with Fuches pointing a gun at Gene’s head. However, at the beginning of the finale, “berkman > block,” he can’t go through with it. Instead, he whispers something in Gene’s ear.

As he’s questioned as a suspect in Moss’ murder, Gene remains in a depressed silence for most of the episode. Then, in the final moments, he remembers what Fuches whispered to him: “Barry Berkman did this.”

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3465 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

More From Ben Sherlock