‘Barry’ season 4 time skip, explained

Barry just made an audacious decision. In Sunday’s newest episode, “Tricky Legacies,” the dark comedy/drama decided to move the action ahead by eight years. Not only are Barry (Bill Hader) and Sally (Sarah Goldberg) living together under the assumed identities of “Clark” and “Emily,”the two of them have started a family together. Yes, Barry and Sally have an eight-year-old son together: John (Zachary Golinger).

While the series had previously dabbled in a life of domesticity for the killer (season 1 even includes a fantasy sequence in which Barry and Sally have two children), the move is a hard left turn for the status quo. The series is currently in its final season, and within the narrative, Barry had just escaped a high-security prison, with several characters gearing up to protect themselves from an anticipated wave of revenge. Rather than showcase the fugitive life or a life of vengeance for its titular character, however, Barry‘s writers opted to jump ahead and focus on Barry’s woeful life with an increasingly depressed Sally.

Where are Barry and Sally now?

With little holding Sally to her previous life, the character made the choice to leave LA and run away with Barry at the end of episode four. When episode five picks up, Sally and Barry are living a sheltered life in the desert. Their son, John, is homeschooled. Sally is detached from her son, while Barry is overly attached, using his child as a therapist.

Barry is committed to keeping his son on the straight and narrow. That means no video games, very little socializing, and plenty of religious proselytizing. Sadly, John has very few friends; when he does interact with another child his age, it’s because he gets in a fight with another boy. Barry makes him apologize, clearly trying to curb any tendencies towards anger his son might have inherited from him. But his obsession with his son’s safety, behavior, and morality extends to fearmongering tactics and emotional abuse. When John’s new friend teaches him how to toss a ball, Barry begins to rally against sports, culminating in a sequence in which Barry forces his son to watch videos of children dying in freak sports accidents. John is unable to sleep after that and cries to his parents, which Barry ignores.

Sally, meanwhile, is working as a waitress. Barry and Sally argue about her frequent drinking, and it does not appear that the two have the shine for each other they once did. Sally has wilted from her once-passionate persona. Now constantly disguised in a brown wig, Sally has turned into a quietly contemplative person. But that doesn’t mean she’s totally beaten down: When a coworker hits on her, proposes an affair, and makes flippant remarks about the value of life, Sally chokes him and later lies about missing money from the register, prompting her boss to fire her bothersome coworker.

What happened to NoHo Hank, Gene Cousineau, and the other characters?

Unfortunately, characters such as NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) do not appear. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Hader explained that he wanted to do an episode focusing solely on Barry and Sally: His pitch was, “What if this was just a quiet episode about Barry, Sally and their kid?”

Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) does appear towards the end of “Tricky Legacies.” While Hader says that originally there was going to be a plot about Gene traveling through Israel, the writers chose to instead have him pop up without explanation, leaving the audience as clueless to his whereabouts in the interim years as anyone else. Cousineau is now disheveled, with long hair and a beard. It’s clearly been a while since he’s been able to groom, and even a studio executive has trouble recognizing him. But Cousineau still seems to have some of his hunger for fame: He comes out of hiding despite the very real threat against his life, and he pitches a movie about Barry’s crimes. News of that movie’s development ends up spurring Barry’s decision to kill Cousineau. Don’t worry, though, the episode ends there, so Cousineau’s safe (for now).

Another surprising return is Natalie (D’Arcy Carden), Sally’s former assistant with whom she got into a profanity-laden altercation. Sally appears to be a fan of Natalie’s show, Just Desserts — or, at least, she’s following the show closely. Not only does Just Desserts (which now has seven seasons) occupy a similar cultural niche to that of sitcoms like The Office, Friends, or Seinfeld, Natalie’s being invited to all sorts of talk shows, and has become something of an icon herself. Sally does not seem pleased by this, and it showcases how far she’s fallen as a result of her connection to Barry.

Why did Barry jump so far ahead in the future?

Barry has never been shy about the particulars of its main romantic relationship. Goldberg herself has even stated that Barry and Sally’s relationship is not a love story, and there have been many, many indications that the two are stuck in a tragic, toxic relationship. Ultimately, Hader revealed that the reason why he chose to move the action ahead eight years was because the interim wasn’t very interesting to him.

Viewers will have to assume that Barry and Sally had an arduous and tedious journey to their current circumstances, and that the other characters have not come across Barry or Sally for some time now; the particulars aren’t important to the narrative. Hader specifically references Detective Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom), who was last seen hunting down Barry following his prison escape. Rather than worry too much about how Barry eluded the hardened cop, Hader simply answers that Barry waited for a few days for the heat to die down before making his next move.

Hader further explained that the surprise timeskip put Barry in a much more interesting situation than simply being on the run. “In season one, he has a daydream about he and Sally and a boy taking a family picture, and so I was like, ‘Well, maybe that’s what he wants,’” Hader said. “So, it was more about them being there. It’s been eight years, and this is where they’re at. That was just more interesting to me.”

Barry‘s timeskip, and its addition of John to the narrative, is a bold choice. Not only does it interrupt the continuity of the narrative of the final season, it serves as a culmination to several of the themes present in the show. Barry has finally achieved everything he’s ever wanted, or so it seems. He has a wife, a child, a family who has to love him and be with him forever — Barry has succeeded. It’s the perfect capstone to the series: Barry now has everything to lose, and the stakes have never been higher.