‘No words came out of my mouth’: Henry Winkler shares his shock at discovering how ‘Barry’ ends

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the series finale episode of Barry

Barry star Henry Winkler has shared his thoughts on the show’s just-aired finale episode, saying he had “no idea how to process” the shock revenge twist ending of episode 8. Titled Wow, the last-ever episode of the HBO black comedy saw Bill Hader’s Barry face a long-awaited comeuppance at the hands of Winkler’s Gene Cousineau. 

After a series-long battle that saw Barry kill Gene’s girlfriend, and effectively send him into exile before framing him for his lover’s murder, Gene exacted his ultimate revenge on Barry by shooting him dead in the final episode. Speaking of the climactic moment during an interview with Variety, Winkler said that he first learned of the Barry-Gene scene halfway through filming season four, and the revelation left him speechless. 

“No words came out of my mouth,” Winkler recalled. “I had no idea how to process that I killed the man who shot the woman I loved.” When asked about the long period of silence that followed Gene’s murder of Barry, Winkler said the moment reflected his character’s emptiness, since he “just sat there and stared into the abyss, which would become my prison cell.” 

Shocking as it may have been, Winkler’s speechlessness following Barry’s finale is a far cry from what he endured during the penultimate episode, with the actor recently revealing that he needed a change of underwear while filming a scene opposite Robert Wisdom’s Jim Moss. 

In any case, the last batch of episodes have proven climactic for almost all of Barry’s ensemble cast, with Anthony Carrigan recently reflecting on the beautiful-yet-terrifying final moments for his character NoHo Hank. As for the future of his role as Gene — which earned Winkler three Emmy award nominations and one win — while at the time the actor said he’s unsure whether the acting mentor would be sent to prison or return to teaching an acting class, Barry‘s audience learned that Cousineau had been imprisoned – at least as far as the in-universe film adaptation of the show’s events is concerned.

In what was perhaps HBO’s biggest-ever night of appointment viewing, Barry‘s final-ever episode aired immediately after that of Succession‘s, prompting an equal level of fanfare among viewers.