In the last episode of season three of the hit HBO dark comedy-turned-drama Barry, the protagonist’s girlfriend Sally Reed – played by Sarah Goldberg – is driven to murder by impossible circumstances.
The man that Sally kills is Shane Taylor (Anthony Molinari), a member of a biker gang run by Taylor’s sister Traci, played by Dale Pavinski and Jolene Van Vug, respectively. The biker gang is instructed by Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root) to kill Barry (Bill Hader) a few episodes prior, but when they try to, Barry manages to escape, stealing one of their bikes in the process.
Later on in the finale, when Sally is at Barry’s apartment to ask him for help with getting revenge on her former assistant, Shane shows up and knocks Barry unconscious. The biker gang member then goes for Sally, attempting to choke her to death, but the former TV writer and actress stabs him in the neck with a steak knife. The man’s eye starts bleeding, but he’s still walking and talking when Sally grabs a metal baseball bat and finally beats him to death in a striking silent scene set inside Barry’s small soundproofed studio.
Barry wakes up and drags Sally away from the gang member, but it’s too late. He’s dead. He instantly takes the fall for his girlfriend, telling her to say “Barry did this.”
Shane Taylor wasn’t a very relevant character in Barry, but his death becomes a major plot point in Sally’s character arc going into season four. In episode six of that season, Sally has what appears to be a dream about Shane as she hears his voice come from outside her house where she is alone with her son. Still in the dream, she gets up from her bed and a man completely covered in a black outfit lurks behind her and seemingly destroys the inside of her house and the walls by running into it with a car. This seems to indicate that she doesn’t even recall Shane’s appearance, but that his voice and his memory still severely haunt her.
All seasons of Barry are available to stream now on Max/HBO Max.
