If for some reason you forgot that Barry was a TV series about a hitman, the Season 2 finale was a stark reminder. The half-hour comedy wrapped up its critically acclaimed second season in striking fashion, as the final minutes saw the titular Barry going on a murderous rampage that left a number of criminals—from both the Chechen and Burmese gangs—dead, as Barry shot his way through their hideout looking for Fuches (Stephen Root). Season 2, at heart, has been about the question of whether you can truly change your nature, and after doing everything in his power not to kill anyone all season long, Barry finally relapsed and revealed his true self—to devastating results.

Barry star, executive producer, writer, and director Bill Hader has been kind enough to speak with Collider at length about each individual episode of Barry Season 2 for the past eight weeks, and during our extensive chat about the finale—which he directed—Hader shed some light on how this conclusion came to be. Hader revealed that the final 10 minutes of the episode came to him in one fell swoop while stuck in traffic, and discussed the challenges he faced in directing such a complex, character-centric episode. Thematically, Hader also discussed how the Barry Season 2 finale could alternatively be titled “Fuches Is Right,” as everything he’s been telling Barry all season long came to pass.

The co-showrunner also revealed how they hit upon the idea to end the season with Cousineau (Henry Winkler) learning the truth about Barry, why that long tracking shot was inspired by Hader’s days on SNL, why they finally decided to make Noho Hank’s (Anthony Carrigan) feelings for Cristobal explicit, and how the conclusion to Sally’s (Sarah Goldberg) arc this season rings so true.

Personally, it’s been a joy to get to talk to Hader at length about each of these episodes this season, and to really dig into the filmmaking and thought-process behind major storytelling decisions for one of the best shows on TV, so my gratitude goes out to Hader for being so eager and willing to shed light on the Barry team’s creative process. And also to everyone who’s been reading these week to week. I hope they’ve been as enlightening and fascinating for you as they have been for me.

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Image via HBO

Check out the full interview with Hader on the Barry Season 2 finale ending below.

So broad strokes, when did you guys hit upon how you wanted to end the season?

BILL HADER: It was probably about a month into writing. We had that Barry was trying to not kill someone all season and we knew that the class had this truth exercise, and then it was this whole thing of what's Barry's truth, what would his truth exercise be and he keeps on wanting to change it because he doesn't like who he is. He doesn't like the truth of who he is. And then he finally settled on like, “Well I'll play Sam in Sally’s scene and not do my own truth exercise.” And then we said his truth has to come out, and so we have to have his performance in the scene somehow. I just said, “What if he just goes and kills all the guys at the monastery?” We talk about it in terms of drinking. He doesn't drink all, he's an alcoholic, and he hasn't drank all season and then he finally goes on a bender in the last ten minutes of the show. What if we do that? And then the other writers were like yeah, that would make sense.

Initially, he just went to the monastery and just started killing people. We just had that, there was no reason for him to be there and then once we figured out the Fuches of it all, it was like, “Oh, Fuches should go to the monastery!” Barry finds out Fuches is there and he's trying to kill Fuches, which makes him less of a monster. It's like he's there for a reason. He's there to kill Fuches, everyone else is just in his way.

It just kind of pops off. And in the way you shoot it too, you're not endorsing it. It's very upsetting. Barry is the lead character of the show and he can be very charming and we obviously have empathy for him. But you just feel really sad when he's doing it and you feel kind of disgust. I think Barry, after he comes out of that fugue state, you see when he realizes he's killed that young Chechen that he trained, he just kind of lost himself for a minute there.

HADER: Yeah, it's like the saddest moment. He killed that Chechen but he also killed the kind of younger version of himself. So we had the idea, he's going to kill Mayrbek, let's go back in Episode 4 and set that up, so that's why he yelled at Mayrbek and says, "Kill, kill, you gotta have that written on your forehead," or whatever it is. It's like this isn't fun and games, you gotta kill somebody and then you're like, “Yeah, Mayrbek can't be Barry.” You know what I mean? He sees Barry and he smiles, he goes, "Oh there's my friend. There's my mentor.” I wanted a thing that was upsetting. Even though we put in those drums and had the rain over it and all that stuff to give it an atmosphere, it's sad. It's a guy disgusted with himself.

And by the end of it, he's literally descending into darkness.

HADER: Yeah, and he's also trying to kill the guy. He's yelling, "Fuches!" Which to me, was always a way of—he's going after the guy that's right. Fuches is right about him. Fuches says, "You're a violent piece of shit, I built the whole world around you that will support that. I've given you a life that will support that" and you have Cousineau over there going, "No, you can change your nature," and it's Barry proving that Fuches is right. And he wants to kill him not because of what he did to Cousineau, not only because of that but I think on some level it's like, fuck you for being right about me.

It's super striking that Barry is really upset that Gene is in prison and he clearly cares a lot about him, but as Fuches says, he could fix it all by turning himself in.

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Image via HBO

HADER: Yeah, he cares about himself. He still cares about himself. He's like, this could all go away if you turn yourself in and say “Hey, it was me.”

This season has all been about telling the truth and that's his ultimate truth, which is that I am a criminal. I'm a murderer. And he can't own up to it.

HADER: We tried to get that he was going to kill Sally, and he is no different than Sam was kind of the idea that we were playing with in that moment. And then how those two things intersect whereas like, by her being afraid of her truth, she ends up inadvertently saving her life in a weird way. It was always like, is he going to kill Sally? I don't know, but he's definitely hyped up in a place. And this episode was really hard to direct because you had to tie up all these storylines but then you're also really in the characters' heads. How do you show that Cousineau is out of it so he's not going to remember what Fuches whispered in his ear? So you have him kind of staring at the floor.

I love that shot.

HADER: You just try to find these little moments that help it, you know? That was a tough episode. It was way tougher than Episode 5. In Episode 5, the story lends itself to being cinematic. With Episode 8, it’s harder to figure out what's interesting coverage and what tells the story the best without getting in the way and all that.

I was curious if after Episode 5 this would be kind of a more tame episode, but directing-wise, I thought you kind of stepped up your game. I really liked the use of color, the handheld, and even some of the iconographic shot composition that kind of really drives home the themes of the season. Like I said, it literally ends with Barry descending into darkness.

HADER: If you watch that, when I knew the last shot was him descending into darkness I went to Hiro [Murai, who directed Season 2 Episode 1] and I said, “Hey in Episode 1, he needs to come out of darkness.” So that's why you see in the first episode he comes out of backstage like, “Alright everybody let's go!” He's coming out of darkness. And then he descends back into darkness.

That's interesting.

HADER: I wanted to bookend the season that way. And then the idea of those lights in the hallway of darkness and light and this idea—again when you talk about it you sound like a pretentious asshole, but it's like he's short-circuiting. How do you show he's short-circuiting? Well what if he blows out the lights and the lights are short-circuiting around him and it gives you this feeling that he's blinking off? That Barry Block is dying and Barry Berkman is taking over.

I really loved the red that you used backstage at the performance and everything. I thought that was really striking.

HADER: I told [cinematographer] Paula [Huidobro] I would love to have some colored lights back there and just making it feel kind of unreal. And the long one take, the handheld shot that takes them back to the stage and Sally’s slapping him and all that. You know what the hardest scene actually to map out was that scene on the—everyone was like, “Oh, it's the gun fight, right?” No, it's the scene on the stage when they walk out on stage, because I wanted it to feel like when I was on SNL and you would go out and it would just be dark and the people would set things out for you and it's very kind of nerve-wracking and the lights come on and there's a go and everything. But it was going from Barry's point of view then you have to switch to Sally's point of view. That was really hard to figure out how to make the transfer the point of view mid -scene.

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Image via HBO

I definitely got the SNL vibes from that tracking shot that follows them the backstage and then her slapping him and then the kind of handheld that brings them out on stage.

HADER: That was definitely inspired by my anxiety of going on and just my own stage fright that I have. That's the kind of feeling you get, you're walking backstage, everybody else has already done their thing, they're all hanging out, they're all relaxing, having fun, and now it's your time to go out there and do it and it's nerve wracking.

It made me super nervous. I think the way you shot this episode really drives that tension through, and the score as well. I thought the score was really great in this episode.

HADER: David Wingo did an amazing job. I was really happy, my very last thing I had to do on Barry was the shot where it comes around him and they walk out on stage and then the camera comes around to his close-up and then the lights come on and you see the audience behind him. That is all visual effects. The visual effects put in the darkness and then when the lights come on, that's all tile, so there's no people behind me when we shot that.

Oh, wow.

HADER: They put in all the people and had to put them out of focus. So that was on Monday [May 6th]. That was this Monday. So we got it, and that was my final, like, are we done? And they went, “Yeah, we're done.” It was like, “Holy shit!” (laughs) Oh my God, it was only 14 months of constant work.

That's insane. So, you finished this Monday?

HADER: This Monday was officially, like, I'm off the clock. They moved me out of my office on Monday. It was a lot. But you still try to be funny in there. I still think Stephen Root, them not being able to hear him when he's trying to talk to Cristobal and then when they make up when Cristobal and Hank meet up and you kind of fully just get it, like yeah they're in love with each other.

I liked that moment that it finally kind of made it explicit.

HADER: Just make it explicit, they're in love with each other. When you're building to this thing, it's like you just hope you land it in some way and landing it, in turn, if you're being honest with the characters, is something that is incredibly upsetting. You have to stay true to it. You kind of just have to go, “Well, I hope people go with this.” It's just funny, accidents happen. It was raining when we were shooting all the stuff, it was during all those big rainstorms in LA when were shooting all the stuff. So my editor, Kyle Reiter, was like, “Ah, man, I gotta put rain over all the gun fight because it's raining outside.” We had music over it, and I said, "Will you take out the music and just play up the rain?” And I was like, “Oh, this is way cooler.”

I thought that was intentional, because it worked perfectly.

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Image via HBO

HADER: Yeah, that was a total accident. It just happened to be raining outside and he put the rain in because it was raining outside. So he was like, “Well, I'll let the rain bleed in,” and it was like, yeah, it really gives it a great feeling. But then, of course, my other editor is like, “Oh, it's like Unforgiven.” And I was like, “Fuck you, man! Now everybody's going to be thinking I did this on purpose for Unforgiven!” (laughs). But it's not, it happened by accident and then it was like, ah, forget it, who gives a shit?

You had that aspect to it and then the choreography of that gun fight for me was really inspired by those Andrzej Wajda movies, like A Generation and Canal, his kind of quick, just this very well composed action, you know? That was kind of not in it or glorifying it.

It's very horrifying, but not necessarily even in a graphic way. I think you did such a good job of putting the viewer in the point of view of Barry and Barry's headspace that it's just upsetting. That he's kind of relapsed, essentially.

HADER: Yeah, he relapses. The whole episode he's a ticking time bomb, and then he has to go off at some point and then he goes off and he goes back into the darkness and then, Fuches and Cousineau at the end of Episode 7, we were like, “Oh, what if Cousineau knows that it's Barry? What if we end the whole season that way?” That was something that was kind of, again, talked about. “Well let's shoot it, we can always cut it if it feels a little like, whatever.” I like it. I like cutting from that just because of the sound of rain was really cool.

That's why I thought the rain was intentional because there's just this darkness that has kind of invaded the space and it's just really upsetting and then what's the most upsetting thing that could happen in addition to everything else, it's that Gene, his mentor, his father, now knows that he killed his girlfriend.

HADER: Yeah, he killed his girlfriend, he killed the love of his life. It's always a fun kind of balance of let's shoot it, let's see if it works, but to be honest, all I think about when I see that scene is that while we were shooting that was when Henry went, "Hey, do you know this is the stage we shot Happy Days on?" In the middle of shooting that awful scene, he tells us about all that. And then, when I directed that scene with him, I was dressed for Episode 5 so I had that black suit on and the red on my face because we were shooting that in the next stage over. We were shooting the Lilly fight of her bouncing around the room, and they would set up, I would go over and rehearse with Henry and Andrew Leeds, who plays Leo, and figure out what we were doing and then I'd go back, we'd work with Lilly some more and then once we wrapped Lilly, I went over and directed that scene with Stephen, so, any behind the scenes footage I think I’ve got the blood all over my face (laughs). I wonder if Henry was just like, “What is going on in Episode 5? What is this episode?” (laughs). But yeah man, it's really upsetting but you just have to be kind of true to the characters.

No, it's great. It's upsetting, but it's great.

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Image via HBO

HADER: I will say though, I really do like the moment when he—we wanted to make it like the season was over. I remember Alec and I said, “He should be at a bus stop, you see that he planted the pen which gets Cousineau off.” Big, big discussion in the writer's room about how Breaking Bad that was, and I'm like, “I know, I know.” And they're like, “It's a little too Breaking Bad,” and I'm like, “I will fully take credit that it's way too Breaking Bad. I don't know how to get him out of this situation. These are the cards we dealt ourselves.” And fuck it, Breaking Bad is a great show. I was bit self-conscious about how Breaking Bad that moment felt. But, you do that, oh cool, he got off, Cousineau's off, all is good in the world. And then he gets the text, and then I was like we should bring back the Barry Berkman chant but with drums, like the Mad Max: Fury Road music. That's what I told David [Wingo]. I was like, “Do the Barry Berkman chant but like Mad Max.” I thought he did a good job.

Was there ever a version of this episode where Fuches died?

HADER: No. It was actually the opposite, there's more of a version of it where Barry just arbitrarily went and shot up all the guys at the monastery. Which made no sense and just made him a mindless killer. I didn't like it, but we had it. I pitched it and a day later was like, I don't really like this anymore, it just makes Barry a mindless killer. Ironically, I was being driven to the For Your Consideration event for Barry Season 1 and John Mulaney was hosting it, and I got caught in traffic. I was sitting in traffic and we just got out of a writer's meeting, and it ended with me going, “Yeah him going and just killing all these guys arbitrarily just doesn't work guys. It just makes him out to be a fucking psycho and I'm just not feeling this anymore.”

So what happens in Episode 8, like the entire Episode 8 just kind of came to me while sitting in traffic. Basically, that whole kind of last part, from him getting the text, to the shooting, and what happens with Mayrbek to the guys, every piece of that shootout and then the cutting of going to black and then coming up with Cousineau and his son and him learning, like that all came out, and so I remember running into the For Your Consideration event and before it started, I'm pulling Alec aside and pitching it all to him.

It's really weird that we were at this thing I was essentially pitching him the entire last ten minutes of Season 2. And Alec just went, “Oh, yeah, that's awesome! Yeah, that's it! Oh, awesome!” And I remember him going, “You should get stuck in traffic more often!” (laughs) I go, “I got it! Fuches has to be there!”

So we got to lay in that Fuches goes to the monastery and Fuches is going to have an army and Fuches goes and he brokers a peace between Cristobal and NoHo Hank. Everything's right in the world and then fucking Hank texts Barry, because we have that scene of him going, "Come and help us," and then going, "Don't worry, Fuches is here," Right? Now, Fuches is there so now I know why he's going there, he's not going there to kill everybody, he's going there to kill Fuches. The whole thing with like the lights flickering, him shooting the guy, us panning over to him shooting the guy and then he gives the guy a shot off screen, and then the guy gets shot in the head, and Mayrbek, the whole thing, the way you saw it, it just came to me real clear.

That's amazing.

HADER: I pitched it to him exactly the way you see it, pretty much. And then it never really changed after that.

That's really cool. I also found the conclusion to Sally's story really emotional and sad. I really love the way you shot that and the fact that she lied, but that's what spoke to people because they kind of want the lie.

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Image via HBO

HADER: People want Braveheart, yeah. People want the lie, and that woman says, "I had a friend who went through it but she didn't have the bravery that you did," you know, I mean how heartbreaking is that? But again, this episode could have been titled, "Fuches Is Right." Barry is a violent piece of shit and he was right, people only want the story, they don't want the truth. Truth isn't entertaining, you know what I mean? Why do you want to tell the truth? Why do you want to be an artist? It's a cynical thing, but it's a thing that Alec and I related to and it's bit almost like talking about our show in a way—without sounding too highfalutin—where it's like, you do an ending like that, going like, “Well here's what the truth of the thing is, he's a violent piece of shit,” in what’s ostensibly a 30-minute comedy.

We thought about putting bits into the whole end shootout and then just cut them all. Because it didn’t need it. And the people coming up to Sally and saying how good she was, I thought about that when we were doing location scouting. I was like, “Okay, she'll be here and then all these people would be coming out and then they should just go over to her and start saying you were great.” The way I wrote it was like, the guys come out and say, “Hey you were great,” and she just takes it. I was like, “Well, that's not interesting. She would be mad. She would be like, no, fuck this, you know?” She gets the thing that she wanted. It's really complicated. It goes back to her friend in Episode 3 where she was like, “Why would you want to talk about that?”

I thought it was a really great payoff to her relationship with the agent, I like how her agent reacted to all of that and then you have the two buffoon dudes come in and talk about Braveheart.

HADER: Yeah, they were like, “Dude, now I get it. Why would you do that?” And she’s like, “You so don’t get this.” But they're right. She's a hit because she lied. That just felt more real to the experience that I've seen and to friends of mine. I really like when she throws the table over where it's like, she's so terrified of telling that truth and how mad she is at herself after it. I love Sarah when she goes, "I lied, I lied. I went up there and I lied. You should go sign those people, they're real artists. I'm not an artist." That's what she wants to be. And now, she's going to get what she wants for lying. People just wanna see the woman speaking up for herself who’s telling the guy to fuck off. Someone very, very close to me had been through domestic violence and she said, “If I saw the guy again it would be kind of like what Sally did in Episode 4, like ‘Oh hey.’” It was a storyline that was very hard and I think it’s gonna continue being part of her storyline, about someone who’s a victim of violence, and Barry is someone who perpetrates violence.

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Image via HBO

Yeah no that scene in the lobby with her made me cry. And then the final sequence, where Barry goes on his rampage, I was just so sad. In a good way, but you’re like “Aw man…”

HADER: Yeah no you feel bad. That’s the hard thing is like, you’re gonna end the whole season like that and then you have an episode like Episode 5 with the little girl and people are like, “Oh man it’s so much fun and craziness and so dark and wild,” and in my head I’m like “Well…” (laughs). “Episode 8 gets pretty fucking sad.”

How far are you guys into breaking Season 3 now?

HADER: Not at all. I mean Alec and I—there are certain decisions you make when you’re writing Season 2 that in order to say, “Okay this is the direction we’re going in,” you kinda have to know where it’s gonna go, so we have those. But we had those at the end of Season 1 and a lot of it changed. But Alec’s on Silicon Valley right now and to be honest, I need to go take a nap. I just need to go lay down and sleep for a couple of months.

If you missed my previous episode-specific breakdowns with Hader, check them out below.

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Image via HBO