Editor’s note: The below contains major spoilers for the series finale of Barry.The series finale of Barry had many shocking moments, but seeing Barry Berkman’s (Bill Hader) story be translated into the screen as The Mask Collector, an extremely revisionist take on his life, was just surreal. What’s more: his own son John (Jaeden Martell) was watching with us, seeing all his trauma become entertainment fodder and smiling sadly at the screen as a cheesy movie turned his father into a hero. The HBO series always had a way of having as marvel at the screen while not quite getting what was transpiring, and this was definitely one of these moments, right?
The idea of a Barry Berkman biopic was one of the central plots of Season 4, especially its latter half, and it’s what sets in motion the chain of events that ultimately ends with Barry being killed by his former mentor, Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler). Only when John sits down to watch The Mask Collector at a friend’s house years later do we find out what happened after: Barry became a hero and was laid to rest with full honors at Arlington Cemetery, while Gene was sentenced to life for the murders of Barry and Janice Moss (Paula Newsome). Wait, what?
What Is ‘The Mask Collector’?
The movie we see at the end of Barry is nothing like any previous version of it we heard about before. In fact, it doesn’t seem produced by a Hollywood powerhouse at all, so it seems that Warner Bros. gave up the idea of a Berkman biopic altogether, and the project was taken on by a Lifetime equivalent. The Mask Collector is not a good movie, that much is clear, and it doesn’t look like many people are even aware of it, as John’s friend had to open a file in his computer to watch it, meaning it was probably bootlegged.
In The Mask Collector, the role of Barry is played by Jim Cummings, a young comedian and actor who’s got a few movies of his own under his belt, like dark comedies Thunder Road and The Wolf of Snow Hollow, the latter with an impressive cast that includes Riki Lindholme and the late Robert Forster. Cummings’ Barry is as far from the real one as possible: he is confident and righteous, with a young naïvety that almost seems charming. Cousineau is played by Michael Cumptsy and is like an amalgamation of Gene and Fuches (Stephen Root), only British and with a failed 007 villain vibe, and Sally (Sarah Goldberg) is played by Louisa Krause, having a very reduced role and looking like a pixie dream girl. For us, the title of the movie itself is a wordplay on the fact that Barry did kill many people (“mask” being “victim”), but for the movie, it means that he had to play many different versions of himself — soldier, actor, hero, father, husband, etc.
The movie is very different from the version we heard Warner Bros. was interested in making. Their idea was a “cat-and-mouse thriller” that had Barry as the villain and Gene as a sort of “final girl”, and Gene was opposed to it because it was mindless entertainment and would glorify Barry. He was right, but we know he really wanted the movie to be as big as possible. Since then, new facts in the Berkman case have transpired, so it’s natural that The Mask Collector is completely different from this.
What Does ‘The Mask Collector’ Mean Within the Series?
One of the main premises of Barry has always been making a clever satire of Hollywood. The series portrays the industry as a big monster of sorts, that finds something interesting, someone willing to do it, chews the person up, and then spits them out. Sally herself has been through that with her failed attempt at a show about her life even being aired, but not going forward. Gene is perhaps the best example, still to be chewed up by the monster as many times as possible.
The idea of a Berkman biopic was at first a play on true-crime movies, a trend that’s dominating the industry as of late. It doesn’t matter how horrible a story can be, it always has the potential for entertainment, and that’s what Warner Bros. wanted to exploit — only doing it became a lot more difficult with Gene killing Barry, so they dropped it altogether. The story ceased to be a chilling thriller and became one that, frankly, can’t really be understood after so many turns and twists after it became public. Still, the monster had to do something with it, and thus The Mask Collector was born: an oversimplification of a story that just isn’t true, despite having the “true story” seal that so many people want to ingest nowadays.
The fact that The Mask Collector even exists within the series then is this metaphor for how the industry doesn’t care if the facts are straight or not; they just want something to put into a can and sell. First, it was going to be a true-crime story, then it became a cheesy war hero PTSD story. Of course, the official version of the Berkman story is confusing by itself, but that couldn’t be sold by the big players, so it had to go somewhere. It had to be sold somehow, even as a cheesy, dishonest, and revisionist story about a killer who has always been as far from a hero as possible.
As for Barry, The Mask Collector represents his ultimate legacy. We know him: a veteran whose set of skills just isn’t useful in modern life who turns into a hitman, and then tries to move away from it by becoming an actor. What we see is what we get with him, as he is someone who’s done a lot of awful things, but keeps telling himself and the world that he’s a good person. His whole life is an act. By the end, he even became religious, so he could continue to pose as good, continuously looking for signs of his virtue even though there never were any. After his death, though, he got the catharsis he wanted and became a hero to everyone, but especially to his son. Maybe this was indeed God’s plan for Barry all along, but, if it was, He certainly works in mysterious ways.
All episodes of Barry are now available to stream on Max.