Ratings The episode was watched by 0.234 million viewers, earning a 0.05 in the 18-49 rating demographics on the Nielson ratings scale. This means that 0.05 percent of all households with televisions watched the episode. This was a slight decrease from the previous episode, which was watched by 0.237 million viewers with a 0.07 in the 18-49 demographics.
Critical reception "wow" received acclaim from critics, however some were left underwhelmed by the final scene. The
review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes reported an 86% approval rating for the episode, with an average rating of 9.4/10 and based on 14 critic's reviews. The site's consensus states: "Clever and tidy,
Barrys finale lacks a certain "Wow" factor but serves as a fitting coda to a series that always defied audience expectations." Ben Rosenstock of
Vulture gave the finale a perfect 5 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "It isn't a huge surprise that the show does grant Sally and John some way out in the end.
Barry is a dark show but rarely a completely hopeless one. There's a consistency to the moral universe of this series, and in this finale, one pattern holds true: Those who deny their true selves will be punished, while those who endure the pain of seeing themselves with clear eyes will be shown mercy." Stuart Heritage of
The Guardian also gave the finale a perfect 5 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "
Barry has concluded with 'wow', an episode of television that pulled off the remarkable job of creating a definitive ending and leaping forward a decade (for the second time in a month), while still managing to be the bitter Hollywood satire it always was." Matt Schimkowitz of
The A.V. Club gave the episode a "B+" and wrote, "Over its short run,
Barry became a show about the ways we perceive, mythologize, and try to shed ourselves of the responsibility of the violence around us. The ways we turn our heads from it and try to process it.
Barry treated its characters as bad guys in a society that celebrates them." Brian Lowry of
CNN wrote, "In metaphorical terms the
Barry finale, similarly, couldn't entirely redeem the season's shortcomings. But in the moments when it was good the episode captured what had made the series so distinctive and did, indeed, have a 'Wow' factor." Josh Spiegel of
/Film wrote, "I'll be honest: while I thought most of 'wow' did an excellent job of wrapping up the stories of these characters, the epilogue — as well as the throughline of what happens to our version of Gene, not the movie version — rings somewhat false."
Alan Sepinwall of
Rolling Stone wrote, "There is so much greatness in the finale, just as there has been in
Barry as a whole, but it's an oddly muted way to go out — even if you consider the real end of the story to be Barry's final words and the cut to black." Jeremy Gordon of
The Atlantic wrote, "By the end, the show was out of surprises. There were no more 'WHAT?!' moments, no more inventive narrative jolts, few examples of that singular comedic register. But perhaps that's the truth about bad people who've finally shed their delusions: They're not that surprising, or funny. In its final episodes,
Barry leaned into tragedy and resignation because that's all its characters had left."
Final scene The final scene, in which a teenage John sees Barry's biopic, drew analysis. Matt Schimkowitz of
The A.V. Club said, "In its final frame,
Barry asks us to consider what effect watching violence has on us as viewers. With John's slight smile of relief, the mayhem that Barry presented is now fodder for mindless entertainment that belittle the real victims."
James Poniewozik said, "As for Barry, if he was never redeemed in reality, he has been by fiction, in a made-for-Hollywood lie. It's the perfect crime." Goldberg gave her own thoughts, "it felt like it was a very dark commentary on humanity and what we choose to believe. And, you know, you could say the whole of
Barry was a metaphor for America." Carrigan said, "The ending is essentially what Hollywood would do to this story." In contrast, Alan Sepinwall criticized the thin characterization of John and also questioned the logic behind the scene, "the series has kept just enough of a toe dipped into the real world that it requires some pretty massive leaps in logic for this to work. You could handwave some of it away as
The Mask Collector playing fast and loose with the facts in the manner of many Hollywood biopics. But this is the only version we're seeing of how the story has been interpreted by the public, and John's reaction to it suggests that this is the interpretation he can believe, because he's never heard another one." Josh Spiegel said, "I just continue to find it a little too hard to believe that Gene would be successfully thrown in jail for the murders of both Janice and Barry (especially Janice, seeing as he didn't, y'know, kill her)."
Accolades == Notes ==