The most recent episode of Barry aired on May 19th, 2019, which is 602 days ago. That’s one of the longest hiatuses between actives seasons going today, although Donald Glover’s Atlanta reached 976 days today (Atlanta‘s third season, however, will premiere in the first half of 2021). So, when can we expect the next episodes of the dark, HBO comedy?
According to a Bill Hader appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, the third season got as far as the table read for the first two episodes back in March 2020. They were a week away from shooting the season.
That’s the bad news: The pandemic stalled production on the series indefinitely.
The good news is this: Over the course of the pandemic, Bill Hader and his Barry co-creator, Alec Berg, used the break to not only finish writing the third season but to write the fourth season, as well. In the meantime, they’re just waiting to get the greenlight from HBO to resume production, and since the third and fourth seasons have been written, we shouldn’t have to wait as long between seasons once the series ramps up again.
Hader also spoke about the cliffhanger at the end of the second season, and how he had written himself into a corner. He likened it to the pressure he felt the longer he did Stefon on SNL, except that here, “I can’t just rely on John Mulaney to make me laugh. I actually have to finish my lines.”
“We really, really screwed ourselves here,” Hader continued, referring to the second-season cliffhanger. “We’re still saying that. We’re still trying to figure it out.”
Don’t worry, though. The Emmy-winning series starring Bill Hader, Stephen Root, Sarah Goldberg, Henry Winkler, and Anthony Carrigan will be back as soon as it is safe to do so, and with some of the best minds in comedy, I have no doubt they’ll figure a way out of their hole.