Barry's 16th Century Chechen Tale Explains The Rest Of Season
Barry season 3, former handler Fuches, while hiding out in the mountains of Chechnya, hears an old 16th-century Chechen fable, which not only inspires Fuches to take revenge but also hints at the rest of the season's story. Fuches totally misses the point of Anna's story - that "revenge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." Tellingly, Anna's Chechen fable also parallels the fate of many of the characters in Barry season 3. In the fable, a man comes across a beautiful farmland in the Argun Gorge. The man kills the farmers who live there and takes the land, leaving the dead souls wandering his land in a state of purgatory. One day a mysterious creature appears to the souls and offers them a choice: seek vengeance and kill the man, or forgive the man and go to Heaven. All except one little boy chooses vengeance. The farmers souls become panthers who angrily kill the man who murdered them and took their lands, but their souls “went to the bottom of the ocean where they drifted in the cold dark depths for eternity.” Meanwhile, the little boy's soul goes to Heaven.
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Barry season 3's Chechen fable is clearly about the follies of seeking revenge. Apart from Fuches, who is known only to the LAPD as Barry's Chechen assassin named The Raven, Anna's fable could also foreshadow the fate of NoHo Hank and the other Chechens in L.A. Indeed, the wandering souls of the farmers are similar to L.A's Chechen mob, trapped in a type of purgatory in L.A. because of the actions of Barry, who, in turn, is similar to the landowner in the fable because of how he massacred the Chechens in the monastery. As Batir starts to question why Hank still wants to hire Barry, and why Hank is preventing the Chechens from going after Cristobal, it's clear that Batir is getting impatient and wants to seek revenge. What's even worse is that Fuches could use the Chechens in his revenge plan against Barry. Based on the fable, the Chechens, Fuches, and possibly even Gene, who also wants to kill Barry, will somehow succeed - but will also likely end up dead and “drifting in the cold dark depths for eternity,” just like the souls of the farmers.
Meanwhile, as NoHo Hank is uninterested in revenge at all, he is the little boy in Anna's Chechen fable, whose soul goes to Heaven as he's let go of his grudge and made his peace. In NoHo Hank's case, Heaven means being able to live peacefully with Cristobal. Although Hank has told Cristobal before that he never runs, Hank could change his mind when it is his own family that threatens his life, especially if Cristobal chooses to go with Hank. While Barry season 3's finale could be explained entirely by Anna's Chechen fable, it could also be a red herring, intentionally meant to lead discerning viewers off the trail of possible twists. In any case, as Fuches comes up with a revenge plan that could put to shame even Barry's terribly misguided plans for earning Gene's forgiveness, Barry could be approaching a truly dark and memorable endgame.
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