'Barry' goes out with a bang in shocking Season 2 finale

Warning: Major spoilers for Barry Season 2, episode 8 lie ahead.

He can't keep doing this.

It's a thought that's crossed nearly every Barry fan's mind.

Hiding from the FBI, regularly at odds with the organized crime scene, and in an all-out war with professional bad guy Monroe Fuches, Barry Berkman-turned-Block seems destined to get himself killed, caught, or worse at some point in the series' run.

But as of Season 2, that day is still far off.

In the show's season finale, it was Barry who had finally had enough, putting his enemies under the gun in a horrifying and spectacular display of "fuck this" firepower that rivaled even the most grisly of Sopranos shoot-outs.

Sloughing off his past seven episodes of good guy behavior, Barry returned to his hitman roots in Sunday's episode, aptly titled "berkman > block." Pushed to the brink by the framing of Gene Cousineau, Barry began the episode by vowing to kill Fuches.

"Fuches, I'm coming for you. You're a fucking dead man," Barry hissed into his phone.

It's a threatening enough statement (particularly when left as a voicemail.) But after watching Barry go to extreme lengths to avoid killing anyone this season, including his girlfriend's abusive ex, it seemed unlikely that the reformed hitman could follow through on the murder of his beloved mentor.

And yet, while he didn't quite stick the landing — amidst the chaos, Fuches managed an unlikely escape — Barry proved he was more than willing to go there.

In his efforts to hunt down and assassinate his target, Barry went nuclear on the NoHo Hank / Cristobal / Esther super mob, racking up a whopping 14 person kill count on-screen (with even more implied off-frame) in the season's final moments.

For long-time viewers, this shocking development wasn't so much an upping of the ante as it was a decimating trajectory change for the series' narrative.

Over the past two seasons, Barry fans have rooted for the misguided aspiring actor to escape his past and begin life anew. We've prayed for the surprisingly capable Detective May to give up on Janice's case. We've agonized over Sally's insufferable uselessness. We've pleaded for Hank to give Barry a break on one thing, any thing, just one time.

But, Barry couldn't be a sort of good guy forever. Like the antiheroes of many other series, Barry had to finally pick his good or his bad side, his Block or his Berkman.

Surrounded by bodies, all casualties of his glorified tantrum, Barry saw the answer clearly. The next iteration in the Walter White legacy, this was Barry's Jane moment, and he went Berkman.

Heading into the already confirmed Season 3, Barry has plenty of big questions to answer, made even more dire by the sudden change in its lead.

How will Barry account for that massacre? What will happen to NoHo Hank? Where will Sally's public fraud take her acting career? Will Gene identify Barry as Janice's killer? When exactly are the Swim Instructors call-backs?

There's plenty to guess at before Barry returns in 2020, but for now, one thing is certain: We were right; Barry couldn't keep doing this.

And so, he didn't.