Is Barney Dead? Did Hoon Lee Leave Your Friends and Neighbors?

Tensions flare in the sixth episode of Apple TV+’s ‘Your Friends and Neighbors’ as Andrew Cooper, a former hedge fund manager recently fired from his job, faces the consequences of his actions. After the shocking events of the previous episode, where he wakes up next to Paul Levitt’s dead body in Sam’s house, things go slow for him in this episode as he spends time with his family when they take a trip to Princeton for Tori. However, whatever sense of hope this state of calm brings to Coop is robbed in the final scene when he and Barney take some pretty bad hits. While Coop is still conscious by the end, things don’t look so good for Barney. Does this mean that he is gone for good? SPOILERS AHEAD.

Barney is Not Out of the Picture Yet

Things take a turn for the worse in the last few minutes of the sixth episode, ‘The Things You Lost Along the Way,’ when Coop is jumped by two goons who beat him up pretty well. As this happens, his best friend, Barney, becomes aware of the situation and he immediately runs to his help. However, before he can reach Coop or the goons, he is hit by a car while crossing the street. Barney falls to the ground and is rendered unconscious, but he is not yet dead, even though it may seem like it at the moment. While characters dying to advance the plot is not something alien for the Apple TV+ show, killing off Barney so early into the story would be a complete waste of his and actor Hoon Lee’s potential.

While he has been on the sidelines all this time, Barney remains an important person in Coop’s life, one of the very few, to be honest. If anything happens to him, it would be a massive blow to Coop, especially if he dies. Because the plot is still evolving to the point of that level of tension, Barney’s departure from the story would be premature. While the accident is good for shock value, his death wouldn’t have that much of an emotional impact, which is why it seems unlikely that he would be put out to pasture so soon. Moreover, the accident itself is enough to show that things are not that bad, and Barney cannot come out of it. While he is hit by a car, it does not look as bad. The sudden arrival of the vehicle and the impact with it is enough to throw him off and render him unconscious, but it is not bad enough to kill him, at least not immediately.

It will send him to the hospital for a while, and the most tension it will create will be in the financial terms, as he has already been struggling with his family’s increasing expenses, and nothing seems to be going right in his life recently. This is where a new possibility emerges for him. It could be that this accident finally leads Coop to come clean to his friend about what he has been up to for the past few months. Because Christian is behind the attack, and the cops are already looking into him for Paul’s murder, Coop might require someone to confide in.

Moreover, Barney will demand answers to understand why his best friend was attacked by seemingly random strangers out of nowhere. So far, Coop has kept that part of his life separate, but now that Barney has taken a hit for him, it might be time for him to come clean, which is where more problems will surface for Barney. Considering the sheer potential that his storyline still holds, it would be remiss to believe that Barney is going out of the picture so soon.