Published June 17, 2026, 4:00 p.m. ET

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed delivered a final scene so shocking and epically executed that it gave me Barry flashbacks in the best way possible.

If Bill Hader’s HBO tragicomedy, then you know what a serious compliment that comparison is. But if you haven’t, it’s OK! We’re here to break down the jaw-dropping final scene of Episode 6, “Rosebuds,” complete with commentary from showrunner David J. Rosen and stars Tatiana Maslany and Murray Bartlett.

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Episode 6 spoilers ahead.

The majority of the sixth episode focuses on Paula (Maslany) throwing an ambitious pizza party for Hazel’s friends and their moms. With the custody battle ramping up, the pressure to impress others is so on. But before she plans the big event, she goes to a gun range and practices shooting with the firearm she got from the pawn shop.

While Paula’s out running errands, the devilish sociopath Dennis (Bartlett) is snooping through her apartment waiting for her to come home so he can finally take care of business. After he notices the PI that Mallory (Jessy Hodges) hired snapping photos outside, he retreats. But Paula isn’t in the clear yet! Her pizza party’s a smash and she earns the major mom points she was praying for, but when a girl’s pineapple allergy flares and Paula runs to the bodega down the street to buy antihistamines, her worst nightmare becomes a reality.

On her walk home, the trunk of a car on the sidewalk pops open and Dennis jumps out from the shadows and punches her in the face. She gets a hit of her own in and splashes Pepto-Bismol on his face, but he knocks her unconscious, tosses her in the trunk, and drives to an abandoned lot to finish her off. He gets out of the car, walks to the trunk, and whips out his pocket knife. But when he pops the door open, Paula shoots him right in the face and he falls backwards, defeated!

The iconic scene was so unexpected I screamed the first time I saw it. And Maximum Pleasure‘s cast members were similarly shocked when they read the scripts.

“I’m like, oh no! I die again! I mean, I die in everything!” said Bartlett, who’s also died in show like The Last of Us and The White Lotus. Despite the pain of prematurely leaving another series, the Maximum Pleasure star told Decider he fully understands the twist.

“It’s fantastic, because it’s the continuation of these really shocking events and surprises that come at you throughout the show. So it made perfect sense,” he said, shouting out one of the perks of fake dying: the makeup! “The cool thing is when you do scenes like that, then these amazing artists get to do their work and get so excited. And they did such a brilliant job. I have pictures of me and my double, because we both had half our faces blown off with blood dripping down us. It’s an epic photo.” 

Maslany was a big fan of the closing scene, and not just because she got her action hero moment. “I loved it because it was so unceremonious,” she told Decider, noting one big downfall. “The annoying thing is that Murray and I never got to do scene work together, and he’s such an incredible actor. I would have loved to be on the receiving end of him and just played with him. But it’s so great that there are no words and it’s just like, ‘Oh! We even forgot she had that gun!’ It’s just kind of like he’s gone and I love the brutality of it.”

As noted in a previous article, Bartlett’s Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed performance has been awe-inspiring. And yes, the team was tempted to keep Dennis around longer “just to hang out with Murray.”

“He’s the greatest,” showrunner/EP David J. Rosed told Decider. “We always planned that moment. And as we were getting close to it and loving his performance, and literally and loving him as a human, it was one of those looking at yourself super close in the mirror moments, being like, ‘You’re going to do this. You’re really going to do this.’ And we stuck to our guns.”

Dennis was a deeply disturbed sociopath who was coming for our beloved Paula, but Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed won’t be the same without him. Though we’ll miss Murray Bartlett on the show immensely, we can’t wait to see how our protagonist gets herself out of this massive bind in Episode 7.

Stay tuned for more Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed coverage from Decider.