The Righteous Gemstones

The show’s fourth and final season, which starts Sunday on HBO, finds McBride and his ridiculously talented band of collaborators going out on top, and at the top of their game. It’s only March, but if The Righteous Gemstones’ capstone season ends up being the best thing on TV in 2025, it will have been a good year for TV indeed.

For half a decade, The Righteous Gemstones has quietly been one of the best comedies on television, providing laughs and joy to anyone with a sick sense of humor and possibly a touch of religious trauma. The fourth and final season, which premieres on March 9 on HBO, is no exception and proves to be a hallelujah of a sendoff to one of television’s most underrated hits.

The Season 4 premiere isn’t all that funny. But it makes a powerful point. One that lingers, as intended, across the eight subsequent episodes, and gives the final season a fitting framework as a message of hope for the hopeless.

The brilliance — and comedy — of Season 4’s nine episodes (all of which were provided for critics) lies in how McBride begins to challenge each of the kids on the possibility of Eli moving on and finally finding someone new.

Season 4 isn’t just The Righteous Gemstones’ final season; it might also be the funniest season to date. The writers know their characters better than ever before, and the actors are more settled into those roles. Every episode has a handful of belly laughs from all over the spectrum of the show’s signature comic sensibility.

At various points the different branches of stories feel a bit disjointed, and it’s clear the shooting schedules of various cast members prevented them from being in scenes that feature an ensemble. But it doesn’t matter. “The Righteous Gemstones” is funny, wry, clever, disgusting, moving, shocking, and endearing in ways that are purely aspirational for most comedies on TV, and I’m sorry to say goodbye to it.

The strength of The Righteous Gemstones has always been its characters and the top-to-bottom perfect performances of its exemplary cast. That’s still true with this final season, even as it builds to a thrilling but stressful conclusion that almost turns into a Southern-fried Grand Guignol.

Finds new ways to drum up dirty humor and sweet pathos in this latest installment.

To the very end, The Righteous Gemstones remained true to itself — while never forgetting that it’s a comedy, going balls-out with its humor at the right moments. (Sometimes quite literally, thanks to Goggins.) The only difference with these final episodes is that like its characters, it grew up just a little bit along the way.

While “Gemstones” doesn’t bite the religious hand quite the way it did in previous seasons, it does conclude without a big sermon. Aimee-Leigh might have delivered the message in song. But the way Jesse, Judy and Kelvin do it is quite good – and just the farewell we need until they return with a big “Gemstones” movie.

The Righteous Gemstones ends with the same delightful strangeness, the blissfully hilarious humor, and the occasionally unexpected heart that we’ve come to love from this show over these years.