"Before I came to Al-Anon, I was a cook. I mean, I’m still a cook, I’m just a different kind of cook, I guess."
The key to understanding The Bear’s series finale, which aired last week, is the beginning of a seven-minute monologue from its season 1 bow, "Braciole." It’s when Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), hair disheveled, stops and stutters his way through the scars he's never dared to describe aloud. How he would cook with his brother, Mikey (Jon Bernthal), how they were best friends, and how that changed when Mikey started using drugs. Mikey had a restaurant, but he stopped letting Carmy inside. Cut him off cold. So the aching little brother, feeling rejected and lame and shitty, spends years leveling himself up into a world-class chef, even though it nearly kills him. But it's Mikey who dies—he kills himself—sabotaging Carmy's grand plan: "I just wanted him to be like, 'Good job!'"
"He left me his restaurant," Carmy says, wrapping up a scene that is so moving that it's part of what launched White and The Bear to countless awards podiums. "And over the last couple months I’ve been trying to fix it 'cause it was in rough shape, and I think it’s very clear that me trying to fix the restaurant was me trying to fix whatever was happening with my brother. And I don’t know, maybe fix the whole family because that restaurant, it has and it does mean a lot to people."
Since then, The Bear has fired its last order. The series finale, “The Original Beef of Chicagoland,” paid off on season 4's controversial ending. If you'll remember, Carmy decided that—in order to fully heal from Mikey's death, his years suffering as an underling in the world's greatest restaurants, and untold amounts of family trauma—he had to walk away from the industry entirely.
Season 5 picks up the very next day, its eight episodes dishing up The Pitt-style, hour-by-hour madness of what may or may not be The Bear's final service. Instead of ghosting his poor crew (on the day of torrential weather, no less) Carmy sticks around for one more day as Sydney's (Ayo Edebiri) pseudo-sous-chef. What ensues is a sports-movie style rally where the kitchen staff—despite inadvertently learning of Carmy's plans to go on a smoke break and never come back—pulls off three miraculous turnarounds. Then, Carmy learns that the blocked number pinging him all day was a Michelin inspector. The big news? The Bear earned two stars, which damn near cements that Carmy and Sydney's Coca-Cola-ribs creation will live to fight another day.
Here's what a vast majority of critics believe happen next, because creator Chris Storer seemingly plays it pretty straight: Carmy leaves The Bear behind, interviews for an open internship at an architectural firm, and Sydney (with the help of Ebon Moss-Bachrach's Richie) has free rein to lead the now-acclaimed restaurant to its next chapter. The Book of Carmy is closed and shut, right?
Well, some fans aren't convinced. And neither am I.
Right now, a Reddit thread titled “Clarity on Carmy’s ending?” has well over a hundred replies. It’s reminiscent of season 4’s aftermath, when The Bear’s loyalists were mystified as to how Carmy could possibly put his knife down. You can parse through it in full above, but here’s the gist: Some fans think that Carmy didn’t leave The Bear after all. They say the ending is intentionally up for interpretation, because the final moments of the episode place Carmy wearing an apron at The Bear. Not only that, but before his journey to become the next Frank Lloyd Wright even begins—by way of another sprawling monologue that’s eerily reminiscent of the season 1 finale—he realizes what he would leave behind if he put down that apron.
So that’s why I keep thinking about the way Carmy introduced himself to a room full of near-strangers at the end of The Bear's buzzy debut in 2022—because it feels more true to the Carmy we all said goodbye to in the series finale.
