“The Bear” Season 3 was criticized at the time of its release for its inconsistent plotting and lack of forward progression.
While it is true that less happened in the season than those that preceded it, though, there are still moments and developments throughout it that are important to remember before you watch “The Bear” Season 4. Case in point: Even the season’s reflective premiere, which is comprised mostly of flashbacks to Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) ascent up the culinary industry, revealed to viewers that Marcus’ (Lionel Boyce) mother died on the Bear’s preview night.
With that in mind, here is everything you need to remember from “The Bear” Season 3 before you watch the FX series’ newest episodes.
Dysfunctional dining
In the second episode of “The Bear” Season 3, Carmy announces that he wants The Bear to change its menu every day and sends a partnership agreement to Syd (Ayo Edebiri) that would give her an official stake in the business. All the while, Carmy and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) continue to loudly — and sometimes violently — bicker to the point that it becomes impossible for an increasingly frazzled Syd to ignore the dysfunction of the kitchen.
That dysfunction never subsides throughout “The Bear” Season 3, which features countless cameos from not only real-life chefs like Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud, but also recognizable actors. “Billions” co-creator Brian Koppelman appears as Nicholas “The Computer” Marshall, a family friend and accountant whizz who is brought on by Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) to offer financial advice for the Bear team.
John Cena also shows up as Sammy Fak, the brother of Neil (Matty Matheson) and Teddy Fak (Ricky Staffieri), while Josh Hartnett makes a cameo appearance in the season as Frank, the wealthy and friendly fiancée of Tiff (Gillian Jacobs), Richie’s ex-wife.
Broken relationships
Early in “The Bear” Season 3, Syd decides to move out of the apartment she shared with her dad (Robert Townsend) and into her own place. While grappling with Carmy’s dysfunction, she gets a surprising offer from the Chef de Cuisine (Adam Shapiro) at Ever, the restaurant owned by Olivia Colman’s Chef Terry. He tells her he wants to open his own restaurant and offers her the CDC position there — an opportunity that leads to her continuing to put off actually signing the partnership offer Carmy sent her.
In the middle of the season, “The Bear” took another trip into the past in a standalone episode centered on Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas). The episode in question reveals how a long, nerve-wracking stretch of unemployment led to Tina meeting Mikey (Jon Bernthal) for the first time and getting hired at the Original Beef. It is impossible to know whether or not “The Bear” Season 4 will reference the events of this particular episode, but it is worth remembering how it deepened and illuminated Tina’s relationship to Carmy’s family and their restaurant.
Late in the season, Natalie (Abby Elliott) got a standalone episode of her own when a trip to a supply store was interrupted by her water breaking. With no one else picking up her calls, she is forced to call her mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), who helps her through the early stages of her child’s birth. The two end up tentatively reconciling. The same, unfortunately, can not yet be said for Carmy’s broken relationship with his former girlfriend, Claire (Molly Gordon), whom he still has not apologized to for his comments in the “Bear” Season 2 finale. Richie, meanwhile, gets invited to attend Tiff and Frank’s wedding and is gently pressured into going by the former.
The review
Both Richie and Carmy’s personal, romantic relationships are, like many of the plot threads introduced throughout the season, left unresolved at the end of “The Bear” Season 3. The same goes for the future of the Bear itself. Near the end of the season, Jimmy tells Carmy that if the first, major review of the restaurant turns out to be negative that he will have to pull his funding. That possibility hangs over the final episodes of “The Bear” Season 3, even as Carmy, Syd and co. take a night off to attend the closing party of Ever.
Whilst there, Syd noticeably hits it off with Luca (Will Poulter), who tells Carmy that he plans on staying in Chicago for a few months. Carmy, for his part, spends most of the evening distracted by David Fields (Joel McHale), the abusive chef he worked for in New York. When Carmy confronts him over the panic attacks and insecurity he caused, however, Fields pushes back and insists that his treatment of Carmy made the young chef better. Later, in a private moment, Chef Terry asks Carmy to call her by her first name the next time they see each other.
Carmy leaves Ever to walk the streets of Chicago alone, while Chef Terry, Luca and co. go back to party with Syd at her new apartment. While there, Syd, who still has not signed her partnership agreement with Carmy or responded to Shapiro’s CDC offer, sees a newspaper clipping of a review of the Original Beef and leaves her apartment to have a panic attack. Across town, Carmy’s walk gets interrupted by multiple missed calls from both Jimmy and Computer, as well as the release of The Bear’s first review, which viewers are left to believe was mixed, thanks to Carmy’s own insistence on changing the restaurant’s menu every day.
And that is how “The Bear” Season 3 ends. When the series returns, will Carmy finally learn the right lesson from his teachers and begin to prioritize himself and his loved ones above his work? Or will he remain trapped in the same toxic, self-destructive cycle? Fans will have to wait to find out, but it seems safe to say that “The Bear” Season 3 left the series’ future episodes with plenty of questions to answer and even more material still waiting to be explored.
“The Bear” Season 4 premieres Wednesday, June 25 on Hulu.
