Yes, Jeff! The Bear Season 4 has arrived on Hulu, delivering yet another emotional rollercoaster and concluding at a point that would make sense for the show to end. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t be getting a Season 5.
Much like Carmy and Syd trying to make their restaurant – and their partnership – work, The Bear has had its ups and downs, with Season 3 earning criticism for its slow plot progression and cliffhanger ending.
But it wasn’t without credit. The Hulu show has always been driven by its characters, and in the third chapter we were given space to sit with their emotions.
Season 4 picks up the thread, addressing the fallout from the review, whether Syd will jump ship, and if Carmy will ever find peace. All of this builds to an arguably conclusive finale, so what does this mean for the future of The Bear?
Is The Bear Season 4 also the last?
Right now, it’s not been confirmed that The Bear Season 4 is the last. All of it depends on creator Christopher Storer and the crew, cast schedules, and ratings.
Interestingly, TV critics Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan said on a recent episode of The Watch podcast that it was understood that the fourth chapter would be the last – but this is no longer the case.
“Everything we understood, this fourth season was supposed to be or was going to be labeled the final season. That verbiage is missing,” says Greenwalf.
But Ryan adds, “We assumed that, because we assumed that this is a three season arc that had been stretched to four and that this would be the final season. There has been no literature to suggest that so far.”
If we’re to look at the evolution of The Bear, it’s hard to gauge. FX CEO John Landgraf told Puck last year that Storer works on a season-by-season basis, allowing the story to progress organically.
“Nick Grad and I sat with Daisy Phillipson Chris [Storer] at lunch, and Josh Senior, his partner,” he explained.
“We said, ‘You’re at the point now where if you want more than one season of pickup, we can do it. And it may help you, because you have actors that are movie stars now; they’re going to want to go do other things, and you can figure out when you’re going to make the shows and when to release them.’
“And they said, ‘No, we can’t work that way. We only want one season.’ So we picked up one. And then they got into making it, and they called us and said, ‘Yeah, we think we have two seasons here. Can you change the one-season pickup into a two-season pickup?’”
Landgraf went on to say there are a lot of reasons why The Bear is great, “but one of them is the relationship between the creator, the author, and the characters, and he’s been stuck a lot at times in his life, and he wanted to make a season about stuckness,” referring to the third chapter.
Without giving away spoilers, Season 4 could very well serve as a natural conclusion for the characters of the show. If Storer does continue the story, it would look different to what had come before it.
In a separate interview with Variety, Landgraf was asked about whether Season 4 could be the last, to which he said, “We really don’t know. These decisions are really creative decisions.
“It was Sterlin Harjo who made a decision that Rez Dogs was a three-season series. And so it’s really Chris [Storer’s] decision on The Bear. It’s about, how much more story does he have to tell?
“I mean, obviously, I’m hoping he has more than one more season of story to tell. But not to the extent that if there was one great season or three mediocre ones, I’d rather have one great one. You just have to follow the creative.”
The one reason Season 5 could be harder
If The Bear Season 5 does get the greenlight, there’s one thing that will be trickier this time round: the cast. As Landgraf said, “You have actors that are movie stars now.”
We’ve seen this happen with shows like Euphoria and Stranger Things – the actors in the show go on to book huge gigs, making it increasingly difficult to align their schedules.
Jeremy Allen White is playing Bruce Springsteen in a new biopic, in the upcoming Star Wars movie The Mandalorian & Grogu, and rumored to be joining the MCU, to name a few.
Ayo Edebiri is juggling multiple projects including Ella McCay and Prodigies, while Ebon Moss-Bachrach is making his official MCU debut in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, with Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars to follow.
What makes things even harder for this show is the fact that it has always released one season per year. Whether this will still be the case is yet to be seen, but for now we’ll have to play the waiting game. And, of course, watch Season 4, which is streaming on Hulu now.
You can also read about the show to watch if you love The Bear, Carmy’s “non-negotiables”, and find more new TV shows streaming this month.
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