Yes Chef! ‘The Bear’ Is Returning for Season 2.
The following story contains spoilers for The Bear Season 1.
In an era with so much TV, viewers generally tend to know what to expect. For example: shows like WandaVision, The Mandalorian, and Peacemaker represent standout chapters in larger, already established franchises. Then there are major shows like Stranger Things, which have cultivated massive audiences over the years, and established critical darlings like HBO's Barry. But every year we also get a handful of genuine unexpected surprises—and in 2022, perhaps the most welcomed of those surprises has been FX's The Bear.
The Bear, which is produced by FX but streams exclusively on Hulu, centers on Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White)—a nationally-renowned, award-winning chef, who returns home to run his family's sandwich shop in Chicago following his brother's unexpected death. The show is somewhere in between drama and dark comedy, but try not to put a label on it—it's just entertaining, compelling, and, really, meaningful television.
Perhaps the smartest choice that showrunner Christopher Storer and the rest of The Bear's creative team makes is setting the show's runtime at (on average) around 30 minutes. The first season comes in around four hours total, and with the super fast pace at which the plot moves and most of the characters interact, that's four hours that breezes by. Like Barry (also a 30-minute runtime), there's not a second of filler in The Bear.
And while we've all gotten to see inside and meet the characters of this Chicago kitchen, there's some good news: we'll see more of them again. The Bear is coming back for Season 2. Here's what we know so far.
Will there be a Season 2 of The Bear?
Yes chef, there will be! On July 14, 2021, FX officially ordered a Season 2 of its runaway restaurant hit.
“The Bear has exceeded our wildest creative, critical and commercial expectations,” FX Entertainment President Eric Schrier said in a statement sent to press. “We deeply appreciate the brilliant work led by Creator and Co-Showrunner Christopher Storer and Co-Showrunner Joanna Calo. Jeremy Allen White’s lead performance is spectacular, as are those of his co-stars Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Abby Elliott, Lionel Boyce and Liza Colón-Zayas. We can’t wait to get to work on season 2.”
The show currently has a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics (and a 93% score from fans), and is one of the best received shows of 2022 from both groups.
When will Season 2 of The Bear come out?
We don't know yet for sure, but it's possible that The Bear could come out right around this same time next year. The Bear has been received exceptionally, and will likely be in contention for next year's Emmys; that means they'll want Season 1 to be the lone entry in the window. The Emmy nomination window for 2022's show closed on May 31, 2022, so it's likely that next year's cutoff date will be right around the same time.
Most likely, then, a Season 2 would come after June 2023 at the earliest, so that Season 1 would be set up to get the Emmy nominations for Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and the show itself that it deserves.
What will Season 2 of The Bear be about?
While Season 1 of The Bear focused on Carmy returning to Chicago to run the Original Beef of Chicagoland sandwich shop following the death of his brother, Michael (played by Jon Bernthal in some truly wonderful flashback guest casting), Season 2 is likely to focus on how Carmy, Syd, Richie, and the rest of the gang continue to improve and reinvent the shop into a top-notch restaurant.
At the end of Season 1, Carmy found a note from his brother for a spaghetti recipe, with a familiar phrase: "Let it rip." When Carmy went to prepare the dish for "family"—the meal for restaurant employees made to use excess food and ingredients—he discovered that Michael really did believe in him, and had hidden away wads of money in all the different cans of crushed tomatoes.
With a massive new infusion of capital—a surprise gift from his late brother—Carmy seems poised to further improve the restaurant (now named The Bear) in Season 2. And if you listened closely, Carmy and Syd were already cooking up some new improvements before the season was even out.
Who will be in the cast?
We can feel pretty confident about this: Jeremy Allen White as Carmy, Ayo Edebiri as Sydney, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richie, Abby Elliott as Natalie, Lionel Boyce as Marcus, and Liza Colón-Zayas as Tina all should be locks to return, as should the rest of the restaurant's kitchen staff.
The Bear employs flashbacks often, so it's also likely that we could see Joel McHale as Carmy's intense and emotionally abusive boss from his New York days again, and it's also likely that we could get another look at Jon Bernthal as Mikey Berzatto. Oliver Platt, as Cicero, could also make a welcomed return, as he was one of the most entertaining characters in Season 1.
Let's just hope that when the show does come back, it manages to capture the same restaurant magic as Season 1—because this was a damn good time.
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