With a few notable exceptions, it is a truth universally acknowledged that every TV show has to end someday. And if you’ve gotta go out, history tells us that five seasons can and frequently does make a pretty solid run for the books — Breaking Bad, The Wire, Stranger Things, The Twilight Zone, Merlin, *cough* Supernatural *cough* are all five-and-out bangers, for example. With that in mind then, do not despair at the sad but also pretty unsurprising confirmation coming from Deadline today (and Jamie Lee Curtis’ Instagram a fortnight ago) that FX kitchen “comedy” The Bear is officially set to end with its upcoming fifth — and now final — season on Hulu/Disney+.
The first concrete sign of The Bear‘s kitchen shutting up shop came when the notorious JLC — who plays Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) mother Donna in the show — posted a photo of herself alongside Natalie ‘Sugar’ Berzatto actor and on-scren daughter Abby Elliott alongside the caption: “FINISHED STRONG! Surrounded by an extraordinary crew and group of writers and producers and scene partners on the show that Chris Storer created, completing the story of this extraordinary family that we have all fallen in love with. Got to finish it out with my baby Berzatto bear.” Additionally to that, the way that Season 4 ended, with *SPOILER ALERT* White’s Chicagoan chef Carmy deciding — in a beautifully pitched display of personal growth — to hang up his apron, stepping away from the restaurant game and leaving The Bear in the more-than-capable hands of Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), and Sugar as they now look to beat the clock and save their restaurant. kind of put the writing on the proverbial wall for the series. At this point then, Deadline‘s sources merely consolidate and confirm what many of us had long since suspected would be next for Christopher Storer’s series.
Having provided the ultimate springboard for the careers of leading trio Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, garnered 21 Primetime Emmys over the course of its run, and served up some of the finest television episodes of the streaming age, The Bear has cooked and cooked while barely letting up for four years and almost a half-century of episodes by now. All of which is to say that while we’ll be sad to see Carmy and co calling “Hands!” and hanging up their aprons for the final time somewhere in the near future, we’re hyped for one last outing with the gang and always heartened to see a great TV series getting to end on its own terms.
