Everything We Know About 'The Bear' Season 3

The “Yes, Chef!” memes and national obsession with blue aprons are still going strong, which means that we’re not the only ones anxiously awaiting season three of The Bear. FX and Hulu’s breakout hit series, a strong contender for many awards at the Emmys in January, has been confirmed to return for a third season in 2024—but with SAG-AFTRA still on strike and the writers only recently back to work, it’s hard to know exactly what that means. Here’s everything we do know for now.

Next year is the best we can do, unfortunately. On November 6, FX’s Hulu sent a press release announcing that the series, created by Christopher Storer, had been renewed for a third season premiering in 2024. “The Bear, which wowed audiences in its first season only to achieve even greater heights in season two, has become a cultural phenomenon,” said Nick Grad, the president of FX Entertainment, in the accompanying press release. “We and our partners at Hulu join fans in looking forward to the next chapter in the story of The Bear.”

In the United States it will continue to air on Hulu, while it’s on Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ everywhere else. The division between Disney and Hulu may diminish if not disappear entirely in coming years. Disney announced on November 1 that it will take full control of Hulu and buy out Comcast’s 33% stake. Disney had already experimented with putting some programming on both Hulu and Disney+, and the upcoming Marvel series Echo will premiere on both platforms. The Bear could very well do the same by the time season three premieres.

As a workplace dramedy that relies heavily on its ensemble, The Bear isn’t likely to be the kind of show that jettisons characters without warning. In the season three press release, Grad specifically singled out stars Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, so if for some reason you were worried, they’ll definitely be back. But we find it hard to imagine the show The Bear or the restaurant The Bear pushing forward without Abby Elliott’s Natalie, Lionel Boyce’s Marcus, Liza Colón-Zayas’s Tina, Edwin Lee Gibson’s Ebraheim, or Matty Matheson’s Fak. Then there’s Oliver Platt as Uncle Jimmy, who earned an Emmy nomination alongside White, Edebiri, and Moss-Bachrach for the show’s first season, and will almost certainly do the same for the second. Jon Bernthal was also Emmy-nominated for the first season, and got an even bigger spotlight in the season two flashback episode “Fishes,” but it’s hard to predict how many Mikey flashbacks a third season might have in store. They’d be foolish not to bring him back at all, in our humble opinion.

And don’t forget that given the caliber of guest stars in season two, literally anyone could show up as a new character. They’ve already brought in multiple Oscar winners—maybe Nobel laureates are next?

Unlike the first season, which built to Carmy’s decision to reopen a new restaurant called The Bear, the end of season two was deliciously open-ended. The Bear’s friends-and-family night was a success but still ended with Carmy getting locked in the walk-in fridge and breaking up with Claire (Molly Gordon). Natalie’s baby is still on the way, Carmy and Natalie’s mom Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) remains a wild card, and even though everyone in the kitchen set aside their differences for the sake of opening night, the next blowup is inevitably around the corner.

Great question! The WGA strike has been resolved, which means the writers of The Bear have almost certainly gotten back to work. But the SAG-AFTRA strike remained in effect when FX’s Hulu sent out the season three press release, which shows some remarkable optimism on their end. Just a few days earlier HBO presented its 2024 slate to the media with a lot of notable absences, including Euphoria and The White Lotus, that have been delayed by the strike. Many, many Hollywood productions will have to gear up quickly once the strike is resolved, and actor schedules—difficult under the best of circumstances—will get packed very fast. But if the network is prioritizing The Bear season three, perhaps the cast’s representatives are ready to do the same.

Well, again, a lot of them have been on strike for months, which makes the pickings a little slimmer than we’d like. But White is about to have his biggest film role yet in Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw, about a Texas wrestling family, which opens on December 22. He stars opposite Zac Efron and Harris Dickinson in a battle of the biceps that must be seen to be believed. Edebiri had a starring role in the raunchy summer comedy Bottoms, and also has a role in the upcoming indie The Sweet East, set for release in December. She continues to lend her voice to a range of animated projects, including Netflix’s Big Mouth, which just returned for its seventh season, and the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, in which she plays a delightfully awkward teenage April O’Neil. Moss-Bachrach was also busy this summer, with a supporting role in the Jennifer Lawrence–led sex comedy No Hard Feelings, which is now on Netflix.

Provided the SAG-AFTRA strike does end by January, the entire cast of The Bear should be dolled up in their finest for the Emmy Awards, which were delayed by the strike from their usual September date to January 15. It’s a bizarre quirk of timing that they’ll be up for awards for the first season, even though the second season aired months ago, but that shouldn’t make it any less satisfying if Carmy and company manage to take home some hardware.