The Bear

[Targaryen]

Kind of expected, but now it's official...

Season 5 will be the final season of The Bear.

I'm glad they're going to be able to finish the show on their terms. Hate when a good series gets cancelled with unresolved plot points.

[FrankTheTank]

Guessing it is going to be full on carnage so they get their star, and then Carmy rides off into the sunset? One of the strongest shows in some times, despite its flaws. The writing and acting, overall, has been consistently strong. I am glad that this is it though, no show should pull a Walking Dead and go on for 37 seasons.

[Targaryen]

With absolutely no fanfare, FX/Hulu just released a special one-off prequel episode of The Bear today in anticipation of the upcoming final season, which I'm guessing will be released late next month (all of the first four seasons were released in the final week of June of the last four years). The episode is called "Gary", and it was co-written by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Jon Bernthal, and it's about the frequently referenced work road trip that Mikey and Richie took for Uncle Jimmy to Gary, Indiana some time before the pilot of the series took place.

[Targaryen]

We have a release date...

[FrankTheTank]

With absolutely no fanfare, FX/Hulu just released a special one-off prequel episode of The Bear today in anticipation of the upcoming final season, which I'm guessing will be released late next month (all of the first four seasons were released in the final week of June of the last four years). The episode is called "Gary", and it was co-written by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Jon Bernthal, and it's about the frequently referenced work road trip that Mikey and Richie took for Uncle Jimmy to Gary, Indiana some time before the pilot of the series took place.

I watched it last night, and thought it was terrific. It explores their very complicated relationship, and how Mikey was hurting, and simply a struggling adult. Highly recommend it.

The interesting thing is on HULU it is listed as episode 1, so will there be more one off's?

[Targaryen]

With absolutely no fanfare, FX/Hulu just released a special one-off prequel episode of The Bear today in anticipation of the upcoming final season, which I'm guessing will be released late next month (all of the first four seasons were released in the final week of June of the last four years). The episode is called "Gary", and it was co-written by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Jon Bernthal, and it's about the frequently referenced work road trip that Mikey and Richie took for Uncle Jimmy to Gary, Indiana some time before the pilot of the series took place.

I watched it last night, and thought it was terrific. It explores their very complicated relationship, and how Mikey was hurting, and simply a struggling adult. Highly recommend it.

The interesting thing is on HULU it is listed as episode 1, so will there be more one off's?

No, I think they just didn't know how else to classify it. The final season releases late next month, with 8 episodes total. Can't imagine there are any more of these one-off surprise episodes. Apparently the surprise episode was filmed back in April 2025 along with reshoots for S4 (which was mostly filmed simultaneously with S3 in early 2024), so they somehow managed to keep this whole thing completely under wraps for a whole year (I'm sure everybody involved had to sign NDAs).

The crazy thing about the episode is that it shows Mikey in a very, very dark place and he's clearly spiraling - but it takes place in early 2019 (a few months after "Fishes"), and Mikey's suicide wasn't until February 2022. So he was obviously really struggling for quite awhile before he finally gave up and took his own life.