The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri look back at 5 seasons of culinary drama

Should I stay or should I go?

It is a practical and existential question that plagues the two lead chefs in FX’s The Bear.

He was the emotionally tortured and volatile chef who left behind a rising career in Michelin-starred restaurants to return to Chicago, his hometown, to run his recently deceased brother’s troubled sandwich joint. She was a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef with potential, seeking mentorship and an opportunity to work with a prodigy. Together, Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto and Sydney “Syd” Adamu – played by Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, respectively – transformed the Original Beef of Chicagoland from a hole in the wall into the titular fine-dining establishment.

But now their partnership in the kitchen has come to an end.

Created by Christopher Storer, The Bear’s fifth and final season picks up the morning after Syd, Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Sugar (Abby Elliott) learn that Carmy is quitting the food industry and leaving the restaurant in their hands at a make-or-break moment. And the pressure mounts for Syd to decide if she will jump ship to pursue another opportunity.

The eight-episode season, now streaming in full on Disney+, largely stretches across one day as the restaurant’s debts accumulate, suppliers cut them off and an unrelenting storm floods the kitchen and threatens to upend a night of service the chefs desperately need to have one last shot at survival and one last performance as a team to deliver an improbable turnaround.