The Bear Season 2 Trailer: A New Restaurant Means Fresh Beef

If you're a fan of cranky, chaotic, Chicagoan chefs, you're in luck: "The Bear" season 2 is on its way. There'll be 10 episodes this time, two more than the first season, which should give the show plenty of time to deal with the many questions raised by season 1's final moments. Will the new restaurant be a success? Will Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) be able to get along with each other long term? Will Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) ever be able to find a reasonable work-life balance? The answers are only a month away.

The first teaser for the second season of "The Bear" released back in March, promised a similarly melancholy and chaotic tone as the first. The characters may be starting fresh with the new business, and that's exciting, but there's definitely a part of them that will miss The Original Beef, regardless of how stressful those days were. More than anything, the characters will likely be asking themselves if changing the restaurant will really fix their many personal problems. On a meta level, audiences are wondering a different question: was season 1 a fluke, or is "The Bear" a show that will only get better with age?

If showrunner Christopher Storer's words are anything to go by, it's shaping up to be the latter. "It almost feels like season 1 was sort of, 'Let's catch up', and season 2 is sort of like where the show properly begins, once we've met everyone and seen their backstory," he told Variety earlier this year. "So it's been cool to just expand the world and just learn more about [the characters]."

Of all these characters, it's the evolution of Sydney and Carmy's relationship we're looking forward to the most. The two have made for a fascinating yet fragile dynamic in the first season; it seemed like they were parting ways forever in that stressful penultimate episode, but the final moments of season 1 left their relationship on a promising note. We've never seen Sydney and Carmy working as equal partners before, and it'll be fun to see how that turns out. 

The other big question mark this season is Richie, the most change-resistant character on the show, who likely won't have an easy time adjusting to this classier, cleaner alternative to The Beef that Carmy and Sydney are pushing for. As Storer explained, "Season 2, really, it's about balance in a lot of ways, between time and what it means to start fresh and how you can start in a healthy direction. For somebody like Richie, I think finding where he fits in is what he's looking for."

"The Bear" season 2 will premiere on Hulu on June 22, 2023.