The Bear Season 2 Finale Almost Didn't Include A Major Moment

Although most of the characters on "The Bear" have grown a lot over the course of the series so far, they all still experienced plenty of setbacks in the season 2 finale. Natalie (Abby Elliott) doesn't get any closure from her mother, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) still gets flustered from all the tickets, and Carmy — most tragic of all — gets trapped inside a walk-in fridge. It's the worst-case scenario for a head chef on his restaurant's first big night, and he does not handle it well. 

Not only does Carmy have to deal with the guilt of letting his team down in a key moment, but the resulting depression also leads him to accidentally break up with his girlfriend Claire (Molly Gordon). "What the f**k was I thinking? Like I was gonna be in a relationship?" Carmy vents, unaware that Claire is listening from the other side of the door. Claire laments his feelings and walks away, then Richie comes by to yell at him, and finally, Carmy's left alone with nothing but his phone, which he notices has a voicemail from Claire, delivered shortly before she left him. "I really love you," she says in it, but now it's bittersweet. 

It's a gut-wrenching moment, and it almost wasn't in the show at all. "When I first read episode 10, the voicemail was never going to be in it," Molly Gordon explained in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "What I think happened is that Chris wanted to make that part more meaningful and add more to the episode. It was heartbreaking for me, acting in the walk-in scene, knowing that Jeremy [Allen White] hadn't heard that voicemail, knowing he would be listening to it while trapped in a refrigerator."

In the aftermath of the episode, it's easy to wonder if this is truly the end of Claire and Carmy's relationship. Although what Carmy said was hurtful, it still feels like he could probably reach out to her and make some amends. Claire had just said she loves him, after all, so it sure seems possible that she'd be willing to stick around and work things out. 

For Molly Gordon, however, there was some catharsis to be found in Claire's decision to leave. "I've stayed in relationships and tried to fix someone like that," she explained, "So I was happy that Claire just leaves. She doesn't go, 'Oh wait, is that actually how you feel?' She just chooses to leave the situation." Admittedly, this doesn't feel completely fair to Carmy. Are the things you say in presumed privacy during a period of heightened stress actually representative of how you genuinely feel? It does reinforce an interesting contrast between Claire and the rest of the characters. Whereas Carmy's spent the whole  show trying to stick with a restaurant owned by his chaotic, hurtful family, Claire simply removes herself from the situation and goes back to her seemingly stable life.

We don't know if Claire will ever return to the show, but that final voicemail of hers serves as a devastating conclusion for Carmy's season 2 character arc. After 10 episodes of raising the question, "Can Carmy have a meaningful personal life while still running a restaurant?" the final moment seems to give a clear-cut no. Or at least, not any time soon. In the season 2 finale, Carmy's chosen to give his restaurant his complete attention, and we'll have to wait until season 3 to find out the full consequences of that decision.