If you haven’t had lunch already today, watching the first trailer for The Bear Season 2 should send you running to your kitchen. With shots of fresh pasta, steaks soaked in rosemary butter, and noodles sizzling in an oily scallion mixture, the upcoming sophomore season of Hulu’s hit series promises to be one of the most appetizing shows of all time.
If the team behind “The Bear”—a reinvention of Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) family restaurant The Original Beef—manages to open on time, that is. Carmy, Sydney (Ayo Edibiri), and Natalie (Abby Elliott) are putting the restaurant refresh on a fast track, setting it to reopen in six months. But that’s going to mean sending the OG team to culinary school, hiring a handful of new team members, and completing tons of construction in the meantime.
“It’s a face lift,” Carmy explains, as he paces around in the preview, “it’s not a gut.”
“Bear, it’s a face lift and a gut,” Fak (Matty Matheson) shoots back.
Carmy is also working through his personal issues this season, continuing his work in group therapy to unpack his feelings around the death of his brother Michael (Jon Bernthal). While sitting amongst a handful of strangers, Carmy says he’s trying to come from a place of “positivity” when it comes to his work and his life—but is that even possible, when alarms are buzzing everywhere, and food is burning seven stoves over?
The Original Beef will no longer be a hole-in-the-wall location, after this revamping process is over. The team promises a “destination restaurant” for the Chicagoland area, with a menu that is “chaotic” but also “thoughtful.” Whatever the theme of this new joint is, I’d pay anything to have just one meal served by these genius weirdos.
Most of the main Season 1 cast makes an appearance in this trailer, including White, Edebiri, Elliott, Matheson, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colón-Zayas, and Edwin Lee Gibson. Two new cast members are also set to join: Bob Odenkirk and Molly Gordon, who appears as an old friend (or possibly ex-girlfriend) of Carmy. Here’s hoping it’s the latter—we could use some new tension in this show.
The Bear Season 2 premieres on Hulu on June 22.
