(Slight spoilers for The Bear Season 3 follow.)
Television’s most hotly debated scene last year appeared in the The Bear’s Season 2 finale. In it, chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) has a panic attack amidst the opening of his new fine dining restaurant, The Bear. Carm tries to envision happier times with his current fling, Claire (Molly Gordon), but that only makes him spiral harder. And then, poof! All of his nerves go away the second he imagines his co-chef, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), walking through the restaurant doors on her first day.
Fans spent nearly a year trying to figure out what this scene meant. Is Carmy crushing harder on Sydney than he is on Claire? Are they soulmates? Or is Carm’s relationship with Sydney entirely platonic, and that vision represented something else entirely—perhaps Carmy setting his sights on his restaurant’s future?
Although fans are all entitled to their own read of the moment, White himself is ready to set the record straight.
“Syd and Carm have a really powerful relationship,” White tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed over Zoom. “We’re shooting down romance stuff left and right, but this isn’t to say there isn’t a real platonic intimacy to their relationship. They’re incredibly reliant on one another. That’s a beautiful thing, too.”
In Season 3, Carmy has a similar moment with Sydney. While facing some intense anxiety during service at the restaurant, Carm tries to calm himself down by envisioning the people he loves most in the world. Again: This doesn’t work. As his hands shake and he loses focus, the only person who can break him out of his own head is Sydney. This time, she literally speaks to him, telling him to get himself back on track.
“Oftentimes, I feel like Syd’s voice can get through to him because he sees her potential,” White continues. “He has a lot of respect for her abilities. In a lot of ways, she is so many things that Carmy is not.”
Sitting beside White as he explains the characters’ connection is Abby Elliott, who plays Carmy’s sister Natalie, nodding in agreement.
“[Sydney] knows how to do that,” Elliott says. “She knows how to get [Carmy’s] attention. And sometimes that’s yelling at [him] to snap out of it.”
Sydney and Carmy’s dynamic also reflects Syd’s authority in the restaurant, Elliott adds. When Carmy isn’t in control of his own restaurant, it’s Sydney who takes charge.
“Our characters really do listen to her because she is a leader,” Elliott adds. “We all know that she is integral to The Bear team, and that she really makes us work.”
But White says there is something special about Sydney and Carmy’s relationship, some cosmic connection that brings them together time and time again. White mentions the first episode of Season 3—in a flashback, we see Carmy preparing a dish while working at a fine dining establishment before The Bear even existed. After the meal is plated, a server delivers it to Sydney, who is dining at the restaurant.
“There is this connection between these two people that existed before they even met,” White says. “Then, that gets you thinking about, like, what a beautiful thing it is to prepare food for someone. How you’re connected forever, in some way, dining in these restaurants.”
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