Is This the Final Season of ‘The Bear’? Should It Be?

The fourth season of The Bear ends with the clock running out. It’s the clock that Jimmy (Oliver Platt) and Computer (Brian Koppleman) give Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and his crew at the beginning of the season to turn around the business before they have to shut down. Suddenly it’s at zero, and we have no idea if The Bear (the restaurant) can stay afloat.

But what does this mean for The Bear, as a TV show? Is this it? Are we done?

Time has always been a theme in Christopher Storer’s show about Chef Carmy and his ragtag band of “cousins” who turn an Italian beef joint into a fancy restaurant. Carmy lives by the rule “every second counts,” which is both about the efficiency of operating a kitchen and, you know, living life to the fullest. So there’s symbolic weight to the fact that there is no time left at the end of episode 10—one that could very well imply there’s no time left at both The Bear and The Bear.

The Bear, for what it’s worth, has not been renewed for a fifth season yet, and seasons three and four were filmed largely back-to-back. Meanwhile, FX Chairman John Landgraf has remained coy about whether more Bear is in the cards, saying he’s leaving the decision up to Storer. With this finale, however, all that’s clear is that Storer himself is playing coy with the future of the show.

As for the future of the restaurant The Bear, well, Carmy himself is stepping back. In the last half an hour, we learn that Carmy has quietly changed the agreement he sent to Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) to sign. Instead of making her a co-partner with him, he has decided to leave The Bear entirely. The restaurant will belong on one side to Jimmy, and on the other to Sydney and Natalie (Abby Elliott), Carmy’s sister and the operations manager. Eventually, after their long airing of grievances, Sydney finally agrees to cut Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) into the deal. They’ve come a long way since she accidentally stabbed him.

For Carmy, the decision represents the culmination of the growth he has slowly been making over the course of the season. He first makes the call to Pete at the end of episode 3 following his long-awaited confrontation with his ex-girlfriend Claire (Molly Gordon), who he rudely dismissed when locked in a freezer on The Bear’s friends and family night. (That happened at the end of season 2. The growth has been almost excruciatingly slow.)

Carmy’s self-awareness means he is reevaluating his relationship not just to The Bear but to cooking as a whole, realizing he invested himself so thoroughly in the job as a means of avoiding his pain. I mean, anyone who has been watching the show for four seasons could tell you that, but it’s good he’s figuring it out for himself.

Sydney, who has been debating leaving The Bear all season, is completely thrown by this—in part because Carmy handled it poorly, leaving her to figure out his plans without talking to her first, and in part because of her own self-doubt. But Carmy assuages those fears.