‘The Bear’ ending explained: What happens to Carmy?

Despite a torrential storm, broken pipes, and a rampaging spoon thief, The Bear Season 5 — and therefore the series as a whole — managed to cook up a happy ending.

The Bear earned not one but two Michelin stars from Michelin inspector Peter Clark (Gary Janetti), who visited the restaurant in Season 4. (The man everyone thought was the inspector in Season 5, played by Peter Grosz, was just a red herring.) Thanks to its new, doubly stellar rating, the Bear is able to stay in business, meaning Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), Marcus (Lionel Boyce), and the rest of the Bear’s staff are able to keep cooking up a storm in the kitchen they worked so hard to build.

Outside the kitchen, Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) gets the opportunity to fly to Japan for a hospitality conference, and Jess (Sarah Ramos) is coming with him. While I’m not the biggest fan of how The Bear has handled its romances in the past, the reveal of the two holding hands on the plane did cause my Grinch heart to grow three sizes. Elsewhere, Ebra (Edwin Lee Gibson) kickstarts the Beef’s ghost kitchen empire, with emphatic approval from Carmy (Jeremy Allen White).

Speaking of Carmy, what happened to The Bear‘s main Bear?

Season 5 of The Bear finally lets Carmy move on.

In The Bear‘s series finale, Carmy makes good on his promise from the end of Season 4. He officially leaves the food industry.

His mind was made up before he participated in what might have been the Bear’s final night, but even then, that last service was proof that he needed to escape this line of work. Between a blowup fight over his quitting announcement to his panic over a dropped lamb dish, Season 5 made it clearer than ever to Carmy that working in a restaurant simply isn’t healthy for him. The reverse is also true: Carmy’s behavior in the kitchen has repeatedly created a hostile work environment for his coworkers, something he has grown to recognize and tried to change over the show’s run.

In a Season 5 conversation emblematic of Carmy’s understanding of his unhealthy relationship with restaurant work, he compares his response to stress to Sydney’s own coping mechanism. When she gets frustrated, she heads out to the Bear’s empty back alley to yell into the void. Carmy, on the other hand, knows that he would just yell at other people, and that knowledge is why he needs to leave the industry.

Carmy explores a new passion in The Bear‘s series finale.

While The Bear Season 5 doesn’t actually explore Carmy’s new life beyond cooking — which feels like a bit of a cop-out given the bombshell of Season 4’s ending — it does give viewers a taste of what’s in store for ex-chef Carmy. In the series finale, Carmy interviews for an internship at an architecture firm, suggesting a new career path that would still let him exercise his creativity.

The Bear has established Carmy’s love of art and design often throughout its run, between his elaborately structured dishes and his gorgeous drawings of his creations. On top of that, Season 4 featured a long sequence of him visiting and admiring famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio in Oak Park, just outside of Chicago. Clearly, he has an eye for the field, and in his final appearance at Richie’s daughter Eva’s (Annabelle Toomey) birthday party, he already seems to be more at peace outside the restaurant world. Here’s hoping he can let it rip in his new career.

The Bear Season 5 is now streaming in its entirety on Hulu. Episodes also air Thursday nights at 9 p.m. ET on FX.