The Bear Season 3 Confirmed Whether We'll See A Carmy & Sydney Romance

No, we won't see any sparks fly between Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) and Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) during Season 3 of FX and Hulu's acclaimed restaurant dramedy "The Bear."

During a press conference attended by the two Emmy winners as Season 3 of the show prepares to drop on Hulu (via Vanity Fair), Edebiri and White said there definitely won't be a romance between their characters. "There was no talk in the rooms about any romantic implications [between Carmy and Sydney]," White confirmed. "Carmy is somebody that I think she's really looked up to, but now is sort of in the thick of doing business with," Edebiri added, "and it's, I think, a lot more chaotic than she might have idealized before they really started working together." 

White also discussed the professional partnership that launched during the show's second season, acknowledging that Carm is "not the best communicator, but he will often make a sort of grand gesture like that to try and communicate to Syd or the kitchen or whomever. He's got a lot going on in his mind all the time, and people aren't always aware of exactly what's going on." From there, he teased a little bit about what fans can expect from the duo's dynamic in Season 3: "You'll see, obviously, how that affects Carmen and Syd's relationship, but I think Carmen's trying to welcome her in a little bit was the point of the partnership agreement."

To be absolutely frank, avoiding a romance between Sydney and Carmy is the single best choice that "The Bear" can make as it enters its highly anticipated third season. Not only is it a boring and rote choice to simply stick two of a property's main characters together whether it makes sense or not, but the dynamic between the two chefs is a rare depiction of platonic friendship and professional strife onscreen. Carmy and Sydney do butt heads sometimes, and in Season 2, Sydney seems hesitant about Carmy's budding relationship with his childhood friend Claire, played by Molly Gordon — but at no point does the show say that Sydney is jealous of Claire for romantic reasons. Instead, the series positions Sydney's misgivings as concerns about the titular Bear, the fine dining restaurant she and Carmy are launching together. (The official opening of the restaurant, incidentally, pushes Carmy to the breaking point in the Season 2 finale, leading to an enormous blowup overheard by Claire that leads to her leaving the building entirely — and potentially ending the relationship.)

As it happens, Ayo Edebiri told The Hollywood Reporter in August of 2023 that she's sort of tired of hearing theories about Carmy and Sydney's potential romance. "It's really not our thought process when we're making the show, and I understand it can be part of a show's culture—but I don't think they're going to get what they want," the Golden Globe winner revealed. "I think it's incredibly cool to have this dynamic onscreen that isn't romantic, but that feels charged and sexy."

At the end of Season 2 of "The Bear," both Sydney and Carmy find themselves in over their heads when they hold a friends-and-family night at their new restaurant The Bear, where everything goes haywire pretty much immediately. Despite the fact that Sydney is an immensely talented chef, she loses her grip as the orders begin to mount, and Carmy's "cousin" Richie (Ebon Moss-Bacharach, who also won an Emmy for the series) has to help her manage even as the restaurant runs out of forks entirely. When Carmy gets trapped in the walk-in freezer, he goes on a vicious rant about how he can't possibly be in a relationship with Claire, which she overhears on the other side of the door ... leaving both of them bereft after it's revealed that Claire left Carmy a voicemail telling him that she loves him.

All of this is to say that, at the end of Season 2, emotions are seriously heightened amongst the staff of the fictional restaurant, and as Ayo Edebiri also told Vanity Fair, she feels like that endpoint really defines the relationship between Sydney and Carmy. "Work can be a very intimate thing and a very personal thing and a very emotional thing, and I think when you're also in industries that are creative or creative adjacent, I think there's something that also invokes feelings of passion," Edebiri told the outlet. Now, we just have to wait and see where Carmy and Sydney land after their first night of service.

The entire third season of "The Bear" drops on Hulu on June 26 at 9 P.M. EST.