*Warning – contains spoilers for The Bear prequel episode Gary.*
For fans of The Bear, prequel episode Gary, which was written by and stars Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Jon Bernthal, came out of nowhere. For the duo behind it, it had been a long time in the making.
“Jon and I had been talking a lot about it I think during maybe the third season,” Moss-Bachrach said when speaking exclusively with Radio Times alongside Bernthal.
“We approached Chris Storer, the writer, the creator, about… I’ve always been interested in seeing some of the moments before Mikey’s death, and just get a little bit of a window into who he was and also really what he meant to Richie, and why Richie’s in such despair when we find him at the beginning of the show.
“And when we went to talk to Chris about it, he preempted us and before we even got a word out, he was like, ‘Listen, I’d love for you guys to write an episode that was just the two of you guys, spending some kind of day together.’
“And we got off the phone, and were like, ‘Whoa.’ Like, really buffaloed, and really moved by that offer, by the gauntlet that Chris threw down, and couldn’t believe it. We were just really off to the races after that.”
Gary, which arrived on Disney+ as a surprise drop on Tuesday 5 May, sees Moss-Bachrach’s Richie and Bernthal’s Mikey on a work trip to Gary, Indiana, ahead of the events of the original series. Notably, Mikey took his own life before The Bear season 1, so this episode helps to uncover new layers of his mental state, while also offering insights into the man Richie was at the start of the show.
“We had so many ideas,” Moss-Bachrach said of writing the prequel. “When you get a job, you start to create a character, you have to do so much imagining. And so, in some ways, I’ve been thinking about this episode from before we even started shooting the pilot.”
That pilot was shot in July 2021, meaning this really has been in Moss-Bachrach’s head for a long time.
“Like, ‘Who is this man? Who was this man? What was their love? What was their hate? What was their experience?’,” he said. “I mean, they’ve obviously spent more time together than probably Richie spent with anybody in his life. And so when it was time to write down and put pen to paper, I had so many ideas, as did Jon, that it just flowed out pretty quickly.”
Meanwhile, Bernthal said it was “such a joy to get the news,” adding that “we both remember exactly where we were when Chris said, ‘Yeah, you guys go ahead and do this.'”
“We called each other like 12-year-old boys right after, like, ‘Can you believe this?!’,” he said. “There was never, ‘Oh man, how are we gotta do this?’ It was always just additive. Like, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,’ all the way through the process. There was never a day on set that was hard or difficult or was a struggle. It was unbelievably creatively fulfilling.”
One aspect of the episode Moss-Bachrach wouldn’t be drawn on was its conclusion, which flashed forward to the present day, and saw Richie getting into a brutal car accident.
Asked what he could say about this ending and what it means for Richie going forward, Moss-Bachrach said: “I’m gonna have to be frustratingly coy about that.”
However, he did tease: “I don’t know, I think all will be revealed.”
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After Gary debuted on Disney+, the release date for The Bear’s fifth and final season was confirmed, with the new episodes set to be released on Friday 26 June 2026 in the UK.
Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Moss-Bachrach, Abby Elliott, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colón-Zayas and Matty Matheson will all be returning in their main roles, while Ricky Staffieri, Oliver Platt, Will Poulter and Jamie Lee Curtis will be returning in their recurring roles.
The Bear seasons 1-4 and Gary are available to stream now on Disney+ in the UK – you can sign up to Disney+ from £5.99 a month now.
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