Anyone who’s watched “The Bear” know just how intense it can be at any given moment, and during Season 1, that intensity rarely — if ever — lets up for even a moment. Carmy comes from Michelin-starred restaurants and wants to turn The Original Beef of Chicagoland into a high-caliber establishment; in Season 2, that wish slowly becomes a reality as Carmy and his team battle against time and bureaucracy alike to accomplish their goal of creating a restaurant named The Bear. Along the way, he wants his staff to learn the ins and outs of fine dining. For his obstinate “cousin” Richie (fellow Emmy winner Ebon Moss-Bacharach), that means staging (or training) in an elite Chicago restaurant in the episode “Forks,” one of the season’s standouts. For his eager, brilliant sous chef Sydney Adamu (another fellow Emmy winner Ayo Edebiri), it means eating her way through the city in “Sundae,” the second episode. For Marcus, it means working with Luca in “Honeydew” while exploring Copenhagen in his spare time.
Luca’s kind mentorship in “Honeydew” is a striking contrast to the often-difficult, harsh world of haute cuisine shown on “The Bear,” and it also manages to give dimension to Carmy without him appearing alongside Will Poulter in a single scene (it’s suggested that Carmy once taught Luca himself). Later in Season 2, Marcus receives a gift from Luca to celebrate The Bear’s opening, bringing the moment full circle … and apparently, there’s still more of Luca’s story to tell in Season 3.