Has ‘The Bear’ Season 5 begun filming? Jeremy Allen White shares promising update on Hulu series
Fans of ‘The Bear’ may not have to endure as long a drought between seasons as they once feared. Jeremy Allen White, the Emmy-winning face of the Hulu dramedy, has revealed that cameras on season 5 are gearing up to roll sooner than expected. He offered viewers a welcome update after months of silence about the show’s future. During a recent Variety interview, White confirmed that the production team is preparing to get back to work, even if he doesn't yet have the precise date in hand. The actor, who portrays the tightly wound and endlessly determined chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, hinted that the cast and crew are targeting the first week of January to begin filming.
“Jan. 5 or something like that. Very soon,” White shared when pressed for a timeline, adding that the official start date is still being finalized. The update arrives not long after ‘The Bear’ wrapped its polarizing fourth season on Hulu this past June. Season 4 debuted June 25, delivering another 10-episode batch that continued Carmy’s turbulent fight to keep his reinvented Chicago restaurant from collapsing under the weight of its own ambition. FX announced the season 5 renewal just a week later. Since premiering in 2022, ‘The Bear’ has carved out an impressive legacy.
The series became an awards-season powerhouse almost immediately, sweeping Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series and earning White back-to-back wins for Lead Actor in a Comedy. But as the show pushed into later seasons, enthusiasm from awards bodies began to fade. While season 3 picked up a solid set of nominations, it went home empty-handed. Season 4 struggled even more to win over critics, landing an 84% Rotten Tomatoes score, the lowest of any season so far. Several reviewers noted that season 4 felt stuck in a holding pattern, uncertain about where to take Carmy and the people orbiting his mess.
ScreenRant’s critique was especially blunt, describing the narrative as “confused” and arguing that the series appeared to be “spinning its wheels” rather than pushing the story somewhere new. One line from the review captured the sentiment: the season struggled to “make it exciting to worry about the fate of the restaurant again,” leaving viewers with less emotional investment than earlier chapters had earned. Even so, not all commentary was dim. The season 4 finale, an episode that shifted focus back to character growth and long-simmering emotional payoffs, earned strong praise.
Critics highlighted how the closing hour gave Carmy, Sydney, and Richie story turns that could function as natural endpoints if Hulu had opted not to renew the show. But the series will indeed continue, and fans now have confirmation that the next chapter is inching closer to reality. Hulu has yet to reveal when ‘The Bear’ season 5 will premiere, but with filming expected to begin in early January, viewers may get answers sooner rather than later.
