When the finale of The Bear’s second season aired last June, one of the hottest topics surrounding the show wasn’t actually a plot point. While viewers wondered if Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), the series’ emotionally tortured star chef, would ever get out of that walk-in refrigerator, the series’s most dedicated fanatics turned their attention to an even more pressing question: Would Carmy and his sous chef Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) end up falling in love?
The duo even got its own portmanteau — SydCarmy — as fans endlessly speculated about whether or not Sydney and Carmy would, at the very least, make out. On X and Reddit, there have been countless examinations of their interactions and how they might point to love or lust between chef and sous. Generally, The Bear’s fandom is pro-SydCarmy, though some viewers are vehemently opposed to the relationship, sometimes voicing that opposition with hints of racism. But no matter how you feel about the duo’s potential romance, there’s no denying that SydCarmy has evolved into a phenomenon, one that took White totally by surprise.
“It’s crazy. It’s something that has happened entirely separate from the show that we’re making,” White told Eater in a press junket promoting The Bear’s third season. “Carmy and Sydney being romantically involved was not something we had discussed whatsoever. It feels like there’s a show happening outside of the show that we’re making. Maybe we’re just programmed from the TV and film that we’ve been watching for so long. If there’s a guy and a girl in a story, they’re gonna end up together.”
To some extent, the desire to see Sydney and Carmy end up together is an extension of a culture that’s obsessed with “shipping,” or hoping that two characters in a film or book will hook up. (Think ReyLo from Star Wars, or Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from The X-Files, which brought “shipping” into the mainstream.) Now, there is an entire hashtag on Tumblr devoted to SydCarmy fan fiction and memes. “People love to ship characters right now,” adds Abby Elliott, who plays Natalie Berzatto, The Bear’s stressed-out restaurant manager. “Shipping is real.”
Edebiri, on the other hand, thinks it’s much more simple than that. “People like to see people kiss on TV,” she says. “But also, the show is about many things, and one of those things is passion. And I think when you see people being passionate about their work, it’s maybe one of those things where the wires are getting crossed in your brain a little bit. You see passion and think maybe, whoa [gestures romantically]. Yeah.”
At this point it appears that all the shipping is really for naught — in an interview with Vanity Fair, Edebiri and White both confirmed that a romantic relationship between Sydney and Carmy was never in the cards. But that won’t stop the internet from trying to find meaning in every single “yes, chef” when Season 3 premieres on June 26.
