The surprise episode ended with the actor’s character Richie getting into a car accident.

The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach reacts to prequel episode’s shocking cliffhanger

The surprise episode ended with the actor's character Richie getting into a car accident.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and NME.

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May 8, 2026 6:58 p.m. ET

Ebon Moss-Bachrach in 'The Bear'. Credit:

- Ebon Moss-Bachrach is addressing that shocking cliffhanger at the end of The Bear's standalone episode, "Gary."

- The prequel sees Richie (Moss-Bachrach) remembering the time he and late pal Mikey (Jon Bernthal) went on a road trip to Gary, Indiana.

- Richie wakes up from his daydream in his car and proceeds to drive forward before getting hit by another vehicle.

**Warning: This article contains spoilers from *The Bear*'s standalone episode, "Gary."**

Only *The Bear** *could drop a surprise episode and somehow manage to end it on an even *bigger* cliffhanger.

The Emmy-winning comedy series did just that earlier this week, releasing a brand new standalone prequel episode titled "Gary" and closing with the reveal that everyone's favorite cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) had just been involved in a shocking car accident. His condition after the collision remains unclear as *The Bear *prepares to premiere its fifth and final season next month.

Written by Moss-Bachrach and Jon Bernthal, and directed by *The Bear *creator Christopher Storer, "Gary" sees Richie daydreaming behind the wheel about a road trip he once took to Gary, Ind., with his late best friend Mikey (Bernthal). When a car horn shakes him from his reverie, he pulls out into an intersection and is immediately hit by another vehicle.

Moss-Bachrach tells ** that the crash occurs as Richie is heading into work one day. "It's very important that this is… It's a memory piece," he says. "The entire episode seems to take place in Richie's head that morning as he's maybe on his way to work, it seems like, and he's lost in the past. Then, life rams back into you and reality… It just doesn't give you time to spend too long ruminating."

Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach.

While the accident appears to take place following the events of season 4, Moss-Bachrach stays mum on the official timeline of events. "Beyond that kind of general tonal thing, I can't really get into the details," he says, before noting that the crash could "potentially" have occurred between seasons 4 and 5.

When it came to crafting "Gary," Moss-Bachrach explains that he and Bernthal had been interested in spotlighting "the good times" between Mikey and Richie for years. The former's death by suicide serves as the inciting incident for the first season of *The Bear*, with his younger brother Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) returning home to Chicago to take over the titular restaurant.

"I'm always interested in finding my character's joy," Moss-Bachrach says. "We see so much of grieving Richie, broken Richie, sad Richie, and I wanted to see what it is that this man's grieving, what it is that he's mourning, what was the nature of this relationship."

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So, prior to filming season 4, the pair called up Storer and pitched him the idea of shooting multiple flashback sequences that could be interspersed throughout the season. Instead, the creator asked if they'd be interested in writing their own Western-inspired standalone episode.

Gobsmacked at the opportunity, Moss-Bachrach and Bernthal began piecing together a story that took their characters on an adventure, yes, but also highlighted their friendship and the contrasting trajectories of their lives and emotional states.

"I just wanted to see all the in-between moments," Moss-Bachrach says. "I'm not super interested in the kind of capital 'D' dramatic story points, but just what it's like to be a fly on the wall, or a fly on the window of their car, and see these guys together when they're both sort of in very different… One's really going down and one's really coming up. And to find them at this precarious moment, I think it's just super interesting."

It's true. "Gary" is set just as Richie and Tiff (Gillian Jacobs) are about to welcome their daughter, Eva. Mikey, meanwhile, finds himself opening up to a woman at a bar named Sherry (Marin Ireland) about his mental health struggles and difficult upbringing being raised by a single mom.

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"I think that there is this thing with Mikey that… it's inescapable," Bernthal says. "There's no getting out of it. He's very aware of it, the hopelessness is so all encumbering, and so I'm really proud of the stuff with Marin and I in the bathroom because, to this total stranger, he really articulates exactly what it is that plagues him and then you see it manifest a second later."

And it does when, after a day spent joyously playing basketball and drinking tall boys together, a teary-eyed Mikey lashes out at Richie at the bar, calling him a terrible father and encouraging him to walk away just like his own.  "What we wanted was at the end, before Mikey's done, for him to say some things to Richie that are gonna haunt him, and will be there forever, and he can never take back," Bernthal says. "You don't get the wound of that without having real joy and real bliss and seeing how perfect they are together, too."

Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach.

Moss-Bachrach adds that he believes Mikey attacking Richie is a painful attempt to protect himself from another uncertain future.

"I think for Mike, in many ways that eruption and that attack on Richie happens because he knows Richie's gonna be starting a family, and he's gonna be losing his friend a little bit," he says. "So there's a little bit of like, 'You can't fire me, I quit' kind of thing. Like, 'Let me burn it down before I can get hurt by the thing.' And it's a very destructive and human thing that happens all the time."

Still, it's clear that the pair's blow-up at the bar has left a lasting impression on Richie, who finds himself employing one of Mikey's tactics in season 2. "That argument really dovetails with the argument between Richie and Carmen, when Carmen's stuck in the freezer, and he's screaming at him and Richie's yelling on the other side, he's saying, 'I love you, I love you, I love you,'" Moss-Bachrach says. "There's a lot of similarity between those two arguments, and that's not an accident."

Bernthal is also quick to reiterate that viewers are seeing Richie's version of what unfolded that day, and that the actual events may not have played out exactly as he remembered it. Case in point: the moment at the end of the episode where it's clear Mikey wants to make amends on their drive home, but can't quite form the words.

"It's such a beautiful meditation on grief and regret and things you could have done, or should have done, or wish you'd done, or maybe you did do," he adds. "There's a lot of layers to it."

"Gary" is streaming now on FX and Hulu. The fifth and final season of *The Bear *premieres June 25.

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Comedy”