‘The Bear’ Season 3’s Biggest Celebrity Cameo Raises Some Strange Questions

Another season of The Bear has arrived, and with it comes a whole new slate of celebrity cameos. However, some viewers may have missed Bradley Cooper’s cameo in season 3.

Spoilers ahead!

The Bear has quite a reputation for its celebrity cameos, and season 3 did not disappoint. It brought in famous actors like John Cena and Josh Hartnett, as well as a few real-life celebrity chefs, including Thomas Keller, Christina Tosi, and Wylie Dufresne. While many assumed that Cena was the biggest cameo of the season, an A-list actor was hiding in the season 3 finale. Although viewers may have missed the cameo the first time around, Bradley Cooper does boast a small appearance in The Bear.

Does Bradley Cooper really cameo in The Bear?

The reason viewers may have missed Cooper in the season 3 finale of The Bear is because it’s not a physical cameo. In the finale, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) visits the restaurant Ever, which is helmed by his mentor, Chef Terry (Olivia Colman). As he walks through her Michelin 2-star restaurant, he finds a wall that Terry covered with photos of celebrity chefs from The Bear’s Universe. Cooper appears in one of the photos.

However, he’s not portraying a new fictional celebrity chef for The Bear. The photo is actually taken from the 2015 film Burnt and sees Cooper in the role of Adam Jones. In the movie, Jones is a disgraced chef dead set on earning his third Michelin star. The photo in The Bear is taken straight from the film, showing Cooper as Jones, in a white t-shirt, leaning over a stove with a disgruntled expression on his face. After spotting the image, the only conclusion viewers could reach was that Jones exists in The Bear’s universe.

Cooper’s cameo isn’t the only hint of a shared universe between The Bear and Burnt. In one episode, Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) spots a fork lying conspicuously on the floor. Although the show never explains the significance of the fork on the floor, those who have watched Burnt may find meaning in it. In Burnt, Jones explains to his team how to spot food critics, claiming that one thing they tend to do is purposefully put a fork on the ground to see if the employees will notice it. However, real-life food critics have debunked the myth and confirmed that the fork on the floor was just Burnt’s invention. If The Bear exists in the same universe as Burnt, though, maybe the fork on the floor was hinting at a food critic in the restaurant.

Ultimately, it’s unclear what The Bear is planning to do with its Cooper cameo and hints that The Bear and Burnt share a universe. While it could just be a fun Easter egg, perhaps the show is building up to have Cooper’s Jones make a physical appearance in a future episode.