How The Bear Season 5 Paid Tribute to Rob Reiner After His 2025 Death

Jeremy Allen White, Liza Colón-Zayas Reveal What Made Saying Goodbye to 'The Bear' So Difficult

The loss of Rob Reiner is still echoing across Hollywood.

In one of the legendary filmmaker’s final roles before he and wife Michele Singer Reiner were killed in December, he headed to the small screen with a memorable role as restaurant consultant Albert in The Bear season four. And following Reiner’s death, the storyline involving his character’s mentorship of line cook Ebra (Edwin Lee Gibson) endured in the fifth and final season, with the FX series making a poignant nod to his legacy.

In the series finale, Ebra’s attempt to pitch his and Albert’s business plan—which would see The Original Beef of Chicagoland turn into a financially-beneficial franchise—to Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) finally come to fruition. Carmy doesn’t even need to hear the full plan: He trusts Ebra, and he’s all in.

Ebra and the rest of the staff that have been keeping The Beef afloat then check out the location for their first franchise, and the line cook excitedly calls Albert.

“Albert, we are in business,” Ebra says to Reiner’s character, who can’t be heard on the other end of the phone. “It’s perfect. I will have all the documents, email it to you immediately. Anything else I can do?”

And after Albert silently responds, Ebra’s reply is a nod to Reiner’s legendary Hollywood career.

Quoting The Princess Bride, with a small smile on his face, Ebra says, “As you wish.”

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For Gibson, returning to The Bear without Reiner—whose death preceded filming—was challenging.

“It's emotional when I think about it,” he told The Standard in an interview published June 24. “Because we go back in season five, and he's not there and we fully expected him to be there, [it] changed a bit the trajectory of the story.”

Yet, he will always treasure the moments he did share on and off camera with Reiner.

“All those days that Rob and I spent together were a lot of fun,” he remembered. “I'm really happy that it looks like, ‘Oh, they must have spent so much time’, when in actuality we just had such a great chemistry immediately.”

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Gibson continued, “I got to be his last scene partner, unfortunately. But it was just really, really great moments with someone that you grew up watching in front of the camera, then behind the camera.”

For White, who played the talented but tortured chef Carmy Berzatto across all five seasons of The Bear, having Reiner play even a small role was a dream come true.

“We all got to spend a little bit of time with him,” the Shameless alum told USA Today. “And he was incredibly generous, incredibly kind. Like so, game and curious, committed. He was really happy to be there.”

White continued, “I’ve been really lucky, I’ve met a lot of people I admire now. And sometimes, you meet those heroes, and it’s disappointing and you wish you hadn’t—and that’s just the opposite case with Rob.”

For more tributes that have been shared in Reiner’s honor, read on.

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