Michael "Mikey" Berzatto is a fictional character on the FX Network television series The Bear. Mikey, memorably played by Jon Bernthal, left a legacy that made possible the construction of the show's found family, not to mention the Bear restaurant itself. He haunts the narrative. Mikey's suicide was the inciting event that led his younger brother Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) to move back to Chicago and take over the family's misbegotten Original Beef sandwich shop, putting Carmy forever at odds with Mikey's best friend, their play cousin and de facto foster brother Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). Mikey appears in roughly one major flashback in each season thus far (namely, and chronologically, "Ceres," "Fishes," "Napkins," and "Groundhogs"), and he is a continuing presence in memory, dialogue, photographs, flashback montages, dream sequences, and voiceovers throughout the series, most notably in "Braciole," "Tomorrow," and "Forever."
Michael Berzatto, called Mikey, was born November 15, 1979, and shot himself in the head on the State Street Bridge on February 22, 2022. He was 42 years old at the time of his suicide. The loud, lionized, charismatic, and larger-than-life oldest brother of the family, Mikey was first described by Uncle Jimmy in the second episode of the series: "No disrespect...your brother, he was an animal, surrounded by dickheads, and then he lost his mind, and now he put you in a real tough spot."[1] In the season one finale, "Braciole," his best friend Richie reflected on Mikey's suicide and described him as "...so loud and obnoxious and fսckin' hilarious. You know, he was Mikey Bear. I thought...he would pull out of it."[2]
Mikey's rejection of Carmy led Carmy to leave Chicago to become a professional chef in an attempt to work toward his big brother's acceptance.[3] Unbeknownst to Carmy, Mikey was intentionally pushing Carmy away from the family to protect him from their destructive habits and chaos.[4] In an interview with Variety following the release of season two, Bernthal commented, "I think the stuff that we don't know is almost as interesting as the stuff that we do...I only know bits of information and we know, obviously, what Mikey's fate is. Oftentimes, when we really love people and we're aware of our own toxicity, our own hopelessness, and him being in the state that he's in...he feels like this shop and the way that he's run it and everything around him has been this enormous albatross, and he's kind of run into the ground. He's shrouded in hopelessness, and he wants to keep his brother out of it. He wants to keep his brother pure. That might manifest itself sometimes in jealousy and anger."[5]
He seems "kind of dumb," but he's also the man who "turned the Original Beef of Chicagoland into something that mattered to a group of misfits."[6] Following in his mother's footsteps as an addict, Mikey drank to excess, got high, and was dependent on painkillers, which is part of why Carmy, sister Natalie (Abby Elliott), and brother-in-law Pete (Chris Witaske) now attend Al-Anon support group meetings.[7] As we learn in season one, Mikey "apparently liked to drink and party and get into a good bit of trouble with Richie around Chicago."[8] It is implied that Mikey encouraged his best friend and all-purpose deputy Richie to deal small amounts of cocaine out of the back of the restaurant to sustain the business during the COVID-19 pandemic.[9]
Mikey's suicide launched the events of the series.[3] Carmy attended Mikey's funeral momentarily before returning to New York to wrap up his life there before permanently moving back to Chicago. The picture on Mikey's funeral card was the Lamb of God, and the Bible verse was Daniel 6:22, which reads in the King James Version as "My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt."[10]
In a 2025 interview, Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Mikey's mom Donna Berzatto suggested that Mikey may have struggled with untreated mental illness from an early age:[11]
"The script is beautiful. I learned that having a kid who you don't know how to help is one of the most powerless experiences as a parent. I personally have a child with special needs. I have a child who has a learning difference. And the powerlessness you feel when you can't actually help them—you can find people who can help them, but you can't. So the part of that scene [in "Tonnato"] that gets me every time is when she talks about Mike. Because clearly Mike had that problem since he was a little boy. And being a parent and not being able to help your kid and not knowing what to do to help them—and finding that alcohol just made it all more palatable and easy—to play a woman who has struggled with that, and then to have the beautiful writing that articulates that exact powerlessness and turmoil, and resulting shame and self-hatred, and then the addiction on top of it—I just thought it was a beautifully constructed."[11]
Of the three Berzatto siblings, only Mikey has "stereotypical" Italian-American features—dark-haired and swarthy, Mikey also bears evidence of a once-broken nose.[12] Both Berzatto brothers are racked, the muscles adding a layer of implied threat to their rage issues. The muscles and the broken nose seemingly suit Chicago, Carl Sandburg's City of Big Shoulders, a place about which Nelson Algren wrote, "Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real."[13]
In large part due to Bernthal's performance, which has been called "unfailingly riveting," Mikey haunts the narrative and is "the most important" figure in the assembly of the family as it exists in the series.[15]BuzzFeed commented on Bernthal's Mikey in 2025, writing, "'I'll take "TV characters who make me WEEP' for $500, Alex. The Walking Dead actor is beyond perfect as Mikey, Carmy and Sugar's older brother who died before the start of the series. His energy is so warm and sincere that I genuinely forget he's acting. Including him in flashbacks was such a smart choice, and it makes his death hit even harder. Bernthal 1000 percent deserved that Emmy."[16]
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