Editor’s Note: The following contains a spoiler regarding the plot of Season 3: Episode 1 of Ted Lasso.
Being a Ted Lasso fan has always been a test of faith.
First, we had to trust the show’s creators — Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly — to take a series of NBC Premier League commercials about a clueless American coach in London and give it roots, along with characters worth rooting for.
After we leaned into the first season’s feel-good optimism and powerful storytelling, we were tested again in Season 2 when the writers made the necessary (and somewhat risky) room for growth with heartbreaking storylines, a deeper look at Ted’s mental health struggles and a finale that left us slack-jawed and desperate for answers we wouldn’t get for nearly two years.
MORE: Brendan Hunt says Ted Lasso Season 3 is ‘not necessarily the end of everything’
As Lasso fans gear up for Wednesday’s premiere of the show’s third and final-for-now season on Apple TV+, it also might be the biggest test to date for all involved. It’s time to land the plane, and with a show this popular and beloved, everyone’s got an opinion on how to do it. Because the show’s creators knew how the story would end long before it began, the question isn’t whether they’ll effectively wrap the story they wanted to tell. It’s whether the show’s passionate and fiercely protective fans will trust them to do it, even if they don’t always understand the process.
There are series that go on for years that don’t deliver as much story and character development as Ted Lasso’s award-winning writers have packed into 22 episodes — and certainly very few that manage to build a culture of audience loyalty that resembles the depths of sports fandom rather than people united by their love of a TV show. In just two seasons, the show has inspired a slew of popular fan podcasts and blogs devoted to analyzing each episode and predicting what might come next, not to mention a thriving market for independent artists to sell everything from character illustrations to laptop stickers and even ornately designed holiday ornaments (it was a gift; leave me alone).
It’s not hard to see why Lasso fans are so personally invested. When the show premiered in August 2020, it met us where we were during a time of collective isolation and fear. Confined to our homes and doing all we could to distract ourselves from reality, binge-watching anything streamable was no longer a guilty pleasure — it was how we coped with uncertainty. Then came Ted Lasso, a show that preached kindness, forgiveness and hope, all things severely lacking back then, and those who were tuning in week after week couldn’t stop talking about it. By the end of the first season, we weren’t just rooting for Ted’s character. We were rooting for the show.
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Word-of-mouth popularity spiked leading up to season 2 and expectations were high for the show’s creators to deliver the same warm-blanket comfort as the season before. Ultimately they did, but not without doing the messy work of exploring the internal battles of the show’s key characters and reinforcing how hard it is to truly know people when they’re shaped by so many things we can’t see.
Stories alone can’t heal you, but they can show you what healing looks like. And great stories don’t skip over the work. There are no trophies for forgiving your parents. No gold stars for learning how to be vulnerable with the people you love. Sometimes healing is just waking up every day and choosing the work.
This is part of the reason why some felt Season 2 was a departure from what they wanted the show to be: Something that made us feel good and believe in the goodness of others. Simple. Black and white. No trap doors (and for the love of god, no holiday episodes!). But the gray areas are where this show lives and where it sings, especially when it comes to Ted. Yes, it was difficult to watch him use his relentless optimism as a way to smother his unhealed pain. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t genuine or that we bought into a misleading character. It just meant he was human.
Resolution will look like a lot of different things to Lasso fans. Many want Ted to find love again, whether with Sassy, Rebecca or someone else, after watching him navigate a painful divorce for two years. Others want the classic sports-movie ending he promised in the first season by winning the Premier League against all odds and proving he doesn’t have to know the sport to be an effective coach.
There are several possibilities, none of them mutually exclusive, but one thing has been certain from the beginning: There was never going to be a reality where Ted stayed anywhere for very long while his son lived on another continent. His reason for moving to Richmond was to save his marriage by giving his wife a literal ocean of space. His marriage might be over, but he’s still Henry’s father and he’s ready to go home. Whatever that means. Whatever it takes.
It’s hard to see how that might play out, especially given his promise to Rebecca to come back this year and “win the whole (expletive thing).” But after watching the first few episodes of Season 3, I’ll say this: We probably shouldn’t ignore how the show makes masterful use of its first and last close-ups of each season. The pilot’s first close-up was Rebecca in her office, angry and vengeful and ready to use Ted in her plan to destroy AFC Richmond. Rebecca was also the final shot of the season, evolved and forgiving (and covered in Pellegrino), as she entrusted Ted to rescue the club from relegation.
Then there was the first shot of Season 2, a close-up of Nate standing with Ted and Coach Beard as AFC Richmond’s new assistant coach. Admittedly, the choice to open with a shot of who was then a relatively minor character seemed confusing. It only made sense by the time we got to the last shot of the second season’s finale: Another close-up of Nate at work, this time standing alone as the new head coach of West Ham United, all but consumed by insecurity and revenge.
The first shot of Season 3 is the first time the show opens with its title character as we see Ted, zoned out and a bit heartbroken, sitting at the airport with Henry after spending six weeks together in Richmond. It’s clear Ted’s sadness about sending his son back to Kansas is bigger than the moment itself, which ultimately sets the stage for Ted to reassess his reasons for being in Richmond, and more importantly, his reasons for not being with Henry.
The final shot of Season 3 is anyone’s guess, but if the pattern holds we can only hope that wherever we find Ted at the end of his journey, it’s somewhere that looks like home.
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