Warning: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED EPISODE 1 OF TED LASSO SEASON 3.
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Welcome to our Ted Lasso Power Rankings!Each week of the 12-episode season, For The Win will chat about the latest episode to see who is thriving and who is straight up not having a good time in the Ted Lasso universe. Let’s dig into it.
We picked up with AFC Richmond promoted to the Premier League, but they’re hearing humiliating predictions from the media. Meanwhile, former AFC Richmond assistant Nate (the “wonder kid”) is coaching at West Ham United.
Roy Kent, while dealing with a breakup with Keeley Jones (who now runs her own PR agency), has replaced Nate as an assistant coach for Richmond.
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We asked Brendan Hunt about Ted Lasso’s third season and whether this is really the end for the award-winning series.
Fans of Apple TV+’s wildly popular series, Ted Lasso, are gearing up for the show’s third season, which premieres March 15.
There’s plenty of speculation around whether this is the last season of the Emmy-winning series. While no one has confirmed the third season will be the show’s last, its creators — Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly — have said from the start it was developed as a three-act story.
Hunt, who also plays fan-favorite character Coach Beard, says while the third season is the end of this story, it’s not necessarily “the end of everything.”
“We don’t know,” Hunt told For The Win. “We’re gonna take a little break here and we’ll figure it out when the dust is settled.”
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.
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.
Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard) and Jason Sudeikis (Ted Lasso), the show’s stars and co-creators
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.
Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent) and Phil Dunster (Jamie Tartt)
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.
Sarah Niles (Dr. Sharon Fieldstone) and Jason Sudeikis (Ted Lasso)
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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It’s hometown week, folks! We are down to the final four women vying for Zach Shallcross’s season of The Bachelor as Gabi, Ariel, Charity and Kaity hope to earn a spot in the trio for Fantasy Suite week.
Zach’s journey on the road starts in Pittsford, Vermont with Gabi as the couple scampers through the woods, taps a tree, tries a bunch of different syrups and meets Gabi’s family. It’s a pretty straight-forward and seemingly lovely time for everyone.
Next up, he heads down to New York City with Ariel. She took him around the city, trying traditional Jewish fare like pastrami, gefilte fish and tongue sandwich. Meeting Ariel’s family was a little intense with her brother and father reasonably questioning the process and how well they know each other.
Columbus, Georgia was the next stop so that Zach could meet up with Charity and her family and friends. David, Charity’s father, was my personal favorite this week with the best dad energy and advice for his daughter. Most of Charity’s time with her friends and family was spent rehashing previous heartbreak and crying, but they closed it out with a country music bar.
Last, but not least, was Kaity in Austin. This feels a little unfair — or at the very least foreshadowing — as Zach is also from Austin. The duo went grocery shopping and built a bookshelf. Honestly, the truest test of whether a relationship would work is making a couple do mundane tasks without fighting, so I respect the move of having him do chores around your house. They finished with a visit to meet with Kaity’s mom.
A relatively straightforward hometown week episode with very little drama. Let’s get into the contenders, pretenders, those that have work to do and our Top Five.
The Last of Us fans were treated to some familiar faces in the season 1 finale.
Longtime fans of The Last of Us were given quite the treat during the TV show’s season finale on Sunday.
HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us, the critically-acclaimed video game series developed by Naughty Dog, ended its first season on Sunday to much discussion from fans. The post-apocalyptic drama series, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as the series main characters Joel and Ellie, has become a big hit in the prestige TV world over the last few months.
And it’s not difficult to see why, as The Last of Us has been a pretty darn good and faithful adaptation of its dramatic, emotional source material. Not only that, in Sunday’s season finale, fans were treated to not one, but two cameos from its video game cast.
Spoilers for The Last of Us episode nine “Look for the Light” ahead.
Episode nine opens with Ellie’s mother, Anna, giving birth after being bitten by an infected. Playing Anna, however, was none other than Ashley Johnson, who originated the role of Ellie in The Last of Us video games!
Not only that, later in the episode, Laura Bailey got a minute-long cameo as a nurse during a pivotal scene. Bailey voiced a few minor characters in The Last of Us, but played a much larger role in the game’s sequel The Last of Us Part II.
2 simple rules for watching Survivor with a current castaway
Warning: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED EPISODE 2 OF SURVIVOR 44.
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Welcome to Survivor Vibe Check!Each Thursday this season, Blake Schuster and Bryan Kalbrosky will chat about last night’s episode to see who is thriving and who is straight up not having a good time on the islands of Fiji. Season 44 got off to an absolutely chaotic start. In Episode 2 the game seemed to slow down a bit as players settled into their strategies. Let’s dig into it.
Blake:Before we get into the episode, you went to Claire’s watch party in Brooklyn on Wednesday. Set the scene for us.
Bryan: Claire was a delightful host. She was in a particularly great mood the entire night. Earlier in the day, she had just gotten verified on Instagram (huge win, Claire!) and she got a new tattoo that may or may not allude to the title of the next episode of S44. She laid two ground rules for the night: No phones and cheer whenever she is on the screen. She clearly has the best facial expressions of anyone on the season, so we got a lot of wonderful reaction shots to hoot and holler about. It’s iconic that she has simply not participated in these tribal challenges so far because that’s truly what I would do, too.
One takeaway: Josh (who should be shown on screen more often!) may or may not have initially lied about his profession to his tribe. But as he finished the challenge during this episode, it was clear that he moved his fingers with the surgical precision of his actual profession: a surgeon.
Blake: I would expect absolutely nothing less from Claire. I get the sense that she might be hiding her strength in these early challenges by sitting out, but it’s certainly a huge risk if she’s forced to go to tribal council. So far it’s paid off. Claire has spent the first five days sizing up everyone on her tribe without coming off as a threat.
Bryan: Speaking of which, we got an answer to one of my burning questions from last week: How long can Helen go without revealing that she’s actually wicked smart? It turns out: Not very long! It was a bummer to see her eliminated so early, but like you said, it’s not a bad idea to hide whatever your strengths may be or you could end up in a similar fate.
Blake: Meanwhile, the other big thinker on the Tika tribe, Carson, has put himself in the center of things by aligning with both factions. I can totally see why having Carolyn and Yam Yam in his pocket is a good thing in this moment, but he’s playing with fire there (pun intended) if they ever find out his scheme. The vibe I get from Carson is a much more socially aware version of the game Spencer tried to play in Cagayan.
Side note: Hey Carson, do us all a favor and make those 3D Printed Survivor puzzles free to download online please!
Bryan: I really didn’t like the gameplay I saw from Carson in this episode. I think it’s setting himself up for disaster a bit too early in the season on such a small tribe. He was going to come out looking like a liar no matter who he voted for and that’s not great. I think he’s getting a lot of comparisons to Christian from David vs. Goliath, but he definitely reads more like Spencer to me as well.
The 3D Printed Survivor Puzzles would be fun to have around the house, that’s for sure. That being said, Matthew taking his sling off so he could do the challenge he built at his home was a … choice.
Blake: Matthew just cannot contain himself whether it’s needlessly climbing rocks or revealing way too much about his background. I love his excitement, but my guy, save that for the confessionals when no one can hear you!
Bryan: I think Carolyn was the most fascinating player of the episode, and I’m glad that unlike Brandon, she was able to keep her immunity idol a secret — even if it was challenging.
Blake: Do her and Yam Yam secretly control the game on Tika? That look they gave each other as they left tribal was very telling.
Bryan: They certainly have the majority after that latest vote, so if Carson keeps riding their coattails, they’ve got the power.
Pedro Pascal eating hot wings. What else could you ask for?
There’s arguably no actor hotter than Pedro Pascal right now, and he put it to the test on Thursday morning with a visit to the wildly popular Hot Ones show to eat some wings. Pascal, who is the lead in both Disney+’s The Mandalorian and HBO’s The Last of Us, has completely taken over the internet with his charm, interviews and decidedly handsome good looks.
If you’re unfamiliar with the premise of the show, host Sean Evans interviews stars as they eat a series of increasingly spicy chicken wings. Some of the absolute best memes — including Paul Rudd’s iconic “Hey, look at us,” moment — came from Hot Ones.
“Thank you for having me,” Pascal said to open the show. “I’m so glad for the opportunity to finally be taken seriously.”
It was a perfect episode with a perfect guest, and you should all watch it immediately.
He gave the world so much more content to create future TikTok edits with, asked to take a bite out of someone’s arm to handle the heat and said Grogu (Baby Yoda) kept stealing his scenes by being so dang cute.
Joining that list of all-time greats is Tori Deal, who will be coming off an incredible win on Ride or Dies, her first in her career alongside Devin Walker.
As the season of World Championship drops on Paramount+, Deal spoke to For The Win about her victory and what we can look forward to in this season:
Meet the 32 women looking for love on the rebooted reality show ‘Farmer Wants A Wife.’
32 single women from all over the country will head from the city to the country to find love in Fox’s new dating reality show, Farmer Wants a Wife, which premieres on Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET.
Farmer Wants A Wife is a reboot of a 2008 reality show, which itself was based on a British series that became a hit across Europe.
The 2023 version of Farmer Wants A Wife seems set up to be four seasons of The Bachelor crammed into one. The 32 eligible women will be split into four groups and each assigned to a different farmer.
Jason Sudekis had this to say to Deadline as we get set for the series to come back next week: “This is the end of this story that we wanted to tell, that we were hoping to tell, that we loved to tell.”
But he also added this: “Yeah, I think that we’ve set the table for all sorts of folks…to get to watch the further telling of these stories.”
Could there be a spinoff? And who from a cast full of stars with fascinating stories deserves one?
Some For The Win staffers weighed in:
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