After the perfect ending: why was "Ted Lasso" brought back at all?
Three years after saying goodbye to the Richmond fans, the most optimistic coach on television returns for a fourth season — this time with a women's soccer team. After the final season exposed the mental toll of his endless optimism, the question arises whether the series has truly found a new story to tell — or if it is simply trying to recreate one of the biggest streaming hits of the decade.
The third season of the series was almost forced to dig into the guts of Ted Lasso's (Jason Sudeikis) endless generosity, which turned out to be a defense mechanism and a way to avoid friction with real life — in his case, dealing with the grief over his father, the breakdown of his marriage, and the fear of his relationship with his young son, Henry. His "toxic positivity," it turns out, had a mental price and was not just endless altruism. In this sense, the creators of "Ted Lasso" risked an own goal by failing to completely separate from the sweetness that characterized the plot and balance Lasso's approach to life with his mental abysses.
On another level, the creative freedom that those creators gained following the phenomenal success of the series and its categorization as one of Apple TV's flagship projects did not necessarily do them good — for example, in the unrestrained editing and secondary plot lines that spiraled out of control and received unreasonable screen time without dramatic justification. The cute sedative pill from the COVID era, which started as an extension of an American commercial, tried to become a panoramic drama in the style of HBO. The result was a drama that wants to be mature — but pushes the pedal a bit too hard on educational messages.
Now, three years later, Sudeikis and the other creators are doing something brand new and trying to return Lasso to his innocent and warm starting point by changing the setting from the Richmond men's soccer team to the women's team. The trick is the same, the bangs are the same, the world is no longer the same — but our Ted is still optimistic, loving, and impossible to anger. Is he still repressed? Likely, but as it seems, he will have to discover everything all over again.
In interviews from the last week, the creators swear that the idea to return did not stem from the desire to load another season onto a successful brand, but because they felt there was a new story worth telling. During the filming of the third season, they were in England exactly during the 2022 Women's Euro, and saw up close how the country fell in love with the players' team. Brett Goldstein, who also plays Roy Kent, emphasized that they felt they were "watching a cultural shift in real time," a good enough reason to drag Ted Lasso across continents again. They even planted in the final episode of the third season the moment where Rebecca and Keeley talk about starting a women's team, just in case.
The first of ten episodes in the current season is intended to settle the viewers' minds regarding the critical question: how the good guy who left a promising career and a lot of money to be a good father to his young son, and swapped coaching a soccer team in the English Premier League for a job at a supermarket in Kansas, returns again to the English grass fields? Even the most skilled screenwriter would need a good reason to believe that Lasso is still the good guy when he chooses, for the second time, soccer over his family. Even when Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), Higgins (Jeremy Swift), and Keeley (Juno Temple) appear on his doorstep in America with the job offer, Rebecca emphasizes that this time she wants to recruit him for the right reasons. So what are the right reasons? Unclear. Right now it's just Lasso's longing for the pitches, and perhaps Apple's longing for its successful feel-good series.
The second question is whether there is justification for bringing Lasso back to the screen? There are not many television meals that can be served twice and expect the same enthusiasm. "Ted Lasso" arrives with 11 Emmy awards and the title of the most-watched original streaming series in 2023, but we are in 2026. We are more angry, more sober, and less inclined to surrender. "Ted Lasso" is renewing itself with new staff members in addition to the familiar ones: the excellent Tanya Reynolds ("Sex Education") joins the ensemble as Alice Chilton, the assistant coach who grumbles on the outside but is of course soft on the inside, as well as Tracey Ullman in the role of Rebecca's mentor.
If this season succeeds, it will not be because Ted Lasso has changed, but because the series will find a new way to examine his philosophy. The women's soccer team is tasked with a not-so-simple mission: to recharge the way of life that is Ted Lasso with meaning, with the help of issues like gender discrimination, budgets, pregnancy, and motherhood. Its challenge will be to succeed in the mission without getting carried away with an overdose of agenda and without falling into the jaws of the perception of a man saving a group of women.
Is "Ted Lasso" indeed reinventing itself? According to the ten episodes released for review, probably not. But the commodity the series offered us was never plot originality. It sold us humanity. The new season does not tell a new story, but it reminds us why we loved the people who told it to us in the first place. What distinguished "Ted Lasso" was the chemistry between the characters, the dialogues, the jokes, the transitions between humor and emotion, and the choice not to brood on cynicism as a symptom of sophistication. All these are still present in it. They are admittedly not as exciting as they were at the first meeting, but its comforting magic, especially for those who are celebrating, is still there.
