The 'Ted Lasso' Season Finale Is—Improbably, Miraculously—Perfect
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This story contains spoilers for the Season Three finale of Ted Lasso.
For a long time now, we all suspected where Ted Lasso would end its third—and potentially final—season: Ted Lasso realizes its better to be a good father than a good football coach. He packs it all up, leaves AFC Richmond, and heads back to Wichita, Kansas, to be with his son. Right where he began.
It fully sank in for me following an otherwise odd moment in last week's episode. Ted, Beard, and Mama Ted are having a pint at Mae's bar. The crew is all taking turns at the pinball machine (was that always there?), which has a very convenient theme: The Wizard of Oz. When Ted steps up to take his turn, he activates Dorothy's tiny house: whirling, swirling, raging. He looks at it for a moment. There's no place like home.
See where I'm going with this?
Ted Lasso is Dorothy Gale, through and through. A mysterious force (read: an NBC skit spinning off into a full-length television series) rips Lasso away from his Kansas home, planting him in a strange, scary, and oddly beautiful land (England!). Lasso meets a whole bunch of colorful friends, all with a debilitating personality flaw. (I'm imagining Roy Kent as an angry, heartless Tin Man.) Fighting to reach the promised land with a diabolical force working against them—the elusive Premier League title and the never-ending threat of relegation—the makeshift team has to learn something to get to the end of the Yellow Brick Road. Confidence in who you are and always were. The power of friendship. That dreaming, really dreaming, is a matter of life and death.
In the end, Lasso, just like Dorothy, uncovers the truth that was nagging at him all along: There's no place like home.
There you have it, friends. By the time the credits roll on Ted Lasso's Season Three finale, Lasso is back home in Wichita, coaching his kiddo's team, and making eyes at Michelle. In the rest of the Lasso-verse, the rest is just as copacetic. Beard and Jane have an Office-esque Big, Sad, Beautiful Finale Wedding moment with the team looking on. Rebecca rediscovers her meet-cute, and maybe even a stepdaughter. The broken heart of Jamie Tartt is finally healed as he makes good with his father. Sam Obisanya triumphantly suits up for the Nigerian national squad. Everything ends exactly where it should. And it feels damn good.
Yes, this season was uneven—at times wildly so. The way Ted Lasso's creative team wrote each character, things don't feel quite right when someone doesn't have a direct link back to AFC Richmond. So while the whole KJPR and Keeley exploring her sexuality side plot was a noble swerve, it felt like one giant audition for a Ted Lasso spinoff. Same goes for Nate the Great at West Ham. Why not simply start with Nate finding himself again as a waiter (who falls in love!) at A Taste of Athens? Colin's coming-out journey was clumsy, as was Rebecca's early-season identity crisis. Still, Ted Lasso more than earned a license to stumble and find its way at the end, just like its characters.
And with a finale like this? It's like a fresh box of Lasso's biscuits in the morning. Sudeikis and co. really—and I mean really—turned on the big-sport-movie-emotions and let the spigot flow. Listen, you don't needle drop Cat Stevens's "Father and Son" unless you're trying to short the tissue market. Same goes for the "So Long, Farewell" song-and-dance number from AFC Richmond's finest, saying goodbye to Lasso via one giant, cheesy, heartfelt ode to The Sound of Music. The episode stands as a beautiful reminder as to why, in the very worst moments of the pandemic, devastation everywhere, this was the show that captured the world.
All of that said, we need to address Ted Lasso's future for a moment. Sudeikis is very likely done with the series. For the record, here's what he said about this season and the show going forward:
"This is the end of this story that we wanted to tell, that we were hoping to tell, that we loved to tell. The fact that folks will want more and are curious beyond more than what they don’t even know yet—that being Season Three—it’s flattering. Maybe by May 31, once all 12 episodes of the season [have been released], they’re like, ‘Man, you know what, we get it, we’re fine. We don’t need anymore, we got it.’ But until that time comes, I will appreciate the curiosity beyond what we’ve come up with so far.
Funnily enough, Ted Lasso paints (rather deftly, by the way) a pretty clear future for Ted Lasso without Ted Lasso. Newly minted Diamond Dog Roy Kent takes the helm as the new manager of AFC Richmond. The team—Jamie, Zorro (!), Dani, and Sam—sticks around, largely the same. Rebecca is still the owner, but we'd get a few shits and gigs from the fandom owning little slivers of the team. Nate has plenty of growing left to do. The Jamie, Roy, and Keeley love triangle will spin madly on. Really, though, if we're simply asking whether or not Ted Lasso will continue? I have to say, by way of another Wizard of Oz shoutout, the show has already answered that question.
Did you happen to catch the line from that halftime scene, where the squad put the BELIEVE sign back together? And you're absolutely lying to me if you didn't weep?
There's no place like AFC Richmond.
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