Was this the end of Ted Lasso? I really hope so

This story contains spoilers for the fourth season of Ted Lasso , including this week’s finale.

After six years and four seasons, Ted Lasso is over. Finally. Again. Maybe.

I mean, can we actually trust this is the last we’ll see of it? After all, everyone involved with the show swore the third season would be its last, but after all the storylines were wrapped, the irresistible lure of Apple’s fat wads of cash was enough to drag the team out of retirement for a comeback that was about as necessary as Cristiano Ronaldo’s second stint at Manchester United. Which is to say, not necessary at all.

With the juice well and truly squeezed out of those half-time oranges by the end of season three, this felt like the skin and pulp was being turned into a batch of marmalade no one had asked for.

To be clear, no one has officially ruled more Ted in or out. Apple TV is yet to renew the show for season five, and the creators are hopeful. Before this season premiered, the show’s star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis told The Hollywood Reporter he had a new three-season arc in mind. But for mine, it’s time to hang up the boots once and for all.

When the first season landed in August 2020, Ted Lasso quickly established itself as the perfect antidote to our lockdown blues, a little ray of sunshine and goodwill at a time of deep but seemingly necessary deprivation. I’ve just gone back to that first season to see if it stands up six years later, and it really does. The conceit was so strong, the ideas so fresh, the characters so surprising.

In it, Ted Lasso (Sudeikis) is an American football coach hired to take over English soccer team Richmond AFC, not because he has the skills to make it work, but precisely because he doesn’t. He’s such a know-nothing that he doesn’t understand the offside rule, and he thinks a game has four quarters.

Owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) has inherited the club as part of the divorce settlement from her cheating husband Rupert Mannion ( the late Anthony Head ). Rupert loves Richmond, so Rebecca wants to destroy it in revenge. Ted is her secret weapon. Only it doesn’t work out that way because Ted’s ability to bring out the best in people makes the team so much better. More than that, it makes everyone a better person , including Rebecca.

Yes, it was syrupy. But it also felt genuinely good-natured, optimistic and celebratory of ideas like respect and compassion and the value of working together. Of accepting your limitations, but not being defined by them.

I concede the disappointment I feel for this season might have something do with it feeling so out of kilter with the state of the world right now, but I think it has more to do with the fact it felt like a pastiche of itself. Too often, Ted Lasso S4 was merely going through the motions, offering us faded takes on the things that had worked so well in its first three seasons (and especially the first two) as a kind of desultory fan service.

In plopping Ted back into the Richmond milieu as the coach of the women’s team, the so-called Lady Greyhounds, there might have been an opportunity to explore a different set of characters, a new set of dynamics.