This article contains spoilers for Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10.
In 2019, Apple TV picked up Ted Lasso as part of its pre-launch buying spree, seeking to establish itself as a competitive streaming service with a three-season pitch led by Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence. Despite the show’s success – at one point, it held the record for the most Emmy nominations for a rookie comedy, before enjoying an Emmy sweep that same year – Sudeikis held his ground, concluding Ted’s (Sudeikis) story with AFC Richmond in 2023. Poor reception to that third season, along with the money still to be made from the series, led to Ted Lasso returning for a fourth season in August, following Keeley’s (Juno Temple) suggestion in the Season 3 finale that Richmond establish a women’s team. “Being Alive” concludes the rebooted ten-episode season, leaving Ted Lasso in better shape than it was three years ago, but no less unnecessary to keep on our screens.
For a season about a women’s football team, Ted Lasso never commits to the Lady Greyhounds or even to the sport it depicts. With executive producers Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt, and Brett Goldstein seemingly wary of positioning themselves as the saviours of women’s football in England, the season never digs beneath the surface of the issues facing women in the sport. Leah Williamson, captain of the Lionesses and vice-captain of Arsenal WFC, served as a consultant to the writers throughout the season. Ted Lasso therefore had the potential to do something meaningful with the platform it was given. Instead, the season repeatedly introduces problems, briefly acknowledges them, and quickly resolves them, or mentions them in passing before moving on. Issues are raised but not challenged, treated as the way things are in a sport that desperately needs reform.
ACL injuries provide perhaps the clearest example of the lacklustre handling of topical storylines. These injuries remain an underfunded area of research, with players having faced difficulties accessing appropriate treatment and rehabilitation. Williamson herself has experienced an ACL injury, but rather than using the subject to explore prevention, treatment or the disproportionate impact of such injuries on women’s football, Ted Lasso treats “ACL” almost as a buzzword. One player tears her ACL in Episode 2, only for the series to move on almost immediately as the Lady Greyhounds seek new players. Gemma (Abbie Hern) injures her knee in Episode 8, but a time jump conveniently rules out any exploration of her recovery.
This extends to misogyny off the pitch. Audience reaction to the news that Ted Lasso was returning with a women’s team perfectly illustrated the hostility and dismissal women’s football continues to face. The series had an opportunity to confront that reality, but it rarely engages with it meaningfully or calls it out. Baz (Adam Colborne), Paul (Kevin Garry), and Jeremy (Bronson Webb) – the pub trio – may grow from their initial hesitance towards the Lady Greyhounds, but the show does little to demonstrate that growth across the ten episodes. Likewise, Henry (Grant Feely) refers to Ted’s job as coaching “a bunch of girls,” and nobody challenges him for infantilising the women who play and lead the game. The moment passes, much like so many of the season’s other attempts to address the realities surrounding women’s football.
Even the team’s final, sold-out game at Nelson Road receives barely any focus in the finale. Former AFC Richmond players watch on, but we do not see the match’s conclusion or learn the score. Yes, we know the team is heading to the WSL next season, but all the finale confirms is that Ted Lasso’s return was never really about the game.
The storylines that Ted Lasso does not push aside become predictable instead. “Being Alive” spends much of its runtime tying up loose ends, but few of those resolutions feel earned. The finale opens with Mae’s (Annette Badland) funeral reception at the Crown and Anchor, bringing the ensemble together to mourn a beloved character. It is a sweet dedication, though one that eventually fuels the shareholders’ storyline, reaffirming that Mae died for shock value alone.
Higgins (Jeremy Swift) and Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) attend the shareholders’ meeting unsure of who will turn up, as they have yet to discover that Zelda (Tracey Ullman) has bought out all the shares. Though the pair discover her identity off-screen, they put on a performance at the meeting, hoping Zelda will fall into their trap. She does, because Ted Lasso has become a soap opera, and the episode gives weight to her friend Hugo Riddles, who helps Rebecca uncover the truth. Hugo turns on Zelda after growing tired of her insults, a random development that leads to the even more pathetic revelation that Zelda’s ultimate goal was to own a Premier League team so that men would finally listen to her. Ullman tries her best with the pantomime villain handed to her, but the over-the-top character has been dead weight all season, already struggling under its own poor choices.
Mae comes in clutch one last time when her 2% ownership stake passes to Rebecca, as her will states. With Rebecca back at 51%, she remains the club’s owner. Yet Rebecca’s involvement with the club no longer matters to Ted Lasso, since the writers still find time to shoehorn Matthijs (Matteo van der Grijn) into the finale. Rebecca proposes to her long-distance boyfriend after reflecting on life’s messiness and deciding she is ready to embrace it. The problem is that the season has done remarkably little to make Matthijs feel like the person she should spend the rest of her life with.
The same problem affects Ted and Henry. Their relationship could be one of the show’s strongest, especially given everything we know about Ted’s relationship with his own father. Mae’s death leads Henry to ask how his grandfather died, forcing Ted to confront the possibility that his own son could one day resent him. Ted initially maintains the lie that his father died after falling down the stairs before eventually telling Henry the truth, though the actual conversation happens off-screen. Yet another important scene is glossed over as the series rushes to the next resolution, letting the writers take the easy route when the best television is crafted through character-driven focus.
The highlights mostly revolve around Alice (Tanya Reynolds). The coach began stern and guarded, determined to be taken seriously in a sport that questions women in positions of authority. That determination has masked her softer side, making her growing partnerships with Ted and Beard (Hunt) one of the season’s most rewarding. The finale sees her join the Diamond Dogs, offering a rare glimpse of what the series can still be when its writing lets its characters interact naturally, rather than serving the plot’s forward motion. Roy is the latest to fall victim to this, taking a head coaching position at Chelsea in a storyline that feels as if it exists to accommodate Goldstein’s busy schedule.
There is no denying that Ted Lasso can still deliver the warmth and sentimentality that made it such a phenomenon. Alice’s promotion to head coach, Roy finding Ted’s green toy soldier, and Shannon’s (Shannon Hayes) rise from the bench offer occasional glimpses of its old charm, proving the series still has something to offer. But these moments are buried beneath lazy plotting and writing that glosses over meaningful developments, making it hard to see the worth in its return. The Lady Greyhounds were supposed to give Ted Lasso a fresh purpose, but Season 4 repeatedly sidelines them in favour of exhausting the obvious. In trying to prove that there was still more story to tell, Ted Lasso has only demonstrated that some stories are better left finished.
