'Ted Lasso': 6 questions about the new season

"Ted Lasso," easily Apple TV's biggest comedy hit, returns Aug. 5 for its fourth season. )The show stars Jason Sudeikis as an optimistic American college football coach who is hired to manage a struggling English soccer team.) 

A fourth season? You mean ... The season that was never supposed to happen? Yup, that one, or to quote Ted himself, "you say impossible, but all I hear is possible." (And to quote him again: "I believe in 'believe.'" )

 Here are six questions/answers that should help fans get ready:

1. Why is "Ted Lasso" back?

The answer here speaks directly to the broader troubles in streaming, and TV, in general. With the exception of "Severance," Apple hasn't had a hit even remotely in "Lasso's" league and to keep the subscribers coming, and the churn at a minimum, there really never was any doubt that this fourth season would be a priority for the streamer. All the other questions must now follow.

"Lasso" was a COVID-era fluke, launching Aug. 14, 2020, just when that can-do Ted Lasso optimism and positivity was needed most. "Believe!," he enjoined, and "believe!" fans did — an astounding 16.9 billion viewing minutes over 34 episodes. As a reminder, "Lasso" — 61 Emmy nods, 13 major wins — was the world's most popular TV show for a brief run back in 2023.

So yes, Apple needed this and maybe some fans did too — to many the most recent season was indulgent and messy — so there's clearly some unfinished business here. Just don't expect closure. In one interview (with the Hollywood Reporter), showrunner/star Sudeikis hinted at two more seasons after this.

2. What happened last season?

It has been three years, so let's go back to that 2023 finale ("So Long, Farewell") to see how this fourth season sets up. That feel-good-up-with-people-ninja-master-soccer-coach Ted Lasso told a distraught AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) that he is indeed returning home to Kansas to coach his son (now played by Grant Feely) while Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) takes over Ted's role at the club. Ted's famously hirsute pal and sidekick Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) stays behind in England to get married, while, most critically for this fourth, Rebecca confidante/PR exec Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) proposes that Rebecca should launch an AFC Richmond women's team.

Rebecca, who held on to a majority stake in the team (after defeating her ex-husband's team, West Ham, in the semifinals), is down with the idea. And the more-or-less final words of Ted, to his son — mirroring the advice he gave to right midfielder Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh) back in the first season — "Be like a goldfish," meaning forget your mistakes, and move on. Ted apparently did. Until ...
 

3. What's new this season?

Without wading too far into the deep end of the spoiler pool, we can say that Rebecca, Keeley and director of communications Higgins (Jeremy Swift) head to Kansas City in an attempt to persuade Ted to return to England to coach the new 2nd division women's soccer team, the Lady Greyhounds. For a few reasons (a job at the local supermarket bagging groceries notwithstanding) he takes them up on the offer.

This new season is deja-vu-all-over-again. Most of the main characters/stars have returned but so have those highly specific touches so familiar to any "Lasso" fan — Ted's special shortbread; the famous "Believe!" sign; the eponymous character's fondness for Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys. Nothing has changed; yet everything has. The Lady Greyhounds do already have a highly qualified female candidate for head coach, Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds, "Sex Education") who settles (reluctantly) for assistant coach instead. "Did you ever consider me for head coach," she asks Rebecca. "Did you consider any woman?"

4. Why did the show decide to make women’s soccer the center of this next chapter?

There's always the obvious reason — women's amateur and professional soccer is booming, in the U.S. and especially on Long Island. The vast majority of "Lasso's" viewers are in this country. (Surprisingly, it never was much of a hit in the U.K.) A new club, the Island FC, plans to launch a men's team at Uniondale's Mitchel Athletic Complex next year, and a professional women's squad after that. There are already two other teams here, the Long Island Rough Riders of the USL W League, and Long Island Fury, of the Women's Premier Soccer League (both also out of Mitchel). And there are the two long-running women's amateur Leagues, Long Island Women's Soccer, based in Port Jefferson Station; and Setauket-based Long Island Ladies Soccer League, which turns 50 next year. Plus, there's the Long Island Junior Soccer League, one of the biggest in the nation (44,000 members) with some 600 girls' teams. Back during the last women's World Cup, in 2023 — in the wake of an explosive 2021 investigation into sexual misconduct in the National Women's Soccer League — women's soccer was the fastest growing sport in the country. The next women's World Cup arrives next year, just around the time the fifth season of "Ted Lasso" should be arriving. So yes, there are sound — and obvious — reasons why this next season has pivoted to women's soccer.

5. What does focusing on a women's team mean in terms of storytelling?

Yes, of course, "Ted Lasso" will remain "Ted Lasso," full of that trademark good cheer, and all those easygoing Ted bromides like "be curious, not judgmental," or "doing the right thing is never the wrong thing."

And yes, it will remain a comedy. "Oh my gosh, I could give the show so much material," says Gina Titus, president of the Long Island Ladies Soccer League, who says the outlandish behavior of some players equals or exceeds players on the men's teams. "It just goes on and on," she says.

Nevertheless, with a women's league at the center of the new story, the stakes also suddenly feel a little sharper, or at least a little more real-world. That 2021 report set out the parameters of a scandal that rocked the women's soccer world — physical, emotional and sexual abuse — while the sport has continued to grapple with other issues, like equal pay and equal status with men's teams. Some of this has in fact set the groundwork for the new season. For example, in the pilot, another semi-pro women's team in Twickenham has folded after the team's owner decided to funnel the money to the men's team — a reason Rebecca decided there was an opening for an AFC Richmond women's unit.

Brenda Elsey, a history professor at Hofstra University and an expert on soccer culture here and in Latin America, says, "I think [the new season] will explore sexual harassment and explore some of the racism in the game [because] anything that's bad in boy's and men's soccer is exponentially worse in girls and women's soccer."

But "if the series sparks a lot of conversations, fans will be very happy and happy to be having those conversations" on a hit show.

6. "Ted Lasso" was obviously a worldwide hit last time around — but what about here on Long Island?

Apple had a shrewd viral marketing stunt to boost interest in the show here four years ago — as if any were needed. On the eve of the last World Cup, it posted a bright yellow sign outside Lake Grove's town hall, celebrating hometown U.S. Men's team defender Joe Scally. In Ted's voice, it read in part "Scally, Scallywag, Scallycat, and 'Son of Lake Grove, defender of Grass, above average Joe.' That last one's my favorite ... I'm rooting for you to earn a new nickname on the world stage: 'Champ.' Duke of Biscuits, Ted Lasso."

Indeed, Lasso/Sudeikis — who along with Brendan Hunt's Coach Beard introduced Justin Bieber during the recent World Cup finals halftime show — already had, and has, plenty of fans here. "'Ted Lasso' has resonated within Long Island's soccer culture," says Michael Lewis, the Ronkonkoma-based editor of FrontRowSoccer.com who has covered the soccer scene here since 1975, in an email. "At some of the games I have attended, I've heard some players say something to the effect: 'Do you think that would happen on 'Ted Lasso?'" The show, he added, "discovered a magic formula."

Stephanie Hernandez, Long Island Junior Soccer League's programs and events manager, says lots of her co-workers watch: "It's a riot," she adds and — the ultimate tribute — staffers refer to one of the league's vendors as "Ted Lasso." 

Lewis says the rich women's soccer history on Long Island should be a bonus this time around too. "If the show had returned to the AFC Richmond men's club, it might have been more of the same. But the women's game hasn't been featured on many, if any TV shows. This is new territory. 'Ted Lasso' could make some major inroads."