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Warning: spoilers for the Ted Lasso The season 4 finale follows.
Ted Lasso Star Brendan Hunt revealed Jason Sudeikis wanted Ted to leave his role at AFC Richmond and admitted there was no guarantee the show would return for a fifth season.
THE Ted Lasso The season four finale aired Wednesday and dramatically reshuffled the AFC Richmond coaching staff.
Ted (Sudeikis), handed over his position as manager of the club’s women’s team, the Lady Greyhounds, to Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds), and became assistant manager alongside Hunt’s Coach Beard. Former Richmond player and coach Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) has meanwhile accepted the job as Chelsea’s new manager, leaving the men’s team without a head coach.
According to Hunt, who is also co-creator, executive producer and writer of the series, Ted’s request was never intended as a last-minute reversal. “It was something Jason wanted to do from the beginning in the writers’ room,” he said. Variety. “He saw Ted’s resignation as a fundamental part of what the season was going to be.”
The first episode of the fourth season opens with a close-up of Ted’s name badge identifying him as “assistant principal”, a detail that returns as a bookend when Ted ends the season in the same position in Richmond. Hunt described the misdirection as “a little last-minute goose,” dispelling the notion of fans who thought Ted’s season with the women’s team was just a temporary detour.
The fourth season came as a surprise to fans as the series was set to end with its third season, with Ted returning to Kansas to be closer to his son Henry and Roy taking over as manager of Richmond. Apple renewed the series for a fourth season last year, bringing Ted back to Richmond to coach the newly formed Lady Greyhounds and wondering how much of his life he was willing to devote to football.
“The Henry case is the main thing,” Hunt said. “The idea of bringing Henry to London this time, he thought in his head, ‘now I’ll have a lot more time with Henry’ – and it didn’t work out that way. He missed his games, and even more so as the Employee of the Year plaque his record-setting father bequeathed to him unintentionally.”
“You can be a little too dedicated to your job, and that can harm your health,” Hunt added. “He just wants to make sure he’s with Henry more.”
Hunt explained that Ted’s decision was also influenced by watching Alice during the season. “She was almost ready when we first met her, and now she’s a lot more ready,” he said, adding that Ted was “just ready to be support staff right now, to have more of his free time and see what he can do with it.”
Ted’s new role is one of several major changes at Richmond. Roy’s move to Chelsea offers the former player-turned-manager a new challenge just as he and Keeley Jones, played by Juno Temple, prepare to become parents.
Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) proposes to Matthijs (Matteo van der Grijn) and manages to retain Richmond’s majority stake after Mae Green (Annette Badland) leaves her stake in the club to Rebecca in her will.
All the open topics leave the door wide open for another season, but, according to Hunt, “there’s no indication yet that we’ll be able to answer those questions.”
As for whether there could be an additional season, Hunt said Sudeikis is “playing the cards close to his chest, and I’m not privy to the poker game I hope is going on between the powers that be.”
“I think we always hoped to come back for more than one game, but if it ends up being just one, then OK, that’s no big deal. It ended well,” he said.
The four seasons of Ted Lasso are available for streaming on Apple TV.
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