ISSUE NO. 68
Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the last entry: The Last Watch: The Shows and Movies That Stole My Heart In 2024. This column has spoilers for the first three seasons of Ted Lasso.
Ted Lasso’s last season was met with some frustration by fans, whether it was shippers of Ted and Rebecca feeling jilted that their will-they-won’t-they became a definitive “won’t”, folks upset at the untimely end of Roy and Keeley’s relationship, the belief that the storytelling was now twee or the perceived mishandling of Nate Shelley. Since it ended, though, I’ve consistently been a firm believer that Ted Lasso as a series didn’t change; our needs as viewers did. Season 1 debuted right in the midst of a global health crisis leaving viewers with a desperate need for something warm and hopeful. By the time Season 3 premiered mid-2023, America had returned to “business as usual” and, while our “business as usual” has its own warts, we didn’t need Ted Lasso the way that we did when it first aired.
Now, if a recent post from Nate Shelley actor Nick Mohammed is to be believed, it appears that Ted Lasso and company are going to return when we need them most yet again. Mohammed went to social media to tell fans that he was unfortunately going to have to reschedule his tour due to scheduling issues with another project. In his video, he notes that he doesn’t want fans getting themselves in a tizzy speculating what that may be, while brandishing his script and waving it around the screen. Behind the script is the beloved “Believe” sign, synonymous with the Lasso Way and intentionally fully visible for fans. “The last thing I want is for people to go mad,” Mohammed jokes before ending his message to fans.
Cheeky.
This information doesn’t come out of the blue — Ted Lasso’s continuation has been rumored since journalists were told in (what we thought) was the last junket of the series that we shouldn’t call Season 3 “the last season” or anything mirroring it, small hints have been dropped by various cast members here and there in the aftermath of the Season 3 finale, and we started to see reports of Season 4 back in August of last year. Mohammed wasn’t a part of those initial reports, but it feels fair to take his tease as a confirmation that Nate Shelley will return.
With all that in mind, there are some things I’d like to see from Season 4 of the show. It feels reasonable to put the most important one right up front, even if it will likely be the most frustrating to those who left the series with a sour taste in their mouth after Season 3. I want the series to do exactly what it has always done: tell stories rooted in radical kindness and curiosity while also challenging each one of its characters in meaningful ways.
Nate’s arc alongside the devastating split between Roy (Brett Goldstein) and Keeley (Juno Temple) are perfect examples here.
Let’s start with Nate, as that’s been the greatest pain point between fans of the series. When Nate went darkside, the shift was met with what I will gently describe as a lot of meltdowns. People demanded to know how the writers could do such a thing to such a nice character, as if the change came out of the blue. Meanwhile, Nate’s defining moment in the first season was being fundamentally cruel to every member of AFC Richmond in order to get them to pull their heads out of their asses and play better.
The fact of the matter is that these huge pendulum shifts in people who are treated poorly or overlooked their whole life are common. Nate falling to the dark side after gaining an ounce of power isn’t unprecedented. It is, in fact, one of the oldest stories in the proverbial book. But what makes said story meaningful is that Nate doesn’t stay mean and incurious. Once he starts having meaningful conversations about his emotions and stops lashing out, he finds balance again.
Roy and Keeley are a different inevitability. One that, somehow, hurts even worse due to the fact that their breakup was because of their respective growth rather than in spite of it. The exception to that notion is, of course, Roy ending the relationship before trying to figure things out because he was scared. But, as the local gruff asshole who is pretty terrible at opening up to people, I’m here to tell you that his behavior is, uh… right on target. Still, that Roy opened up in the first place is major progress. Keeley was already pretty emotionally secure, but found her growth in her professional prowess, shifting from “being famous for being almost famous” to a bonafide business woman, failures and all. In their respective growth, they found themselves heading in different, complicated directions, and Roy killed their chances of solving the problem before they really even tried.
But Roy’s failure isn’t the point here: Keeley’s success is. I can’t stress enough how much I agree that their breakup was a tremendous bummer. But when Keeley has both Roy and Jamie (Phil Dunster) knocking on her door, she tells both of ‘em to take a hike in favor of taking a breath and deciding what her future looks like – and whether it includes either of the football stars.
The TedBecca of it all is a much simpler analysis: a whole lot of people need to get more comfortable with men and women being best friends. I was rooting for those crazy kids too! But their respective “endings” made much more sense than them running off into the sunset together. At the end of the day, the writers’ job is to service the story, not what fans are shouting for most.
And, to tie things back together here, sometimes all it takes is a little patience with the storytelling. The rage over Nate was rooted in the assumption that he would remain miserable forever. But it has to be remembered that, secondarily to the core tenets of kindness and curiosity, Ted Lasso is a show about growth, and anyone who’s ever experienced an ounce of it can tell you that progress isn’t linear, and it often hurts like hell.
What Ted Lasso does best is meeting the pain of that growth with an inescapable warmth. That is, of course, if you’re open to it. Returning to my opening thesis that Ted Lasso didn’t change, the viewers did, it was both fascinating (and frustrating) to see people shift from delight over something like Season 1’s “Let It Go” moment to absurd criticism of Season 2’s absolutely lovely Christmas episode “Carol of the Bells.” Both seasons saw challenging moments for the characters, with Season 1 featuring Ted’s devastating realization that he cannot fix his marriage and Season 2 focusing on the rise and fall of the beloved Nate Shelley. But the idea that good people can do bad things and go through dark times hit some folks in a way that they couldn’t get out of, and a show that was once praised as a delight became too cutesy or quaint.
I don’t know what Ted Lasso Season 4 is going to look like. What I can tell you, though, is that I am damn happy to see it return, and am thrilled that it’s coming back right when we need it again. May viewers' cries of “twee” and “cringe” subside as we all give ourselves back to the openness we once had for its warmth, and may we all experience a little bit of our own personal growth along the way.
