{"id":874689,"date":"2026-10-08T03:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T03:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/874689\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T03:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T03:34:10","slug":"ted-lasso-finale-explained-by-brendan-hunt-will-there-be-a-season-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/874689\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Lasso Finale Explained by Brendan Hunt; Will There Be a Season 5?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the Season 4 finale of \u201cTed Lasso<\/a>,\u201d now streaming on Apple TV.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a new coach at AFC Richmond, and it\u2019s not Ted Lasso. The Season 4 finale of \u201cTed Lasso,\u201d titled \u201cThe Departing Lass,\u201d ended with Ted (Jason Sudeikis) handing the AFC Richmond women\u2019s team manager job to Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds), while he demotes himself to assistant manager alongside Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\n\tAlice is ready for the challenge, having been instrumental in the team\u2019s rise. And at the same time, it turns out Ted has been thinking about his father lately \u2014 who died by suicide when Ted was just 16 \u2014 and realizing that he still has been absent too much for his own son Henry, he knows it\u2019s time for a change.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, there\u2019s also a switchup on the men\u2019s team, as Roy (Brett Goldstein) has been offered \u2014 and has accepted \u2014 a huge job managing the Chelsea team. But he and Keeley (Juno Temple) are about to have a child, so he has a lot to ponder. Not to be outdone, Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) proposes marriage to her boyfriend Matthijs (Matteo van der Grijn).<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd as the team mourns the death of pub owner Mae (Annette Badland), she winds up saving the day from beyond the grave. That\u2019s because Zelda (Tracey Ullman) is ultimately thwarted in her attempt to buy up a controlling interest in AFC Richmond by Mae\u2019s last will and testament, which gives her shares in the team back to Rebecca \u2014 keeping her at 51% ownership.<\/p>\n

\n\tOh, and Nate (Nick Mohammad) drops by to visit Nelson Road \u2014 and take part in a reunion of the Diamond Dogs, who are called into duty when Roy asks for advice on being a new dad. And Beard, having gone through some midlife crisis looks this season, gets a haircut.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s a lot of story, not to mention a new version of the opening theme, now performed by Brandi Carlile<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tHunt, who also serves as an executive producer and writer on \u201cTed Lasso,\u201d spoke with Variety about the Season 4 finale \u2014 including whether there will be a Season 5.<\/p>\n

\t\tLet\u2019s start by talking about how the season ended. There was a little bit of a fake-out when Roy was leaving, so it seemed like Ted was going to ask Rebecca for that job again. But instead, he was going to ask her about demoting himself. How did that come about?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThat was something Jason wanted to happen from the beginning of the writers\u2019 room. He saw Ted stepping down as just kind of fundamental to what the season was going to be. Which is why Episode 1 starts with the close-up of his nametag to \u201cLasso assistant manager,\u201d and then we land on Ted Lasso as an assistant manager at the end. In terms of the fake-out, yeah, just a tiny little goose for the last moment. For anyone who still thought somehow this was like a side dalliance with the women\u2019s team \u2014 \u201cha, I knew he\u2019d come back\u201d \u2014 no, we\u2019re not. We\u2019re quite fond of our women\u2019s team, thank you very much!<\/p>\n

\t\tWe see Ted still feels like he\u2019s not spent enough time with Henry, and that lays the groundwork for him deciding to pull back. What was the discussion in the writers\u2019 room of what Ted\u2019s journey would be this season?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Henry thing is the main thing. The whole idea of bringing Henry to London this time, he thought in his head, \u201cnow I\u2019ll have much more time with Henry\u201d \u2014 and it hadn\u2019t worked out that way. He\u2019s missed his games, and especially as he\u2019s reminded by the Employee of the Year plaque that his record-setting father bequeathed him unwittingly. You can be a little too devoted to your work, and it can be deleterious to to your health. He just wants to make sure he\u2019s with Henry more. And then, as a side channel to that, he\u2019s watched Alice grow. She was almost ready when we first met her, and now she\u2019s much more ready. I think he is just ready to be support personnel at this time, and have more of his free time, and see what he can do with it.<\/p>\n

\t\tWas there ever a thought of letting Zelda actually take over AFC Richmond, perhaps as a cliffhanger for next season?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWe definitely thought about every option for that, including, \u201cOK, what would it be if there\u2019s a new boss here that everyone has to deal with, and what would happen?\u201d But in the end, we said, no. This is this is Rebecca\u2019s roost, and she\u2019ll figure this out.<\/p>\n

\t\tSpeaking of cliffhangers, there aren\u2019t too many this season. But there are still some threads to pick up on. What did you want to leave hanging to address in Season 5?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s not much in the way of cliffhangers. But Ted and Beard as peers instead of hierarchically, I\u2019m curious about that. Roy and Keeley becoming parents, curious about that. Rebecca married, curious about that. The fellas running the pub, and how\u2019s the team going to take to Alice as their leader? These are all just more like questions than cliffhangers. But also, there\u2019s not yet any indication that we\u2019re going to get to answer those questions. So at the moment, they\u2019re still lingering in the air.<\/p>\n

\t\tThat brings up the key question. What what do you hear about a Season 5? What does Jason want to do in terms of coming back?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tHe plays the cards close to his chest, and I\u2019m not privy to whatever poker game that I hope is happening between the powers that be. I think we\u2019ve always basically hoped we were coming back for more than one, but if it ends up just being one, then OK, that\u2019s fine. It did end nicely. We\u2019ll just have to see.<\/p>\n

\t\tWe actually saw more of Mae this season, which made what happened at the end of Episode 9 even more impactful. Did Mae have to die for Rebecca to save the team?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWe had the notion of, if we are going to lose Mae, then the phrase that kept coming up was, how can Mae save the team from the grave? And so we got ourselves toward that. Shout out to to Annette Badland, who is just so beloved by all of us, and such a trooper. Once Jason told her what was happening, she rolled with it.<\/p>\n

\t\tBut tell me about the decision process of having Mae pass away.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s one of the landmarks of life that we go through, and we haven\u2019t exactly gone through it on the show, at least with someone who we know or care about. Like, we never knew Rebecca\u2019s dad, for example, but we were at his funeral. But Mae seemed like the right person for it to be, and then dealing with all the repercussions of it. And then, how can she, in death, just basically save the day.<\/p>\n

\t\tAll right, let\u2019s talk about Beard. He starts wearing color contacts, he changes his hair and starts wearing earrings. How was it decided that he was going to be put through the wringer this season? \t<\/p>\n

\n\tEspecially by the end of Season 3, we know that yes, Beard has a fairly sturdy facade, but he\u2019s basically always had demons. We learned that really when we went on Beard\u2019s after hours as well. As someone who also has always dealt with his own self-image issues, it\u2019s like you can, in his case, get to the Ted effect. You can like get to as good a place as you can get. But you still have stuff that you\u2019re dealing with, and you need to be dealing with it. And essentially, the Jane situation of being without Ted for so long has just rattled him. That\u2019s left him in a vulnerable position. The point of all that being like, there\u2019s only so much other people can do for you. You have to get yourself to the healthiest place. And he\u2019s just not able to for a while here, in the aftermath of the Jane stuff. And then when he thinks he\u2019s gonna rise up from that on New Year\u2019s, there\u2019s another gut punch that he takes there. All that is a long-winded way of saying, it\u2019s just a good old-fashioned midlife crisis \u2014 but with modern cosmetic choices.<\/p>\n

\t\tAnd Richard Schiff apparently plays a version of Beard in Jane\u2019s play!\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI love Richard Schiff, and I hope he gets a kick out of that, because I know he watches the show. So that was a very intentional choice to shout out to the legend.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow do you know he watches the show?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWe just literally crossed paths at the Emmys one year. The year that I presented with Jane Lynch \u2014 and we didn\u2019t even get to talk much. That was the year they were doing all the reunions of old casts, and at one point just crossing to my seat, here comes the whole cast of \u201cThe West Wing.\u201d Richard Schiff in particular, was just beaming at me in this warm and wonderful way. It was very clear, like \u201cOh wow, Richard Schiff digs the show. That\u2019s really great.\u201d So this is our shout out.<\/p>\n

\t\tFor this final episode, you managed to get back some of the other familiar faces from the series, like Nick Mohammed. Were there any folks that you weren\u2019t able to get, or you hoped to get, that you wanted to for Season 4?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was no one who negotiated themselves out of it or anything. Anyone we thought of to go to, we went to. We were letting the story decide largely. Should we come back, we haven\u2019t gotten everyone, and there\u2019s still at least a few people who we would want to say hi to at some point. <\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m still a little surprised that we didn\u2019t get any Sassy time. Everybody loves Sassy, and we love Ellie Taylor so much as well. But everyone who we thought of and could rationalize story-wise was kind enough to come hang out.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou had a runner this season of Ted\u2019s chair constantly being too low. You knew you had to pay that off, and you did. Where did this running joke come from?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery once in a while, Jason\u2019s got an idea in his head that he doesn\u2019t take the time to explain for whatever reason. Not out of malice or anything, he just doesn\u2019t. We\u2019ve got plenty of other things to talk about on set. But somewhere around episode three or four, he was like, \u201cI think my chair is gonna be broken.\u201d OK, great. And then the next episode, \u201cI think my chair is gonna be broken again.\u201d Oh, fine. And then a month later, \u201cIt\u2019s been Alice \u2014 it\u2019s been Alice the whole time.\u201d That\u2019s great! <\/p>\n

\n\tSo yeah, this is one of those things where he sees the whole map and he\u2019s just gonna walk you down it. He doesn\u2019t necessarily need to tell you everything that\u2019s coming up. We don\u2019t need to know everything. We\u2019ll find out eventually. But yeah, I was pretty tickled. As I hope everyone else will when they find out that was the reason.<\/p>\n

\t\tWe\u2019ll call it Chekhov\u2019s chair.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, if you will.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the Season 4 finale of \u201cTed Lasso,\u201d now streaming on Apple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[23536,88,13022],"class_list":["post-874689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-brendan-hunt","tag-entertainment","tag-ted-lasso"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}