For a moment it looked like Ted Lasso was going to blow its season — and, by all appearances, series — finale before the opening credits even rolled. There would be no easier way to end things badly than the shock pairing of Ted and Rebecca, two characters whose relationship has been defined by respect and affection without even a hint of sexual attraction. (There’s another Apple TV+ series called Platonic, but Ted and Rebecca got there first.) It’s a fake-out, though this isn’t revealed until the scene raises the possibility that Ted, Rebecca, Beard, and Jane engaged in some kind of … well, who knows what, given the participants?
But instead of a last-minute swerve into polyamory, Ted Lasso makes a far less unexpected trip into sentiment. “So Long, Farewell†sends the series off with a string of highly emotional scenes as the Greyhounds prepare for a match that could win them the Premier League title (if they can beat Rupert’s dreaded West Ham) and to say good-bye to Ted who, as the previous episode hinted, is on his way back to U.S. (Beard, too, at least in theory, though Ted gets most of the attention.)
Rebecca can’t talk about Ted’s departure yet, and seemingly might not be able to talk about it at all. In fact, Ted’s departure and Higgins’s suggestion that selling a minority stake in the team could earn her a lot of money has got her thinking about packing it all in. Without Ted, does she even want to stick around? It’s a decision she’ll weigh throughout the episode, though for most of it she seems pretty sure it’s time to go. In one of the finale’s best moments, Rebecca finds Ted alone in the stadium (an image that echoes the opening credits) and they have a quiet talk in which she lays it all out, saying “If you go, I go†before directly asking Ted to stay. She at least ends the conversation on a positive note, imagining embarking on a globetrotting life that’s less Eat, Pray, Love than, in Rebecca’s words, Drink, Sleep, Fuck. It sounds nice, even if it’s not going to be her fate.
Theirs is the most notable of a handful of one-on-one Ted talks in “So Long, Farewell.†Nate, now fully back in the fold (after seemingly having his personality reset to its season one factory specs) offers Ted an apology that Ted insists is unnecessary. Later, Beard will apologize, too, knowing that his love for Jane will keep him from following Ted back to the States. But in some ways it’s the one-way exchange Ted leaves on Trent’s manuscript suggesting The Lasso Way is the wrong title that gets at the heart of the show: “It’s not about me. It never was.â€
There are certainly plenty of other characters with notable plots swirling around, aren’t there? While most of the team gets only a few fleeting moments in the spotlight — most notably Dani and Van Damme, er, Zorro’s reconciliation and Colin’s public embrace of his boyfriend on the pitch after the game — the finale gives a lot of time to the Roy/Keeley/Jamie situation. It’s not always time well spent. Though the preceding episodes telegraphed it, it feels odd having spent so much time dealing with Roy and Jamie’s deepening friendship and maturing outlooks on life to rush them into a pretty standard love-triangle confrontation. It at least doesn’t last long, short-circuited by Keeley’s offended response when they give her the privilege of choosing one of them to be her boyfriend. That reaction makes sense for Keeley, but getting to it means making both Roy and Jamie seem stupider than they’ve seemed in a long time.
Roy, to his credit, seems to recognize it. He seeks out the counsel of the Diamond Dogs and, in the end, decides to join them. It feels like a summing-up moment for a series that’s placed a healthy emphasis on men expressing their feelings and trying to improve on the past. Perfection is boring, at least in people. (Movies and Billy Joel albums and Trent’s hair are another matter.) But the key, as Higgins puts it, is to “always be moving toward better.â€
And with that out of the way, it’s time for the unsurprisingly dramatic match. The team enters with tears in their eyes from Beard’s reflective video and struggles through the first half until Ted’s locker room speech at halftime. It feels at first like an obligation — of course the show needed one more halftime moment — but the reassembly of the “BELIEVE†sign is a nice capper. The Greyhounds love grand gestures, though this one probably took less coordination than the staging of the Sound of Music song that gives the episode its title at the team’s last practice.
Thanks to Jamie Tartt but also everyone else on the team, they pull off a miraculous victory, albeit one most notable for some off-the-field drama. Already humiliated by the scandalous revelation of his inappropriate relationship with former assistant Ms. Kakes, Rupert’s in a testy mood. So testy, in fact, that he takes to the field to tell his coach to take out Tartt, shoving him when he refuses then leaving the pitch to a crowd mocking him as a “wanker.†The only true Ted Lasso villain (apart from Edwin Akufo), he meets an appropriate fate.
So, it turns out, does everyone else. Ted returns home and the final shot of the episode suggests he’s at peace. Beard stays behind with Jane and the team. Rebecca has given up on Psychic Tish’s nonsense but still scores an accidental reunion with the Handsome Dutch Stranger, who finally learns the name of his enchanting onetime houseboat guest. (Rebecca also meets HDS’s daughter, suggesting maybe Tish did know what she was talking about, should things work out.) Beard and Jane wed. Roy, now head coach, finally goes to therapy. (Hey, it’s Doc!) Keeley chooses neither. (Or maybe both, who knows?) The Richmond fans get a chance to purchase a stake in the team, making them the Premier League’s equivalent of the Green Bay Packers.
It’s a happy ending to a series that, at its best, took seriously what it meant to pursue happiness while showing kindness to others. Ted Lasso had its ups and downs, particularly in this third season, which essentially laid out Ted’s fate in its opening moments then drew out the path toward that fate over a dozen episodes and took some characters along some truly peculiar sidetracks across some unusually long runtimes. But Ted Lasso will almost certainly be remembered for its best qualities, an unusual gift for heartwarming moments that felt earned rather than forced, and a central character defined as much by his willingness to admit his flaws as his infectious enthusiasm. Good effort. Nice hustle.
Biscuits
• But, seriously, the way Nate’s story was handled this season was kind of bizarre, right? To spend all of the second season depicting a slow descent into bitterness verging on madness and then have him emerge from it with little effort is peculiar. When Keeley welcomes him back to the team, does she remember that kiss?
• To end covering this show on a negative note feels wrong, though. So hats off, once again, to that top-to-bottom excellent cast, from the leads to the deep bench, which made it feel like it was a series with no minor characters.
• Willis.