'Ted Lasso' Season 4 Review

John Odette
4 minutes ago
3 min read

Season Four. [Premiere]

Aired On: Apple TV.

Release Date: 08/05/26.

Genre: Comedy. Drama. Sport.

The Verdict: A Must-See

After a few years on sabbatical, Apple TV’s incredible hit Ted Lasso returns to the pitch for a fourth season. The charming and endearing qualities that permeated the first three seasons, unifying audiences during an oft-tumultuous and uncomfortable reality, have resumed their bewitching abilities, at least in the first four episodes of this upcoming fourth installment.

Ted Lasso, the upbeat, positive, and infectious Midwest coach portrayed by Jason Sudeikis, returns to London to coach a different Richmond football team, the second-division women’s team, colloquially referred to as the Lady Greyhounds. This position provides a barrel of new challenges as Ted navigates team proximity issues (locker room protocol and the like), combats the claims of the irrelevance and economic impact of women’s sports, and deepens his relationship with his son, Henry (Grant Feely, replacing Gus Turner after 3 seasons).

Much of the cast has returned, thus far, in dynamic supporting roles. The gorgeous Hannah Waddingham as Richmond owner Rebecca Welton flies to Kansas City in the season opener to convince Ted to fill the ladies’ manager position. She is accompanied by idiosyncratic Operations Director Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) and tenacious Keely Jones (Juno Temple), Richmond’s marketing manager.

Series comedic staples, the enigmatic Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) and crotchety yet warm Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), Richmond's current men’s team’s management, resume their eccentric positions in the cast constellation. Other smaller characters appear gradually as the episodes unfold, with some high-profile supporting characters noticeably absent, having retired or moved on from Richmond (and the main plot). The chief new addition is the stoic and rigid assistant manager Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds), who harbors resentment as her career placement lands her as number two behind Lasso.

The first four episodes of season 4 flow briskly together, and with little time, I remembered how much I enjoyed spending time with all these characters, in their office spaces, in their pubs, free-kicking their insight. In an era where anything that bucks the status quo or introduces change gets regarded as “woke,” Ted Lasso season 4 sidesteps this label by staying true to the core of what made the show so wonderful in the first place. This series is about empathy and curiosity, vulnerability, accountability, forgiveness, and community. It always has been and does so with regard to the strength of women and the strength of men – the resilience and power of the human spirit.

This show is not perfect, but the flaws are minimal. The solution for Ted’s resistance to taking the manager job is a little contrived; he did not want to leave his son back in the U.S. again, and therefore, his son and ex-wife both decide to move with Ted to London. This convenience does stretch credulity. But under scrutiny, I concede that this critique loosens its grasp almost willfully. The characters are so sharply drawn that I cannot help but feel better when they band together, even when the circumstances pulling them in might feel out of bounds.

Fans of Ted Lasso will be back in droves, and they should be. This goal-scoring new set of episodes has demonstrated the series’ ability to grow the characters on arcs that are not only enjoyable and entertaining, but appropriate. Ted Lasso is returning at the right time, when we need optimism, and we crave authenticity. Sudeikis has become synonymous in the zeitgeist with the eponymous coach; to say he’s a real keeper would truly undervalue him.

We need reminders to replace judgment with curiosity. Through Ted’s sanguine lens, we find the value in others and in ourselves - we can be unapologetically human. There is a yearning for this seemingly forgotten camaraderie in the real world; Ted Lasso reminds us we can still achieve it. There isn’t a red card to be charged here. It’s all barbeque sauce.

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