‘Ted Lasso’ Season 3 Review: The Beloved Hit Fumbles Its Comeback

Panning any part of Ted Lasso feels like kicking a soccer ball high speed into a beloved greyhound mascot, but that’s what I fear I must do. The Ted Lasso Season 3 premiere is a massive stumble for the otherwise exalted Apple TV+ show. It is a dud, a downer, and most of all, terribly unfunny. The good news is that Ted Lasso Season 3 eventually does start to regain its footing. The bad news is that it takes more than a few episodes to get there; and it’s unclear if Jason Sudeikis and his team of Emmy-winning writers and performers will continue on this streak past the four episodes Apple TV+ sent critics.

Ted Lasso follows an American football coach who finds himself hired to run a beleaguered British Premiere League soccer team. Coach Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) might not know what the offsides rule is, but his positive energy and avuncular manner charm just about every cynic he meets across the pond. He transforms Richmond’s chaotic team of misfits into a true football family. Ted Lasso Season 2 ends with the team squeaking back into the Premiere League after a season in relegation, but all is not well. Ted’s first friend at the club, Nate (Nick Mohammed), has betrayed Ted’s secret panic attacks to the press and joined rival team West Ham. Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) and Keeley Jones’s (Juno Temple) love story might be in peril and Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) is still battling ex-husband (and new West Ham owner) Rupert (Anthony Head) by proxy on the pitch.

Ted Lasso Season 3 opens with Ted — and the show itself — at the lowest point to date. We reconnect with Ted in a fugue state, struggling to get his visiting son on a flight back to the States, and uninspired in his role as coach. At one point in the premiere, Ted wonders aloud to Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) why they’re still in London in the first place. This ennui would be fine if the premiere episode itself didn’t feel like a massive misfire. Characters are reduced to their clichés, punchlines miss their marks, and the story is barely progressed forward. (The only new thing the audience learns is the state of Roy and Keeley’s romance.) Overall, Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 1 felt drawn from a comedy student’s spec script; and not an Emmy-winning writers’ room.

Thankfully, Ted Lasso Season 3 steadily improves from there. The jokes get better and the story finally progresses as the rivalry between Richmond and West Ham officially kicks off. In fact, Ted Lasso Season 3, Episode 4 is a riveting and delightful return to the show’s award season-dominating form. It’s an episode that offers up a long-awaited showdown and a bunch of scenes that hardcore fans of the show are sure to love. (An episode that opens and closes with Roy Kent and Jamie Tartt bonding?? Yes, please.)

While the uneven, super-long, early scripts show signs of (previously reported) production strife, the show’s celebrated cast still kills it. Sudeikis gives Ted new levels of pathos as he navigates the grief of divorce. Waddingham’s Rebecca continues her bewitching emotional journey to self-possession, flitting between vulnerability and empowerment in the space of a scene. Brett Goldstein’s line reads and Brendan Hunt’s reaction shots are some of the most hilarious parts of the new season. But if there’s an early season MVP, it’s got to be Phil Dunster. Jamie Tartt started off as the shallowest of himbos and is now one of the most complex characters on the show, setting Dunster up for some brilliant one-liners and emotionally affecting scenes.

Of course, the elephant in the room is how Ted Lasso does and doesn’t match up to rumors about star, EP, and co-creator Jason Sudeikis’s personal life. While the show introduced Ted as a man in a failing marriage, in Season 3, Ted is consumed by the emotional fallout of his divorce. He is unfocused on the game, obsessed with his wife’s new beau, and pining for a son growing up on the other side of the pond. It could be a total coincidence, but it’s really hard to not wonder how much of Sudeikis’s own very public breakup with Olivia Wilde filtered into Ted’s emotional arc. It’s not so much gossip-worthy — there are no special salad dressings here — as much as it’s distracting. Even more so when the earliest scripts of the season are so weak — and so dominated by Ted’s pain.

Ted Lasso Season 3 starts rough, but it does find its footing by Episode 4. It’s the worst season so far to date, but there is enough there for fans to hope — if not “BELIEVE” (har, har) — in a triumphant conclusion to the season. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Ted Lasso Season 3 premieres Wednesday, March 15 on Apple TV+.