“Ted Lasso” ended its fourth season by giving the job away. The finale hands AFC Richmond’s women’s team to Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds), and Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) becomes her assistant. Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) takes the head coaching job at Chelsea while Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) keeps her club and proposes to her boyfriend. That is a lot of change for one hour. Most of it works, and the one decision the show refuses to finish is the most interesting thing it did all season.
The episode is called “Being Alive,” and Apple TV released it Tuesday, October 6th, at 9 PM ET. It closes a ten-episode season about Richmond’s new second-division women’s side, the Lady Greyhounds. Matt Lipsey directed it from a script by Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt. This review is written from the recaps and reviews that followed the release and not from a screener. Every beat below was checked against at least two of eight independent write-ups, and anything only one of them reported has been left out. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Ted Lasso” season four, including the finale.
Most of it works, and the one decision the show refuses to finish is the most interesting thing it did all season.”
The hour opens at the Crown & Anchor, which is closed for the wake of Mae Green (Annette Badland). Mae died in the previous episode at an away match in Bristol, and we never see the funeral. The twins Niamh (Aisling Sharkey) and Siobhan (Rex Hayes) lead the room in “The Parting Glass”. Henry (Grant Feely), grieving Mae, asks his father how his grandfather died, because his grandmother told him it was a fall down some stairs. Ted lets that story stand and promises Henry he is not going anywhere soon.
Longtime viewers know that story is false. Ted’s father died by suicide, and the loss sits under almost everything the character does. Ted admits to Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) that he went “serpentine” on his son. Later he sits Henry down and tells him the truth. The show does not let us hear that conversation. That was the right call, because the scene is about the decision to stop lying and not about the words. Ted also promises to rearrange his schedule so he stops missing Henry’s games. For a character built on cheerful deflection, that is the real ending of his season.
Roy’s story moves faster. On the night of the wake, Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) is battling morning sickness when his agent calls with the Chelsea offer. Roy runs to the bathroom to be sick himself. At Nelson Road he calls a meeting of the Diamond Dogs, and Alice ends up in the room cast as a cat. Nate Shelley (Nick Mohammed) happens to be visiting and now coaches the Polish national team with a baby daughter named Athena at home. Roy never mentions the job and talks instead about his fear of being a bad father. “And don’t disappear when you feel inadequate,” Alice tells him, and it is the best line in the scene.
For the women’s last match, Keeley fills Nelson Road with a viral video built on footage of a drunk Rebecca demanding to know where everyone is, and it sells out. Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh), Isaac McAdoo (Kola Bokinni) and other faces from the men’s side are in the stands. Keeley promised Roy she would only listen to the match and then turns up hiding in the locker room. He lets her watch for a moment before taking her back inside. The episode cares more about who showed up than about the scoreline.
The shareholders’ meeting settles the season’s takeover plot. Zelda Southport (Tracey Ullman) admits she was the buyer all along and that her associate Hugo Riddles (Alex Blake) had been collecting Richmond shares on her behalf. She did not want the Lady Greyhounds. She wanted a men’s Premier League club so the men who run football would have to listen to her. But Rebecca and Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) had caught on. Hugo was tired of how Zelda treated him and sold the Milk Sisters’ shares to Rebecca instead. That left both women at 49 percent, and the last two percent belonged to Mae.
Mae’s will gives her stake to Rebecca and puts Rebecca at 51 percent. It also leaves the Crown & Anchor to Baz (Adam Colborne), Jeremy (Bronson Webb) and Paul (Kevin Garry) with a one-line instruction: “Don’t f**k it up.” Badland told Deadline last month that Mae “uses them to good effect” when asked about the shares. It is a sweet way to give a dead character the final word, but it is not much of a twist. Ana Claudia Paixão at Miscelana wrote that “the conflict ends so easily that it drains the threat the season had built,” and she is right. Rebecca then forgives Zelda and lets her keep her stake.
Roy tells Rebecca he is taking Chelsea. He will finish Richmond’s season first. She is furious and then lets him go. “But we’ve got to take risks, haven’t we, Rebecca?” he asks, and reminds her that she taught him that. She tells him he can always come crawling back when he gets bored of Chelsea’s money. Mae’s death pushes Rebecca toward her own leap, and she decides that being messy means being alive. When Matthijs (Matteo van der Grijn) walks in with flowers she proposes on the spot. Her pencil skirt rules out kneeling, so he kneels for her and says yes.
That speech happens with Ted in the room. He says he was hoping they could chat about her “newly-opened manager position” before the episode cuts away. We never hear her answer. In the final scene a plaque names Alice as manager of the AFC Richmond women’s team with Willis Beard and Ted as her assistants. Alice also turns out to be the one who has been lowering Ted’s chair all season. Her sticky notes count down 112 days to next season.
What the episode leaves open is what Ted asked for. Deadline, FandomWire and The Tab read the scene as Ted eyeing Roy’s job with the men. TV Insider and Miscelana read it as Ted asking to step aside so Alice could lead. “We don’t even hear him explicitly say he is the one who wants the job, let alone Rebecca offering it to him,” The Tab noted. Our read is that the show did this on purpose. Promoting Alice is the payoff for a season of Ted coaching her the way he once failed to coach Nate, and the men’s vacancy is the hook for whatever comes next.
The closing montage plays under Mae’s voice reading “When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver. Isaac shaves Beard’s head. Roy clears out his office and finds a note from Ted saying he will be a great dad, along with one of Ted’s little green army men. He pockets the soldier and walks out with Keeley. It is a strong ending that plays like a goodbye, and that makes the open question in Rebecca’s office feel even more deliberate.
Apple has not renewed “Ted Lasso” for a fifth season, and its own listing calls this a season finale rather than a series ending. Asked about a renewal around the season premiere, Apple’s Eddy Cue told Screen Rant “I hope so” and called the show “certainly good enough for that,” with “plenty of stories to go on.” The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the team planned to be back in the writers room in late August “mapping out a not-yet-ordered season five,” and that Sudeikis has another three-season arc in mind. None of that is an order. The finale earns one anyway. The season found its point in Alice, and the show has now built a clear road for Ted back to the men’s side.
What Do You Think? Should Ted take Roy’s old job with the men, or stay on as Alice’s assistant? Was Mae’s two percent a satisfying end to the takeover plot or too easy a way out? And should the show have let us hear Ted tell Henry the truth about his father?
See you on the next binge!
