Though Apple TV+ is still not confirming that Ted Lasso will end with Season 3, series co-creator and leading man Jason Sudeikis maintains that the next batch of 12 episodes marks “the end of this story we wanted to tell,” and any future beyond that will likely involve a spinoff.
Speaking to our sister site Deadline, Sudeikis was asked if the series could continue in a different form, perhaps following any number of popular characters from the show. “I think that we’ve set the table for all sorts of folks… to get to watch the further telling of these stories,” he said. “I can’t help but take the question as flattery for what all of us that were working on the show has tried to do. It’s really kind of folks to even consider that because you never know what’s gonna happen when you make things. The fact that people want more, even if it’s a different avenue, is lovely.”
But Sudeikis also implied that what fans want now, versus what they’ll want once they’ve seen all of Season 3, may be two different things.
“The fact that folks will want more and are curious beyond more than what they don’t even know yet — that being Season 3 — it’s flattering,” he said. “Maybe by May 31, once all 12 episodes of the season [have been released], they’re like, ‘Man, you know what, we get it, we’re fine. We don’t need anymore, we got it.’”
As recently as September, Sudeikis refused to confirm that Ted Lasso would exit the pitch after its upcoming run.
“I don’t know,” he told reporters after the series took home its second consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. “It’s up to more factors than myself. The response has been overwhelming. We have a tremendous group of writers, actors, people in production and post-production, all of those thrown in the jambalaya of possibility. I couldn’t say yes or no… If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”
But months before Sudeikis suggested that no decision had been made, fellow star (and series scribe) Brett Goldstein, aka Roy, gave an interview to the UK’s Sunday Times and implied that Season 3 would mark the end of the (Nelson) Road.
“We are writing it like that,” he said last June. “It was planned as three. Spoiler alert: everyone dies.”
Hannah Waddingham, who plays Rebecca, has also gone on record about wrapping things up.
“We are halfway through shooting Season 3 and I would like to pause things because I’m not ready to say goodbye to [Rebecca],” she told Deadline in July. “Brett and I were talking about [saying goodbye] earlier and we’re both a little bit in denial…. It’s like a long, slow mourning.”
But again, Apple has not confirmed that Ted Lasso will wrap in May — and there was no indication that the end is nigh in the recently released Season 3 trailer.
Season 3 premieres Wednesday, March 15. In the meantime, hit the comments and tell us how you’re feeling about the future of Ted Lasso.