Those with an AppleTV+ subscription would probably agree that the streaming service brought us a great new addition when Ted Lasso debuted on August 14, 2020. The soccer – OK, fine, football – comedy quickly saw itself lauded by audiences and critics alike, with a number of Emmy Award nominations, wins and other awards coming with the years that followed.
Now, with the second installment in the history books long ago (that season finale aired way back on October 8, 2021) and having left us with several questions, fans are dying to know everything they can find out about Ted Lasso Season 3. Luckily, you'll be able to watch Ted Lasso Season 3 come March 15. In the meantime, we have several bits of good news about the upcoming season of heartfelt hilarity, football shenanigans, and deep feelings!
What Is The Ted Lasso Season 3 Premiere Date?
I wasn’t kidding when I said there was good news to be had, as Apple TV+ announced in early February 2023 that Ted Lasso Season 3 will debut in just a few short weeks, on Wednesday, March 15, with new episodes coming along weekly on the same day.
The comedy was renewed way back in October of 2020, before production had even begun on Season 2. As you can probably imagine, this fast renewal was hardly a giant surprise, considering how massively popular and sincerely beloved the show became after its first season.
Ted Lasso’s Stars And Writers Are All Expected To Return, And There’s At Least One New Cast Member Confirmed
There are even more positive updates where that came from, as many of the Ted Lasso cast members will be back for the third outing, so that viewers will be able to see more of their favorite characters and the actors who make them so special. According to The Hollywood Reporter, much of the main cast closed new deals to continue with Season 3 by mid-September 2021, with those who make up the funny team of footballers for Richmond and other actors likely making new deals by a few weeks after that.
So, we will definitely see Jason Sudeikis (Ted), Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca), Brendan Hunt (Beard), the very real Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent), Juno Temple (Keeley Jones), and Phil Dunster (Jamie) return for the new season. But, we should also be treated to more from actors like Nick Mohammed (Nate Shelley), Jeremy Swift (Leslie Higgins), Toheeb Jimoh (Sam Obisanya), Kola Bokinni (Isaac McAdoo), Cristo Fernández (Dani Rojas), Anthony Head (Rupert), and Billy Harris (Colin Hughes), along with many of the other supporting players. It should also be noted that many of those listed above were seen in the trailer released for the upcoming season, but we’ll get into that more in a bit.
In addition to all of those castings, Deadline announced in April 2022 that actress Jodi Balfour (For All Mankind) had been added to portray Jack, “a charming venture capitalist.” Fans can also look forward to the overall feel of Ted Lasso remaining the same, as Sudeikis, Hunt, Goldstein, and the other writers will all return for Season 3, as well.
You Can Now Watch The Trailer For Season 3!
It took a while (OK, a really long time!), but we finally have footage from the upcoming season in the form of an actual trailer, which was released in late February 2023. Take a look!
Ooooh! Sure, we don't get much in the way of actual dialogue here, but there are plenty of scenes that help us see what's coming up, and a nice bit of team unity and happiness at the end, which should be more than enough to get fans' excitement to build to a fever pitch! I'm SO ready!
Season 3 Will Focus On Big Changes For All The Main Characters
When the premiere date for the new season was released we were finally given an official synopsis of the plot, and the focus is going to be on a number of major changes for our favorite characters, some of which began by the time the credits rolled on the Season 2 finale. Observe:
The newly-promoted AFC Richmond faces ridicule as media predictions widely peg them as last in the Premier League and Nate, now hailed as the “wonder kid,” has gone to work for Rupert at West Ham United. In the wake of Nate’s contentious departure from Richmond, Roy Kent steps up as assistant coach, alongside Beard . Meanwhile, while Ted deals with pressures at work, he continues to wrestle with his own personal issues back home, Rebecca is focused on defeating Rupert, and Keeley navigates being the boss of her own PR agency. Things seem to be falling apart both on and off the pitch, but Team Lasso is set to give it their best shot anyway.
As you can see there will be plenty for the team and their assorted allies and enemies to deal with in Season 3, so it’s a good thing that Sudeikis revealed in a post-Emmy win interview in September 2021 that 12 episodes had been ordered for the new season. That seems like more than enough time to dig into everything they have planned!
All Three Seasons Of Ted Lasso Will Tell A Complete Story
By now every Ted Lasso fan knows that the series was pitched with a three-season arc as the original plan, meaning that the goal was for the story to end with the third season. However, when you have a series that dominated the cultural zeitgeist as quickly as this one has, it makes sense that viewers, those at Apple, and probably several of those behind the scenes of the super-successful comedy would love to see it continue beyond Season 3.
Whether it will or not either hasn’t been fully decided yet (though writer/star Goldstein did confirm that upcoming episodes were written as the show’s last hurrah), or simply hasn’t been revealed to the public right now, but executive producer Bill Lawrence told Deadline in October 2021:
When we first pitched this particular story, we said this series was only going to be three seasons. And I would probably stay clean and say that even if Ted Lasso goes on, the story the writing staff has been telling had a beginning, middle and end for the first three seasons. And then it might veer off from that.
Even if Ted Lasso does last through Season 4 or beyond, we can count on the story that we’ve seen so far being completed by the end of Season 3. What that might mean for the future of this heartwarming series is certainly exciting to think about!
As for how that complete story will conclude, we’ll have to wait and see, but show editors A.J. Catoline and Melissa McCoy spoke to THR’s Behind the Screen podcast in August 2022, and noted that they think Nate and Rebecca will have the biggest transformations in the new episodes. Additionally, there are other new characters aside from the one that was confirmed above, including “new blood on the team” that “invigorates what’s happening in the locker room,” while things that were set up in the very first season will be touched upon again before the finale.
Ted Lasso Season 3 Began Filming In Early 2022
On January 4, 2022, star/co-creator/EP/writer Brendan Hunt posted a photo of himself and lead Jason Sudeikis on Instagram as they were about to board a plane. His caption indicated that filming would start very soon, which echoed what actors Phil Dunster and Hannah Waddingham said about when the show would begin filming around the same time
Unfortunately, production on the surprisingly sweet comedy took way longer than expected. Fortunately, when Sudeikis hosted a charity event in Kansas City on November 12, 2022, he told those present (via GQ UK) that principal photography was due to come to a close the following week. He said something similar when speaking at a press conference for the fundraiser, and with Season 3 set to debut in less than a month from the time of this writing, it seems like he was correct.
What Was The Delay On Ted Lasso Season 3?
Even assuming that one of the best Apple TV+ shows did finish filming in mid-November, according to Puck, the series still took over a year to write and film. The writers room started in September 2021, and the cast had arrived in England by early January 2022, but Sudeikis (who is now also the showrunner) reportedly decided that the scripts required major rewrites. So, instead of a mid-February production start, that beginning date was pushed to March.
Reportedly, though, not even waiting an additional few weeks to get cameras rolling worked. The outlet’s sources also noted that production stalled several more times because of things like shifting character arcs, and additional on-the-fly script changes. There was also, allegedly, a Sudeikis-spurred change big enough that caused production to need to pick up and move to Amsterdam, adding weeks to an already behind schedule. On top of all of that, a plan to shoot at Chelsea Football Club was stalled when that team needed to be sold by its Russian oligarch owner after his country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Though all of this led to the mountain of delays (and the show reportedly going way over budget), the new season is finally set to debut, even though fans had to wait several months past its planned, summer 2022 premiere.
Nate Might Not Be Redeemed By The End Of Season 3
Few of us probably watched Season 1 and had any idea of where the second season was going for the sweet, knowledgeable, formerly bullied Nate. As much as he loved being trusted by Ted and Coach Beard, he hated it with a passion when Roy was also appointed a coach, and let his fears of being abandoned/not being good enough lead him down a shady road, which ended with him likely being at least one of the Big Bads for the new season.
Nate’s portrayer, Nick Mohammed, noted in December 2021 that we actually might not see Nate be redeemed by the end of the new season. As he told the BBC:
We'll see if Nate manages to find his way back to Richmond. But the thing with Ted Lasso is the audience are possibly expecting a redemption arc for Nate, and I'd like to see one, I think, because that would be nice. But equally I could well imagine the writers thinking, 'No, we're going to turn it on its head,' because that's what they did in Season 2, playing against everyone's expectations, so he might be the one character they don't redeem.
Look, if Nate doesn’t get a second chance, while pretty much every other character has, I can guarantee that myself and other fans will not be pleased.
All in all, it sounds like viewers are in for a fantastic set of episodes, when Ted Lasso Season 3 finally premieres.
