Ted Lasso is back on the pitch, and critics can’t agree on whether the folksy soccer coach should have stayed retired.
Apple TV‘s Emmy-winning comedy returned Wednesday after a three-year absence, sending Jason Sudeikis‘ titular character back to Richmond to lead a second-division women’s team. The show won Best Comedy Series in 2021 and 2022, making its comeback one of the most closely watched TV returns of the year.
It’s also drawn the softest reception of the show’s run. Season 4 holds a 62 on Metacritic, the lowest of any season and 11 points below the previous floor, though it fares better on Rotten Tomatoes at 90% as of publication. Most critics screened four or five of the season’s 10 episodes, which roll out weekly through Oct. 7.
| Season | Rotten Tomatoes | Metacritic |
| 1 (2020) | 92% | 71 |
| 2 (2021) | 97% | 85 |
| 3 (2023) | 81% | 73 |
| 4 (2026) | 90% | 62 |
Welcome back
The New York Post‘s Lauren Sarner delivers one of the warmest notices of the bunch, calling Season 4 “the best Ted Lasso has been since Season 1.” She’s not blind to the rough start — she notes the premiere burns nearly an hour setting up a premise the trailer already gave away — but argues the season course-corrects from the plots that bogged down the middle years, with Nick Mohammed’s Nate “mercifully absent.” Her recommendation is aimed squarely at lapsed viewers: anyone who drifted during Seasons 2 and 3 should give it another shot.
RogerEbert.com’s Richard Roeper reaches for a homecoming metaphor, comparing the return to finding your favorite restaurant reopened under the same management with a few new faces on staff. He’s one of the strongest advocate for the newcomers, calling Tanya Reynolds a “breakout star” as assistant coach Alice Chilton and singling out Abbie Hern and Jude Mack, whose goalkeeper refuses to wear gloves because she relishes the sting of a bare-handed save. Final verdict: “Season 4 wasn’t necessary, but it’s a welcome added time.”
The Times (U.K.)’s Carol Midgley, at three stars, keeps it simple. She finds the show “uplifting, unpretentious, homely television with a strong moral compass” — the same qualities that made it a phenomenon in 2020, unchanged and, for her, undiminished.
Playing for a draw
Variety‘s Alison Herman calls Season 4 “a promising reboot and a tedious sequel,” and her argument is that those two things are structurally at odds: the season wants to be a class reunion and a clean slate at once, and it’s far more enjoyable as the latter. She credits Season 4 for reining in Season 3’s bloat, but says the returning cast crowds out the new one — Brett Goldstein’s Roy Kent and Brendan Hunt’s Coach Beard remain “load-bearing — and space-occupying — protagonists” when they’d work better as cameos.
The Daily Telegraph‘s Benji Wilson files three stars under a headline reading “Ted Lasso-mania has finally gone too far,” calling the season mediocre. Even so, he can’t quite dismiss it, admiring the show’s “surprisingly delicate balance between the sickly-sweet and the smutty that leaves you marvelling at how they keep getting away with it.”
Should have stayed retired
Time‘s Judy Berman zeroes in on the women’s-team premise and finds it fundamentally miscast. The original show was about masculinity, with Ted as the empathetic center pulling angry, preening, insecure men toward something better. Transplanting that dynamic reads differently: Berman argues Ted risks coming off “less paternal than paternalistic,” so the show keeps him on the sidelines, which leaves both him and the new players at arm’s length. Her verdict on the reset: “It doesn’t quite work.”
IndieWire’s Ben Travers, grading the season a C, writes Season 4 has “the kind of simple framework that should lead to easy wins, and yet Ted Lasso keeps stumbling over itself, time and time again.”
The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager, who isn’t a fan, sees Season 4 as confirmation that the decline traces back years. The show that went from “refreshingly upbeat to gratingly cloying,” with its treacle spent by 2023. He writes Season 4 has “more of the same mirthless mawkishness that sunk the show in the first place, albeit this time with gender-related jokes designed to warm the heart rather than make one laugh.”
