The Emmy-winning comedy was planned to run for only three seasons, but will critical acclaim and fan demand win out?
Ted Lasso took its final bow on Wednesday, as the series finale found Jason Sudeikis' titular coach on a plane back home to Kansas, and the rest of its main characters on new journeys of their own.
But is this the end of the road for the AFC Richmond Greyhounds? Sudeikis and the show's cast and creators have long insisted that the show was always planned as a three-season run. But that was before they dominated the Emmys' comedy categories two years in a row and became one of the most beloved streaming series.
Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent on the Apple TV+ soccer comedy in addition to writing on the show, told the Sunday Times last summer that, as far as the Ted Lasso writers are concerned, the third season would be the show's last.
"We are writing it like that. It was planned as three," Goldstein shared, later joking, "Spoiler alert — everyone dies."
Sudeikis spoke with ET following Ted Lasso's huge night at the 2021 Emmys -- where the show won seven awards including Outstanding Comedy Series. At the time, he didn't give a committed answer either way, but did reiterate that the show was initially planned for three seasons, adding that creatively, he had yet to consider more.
"I feel like a real coach when I have to tell folks that you can’t look at season 4 when we're in the middle of season 3," Sudeikis explained. "We can’t worry about the championships when we're in the first round of playoffs, you know?"
"We got to take it one game at a time," he continued, noting that there are "many factors" that would contribute to continuing Ted Lasso past season 3. "As cliche as that may sound, there’s actually truth. It’s hard to think about what to do in the distant future when you're trying to deal with what’s right in front of you."
However, Sudeikis made things sound more final this week, in his appearance on Dana Carvey and David Spade's Fly on the Wall podcast.
"This story is done," he said. "It sounds like such a political answer, but it's the truth. We only conceived these three [seasons], then this thing became this big ol' thing."
However, that doesn't mean he's not open to other ideas within the Ted Lasso universe.
"Whether it's [a book], whether it's doing podcasts about the episodes to offer those audio commentaries... just to talk through things and the themes," he shared. "It would explain the show in a much more cerebral way than I ever would have been able to explain it to anybody. Yeah, there's opportunities, I think, for spinoffs."
When ET spoke with Sudeikis at the Emmys, he had plenty of spinoff ideas, including one for co-stars and pals Hannah Waddingham and Juno Temple as a "crime-fighting duo."
"I think that’s one of the neatest things about the show, at least for me," he shared. "To watch over and over these performances by these amazing actors, this great cast. I really enjoy watching every single one of them and it’s so fun on the writing side just to pair up anybody."
"Literally, take any two of them and kind of like [mix them up], it’s fun to think about," he added. "So, I mean, I would love for the first show to have six different spinoffs."
Ahead of the series finale, series star Phil Dunster likened the last days on the Ted Lasso set to the last days of school, leaving open the possibility of a return in the future
"This isn't necessarily the end," he continued, offering a hint of hope. "We don't know... It felt like the end of school, where you're like, I'm so grateful that we've all been a part of this thing. I'm also so excited for what happens next."
Following the finale, the Apple TV+ Twitter account shared a photo of the new AFC Richmond coaching staff -- Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) and newly-returned Nate Shelley (Nick Mohammed) -- with the caption, "Smells like potential."
Was that a hint at a possible spinoff to come? Mohammed isn't telling, retweeting the post with a "my lips are sealed" emoji.
Ted Lasso is streaming now on Apple TV+.
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