We Needed Ted Lasso in 2020. In 2026? It’s More Complicated.

It’s a take that almost writes itself: Ted Lasso, the fictional American college football coach who is brought to the U.K. to train England’s AFC Richmond, is not only a lovable nerd and conscientious dad (who saved us from the monotonous evenings of Covid lockdown), but he’s also a consummate feminist. At the close of the third season, we left him boarding a flight back to Kansas City to be with his family. Now, he’s back and he’s dedicating the next chapter of his career to elevating women’s sports. That’s because he’s modern! He’s enlightened! An antidote to the toxic manosphere!

Only — not everyone agrees. 

In the fourth season, currently streaming on Apple TV in both the U.S. and U.K. — Ted’s been tapped to coach the club’s underfunded women’s team: the Lady Greyhounds. The story addresses the disparities in investment and in opportunities in women’s sport, while introducing women players and coaches who have had to navigate institutions built around men. 

On its face, Season 4 is arguably feminist. It seizes the “chance to celebrate and champion women’s sports, while raising awareness of misogyny and gender gaps that athletes face in the real world,” writes Nicole Gallucci, Decider.com’s senior entertainment reporter. She writes about the “ways big and small, serious and lighthearted” in which the show addresses “underfunding, lack of resources, pay disparities, low media attention, and other cultural biases.”

And, of course, she’s right about that.

One example: In the second episode, we meet Alice Chilton, played by Tanya Reynolds, a steely female coach, who has been passed over for the top job in favor of Ted. That decision forces Rebecca Welton, the owner of AFC Richmond who’s played by Hannah Waddingham, to admit that she, despite thinking of herself as a feminist, has actually been complicit in perpetuating the sexist strictures that have long-dominated women’s sports and that she thought she opposed. It’s a long-hard-look-in-the-mirror sort of moment. (Afterwards, she cracks open some bell hooks and feels better about it all.)

In that sense, the show does do something important, even nuanced: It challenges us all — however progressive we think we might be — to examine our own stubborn blind spots. But one virtuous message does not a feminist series make, and this is where the skeptics come in.

Judy Berman, a TV critic for Time argues that the show “doesn’t know what to do with women’s soccer.” The program has chosen a subject riddled with structural inequality, she argues, yet remains committed to the cosy rhythms of a workplace comedy. In Berman’s view, nothing makes the viewer truly uncomfortable in a way that might actually catalyze change. And many of its female characters, likeable and entertaining as they may be, still “feel filtered through the male gaze.”

Writing for Vulture, Nicholas Quah, makes a related criticism, suggesting that the show tends to translate institutional problems into personal conflicts that can ultimately be solved through decency, empathy and improved attitudes. Easy. 

“Its unwavering commitment to a morally uncomplicated worldview leaves little room for texture, ambiguity, or any semblance of actual conflict,” he opines. “Rather than truly exploring its characters or any of the ideas it routinely gestures toward, the show routinely loops back into a smooth fantasy where everyone is fundamentally decent and reconciliation is the default destination,” he adds. The show’s treatment of women’s sports “is broad where it could be specific and simplistic where it should be curious.”

It’s not so much the individual characters or plot points that are problematic as a simple paradox at the heart of the show. Ted’s fundamental worldview remains intensely optimistic. Systems improve because individuals learn, apologize and become kinder. But systemic inequality exists because kindness isn’t enough. And when a TV show tries to reflect reality while including all of the good bits and only a carefully sugar-coated selection of the bad, things can feel a little Pollyanna. 

Ted’s relentless belief in the goodness of people was exactly what we needed in the darkest days of the pandemic, but six years on, the cultural mood is different. Stubborn gender gaps in pay and opportunity — both in sports and far beyond — have become a proxy for rampant injustice. The news cycle is bleak. Stalled progress toward real change makes the promise of democracy feel hollow. Not all TV shows have to remind us of this, of course — and thank goodness they don’t — but gesturing at the issue in a tokenistic way neither confronts it nor offers us the gift of escapism. 

In Season 4, as the show tries to draw a connection between that happy-go-lucky fantasy and the decidedly darker realities of systemic inequality, I can understand why, for some viewers it simply doesn’t land.

As for me, I am still enjoying it. I’m seeing it for what it is: easy viewing, with PG-13 punchlines and good, mostly clean (though somewhat sweary) slapstick comedy. I like the friction between Ted’s upbeat Midwestern earnestness and Alice Chilton’s dry, British pragmatism. I like how Chilton embodies the cynic that many of us have inside our heads. And, honestly, if a major television show is finally putting women’s sports at the center of the pitch, who am I to argue?

But do I think “Ted Lasso” will be a cultural milestone for gender equity in sport? Hardly. The show wants us to believe that a better world begins with better people. Feminism offers a rather less comforting lesson: better people are not enough. You still have to change the system.