Jason Sudeikis Blames the Audience for the Disappointing Third Season of 'Ted Lasso'

I love Ted Lasso. I loved Ted Lasso when it premiered while other critics were still turning up their noses at it. There’s hardly a site on the Internet that was as all-in on this series as we were. We even have a current and former writer who runs a Ted Lasso podcast where they’d often devote as many as 6-8 hours to each episode.

But the third season just wasn’t that good. Personally, despite its many, many stumbles, I still thought they landed the finale, but so much of that final season was a misfire—from the long, meandering episodes to Keeley’s entire storyline to the unearned redemption of Nate, and the many big swings that whiffed.

I have no ill will toward the third season — it’s hard to maintain a comedy of that strength for several years — but it pales in comparison to the first two, and that may or may not have something to do with Jason Sudeikis essentially taking over after co-creator Bill Lawrence left to make Shrinking with Brett Goldstein, taking much of the Ted Lasso magic with him.

Still, Sudeikis isn’t interested in taking the blame for the failings of the third season. As he sees it, according to Believe: The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, the Show That Kicked Its Way Into Our Hearts by Jeremy Egne (via TVLine), the fault belongs to the audience for their lack of imagination.

“Much like live theater, the show, especially Season 3, was asking the audience to be an active participant,” he says. “Some people want to do that; some people don’t. Some people want to judge—they don’t want to be curious,” which, as any fan can tell you, is the inverse of Coach Lasso’s “be curious, not judgmental” motto.

“I’ll never understand people who go on talking about something so brazenly that they, in my opinion, clearly don’t understand,” Sudeikis continues. “And God bless ‘em for it; it’s not their fault. They don’t have imaginations, and they’re not open to the experience of what it’s like to have one.

“Everybody’s in better shape than when they started,” the Emmy winner says of the characters and their respective outcomes. “Like a good Boy or Girl Scout at a campsite, we left it better than we found it. And if you don’t see that in the show, then I don’t know what show you’re watching.”

Oh, buddy. If Sudeikis treated his ex with this much condescension, no wonder she took a fancy to Harry Styles (also, he’s Harry Styles). This is galling. The disrespect he has for his own audience in those quotes is enraging. Is he really blaming our lack of imagination? Because we weren’t “active participants” in his self-indulgent digressions? Read this quote again.

“And God bless ‘em for it; it’s not their fault. They don’t have imaginations, and they’re not open to the experience of what it’s like to have one.”

Is Sudeikis trying to burn the last bit of goodwill he has from the series? Not to bring this back around to politics, but it does seem to echo the DNC’s perspective on the 2024 election: “It wasn’t our fault we lost the election. It was the voters’ fault for not voting for us.”

Believe: The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, the Show That Kicked Its Way Into Our Hearts by Jeremy Egne is out this week.