This year, Apple TV has brought back some of its biggest fan-favorite series with acclaimed new seasons. ShrinkingSeason 3 released in January, For All Mankind returned in March, followed by Season 2 of Jon Hamm‘s Your Friends & Neighbors in April, while Silo recently premiered its highly anticipated third season. The streamer still has several major returning titles to come, including Slow Horses, Dark Matter and perhaps the most anticipated of them all, Ted Lasso. With the multi-Emmy-winning comedy finally set to return after three years away, new details have emerged about what lies ahead.
When Ted Lasso concluded its third season in 2023, the finale felt like a fitting farewell, bringing the stories of its central characters to a satisfying close. But the comedy’s enduring popularity, coupled withJason Sudeikis‘ admission that he realized he needed the show as much as its fans did, inspired the formation of another chapter. However, rather than loosening tight threads from the past to continue the story, Season 4 will focus on a new set of players who make up AFC Richmond’s newly formed women’s team. After stepping away to prioritize his family and mental well-being, Coach Ted will once again find himself in unfamiliar territory as he takes on the challenge of coaching the club’s women’s side.
Now, in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sudeikis revealed that he has already mapped out a long-term plan for Ted Lasso‘s return. Much like the original run, the new era is envisioned as a three-season arc centered on the new players. While the premise could easily have served as the foundation for a spin-off, the choice to instead continue under the Ted Lasso banner was perhaps an intentional effort to preserve the spirit and identity that made it a sensation. Fellow star Brett Goldstein also expressed confidence in the new season, saying it recaptures much of the magic that made Season 1 so beloved. Sudeikis further revealed that the opening episodes will feature a shorter runtime than those in Season 3; however, how this could impact some of the issues viewers criticized in Season 3 remains to be seen.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Who Else Is Coming Back in ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4?
Ted Lasso Season 4 is keeping much of its championship-winning lineup intact, which bodes well for fan reception as they won’t have to spend too much time getting acquainted with an entirely new squad. Goldstein returns as Roy Kent, who begins the new season as AFC Richmond’s head coach, while Brendan Hunt is back on the touchline as the ever-reliable Coach Beard. Emmy winner Hannah Waddingham also reprises her role as club owner Rebecca Welton. New signings include Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education), Faye Marsay (Andor), and Abbie Hern (My Lady Jane), while Grant Feely takes over the role of Ted’s son, Henry.
Whether Apple TV extends the series beyond Season 4 will essentially depend on how audiences respond, but Sudeikis is confident and is already taking a leap of faith, revealing that the writers’ room for Season 5’s story is set to open this August. If Season 4 can rediscover the winning formula that made Ted Lasso a sensation, the series could be well on its way to a return leg victory when it kicks off on August 5. Fingers crossed.
