Ted Lasso’s Women’s-Team Season Proves “Woke” Was Never the Problem, Season 3 Just Wasn’t That Good

20 Aug 2026, 14:17 by Sari Moon · Thought Catalog

Apple TV

Updated 3 minutes ago, August 20, 2026

Season 4 of Ted Lasso is posting record Apple viewership, hundreds of millions of minutes in its premiere windows, and its highest audience scores since Season 1.

The cast and producers of Ted Lasso — including Hannah Waddingham, Jason Sudeikis, Brett Goldstein, Juno Temple, and Brendan Hunt — gathered at BAM Harvey Theater in New York City for the Season 4 premiere on August 4, 2026. Photo by Cindy Ord / Getty Images.

It’s landing in the middle of the biggest mainstream boom in women’s sports in decades. WNBA viewership, attendance, and franchise values have surged in the Caitlin Clark era, ad spend across women’s sports is up more than 100%, and the NWSL is pulling record audiences of its own. A show built around a women’s team is arriving to a crowd already primed for it.

Ted is back coaching AFC Richmond’s new women’s team, the Lady Greyhounds, after a stint bagging groceries in Kansas. Season 3 took heavy “woke” backlash for what viewers called agenda-driven storytelling: Colin’s coming-out arc, Trent Crimm being revealed as gay, Sam’s restaurant vandalized after he criticized anti-immigrant government rhetoric, and a locker-room scene about leaked nudes and consent that fans mocked as “Sesame Street for adults.” A women’s-team reboot looked like more of the same on paper.

The response says otherwise. Critics sit around 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, up from Season 3’s 81%, and fans are running warmer than the reviews, with the best Popcornmeter numbers since the first season. Season 4 solves its conflicts through action on the pitch (tryouts, fixed kits, a debut friendly) instead of monologues about kindness and inclusion, and the cultural conversation has moved enough that an underdog women’s-team story reads as relevant instead of preachy.

Episode 3, “Richmond’s Got Talent,” puts the barriers on screen directly: shareholder skepticism about the team, a striker sidelined by pregnancy, kit delays fixed by Phoebe and her friends, open tryouts, a debut friendly, and misogyny aimed at Rebecca. New faces include Tanya Reynolds as skeptical assistant coach Alice Chilton and Faye Marsay as single-mom player Lizzie, alongside the returning core of Sudeikis, Waddingham, Temple, Goldstein, Hunt and Swift.

The disparities the show puts on screen are documented facts of women’s football, still there even as the spotlight grows. Viewers are meeting the story where the real world already is, and the numbers show it.

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