Is Season 3 the end Jason Sudeikis Apple TV+ show?

Ted Lasso has come a long way, but he’s also right where he started.

The same goes, in a lot of respects, for the “Ted Lasso” series. And the character seems to know it.

What began as a kind of magical diversion during the dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic is now an Emmy magnet, a feel-good fable, a balm so soothing that its too-clever-by-half banter was for a long time comforting, rather than annoying.

Until it wasn’t.

In season 3, Ted (Jason Sudeikis) is still the fish-out-of-water American football coach taking over an English football team. Soccer, in other words, something he knew little about. And still doesn’t.

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Is this the final season for ‘Ted Lasso’?

In the first four episodes of Season 3 — reportedly the series’ last — Ted still doesn’t know much about football. It’s people he knows about. His team is still fighting to fend off relegation. He’s still issuing folksy bromides that confuse and comfort in equal measure, often at the same time. He’s still bringing his boss biscuits.

But you wonder how much longer Ted can stick around (the character, not the show).

At the beginning of the new season, he’s saying a painful goodbye to his young son, who is flying back to the U.S. to be with his mom after a visit. There are other complications on the home front with Ted’s wife, from whom he remains separated.

And that’s not even in the country where he’s living.

After the bitter departure of Nate (Nick Mohammed) and his promotion to manager of the West Hampton club, the former Richmond assistant is a media darling. Not that he’s any good at doing media, mind you. (Mohammed is not all that great at playing a heel, either, but that might be part of the point.)

But Nate’s got a kind of evil mentor in Rupert (Anthony Head), West Hampton’s owner, who wants to embarrass Richmond — and more specifically its owner, his ex-wife Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham).

It’s all incestuous — inside baseball, to mix sports metaphors.

And frankly, it’s kind of boring.

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Like any good series involving sports — and “Ted Lasso” is at times a great one — it’s more about what goes on outside the game that makes it worth watching. Of course, everything is building toward a Richmond-West Hampton showdown.

Yawn.

Of course, a show about a soccer coach has to have a certain amount of soccer, and of course the way it’s set up you root for Richmond, particularly since they are in the role of perpetual underdogs (though an unlikely development changes that status).

Ted is still struggling with his own issues — one of the four episodes available for review finds him asking everyone if he is a mess. (Yes, is the universal answer.) Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) is still a kind of weirdo savant.

More interesting is what’s going on with Roy (Brett Goldstein) and Keeley (Juno Temple).

Roy is settling into his role as an assistant coach, and Keeley is running her own company now. Goldstein remains the not-so-secret weapon of the series (he does have two Emmys for playing the role, after all). You can see the inner turmoil on his face as he sorts out the complications in his life, on the pitch and off. He remains an artist of obscenity. And Roy and Keeley’s narrative arcs are the most interesting of the season (four episodes in, at least).

If not the ones paid most attention to.

That would be Ted, sorting out who he is, what he is and where he should be.

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We needed ‘Ted Lasso’ in 2020. But do we still?

Sudeikis created a modern folk hero with Ted, a kind of hillbilly sage who was exactly what the world needed in 2020, when the show premiered. It’s understandable that Sudeikis would want to explore darker themes with the character, to make him more fully human.

It’s also understandable that chugging along in a job he’s never been suited for, the perpetual square peg in a round hole, is not going to cure what ails him. Maybe that’s the way out, for the character and the series.

Don’t misunderstand — “Ted Lasso” is still capable of moments of grace, of the small, unexpected miracles of Roy acknowledging his own limitations in a throwaway line; of the heartbreak at the center of Rebecca’s competitive streak; of what Ted doesn’t say. His silence is often more powerful than whatever folksy quip that solves everyone’s problems with a groan and a smile could ever be.

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