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The season finale of Season 2 of Ted Lasso is called ‘Inverting the Pyramid of Success’, which refers to a classic book from a UCLA basketball coach about successful behaviors leading to wins. ‘Inverting’ naturally because sometimes people aren’t as successful as we might hope.
Some of the storylines get entirely resolved, but others are left hanging. We start with a look at the negative way people are seeing Ted post-news story about his panic attack, a classic concern about ‘strength’ versus a mental condition as to be expected. Ted shows great growth by apologizing to his ex-wife over iMessage about inquiring too much into her personal life, and we also see a sort of surprising (not entirely) growth from Jamie.
Jamie explicitly apologizes to Roy about his admission of love to Keeley, blaming it on the whole weirdness at a funeral thing, which Roy probably can relate to based on what we heard him say at the time. But Roy has made his growth too, despite expecting to fight Jamie about the situation, he instead curses and forgives him (although he only says as much to Keeley, not Jamie — that’d be too far).
After we get a great little joke from Keeley about Piers Morgan being awful, we find out she’s gotten the opportunity to run her own PR firm. It’s the setup for a lot of complicated situations — her farewell of a sort with Rebecca is heartwarming and funny (I laughed when Keeley angrily cursed Rebecca out for saying ‘hire your best friend’). But the powerful woman that Roy recognizes and supports makes him feel like he isn’t measuring up, that she doesn’t have a place for him.
The final moments of the normal episode show him surprising Keeley with tickets to a villa, but she can’t go — because she can’t, as she explains it, she’s working too much already. But the oddness in her response leads to Roy to ask if they are breaking up, but she says no — still, it leaves the two in an odd limbo state. It’s hard to to tell if either can handle their new life changes, despite their obvious care for each other.
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The match that promotes the team back to the Premier League is fun for what it is, but it actually has some fantastic wraparound storytelling. Jamie gets a penalty kick but offers it to Dani, who hasn’t done them since he accidentally killed the team mascot in the first scene of the season. But this time he spots the new mascot, the cycle of life moving on, and ‘football is life’ helps him tie the game and move them to promotion.
The team is in a great place, and it leads Sam to reject Edwin’s offer — and we get one hilarious run from Sam Richardson as he angrily takes the rejection very poorly. As for how things end with him and Rebecca, I’m still mixed about it — the power dynamic still hasn’t really resolved, despite the legitimate feelings the two have. So we have two romantic situations in limbo as the ‘sports’ main one is just a success.
But in the more sinister tale, the story of Nate’s fall completes, as every hint and red flag leads to exactly where we always suspected. Nate is even more cruel than normal, but since we know he’s leaving the team, it also feels like he probably feels that has nothing to lose. Over the course of the episode, Nate is on edge about Ted’s story, suspecting he knows the leak source — and Beard is almost obvious about his disdain.
In the end though we find out the reason behind everything — Nate felt like Ted had done something worse than his dad, not that he likely realized it. Ted started by recognizing Nate’s legitimate ability and knowledge and got him promoted to a coach position, but then stepped back and let Nate just work. We already saw multiple times of Ted noticing Nate being insulting to Will and other times of Ted absentmindedly being condescending to Nate too.
So Nate feels abandoned and alone, and Ted isn’t really blameless here either — he even ignores Beard’s advice about confronting Nate sooner, which might have prevented him from leaving Richmond. Instead, Ted doesn’t bring up the article, just asks Nate why he’s ‘mad’ at him. That’s honestly such a passive approach, no wonder … you might think that Nate did the leak as a desperate attempt to get Ted to say something again, but it fails because Ted can’t manage being confrontational.
The final three moments are a way to show the possibilities of what comes next. Trent Crimm has resigned from the Independent due to his revealing the source to Ted, a journalistic crime of a sort, and who knows what comes next from that? Sam plans to build a new Nigerian restaurant, bringing the country to him instead of the other way around.
And of course, Nate is the Darth Coach behind Emperor Rupert whispering in his ear, or like Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings — as Nate also looks different now, his entirely gray hair styled in a new way. Naturally, this means that Richmond has quite the rival next season, so despite their wins, they have lost a great deal too — and who knows what might happen with Ted and Keeley/Roy until then?
Overall, the season really worked for me — I even liked the Beard after dark one, despite its weirdness and issues, but there was a lot of great and interesting character work too. Perhaps it couldn’t entirely match the nature of Season 1, but I wouldn’t rule out Season 3 for getting to that level — across the board Ted Lasso still excels with humor, heart, and great writing and acting. For me, it’s still one of the best shows out there.
What did you think of the season finale? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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