Big spoilers for Ted Lasso’s third season are ahead. If you haven’t checked out this 2023 TV schedule hit, you can stream every episode with an Apple TV+ subscription.
While we’ve all been pondering for years if Inception’s ending was just a dream, the same question about Ted Lasso’s Season 3 finale is not one that we need to think as hard about. I say this because, at the end of Season 3, there were many fans speculating that Ted had been dreaming the idyllic epilogue about all his pals at AFC Richmond living happily ever after. However, Brendan Hunt, a co-creator of the Apple TV+ show and the actor behind Coach Beard debunked the theory, and he gave us some insight into why things went down the way they did.
This dream theory focuses on the final scene of the show which shows where the cast of Ted Lasso ended up, including Beard and Jane getting married at Stonehenge after Ted left London, and it claims that everything that happened was all in Ted's mind. However, the Coach Beard actor himself cleared the air, confirming that everything that happened after Ted got on the plane was indeed “real,” as he answered a fan's question with 16 thousand upvotes on Reddit.
I can see why some thought this happy epilogue was all a dream. First of all, when the montage that includes Roy, Beard and Nate as the coaches, Beard’s wedding and Keeley pitching the women’s team ends, Ted wakes up on the plane holding a book called How To Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics. I'll admit that's a bit suss. Not to mention Beard’s wedding kind of looked like a crazy dream. Also, Ted Lasso has used dream sequences before, see the Amsterdam episode, to show Ted’s inner thoughts. However, this kind of wild theory proved to be wrong.
Along with debunking the dream theory, Brendan Hunt also provided some clarity as to why Ted wasn’t at his bestie's wedding. After one fan commented on Reddit that it “felt weird” having Roy as the best man, the Emmy-nominated actor provided a lengthy and logical answer as to why Coach Lasso wasn’t at the ceremony, posting:
There are a few reasons. The first is narrative: Ted just got on a plane and left the UK, it would be anticlimactic and deflating if we suddenly see him back there before we even see his plane lands. The other is that that’s just the kind of friendship Ted and Beard have.
He went on to say that in real life this happened to him. His friend and fellow co-creator of Ted Lasso Joe Kelly got married, and Hunt missed his wedding. He said it was short notice, and while he “desperately wanted to be there,” he couldn’t. But there were no hard feelings. The same can be said about Ted and Beard as the actor explained:
Our relationship is the exact same, our families live down the street from each other and we see each other all the time. So personally I think Beard called Ted and told him he could sit this one out, and Ted said thanks, because the ceremony conflicted with a big game for Henry’s soccer team. The history of their relationship IMO is long periods of seeing each other and long periods not. We have entered one of the latter, but the former will come around again at some point. They love each other, they will see each other again. They love each other, they will see each other again.
As Brendan Hunt noted, Ted and Beard are on good terms, and everything we saw in that lovely epilogue is very real.
So, now that this theory has been put to bed, it’s time to speculate about the future of Ted Lasso. Is the show really over? Will Roy Kent become the new lead now that he’s taken over Ted’s job? Will there be a spin-off about Richmond's women’s team? It’s all unknown, and while we might not know the future, one thing we do know is it’s not all a dream.
