The Big Question of “Ted Lasso” Season Two
The penultimate episode of Ted Lasso’s second season left us with what’s likely going to be the biggest question of the season. Trent Crimm (The Independent) revealed in the episode’s final moments that an article about Ted’s panic attack will be going live the next morning, and his “anonymous” source was Nate. The breach of journalistic ethics notwithstanding, this sets the stage for one of the biggest episodes of the show yet. Throughout the show, we’ve seen Ted’s kindness endear him to plenty of people who try to bring him down, like Trent and Rebecca in season one, but this hits differently. So we have to ask the big question: Will Ted forgive Nate?
My guess is no. On the surface, it seems like the kind of thing Ted would do. He did forgive Rebecca in season one after she told Ted she’d been sabotaging him from the start. Ted didn’t even think about it. But this isn’t the same Ted we knew in season one, and what Nate did is very different from Rebecca’s actions, and we’ll look at both these points.
Firstly, season two has been about exploring the limits of Ted’s niceness. The very first episode demonstrated this when his cheeriness and biscuits weren’t enough to pull Dani out of the depressed funk he fell into after accidentally killing a dog on the pitch. The team had to bring in a sports psychologist, Sharon, to fix the problem because Ted couldn’t get it done. Sharon didn’t just help Dani, however. She helped Ted understand his emotions on a deeper level.
Ted’s optimism might have won Rebecca and the Richmond team over in season one, but his greatest strength has also been his weakness. That optimism is why his wife left him, the only thing he and his friend Coach Beard have ever argued about, and, as Sharon helps uncover, a wall Ted uses to distract himself from the real problems surrounding him. After all, ignorance is bliss.
Now that Ted’s moved past this, however, it changes how he might handle Nate. Or rather, this obstacle will be the test to see if Ted has changed. In season one, Ted would have easily forgiven Nate and repressed any anger or hurt he might be feeling beneath that happy veneer. Now that he’s developed further, however, Ted might very well kick Nate to the curb — or at least not take this blow with as much grace as he had Rebecca’s betrayal in the first season. After all, there are glaring differences between Nate’s actions and Rebecca’s.
On the surface, these may seem like similar moves. Both of them set out to sabotage Ted and his football career; Rebecca set up numerous pitfalls throughout the first season, including Ted’s first Trent Crimmed-penned article, a near-scandal with Keleey, and simply hiring an American who had no idea what football was. In comparison, Nate’s attempt to publicly destroy and humiliate Ted is virtually the same. He and Rebecca even used the same journalist. The difference lies in motivations and goals.
Rebecca was hurt when she hired Ted and tried to get Richmond regulated. Fresh off her divorce from Rupert, she decided the best way to get back at her cheating dick of a husband was to destroy the football club he loved. The first step was hiring an incompetent coach, then sabotaging him. A large part of Ted’s forgiveness of Rebecca came from acknowledging this hurt. Freshly divorced himself, Ted empathized with Rebecca and forgave her. He saw past the malice to the wounded person beneath.
Nate has entirely different goals. As he indicated at the beginning of this episode, he feels like Ted is casting him aside and taking credit for all of Nate’s brilliant plays (even though Ted was very upfront about Nate suggesting plays before he was ever an assistant coach). This has been a natural progression of Nate’s character arc. When we first met him, Nate was the background character everybody ignored. During the show’s run, Ted hasn’t just boosted Nate’s confidence but also his status. Ted’s the one who made Nate an assistant coach, which eventually led to Nate being featured on TV and becoming a minor star on social media, even if it was just for a few brief moments.
All of this went straight to Nate’s head. The second season has expanded on his character a bit more. He wasn’t just the shy kid because of Richmond. He’d always been like that because of his relationship with his father who never gave him much attention or praise. For the first time, Nate has stopped being a background character and stepped into the limelight, and doesn’t know how to handle the recognition. It’s clear he’s grasping for the attention he’s never had, but he’s going about it horribly.
Nate was quick to abuse his power, as we’ve seen through his treatment of Will throughout the season. He’s growing increasingly disconnected from reality, as his attempted kiss with Keeley shows. Nate’s motivation behind this move with Ted is clear: He thinks that if Ted falls from grace and loses his job, he’s going to get the head coach position. Even though both Beard and Roy are more experienced and frankly just more qualified than him. This shows how disconnected Nate is, thinking this is his chance to grab at the limelight and step up to what he believes he deserves.
This motivational difference sits at the core of why Ted isn’t going to forgive Nate. Nate leaking the truth of Ted’s panic attack is a deeply personal attack, betraying Ted’s trust after Ted was the one to lift him so far. The pure selfishness and greed behind the decision contrast Rebecca’s pain. Even though neither character was justified in what they did — after all, Rebecca’s actions could have cost the team much more than Nate’s leak — Nate’s has a cruel streak to it. This is honestly the perfect way to test Ted’s development. His good nature has been his way of combating reality, and now he’s been forced to confront it: Not everybody is going to respond to his optimism, and Ted is going to have to decide how to handle it.
