Thoughts On Ted Lasso’s Season 2 Finale
Ted Lasso Season 2 came to a close this morning with one of its best episodes. It answered many questions raised throughout the season — will Richmond get back into the premier league? Will Roy murder Jamie? And perhaps the biggest question the season has asked is will Ted forgive Nate for leaking the truth about why he left the field in the middle of a tournament match? The episode did a great job of closing out storylines while opening new possibilities for the next season.
What I want to focus on is what happened between Ted and Nate. This has been the conflict the entire season has been brewing towards. We’ve watched Nate’s attitude grow nastier as he struggles to find his place in the Richmond team as an assistant coach and Ted’s friend, all of which boiled over in this final episode. Nate’s actor, Nick Mohammed, posted an excellent little piece on Twitter that outlines the fall of Nate the Great as giving a well-deserved shout-out to the incredible writing team behind Ted Lasso.
To begin with, we’ll look at how Ted handled Nate’s betrayal. He did so in a pretty Ted Lasso way. Even though Ted knew what had happened, he didn’t confront Nate. Ted didn’t try to make him confess or explain himself before he was ready. As Ted told Coach Beard — seemingly the only character who worked out Nate was the rat — Ted wanted to give Nate space to realize he should apologize for what he had done.
Beard told Ted he should do the opposite and stop holding in his feelings which have been a part of Ted’s journey through the season. But confrontation just isn’t what Ted is about. When he explains the situation to the Richmond team, he even steps up to stop their supportive bloodlust. None of them know Nate told The Independent, but Ted tells the team not to hunt for the source. He does everything he can to deflect everybody’s attention away from the newspaper article, not to save himself embarrassment but to help Nate.
This quiet support of the assistant coach is deeply in line with Ted’s character. Even though Sharon has helped Ted become more open with his emotions throughout the season, he’s still the relaxed, chipper character we’ve known. That said, Ted does end up taking Beard’s advice to a degree. He gets a moment to catch Nate alone and presses him for an answer. But instead of demanding an apology, Ted tries to understand where he went wrong and why Nate’s angry at him.
Nate’s not shy about telling Ted everything he’s felt this season, with the first and foremost point being Nate’s abandonment issues. Abandonment has been a theme the second season has looked at frequently. In this episode alone, we watch Sam struggle with the idea of leaving Richmond and returning to Africa and Keeley worries that her new job opportunity away from Richmond will open a rift between her and Rebecca. However, Nate seems to be the character who takes this theme and runs with it the hardest.
Nate chalks up most of his behavior to trying to get Ted to pay attention to him again. He claims Ted made him feel important and then forgot about him. Nick’s post linked above does make a note of how little Ted and Nate have interacted this season — this is the first scene where the two have been alone, and Ted’s been largely oblivious to Nate’s downward spiral.
It’s also understandable that Nate would feel this way. The episodes that delved into his past have shown that Nate’s not used to any attention whatsoever. This doesn’t condone what he’s done. Rather, it makes it understandable. Nate’s not being cartoonish. He’s a very complex character who has to process feelings he’s likely never dealt with in the past. Ted didn’t deserve to be the source of Nate’s angst — but who else has stepped up and acknowledged him the way Ted has?
We can also see Nate’s point about feeling abandoned through Ted’s actions this season. He’s never overtly avoiding Nate, but nor is he pulling him close. Ted’s got his rituals with other cast members. He walks to work with Beard every morning. He’s got Biscuits with the Boss that leads to his frequent chats with Rebecca. While he doesn’t have a ritual with Roy, Roy’s also the one who would enjoy that sort of thing the least. From Nate’s perspective, Ted makes an effort to be close to everybody else without giving him the attention he thinks he deserves. That, coupled with Ted laughing at Nate’s desire to be a big dog and Nate’s self-confidence issues, is enough to send the burgeoning assistant coach down a rather dark path.
Finally, the episode ends by showing us Nate working for Rupert. This season finale clued us into Rupert purchasing the New Ham football club, setting him up to be the big antagonist for the next season. He also seems to have hired Nate as his head coach as we get a shot of Nate supervising his pitch while the team runs drills like a military operation. It clearly shows there was no resolution between Nate and Ted. After all, we saw Nate storm off from his meeting with Ted then leave the pitch after Richmond took a draw to get promoted.
But ultimately, this is the best path the writers could set Nate on. They’ve done a wonderful job of developing Nate to this point. Unlike Rupert, another antagonist who’s mostly just a dick, Nate’s very well-rounded and complex. He’s got trauma that doesn’t deserve to get relegated to a simple conversation that leads to him and Ted making up. It would be easy to just have Ted and Nate make up here, but where would Nate go? What purpose would all this development have if it just led to the status quo we saw at the start of Season 2?
Ted Lasso Season 2 has been quite different from its predecessor. The finale is no exception; if anything, this season has ended on a bleaker note than the first, despite Richmond getting promoted back to premiere status rather than regulated. For all their successes, the characters will face greater challenges in their rival club and the simple complications that come from being human. We’ll just have to wait until the next season to see how things pan out.
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