‘Ted Lasso’: Brendan Hunt Breaks Down Season 4 Finale, “Passing The Torch” Moment, Coaching Team Shakeup & Who May Be Leaving Amid Renewal Buzz

SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about the Season 4 finale of Apple TV‘s Ted Lasso, titled “Being Alive.”

If you thought the penultimate episode of Ted Lasso was packed with Mae’s shocking death, Keeley’s (Juno Temple) surprise pregnancy and Zelda’s (Tracey Ullman) unexpected (for some) deceit, you’d better buckled up for the finale.

The 56-minute episode featured a touching memorial for Mae, including a moving song by Niamh (Aisling Sharkey) and Siobhan (Rex Hayes); not one but two AFC Richmond manager shakeups with Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) quitting the men’s team to take the helm of his old team Chelsea, signaling a possible exit for the fan favorite character; and Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds) promoted to head coach of the women’s team upon Ted’s (Jason Sudeikis) recommendation, with him and Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) as her assistants.

And that was not all. The shareholder showdown offered a twist too, with Zelda’s henchman Hugo switching sides and securing the Milk sisters’ shares for Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), which, along with Mae’s 2% left to her in her will, gave the accidental football club owner an unassailable majority 51% ownership. Additionally, Ted told his son Henry about his father’s suicide. The finale also managed to squeeze in a marriage proposal as Rebecca spontaneously popped the question to long-term boyfriend Matthijs in her office.

Hunt, who co-created the series and co-wrote the finale with Sudeikis, spoke with Deadline about the episode’s twists and how they set up a potential fifth season, addressing speculation that a renewal is imminent. He explained whether the finale marked the exit of Goldstein as a series regular (and Temple by association as Roy and Keeley are a couple again). Goldstein is the creator, exec producer and star of a new Amazon comedy series, Escorted, in addition to his duties on Apple TV’s Shrinking and his movie career.

Bad news for fans of Ted Lasso’s original Richmond men’s team who have been holding out hope for a larger presence of the players in the show’s new incarnation. The cameos by most of them in the Season 4 finale may have been the last we saw the team in a planned “passing of the torch” moment from the men to the women, Hunt said, explaining why Phil Dunster’s Jamie Tartt didn’t make the scene.

Hunt clarified how Ted’s conversation with Rebecca led to Alice’s promotion and how the new dynamic may impact Ted. He also cleared confusion over the title of the finale, originally listed as “The Departing Lass,” which changed to “Being Alive” when the episode aired.

Additionally, Hunt addressed the divisive character Zelda and whether Ullman would come back next season an shared the surprising inspiration for Beard’s new look in Season 4.

In separate parts of the interview published earlier, Hunt revealed that there was an idea for the late actor Anthony Head to be in the Season 4 finale and explained why the finale employed a cover of the theme song performed by Brandi Carlile and whether that the new version may be here to stay.

DEADLINE: I hear that Season 5 renewal is imminent. What do you say?

BRENDAN HUNT: Where did you hear that?

DEADLINE: I have my sources.

HUNT: Well, then that’s news to me. I certainly hope it happens, and I’m optimistic, but yeah, haven’t heard anything official yet. It would be nice though.

DEADLINE: And you don’t have a Season 5 writers room going, correct? My understanding is that the writers room will start after the green light.

HUNT: Yeah. As happened for Season 2, they can greenlight a room before they greenlight a season if they want, but neither has happened.

DEADLINE: There were two big manager changes at AFC Richmond in the finale, the most important for longtime fans being Roy Kent’s departure. We know how busy Brett is off-screen — he has a new show on Amazon, obviously Shrinking on Apple TV, movies. So, should we assume that he is leaving as a series regular?

HUNT: No, not necessarily. It is acknowledging that he’s a busy man and giving us some wiggle room I would say. But no, there’s no expectation of losing Roy and Keeley. But they are two very busy people, so wiggle room is a smart thing.

DEADLINE: So it’s possible that both Brett and Juno may not be series regulars in Season 5 and the Roy and Keeley storyline may not be as prominent?

HUNT: We have no idea. We don’t know if we’re coming back, and when we come back, we don’t know what’s going to be going on in their lives. But yeah, they’re both really busy. So yeah, the wiggle room.

DEADLINE: Ted’s line to Rebecca about wanting “to talk to her about the newly open manager position” came just after Roy had resigned, so I assumed that was for the vacated men’s team job, and Ted was pitching himself or Nate who had just resurfaced. Instead, we got Coach Chilton promoted. Are the two things connected?

HUNT: He doesn’t say the men’s manager position.

DEADLINE: But why did he say “newly open”?

HUNT: Because he’s coming in to let her know that he is no longer the manager of the women’s team.

DEADLINE: OK. Let’s talk about the decision to change that dynamic. It does make sense, Alice has proven herself, and it’s a women’s team, but Ted for the first time being a backup singer, how will that be? And will the show be called Alice Chilton next season?

HUNT: Yeah, I think Apple’s really excited about that (laughs). We just have to wait and see what is going to be the full impact of that dynamic. I’m certainly interested in finding out like, is this a bit pie in the sky for Ted to think he can just shift down to backseat and have someone telling him what to do and where to be and making demands of him? We’ll see how how he adjusted that. It might not be as easy as he thinks.

DEADLINE: What prompted him to do that? We didn’t get to hear his arguments to Rebecca.

HUNT: Well, he clearly is not spending enough time with his son, and he says to Henry in that previous scene, “I’m going to make some changes to make sure that I’m not missing as many of your games.”

DEADLINE: And the men’s team, is it now completely in the rearview mirror? Roy Kent was the only character that kept it in the picture even though we didn’t see any of their games or any of the players until the finale. Do we care about who the manager will be? Is there any chance for Nick Mohammed’s Nate to come back?

HUNT: I’m not sure that we do care. We do love Nick, though. The men showing up in that last episode was really meant to be a passing-of-the-torch moment, and I think that worked well. We’ve been very judicious with how much we see of the players this first season, and whether or not we’re coming back, we’ve taken the long view from the beginning.

Back in Season 1, we actually met the players just a very little bit, and a little more in Season 2 and Season 3. So if we’re able to come back, then yeah, we’ll certainly be able to start giving more time to these players now that we’ve gotten done a little bit.

DEADLINE: Speaking of the players, the two Irish twin sisters emerged as standouts at the end of the season with their hilarious telepathy pig bit in episode 9 and their touching performance at Mae’s memorial in the finale. Will we see more of that next season and more of Alice’s personal life? There was only one scene with her partner this season.

HUNT: We’ll have a lot to see but we like all these characters, and we’re gonna try to get into all of them, a little bit more now that we set the table with them. But in terms of the twins, Rex and Ash were just fantastic together. There were a few good nominees for the twins when we were casting, but in the end it was like, these are them, and the degree to which they are different and similar is fantastic. They’re so game for everything, and then to finally unlock that twin-telepathy thing towards the end was just really really cool.

DEADLINE: Did they sing that song themselves and how did that come about?

HUNT: That is a traditional Celtic song that gets sung at funerals a lot. It was actually first pitched by Declan Lowney, one of our directors, who is an Irishman himself. And yeah, they crushed it.

DEADLINE: Phil Dunster was not in the finale with the rest of the team. Was it just for logistical reasons because he has the HBO series Rooster?

HUNT: It was a logic thing. Jamie lives in Spain [He plays for Barcelona]. We’ve already seen him at that point, so we didn’t need to bring him back just to stand and applaud with the rest.

DEADLINE: Speaking of Jamie, your character Coach Beard underwent quite a transformation this season, and there was online chatter that Beard may have tried to copy Jamie Tartt’s look.

HUNT: I didn’t see that.

DEADLINE: Talk about Beard’s physical transformation. Is it simply a midlife crisis, or was there more to it?

HUNT: Yeah, he is going through a bit of a midlife crisis. First the Jane stuff, then trying to come back from the Jane stuff, and then getting the gut-punch of miscommunication on New Year’s. We were not specifically going for Jamie Tartt but what a compliment. I’ll take it.

DEADLINE: Was there inspiration for the look, though?

HUNT: Not specific to Jamie, no, the hair was more Hugh Grant in his Four Weddings and a Funeral days, and then went to the costume department and our designer Jackie Levy, and it was awesome. Like what trying-too-hard-to-look-like-a-young-person stuff do we have? Now maybe she had Jamie in mind. I can’t speak for her, but that was never discussed specifically.

DEADLINE: And the new look introduced at the end of the finale, was it Walter White-inspired?

HUNT: It’s just a bald head and goatee, Walter White didn’t invent that.

DEADLINE: Tracey Ullman’s character Zelda, I’m sure you’ve seen the discourse, she was very polarizing. Talk about her arc, and since Zelda technically is still a pretty significant Richmond owner, would you want her to come back?

HUNT: We love Tracey, and we love that character. Zelda has a stake but not a majority one. Again, the same with with Roy and Keeley, there’s wiggle room there. Hopefully we get the chance to have her come over for some more. But we’re not plot-obligated to have her around in every episode, and Tracey can go on with her life.

DEADLINE: The title of the finale changed last-minute to “Being Alive”? Why? Was “The Departing Lass” too British?

HUNT: Well, the change had been made a few weeks ago — it just apparently didn’t make it to whoever puts those titles up, so it was not as late a change as it seems. It had been “Being Alive” for the last like month at least. That was Jason’s call entirely. He didn’t walk me through his thought process entirely, what it did. I watched it last night, and when Hannah has her line about being alive, it was a nice little echo, frankly. So it is a little more than what the episode is about than just about the lass who has departed and a a cute little pun.

DEADLINE: I don’t think we ever find found out how the women’s team ended the football season, did they win the final game?

HUNT: They got promoted in the second to last episode, and then the win in the last episode is that they sold out. So the results of the game itself better than that.