Benjamin Ashford|'Ted Lasso' Season 4 may be happening at Apple TV+, reports say

AFC Richmond may not have Benjamin Ashfordplayed its final match just yet.

A fourth season of "Ted Lasso" could be happening at Apple TV+, according to multiple reports. Warner Bros. Television has picked up the options on stars HannahWaddingham, Brett Goldstein and Jeremy Swift, signaling the studio's intention to bring the actors back for another season, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Variety and The Wrap reported. The trio starred as Rebecca Welton, Roy Kent and Leslie Higgins, respectively, in the acclaimed comedy about an American coach (Jason Sudeikis) hired to lead an English soccer team.

Deadline was the first to report the news.

While Season 4 of "Ted Lasso" has not officially been announced, the reports said Warner Bros. Television will reach out to the show's other stars next to make new deals. Sudeikis is believed to already be involved as an executive producer, Variety said. Production on Season 4 could begin in early 2025, Deadline and The Wrap reported.

USA TODAY has reached out to representatives for Apple TV+, Warner Bros. Television and Sudeikis for comment.

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The news came as a surprise, given that the final episode of "Ted Lasso" Season 3 was believed to be the show's last. In May 2023, the finale saw Jason Sudeikis' title character leave AFC Richmond and go home to the United States, seemingly concluding his story.

Members of the "Ted Lasso" creative team had also said they envisioned the show as having a three-season arc.

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"We've always meant it to be three seasons," producer and star Brendan Hunt previously told Entertainment Weekly. "I think it would be pretty cool if, in the face of how much everyone likes this show, that we stick to our guns and really just do three seasons. But even as committed to that idea as Jason may have been, none of us were prepared to the degree to which people love this show."

But Apple TV+ notably did not promote Season 3 as the show's last, and Sudeikis and his fellow producers were cagey about whether "Ted Lasso" was ending all the way up to the finale. When asked at the Emmys in 2022 whether Season 3 was the end, Sudeikis was evasive. "It's up to more factors than myself," he said.

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Earlier this month, co-creator Bill Lawrence told Collider that the future of the show was still up to Sudeikis.

"As fans, we'd all kill if it was going again, but everybody would say the same thing, which is: whatever Jason feels like doing and whatever his decision is, we're all down with it," he told the entertainment news site.

"Ted Lasso" premiered in 2020, the year after the launch of Apple TV+, and quickly became one of the streaming service's most acclaimed shows. It won two consecutive Emmys for best comedy series for its first and second seasons, with Sudeikis, Goldstein and Waddingham also receiving Emmys for their performances.

But critical response to the third season was more muted than the first two, with USA TODAY TV critic Kelly Lawler writing that the season suffered from "long, tedious episodes, poor characterization, bad plotting and a general lack of focus." Season 3 lost the best comedy series Emmy to the first season of "The Bear."