Ted Lasso Season 4, Episode 1 “Home” Review

Full spoilers ahead.

Three years is a long time to let a finale sit. Long enough that “Ted Lasso” wrapped up in May 2023 feeling like a closed book, the kind of ending where every character got their bow and the show politely let itself out. Roy took the men’s team. Keeley pitched a women’s side. Ted flew home to Kansas to be the dad he spent three seasons apologizing for not being. It worked. It felt earned. And then Jason Sudeikis apparently couldn’t leave well enough alone, because here we are, back in Richmond’s orbit for a Season 4 nobody strictly needed but a lot of us secretly wanted anyway.

Here’s the thing though: this premiere hits the ground running. It doesn’t feel like a show shaking off three years of rust. It feels like a show that knows exactly what made it special in the first place and goes and gets it back on purpose.

“Home” opens on the sound of a grocery scanner, and that’s not an accident. It beeps with the same flat rhythm as a hospital monitor, and that’s the whole thesis of the episode in one sound effect. Ted’s alive in Kansas City. He is not living. Two years removed from Richmond, he’s an assistant manager at a supermarket, still armed with the same relentless niceness that used to steer a Premier League locker room, now aimed at teaching a teenage cashier a lesson by faking a shoplifting attempt. It’s a funny bit, but it’s also exactly the kind of character-first comedy that made Season 1 so easy to fall in love with. Ted hasn’t changed. He’s just been misfiled.

The episode does real work showing you what Ted actually won when he chose to go home, and it respects that choice instead of treating it as a mistake to be undone. He’s present for Henry (Grant Feely) in a way he wasn’t for three seasons. He’s rebuilt something real with Michelle. His mom Dottie is around, even if she’s selling the house Ted grew up in, a quiet gut punch buried under everything else going on. Henry’s struggling, benched from his own soccer team, and Ted can’t bring himself to coach him or talk straight to the coach who benched him. There’s a school subplot where Henry gets hauled into the principal’s office for writing Public Enemy lyrics on an assignment, and it lands as one more sign Henry’s inherited his dad’s instinct to say the true thing at the wrong time and pay for it.

Then Rebecca, Keeley, and Higgins show up in Kansas City, and this is where the episode really earns its keep. Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, and Jeremy Swift slide back into these people like no time passed at all, and the chemistry hasn’t rusted one bit. They’re not there to sightsee, though Higgins wants the jazz museum and Keeley wants a Kansas City Current match. Rebecca’s there to offer Ted the job coaching AFC Richmond’s brand new women’s team, the Lady Greyhounds, the plan Keeley floated in the Season 3 finale that’s finally getting off the ground. That’s the part that impressed me most. The show doesn’t pretend Season 3 didn’t happen just to reset the board. It picks up the thread Keeley planted and actually pulls on it.

Ted says no. Immediately, cleanly, no dramatic monologue required. And Rebecca, to her credit, doesn’t push. She just leaves the door open with a look that says she knows this conversation isn’t finished, and Waddingham sells that in about four seconds of screen time without saying a word. That’s the show operating in its best register, the one where the emotional beat lands harder than the joke that came before it.

Ted flip-flops through the rest of the episode, tells Rebecca no, tells Michelle he’s turning it down, and then Henry, of all people, gives him the green light to go. Ted decides to uproot his life again and coach the Lady Greyhounds in London. Sure, nobody watching thought the show was going to stay set in a Kansas grocery store all season. But the point was never suspense over the outcome. It’s watching Ted actually wrestle with it honestly, weighing what he’d be leaving against what he’d be gaining, instead of the show hand-waving him back to Richmond for the sake of the plot. That’s earned character work, not a foregone conclusion dressed up as drama.

What “Home” gets right, over and over, is the stuff that made people fall for this show in the first place. It’s not cynical about kindness. It still believes Ted’s brand of relentless optimism is worth something even when it’s aimed at nobody in particular in a Kansas City grocery store. And there’s real promise in where it’s headed. A women’s team gives the show a genuinely fresh angle instead of just running the AFC Richmond men’s storyline back a second time, and Higgins fretting over whether the club can actually justify the expense of a women’s side is a sharp, timely wrinkle the old show wouldn’t have had the range to touch. Roy’s apparently coaching the men’s team solo now, and Keeley and Roy are reportedly “very, very good friends” again, which is the kind of tease this show loves to plant in episode one and cash in around episode eight.

“Home” threads a genuinely difficult needle. It gives you back the warmth and the character-first comedy of Seasons 1 and 2 without pretending Season 3 was a detour to write around. Ted’s growth stuck. Henry matters. The ending isn’t a reset, it’s a continuation. That’s a harder trick to pull off than a straight nostalgia lap, and this premiere pulls it off.

Verdict: A confident, character-honest premiere that reconnects with the show’s Season 1 and 2 heart while genuinely honoring where Season 3 left everyone. The Lady Greyhounds era starts strong.

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TL;DR (For The Skippers)

Ted Lasso’s back after three years away, working a grocery store job in Kansas City and missing football more than he’ll admit. Rebecca, Keeley, and Higgins cross the pond with a job offer tied to Richmond’s new women’s team, and Ted has to decide whether going back is worth what he’d be leaving behind in Kansas.

The good news: it doesn’t feel like a show shaking off rust. The cast chemistry is instant, the humor still lands, and the writers actually honor where Season 3 left everyone instead of hitting reset. It’s a slower, setup-heavy episode by design, but it earns the emotional beats it’s building toward.

Bottom line: Strong start. Old-school Ted Lasso warmth with a fresh angle for the season ahead.

AJ Hanson

AJ Hanson has been part of games media since 2011, writing, streaming, and ranting about the industry long before it was his job. He runs the Galaxy’s Edge Discord, the go-to community for fans of Disney’s Star Wars parks, and works as Marketing Director for the Virtual Cantina Network, helping produce shows, interviews, and fan events. A lifelong Star Wars fan and unapologetic nerd, AJ’s focus has always been on building spaces where people can connect, argue, and celebrate the things they love without all the corporate gloss.