REVIEW: ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4 Episode 3 — “Richmond’s Got Talent”

The Lady Greyhounds have not played their first match, but they are already being treated like a losing team. Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 3 understands that their roughest road may never appear on the scoreboard. Before they can win a game, they must convince Richmond that they deserve players, money, attention, and the opportunity to wear the same crest as the men.

“Richmond’s Got Talent” opens with another striker becoming unavailable, forcing Richmond to hold open tryouts days before its first friendly match. Yet the writing room remains far more interested in everything surrounding that problem. The Lady Greyhounds are still attempting to become a team while the people responsible for their success struggle to provide even the most basic support.

Greyhounds owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) and Coach Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds) reached a greater understanding in the previous episode. Rebecca may have been firm with Alice during that conversation, but she still wants to support the ideas Alice brings to the team. That includes open tryouts, an idea Rebecca initially dismisses before changing her mind once she learns it came from Alice.

Rebecca’s commitment to the Lady Greyhounds comes at a personal price.

The reversal creates some of the episode’s funniest moments without making Rebecca’s support feel insincere. She recognizes that Alice understands the Lady Greyhounds and knows where unexpected talent might be found. Their earlier disagreement did not erase that respect. It made Rebecca more conscious of the need to listen when Alice tells her what this team requires.

Rebecca’s commitment comes with its own cost. Her work with the Lady Greyhounds and continued mentorship of Keeley repeatedly take priority over her relationship with the Dutch pilot Matthijs (Matteo van der Grijn), forcing her to cancel another opportunity to see him. She is fighting to create room for other women while discovering how little room that responsibility leaves for the life she has built outside Richmond.

Keeley (Juno Temple) faces a much harder version of that lesson. She begins the episode believing she can build excitement around the Lady Greyhounds after witnessing the enthusiasm surrounding women’s football in the United States. Instead, she encounters a laundry list of reasons people are unwilling to support them.

The Richmond Way gives Keely the right mindset heading towards the team’s first match.

Richmond’s men are playing average football. The financial report from the season premiere warns that a failed women’s team could damage the entire club. Shareholders begin leaving the moment the meeting turns toward the Lady Greyhounds. Even Rebecca leaves Keeley unprepared by failing to tell her about the report before she enters a room filled with people searching for reasons to doubt the project.

Rebecca’s authority forces everyone back into their seats, but Keeley still has to fight through the consequences of being excluded from information she needed. What changes is that this becomes the episode where Richmond’s leaders finally begin moving toward the same goal. Rebecca supports Keeley. Alice pushes the coaches forward. Ted (Jason Sudeikis) trusts that the right players may be found in unexpected places. None of them can make the Lady Greyhounds succeed alone.

Keeley carries that collective effort toward the team’s first match. Every obstacle gives her a reasonable excuse to lower expectations or walk away. She never does. Keely believes in the Richmond Way because she has seen what happens when this club gives people the resources and community necessary to grow.

It is difficult for me to watch Keeley, Rebecca, and the women of Richmond fight for the Lady Greyhounds without thinking about my wife. We have been married for almost 15 years, and I have watched her build a career in STEM as a Latina while people and institutions repeatedly underestimate what she could do. Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 3 understands how exhausting it is to be denied support until after you have already proven you deserved it.

Ted Lasso shows the exhausting effort it takes to receive support, even after clearing every hurdle.

The writers’ room deserves enormous credit for understanding that support cannot begin once women have proven everyone wrong. It has to exist while the doubts are still loud, the numbers are frightening, and success remains uncertain.

The open tryouts extend that idea through a series of appearances that rarely unfold as expected. María Rojas (Paloma Cinco) arrives with the immediate intrigue of being Dani Rojas’ (Cristo Fernández) sister. She explains that her brother taught her software engineering, cooking, and seemingly everything else necessary to navigate life. He did not teach her football because football is not life.

The reversal is hilarious because it dismantles one of the show’s most recognizable ideas without diminishing what it meant to Dani. It also refuses the obvious route of making his sister another miraculous Rojas footballer who instantly solves Richmond’s problem.

Alice reminds Ted that women’s football is not a charity.

That connection reaches beyond the “Richmond’s Got Talent” for me. Fernández now plays professionally for El Paso Locomotive FC, the club from my hometown. I had the surreal privilege of hearing my uncle announce Fernández’s entry into a match. An actor from a series about the strange paths football can open ended up playing in El Paso, creating another unexpected connection between this episode and my own life.

Lizzie (Faye Marsay) similarly arrives carrying assumptions that quickly become irrelevant. She is a mother and a center back when Richmond desperately needs a striker. She still emerges as the strongest player available and immediately displays the leadership the Lady Greyhounds will need. Shannon (Shannon Hayes) may not be the best player at the tryouts, but Ted values her heart and existing connection to Richmond.

Alice reminds him that women’s football is not a charity. She is right. Creating opportunities for women cannot mean lowering professional standards or filling the roster with people because their stories feel good. Ted also understands that a player’s value cannot always be measured in a single practice.

That difference between Ted and Alice gives the coaching staff a strong foundation. Alice knows the limited patience afforded to women’s football. Ted recognizes qualities that may take time to become visible. The Lady Greyhounds need both perspectives, just as they need players bringing different histories, responsibilities, and reasons for being there.

By Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 3, the new ensemble is already taking shape. The series does not need to explain everyone’s entire life yet. It gives us enough to understand how these personalities might fit together and where their histories could create future conflict. The Lady Greyhounds feel like characters rather than replacements for the men who carried the first three seasons.

The only part of “Richmond’s Got Talent” that does not work for me is Roy Kent’s (Brett Goldstein) attitude toward the team. When Phoebe mentions attending the Richmond match, Roy asks whether he means the men. His response makes clear that he considers the century-old men’s team the default version of Richmond.

Roy’s growth over the first three seasons is stunted by handing him the heel role.

Even as a young girl, Phoebe (Elodie Blomfield) immediately understands the problem. Both teams represent the same club. The men should not inherit the Richmond name while the Lady Greyhounds are treated like a secondary project that always requires clarification.

The season already has shareholders, supporters, and financial realities working against the women. It does not need Roy to become another borderline misogynistic obstacle, especially after three seasons of growth and his support in improving their facilities. His behavior toward Keeley is particularly frustrating while she spends the episode being dismissed and stonewalled by other men.

Roy eventually recognizes his mistake and tries to make things better, as he often does. Still, he should have understood more from the beginning. Giving this conflict to another character could have preserved the point without pushing Roy backward. It is the only choice keeping an otherwise exceptional episode from being perfect. Everything else builds toward an ending that completely broke me.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 3 makes powerful references without slowing down to explain them.

Early in Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 3, Alice tells Ted that she has to look up his references, so he should have to look up hers when she brings up Susan Boyle. The line feels like a statement from the writing room. Ted Lasso does not stop to explain every cultural or historical reference. It tells the audience that something matters and trusts us to become curious.

I did not immediately recognize what the episode was doing with Susan Boyle. Once I understood, I kicked myself for missing it. The episode references her, shows Ted watching her famous audition, and then plays her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream.” It never pauses to tell viewers why they should care.

Boyle entered that Britain’s Got Talent audition before an audience that had already decided what she could offer. Then she sang a song from Les Misérables and forced everyone to confront how quickly they had dismissed her. Playing only the vocals over the ending strips away the reactions and spectacle surrounding that moment. All that remains is the voice nobody expected.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 3 understands the power of looking closer.

The song reaches back to one of my earliest experiences with representation. When I performed in Les Misérables in high school, I modeled my Javert after Norm Lewis in the 25th-anniversary concert because he was the only actor I had seen in the role who looked like me. I recognized something in Lewis, and it gave me the language to understand why that connection mattered.

That move was already an enormous swing, much like Ted leaving Kansas for an opportunity in London. Years later, Ted Lasso somehow uses a Susan Boyle performance of a song I have carried since high school to connect that journey with my hometown and the obstacles I have watched my wife face. I never expected this season to reach so directly into my life. By the time “I Dreamed a Dream” begins over the credits, I am in tears.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 3 understands the power of looking closer. Look up the reference. Learn the history. Question the first impression. Give people the room to show what they carry so that you can look at yourself. The Lady Greyhounds finally reach their first match because Keeley, Rebecca, Alice, Ted, and the people beginning to care about the team choose to move forward together. The scoreboard will never show how difficult reaching the field was for the Lady Greyhounds. Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 3 makes sure we see it.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 3 is now available exclusively on Apple TV, with new episodes premiering every Wednesday until October 7, 2026.

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