REVIEW: ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4 Episode 9 — “Mae Rides The Bus”

Six weeks after Gemma’s injury, the Lady Greyhounds are struggling to replace everything their star provided. Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9, “Mae Rides The Bus,” returns football to the center of the season as Richmond approaches the match that could determine whether the club earns promotion. The episode brings back press conferences, tactical adjustments, and the anxiety of watching a team run out of time.

That focus feels long overdue. Richmond’s relationships have always given Ted Lasso its emotional foundation, but those relationships become more meaningful when football gives everyone something to fight for together. Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 finally asks the Lady Greyhounds to turn a season of personal growth into something that appears on the table.

The team has spent weeks learning how to play without Gemma, and the effects reach beyond the missing goals. Confidence has disappeared alongside the results. Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds) receives more control over the tactical response, forcing her to adapt instead of waiting for her best player to return.

That responsibility continues the progress Alice has made throughout the season. She has learned to trust Ted (Jason Sudeikis), listen to the players, and remain open to possibilities she initially dismissed. The promotion match turns those lessons into decisions with real consequences.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 shifts its focus back to football and the chaos that comes with it.

Shannon’s opportunity provides Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 with its most satisfying payoff. Ted saw something in her during the open tryouts, while Alice needed time to recognize how much she could offer the team. Her development has remained in the background long enough for this moment to feel earned rather than convenient.

The season has treated Shannon (Shannon Hayes) like the slowly sinking chair in Ted’s office. Both ideas have been quietly developing without announcing exactly when the payoff will arrive. When Richmond finally needs Shannon, her chance feels like the natural result of everything the coaches have learned about her.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 also understands that the Lady Greyhounds are no longer a project existing on the edges of AFC Richmond. Mae (Annette Badland) joining the team gives the episode its title and brings one of the club’s longest-standing supporters into their biggest moment. The women now have a community willing to travel with them, worry with them, and believe promotion belongs within reach.

When Alice gathers everyone on the bus for a photo with Mae, the moment captures the community Richmond has built around the Lady Greyhounds. Coaches, players, staff, and supporters are all part of the same journey now. All that was missing was Keeley Jones (Juno Temple).

Mae joining the team on the bus is a reminder of how the community has longed for this moment.

The season began with Keeley excited to support women doing badass things. She helped convince Richmond that the Lady Greyhounds deserved attention, built interest around their matches, and continued believing in the team when support became more difficult than posting about it. The promotion match represents everything she wanted to help create. Instead, Keeley spends Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 at home.

Her absence begins with another major personal development when a series of pregnancy tests confirms that she is expecting. Keeley is happy, even if she immediately recognizes how inconvenient the timing is. She wants Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) to be the first person she tells. It’s clear their relationship still means more to her than the growing professional distance between them.

A pregnancy storyline does not automatically diminish Keeley. She can become a mother, continue mentoring women, and remain invested in Richmond. The problem is how quickly Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 uses the pregnancy to remove her from everything else.

Keeley and Rebecca should be discussing the club’s unstable share situation and the possibility that control of Richmond may be slipping away. Keeley has spent years learning from Rebecca while developing her own instincts as a leader. The threat to the Lady Greyhounds creates an opportunity for both women to navigate a professional crisis together.

Keeley’s pregnancy finally gives her some development, but at what cost?

Their conversation instead becomes a celebration of the pregnancy. Keeley explains that she became less consistent with birth control because of her acne, admits the timing is difficult, and allows herself to be excited. Those feelings are valid, but the scene redirects her away from the problem threatening the team she helped build.

Keeley asking Siri whether she will be a good mother makes the shift even stranger. The season has given her very little space to articulate what she wants from her life, career, or relationship with Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein). Now one of its most important questions is handed to a phone for a quick joke.

Her fainting and elevated blood pressure understandably create concern about attending the match. Yet Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 goes further by making sure she cannot even watch from home. Rebecca sends Roy to stay with her, and his presence turns the promotion match into another romantic comedy built around how well he may fit into Keeley’s future.

Roy uses makeup brushes and eggs to recreate the match inside Keeley’s home. The scene is executed well enough to be funny, and Goldstein and Temple remain naturally charming together. It would probably work in almost any other episode.

The series doesn’t know what to do with Roy and Keeley outside of their romance.

Here, the cuteness makes Keeley’s absence more frustrating. She started Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 excited to watch the Lady Greyhounds and ends up receiving Roy’s kitchen-table interpretation because the actual match is considered too dangerous for her to experience. She is prevented from sharing the moment she worked toward before she has even told Roy why the health concern actually exists. 

Keeley is effectively benched during the most important match of the Lady Greyhounds’ season. While the team travels together, she remains at home as Roy recreates the game with household objects. The pregnancy itself is not the problem. Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 uses it to separate Keeley from the work she helped begin and redirect her story toward becoming Roy’s partner and the mother of his child.

Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) later remarks that Keeley would have loved the match. He is right, which only makes the decision to exclude her harder to understand. Everyone recognizes where she belongs except the episode itself.

“What brings no benefit to the bee brings even less to the hive” becomes an important idea throughout Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9. Richmond’s success depends on everyone contributing to something larger than themselves. The Lady Greyhounds have learned how much they can accomplish when individual needs and abilities strengthen the team.

Keeley continues to be sidelined this season, which inadvertently undermines the strength of a major reveal.

Keeley has benefited the hive all season while gradually losing her place inside it. Zelda Southport (Tracey Ullman) has moved deeper into Rebecca and Leslie’s professional circle. Roy has consumed most of Keeley’s personal storyline. Her pregnancy now gives the series another reason to separate her from the club during its defining match.

The late reveal confirms that Zelda has not been honest about her interest in Richmond, paying off suspicions about her growing influence. Rebecca and Leslie have been looking toward familiar enemies while allowing Zelda to move closer, but Keeley has been absent from the conversations where that shift should have become clear.

Keeley’s presence could have added another perspective to the dynamic and made Zelda’s betrayal land harder. Instead, Keeley remains unaware of a threat to the team she helped launch. After beginning the season determined to build support for the Lady Greyhounds, she has been pushed so far from Richmond’s decision-making that one of its biggest developments happens without her.

The promotion match itself delivers what the season has been building toward. Richmond has to prove it can function without Gemma (Abbie Hern), and Shannon receives the opportunity waiting for her since the opening episodes. Alice’s growing influence as a coach becomes visible in the way the team adjusts rather than panics. All without needing Ted to do much more than support the women around him, as he has done all season. 

Things are looking bleaker than ever going into the finale.

Despite the excitement on the pitch, Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 ends on an especially bleak note as the high of the match gives way to news capable of reshaping the entire club. Ted receives it with his head down, while Rebecca confronts the consequences of everything developing around her. The Lady Greyhounds, their coaches, and Richmond itself enter the finale with little reason for hope, even if they all don’t know it yet. 

Keeley and Roy are the exception. Their relationship is restored, Roy gets to demonstrate his potential as a father, and the pregnancy gives them the future the season has spent weeks delaying. Good for them, but their happiness would be easier to celebrate if Keeley had not been removed from the Lady Greyhounds’ story to receive it.

Ultimately, Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 works best when it brings Richmond together. Mae joins the journey, Shannon receives her chance, Alice leads through a crisis, and the Lady Greyhounds prove they can keep moving together. Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 shows how far the Lady Greyhounds have come together, but Keeley deserved to be on that bus with them.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 is now available exclusively on Apple TV, with new episodes premiering every Wednesday until October 7, 2026.

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