REVIEW: ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4 Episode 10 — “Being Alive”

Death hangs over Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10, “Being Alive,” but it is ultimately interested in what everyone chooses to do next. Mourning Mae brings Richmond together before the finale sends its characters toward parenthood, new jobs, changing relationships, and futures none of them could have imagined at the beginning of the season.

The Lady Greyhounds approach their last game of the season, giving Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 room to focus on everything the game brought into their lives. Football is not life. It is still a major part of life for everyone gathered inside the Crown & Anchor, and it created the community now helping them move through Mae’s death.

The farewell is appropriately somber without losing the warmth Mae brought to the series. Niamh (Aisling Sharkey) and Siobhan (Rex Hayes) sing together as the rest of Richmond listens, and the emotion throughout the room feels larger than another scripted goodbye. Mae (Annette Badland) has been part of this community since its beginning, long before the Lady Greyhounds gave her another team to support.

Keeley’s absence in Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 continues a frustrating pattern.

Her absence changes more than who stands behind the bar. Mae represented the supporters who remained invested in Richmond regardless of ownership, relegation, promotion, or whichever version of the club walked onto the pitch. She did not need an official position to shape what AFC Richmond became.

Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) is once again missing from that gathering because morning sickness keeps her at home. The explanation makes sense, but her absence continues a frustrating pattern from the second half of the season. One of the women responsible for building support around the Lady Greyhounds remains separated from the community she helped create.

Her pregnancy also leaves Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) questioning whether he can become a good father. That concern would carry more weight if the season had shown him becoming a better partner before asking the audience to imagine him raising a child. Roy has spent much of the season struggling with basic communication, making his insecurity everyone else’s responsibility, and waiting for women to explain why he deserves love.

Roy’s arc struggles with not doing the work to make the rewards of his storyline worth it.

Chelsea then offers him its head coaching position within the opening stretch of Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10. Roy is a club legend with Premier League managerial experience, so the offer itself is believable. Its placement reinforces how consistently this season of Ted Lasso rewards him despite the consequences of his choices.

Roy skipped the club’s ceremony honoring him and spent most of the year emotionally avoiding Keeley. Now he has the relationship, a child on the way, and a major career opportunity. Good things can happen to a complicated person, but Roy’s story keeps skipping the work that would make those rewards satisfying.

The return of the Diamond Dogs gives him much better material in Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10. Roy finally goes to Ted (Jason Sudeikis), Beard (Brendan Hunt), Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift), and the returning Nathan Shelley (Nick Mohammed) instead of trying to solve everything through anger or isolation. Asking for help is one of the few choices this season that clearly shows him behaving differently.

Change is at the heart of Ted Lasso Season 4, and asking for help and welcoming it is at the forefront.

The group also welcomes Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds), who establishes herself as its resident cat. Her performance could have been a one-note joke, but Reynolds has spent the season making Alice’s strange comedic rhythm feel inseparable from her guarded personality. The woman acting like a cat in this room is still the same person who once refused to let anyone close enough to understand her.

Alice also delivers the scene’s best advice when she tells Roy not to leave when he feels inadequate. Her usual delivery gets the laugh, but the room becomes quiet enough to let the idea land. Inadequacy has shaped Roy’s relationships, Ted’s parenting, Beard’s love life, and Alice’s own attempts to connect with the Lady Greyhounds.

The line captures the season’s larger lesson about change. Feeling unprepared doesn’t release someone from the responsibility to remain present. Parenting, coaching, love, and grief all require people to stay when leaving would feel easier.

Alice Chilton has one of the most fulfilling arcs this season.

Alice has the most complete arc in Season 4. She entered Richmond angry, defensive, and convinced that her knowledge of women’s football gave her the only perspective the team needed. She learned to trust Ted, apologize to Gemma, recognize Shannon’s growth, and support players through problems that could not be fixed with harsher coaching.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 recognizes how ready Alice has become to lead without turning her into another version of Ted. She keeps her intensity, tactical knowledge, awkward humor, and love for football. What changes is her willingness to let other people contribute to the person and coach she becomes.

Ted faces his own version of staying through inadequacy with Henry (Gus Turner). His son has quietly carried questions about the death of Ted’s father, forcing Ted to confront the limits of protecting a child through silence. Being present requires more than moving Henry to London or arranging enough time together.

Ted’s father’s death forces Ted to look at what honesty means moving forward with his family.

The conversation lets Ted reconsider what honesty means in his family. His father’s death has shaped the optimism, anxiety, and fear of abandonment beneath everything Ted does. Sharing more of that truth with Henry gives both of them a better chance to understand the relationship they are trying to build.

That choice continues the season’s refusal to force Ted and Michelle back together as proof that their family has healed. Ted can become a more available father without restoring his marriage. Change doesn’t need to return everyone to the life they had before things became difficult.

The fight for Richmond’s future gives Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) a different test. Zelda Southport (Tracey Ullman) presents her betrayal as another example of a woman supporting herself, twisting the season’s language of solidarity into a defense of ambition without loyalty.

Zelda’s betrayal shows the twisted side of how the language of solidarity can be used for personal gain.

Rebecca survives because her understanding of women supporting women has never meant blind agreement. It means building relationships strong enough for people to act when support becomes costly. Leslie helps her see the larger strategy, familiar sponsors return when needed, and women with the power to change Richmond’s future refuse to surrender it.

The reversal works because Rebecca and Leslie are not foolish enough to walk blindly into Zelda’s plan. They understand the power surrounding the club and find a way to use the relationships built across the season. The victory belongs to a community working together rather than one person proving she can dominate everyone else.

That makes Keeley’s limited involvement difficult to ignore. She began the season beside Rebecca, determined to create attention, sponsorship, and local support for the Lady Greyhounds. The struggle over Richmond’s ownership should have brought everything she learned from Rebecca into the same room.

Instead, her primary professional contribution in Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 is producing a video that goes viral. Keeley eventually receives a moment inside the sold-out stadium and gets to witness what the team has become, but she remains outside the strategy that protects its future.

A final hour save from Keeley is another reminder of how much the show has sidelined her.

The viral video proves she still understands how to make people care. It also feels like a smaller version of the leadership role the opening episodes promised her. Rebecca, Leslie, Mae, and the shareholders determine whether the club survives while Keeley’s story remains centered on Roy and pregnancy.

That frustration is particularly noticeable because Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 offers several stronger examples of relationships supporting growth. Alice becomes more herself through the trust she builds with the team. Ted becomes a more honest father through his conversations with Henry. Rebecca learns that love and leadership can survive change without requiring her to control everything around them.

Mae’s legacy brings Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 back to the community she helped sustain. The future of the Crown & Anchor provides one of the finale’s funniest resolutions while ensuring the pub remains with people who understand what it has meant to Richmond. The three chuckleheads may not be the obvious choice to inherit anything important, which is exactly why their new responsibility feels so fitting.

Mae’s legacy ripples throughout, but it’s the ending narration that carries things home.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 closes with Mae reciting Mary Oliver’s “When Death Comes.” Ted Lasso has always filled its world with poems, books, songs, films, and historical references that viewers may not immediately recognize. The series trusts that curiosity can continue after the credits, turning every unfamiliar reference into another path worth following.

This was my first time hearing “When Death Comes,” and it arrived at a moment when I was already carrying grief. Mae reminds me of my grandmother, and my wife’s recent return from her own grandmother’s funeral. Hearing Mae’s voice guide these characters through death, change, and everything still waiting to be lived hit harder than Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 could have known.

That is the beauty of the references Ted Lasso chooses. Their meaning extends beyond the characters and reaches viewers through whatever they are carrying when they encounter them. Looking up the poem becomes part of the episode, another reminder that art can hand us language for something we were already trying to understand.

Ted Lasso Season 4 uses change as a reminder that it is unavoidable, but it doesn’t always signify the end.

The field of daisies at Richmond completes that idea. Football is not life, but it created the field where these people found one another. Every player, coach, owner, supporter, partner, and friend becomes another flower within something larger, growing together without losing the qualities that make each of them distinct.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 allows death to make change unavoidable without treating change as an ending. Mae is gone, leadership shifts, children need their parents, relationships enter new stages, and Richmond will never look exactly the same again. The community remains because everyone who leaves also changes the people who stay.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 brings Richmond together through grief before sending everyone forward changed toward an uncertain future. Alice is ready to lead, Rebecca finally understands how many people are willing to stand beside her, and Ted recognizes that being present sometimes requires telling the truth when silence feels safer. Mae’s final words give Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 10 its lasting purpose: accept that every life must change, then remain curious about everything still waiting beyond the pitch.

All episodes of Ted Lasso Season 4 are now available exclusively on Apple TV.

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