Spoilers for Season 3 of Ted Lasso are ahead. If you haven’t streamed the hit comedy, you can watch it all with an Apple TV+ subscription.
Ted Lasso loves a musical moment. While they have had some epic ones throughout its three-season run, they capped the show off with its best, most involved, number yet as the boys of AFC Richmond performed “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound of Music. It turns out this moment was full of “brilliant chaos” as Declan Lowney, the director of the Season 3 finale explained, and he told CinemaBlend why.
The Season 3 finale of Ted Lasso was full of hilarious callbacks, like Phil Dunster recreating a classic Jason Sudeikis bit from Season 1, and heartfelt details, like the A+ Cheers reference in Mae’s bar. It was also packed with other silly and loving moments, like when the entire AFC Richmond Team decided to band together to perform “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound of Music (with choreography and everything) for Ted and Beard as a goodbye gift. Loweny explained in an interview with me that reading the scene at first felt “surreal,” but he quickly realized they’d be able to pull it off in a “joyful” way. He said:
I mean, reading it is quite surreal, because you think ‘Do they literally mean? Yeah, they literally mean that.’ And then you look at the clip in the movie, and you’re like ‘Oh shit, yeah, we could do this.’ And then the guys come in, and they start rehearsal with a choreographer, and you go, ‘Yeah, they really can do this.’ And then they go and record the song at the sound studio, and then you go, ‘Well, they really can sing this.’ And then when you put it all together on camera, and you start to shoot it, you know, it is magical. It is a lot of fun. It's so beautifully put together, and they're so earnest, the guys, they’re trying so hard to do something really lovely for Ted. And so that's all very joyful.
In the past, Ted Lasso has had a few musical sequences – like Rebecca singing “Let It Go” and the team performing “Bye, Bye, Bye” on the pitch – however, they haven’t been as big or as involved as the Sound of Music number.
Continuing to talk about this fun performance, Lwoney honed in on the details at the end of the scene. As you likely recall, after the group aces their performance, and Ted gives them his stamp of approval, they go “batshit,” as the director described it. He was actually shocked by that portion of the shoot, because no one told the actors to do that. It was simply incredibly joyous and they kept trying to one-up their reactions with each take. Breaking down the evolution of the hilarious and brilliantly chaotic reactions, the Emmy nominee said:
I had brought in a drone, because at the end of the song, I did a big drone shot on the pitch coming away, and you know, it was great to have big scale. But it was just at the moment when they all went crazy. So Jason took it out and put in loads of close-ups. And it's brilliant, because the celebratory vibe, the release for them all that they’ve obviously prepped this for a months, they’ve been rehearsing and rehearsing, and he loves it. So they go apeshit and pull their shirts off, that was so joyous. And you know, no one told them to do that. They just did it. And then the more they did it, the more they tried to do it with each other. And you know, there was three cameras pointing at them grabbing all these bits and it's chaos, but it's brilliant chaos.
Lowney went on to say that the close-up he loved the most was Trent Crimm’s, because it was so shocking to see this level-headed character take his jacket off and whip it around his head. Seeing everyone involved with that scene, the journalist included, celebrate this silly moment made my heart so happy, and it helped the audience see just how much everyone on the team cares for and truly understands Ted and Beard.
The Season 3 finale of Ted Lasso has its emotional moments, like Rebecca’s goodbye to Ted at the airport, and goofy tease-y scenes, like when they pranked the audience with a possible Ted and Rebecca romance. Somehow, this sweet goodbye on the pitch managed to be all those things, it was emotional, goofy and celebratory, and as Lowney put it “joyous” and “brilliant chaos.”
