Ted Lasso Season 3 Casts Freaks And Geeks Actress Becky Ann Baker As Ted's Mom

With his signature smile and jolly attitude, Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) once said: "I love meeting people's moms. It's like reading an instruction manual as to why they're nuts." Be careful what you wish for Ted, because the time has come for AFC Richmond and the entire viewing audience to read your instruction manual and learn all your childhood secrets. That's right — season 3 of "Ted Lasso" will introduce the titular football coach's mother.

Per Above The Line, Veteran actress Becky Ann Baker is joining the gilded cast of the acclaimed Apple TV+ series. Baker is perhaps best known for two other hit series where she played mother to the main character: "Freaks and Geeks" and "Girls." Most recently she had a recurring role in Peacock's "The Resort" and starred in the Katie Holmes romcom "Alone Together." For "Ted Lasso," she'll be playing mother to Sudeikis character, a fitting development following a season where Ted spent many hours in therapy.

In case you managed to miss all the fanfare and two years of Emmy buzz, "Ted Lasso" tells the story of an American football coach who is hired to coach an English soccer team. With his folksy charm and perpetual optimism, Ted overcomes the many odds against him by charming the pants off of basically everyone, no matter how hard they try to resist — I'm looking at you, Rebecca — but that positivity also doubles as a way to deflect his own internal conflicts. But deflection only works until it doesn't.

The second season of the series offered some unexpected insight into Ted's personal life: he reveals in therapy that his father's suicide has haunted him since he was 16. In the upcoming season, it sounds like we'll learn more about his personal life and where his mother fits into everything.

Other than Ted's mom, the only other parents we've met were those of Nate (Nick Mohammed) and Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham). In both cases, Ted's quote about instruction manuals holds pretty damn true: where Nate seems to derive a lot of his insecurities from his parents, Rebecca seems to have formed her stoicism in response to her mom's openness. But then again, both of them end up changing in major ways because of Ted's influence.

So will we learn that Ted's mother is a bundle of positivity like him? Or will she be completely different? Either way, learning more about Ted's family life is definitely an interesting direction for the series to take. With its second season, "Ted Lasso" grew into a much more complicated beast by delving into the titular coach's psyche. Perhaps it will continue down a similar path for its third outing.

"Ted Lasso" hails from executive producers Bill Lawrence, Jeff Ingold, and Jason Sudeikis. Season 3 has yet to receive a release date but was originally expected to arrive sometime in Fall 2022. After various delays (which /Film recently reported on), it's clear that will no longer be the case since the season is still in production.