The Ted Lasso Season Finale Backtracked Roy And Jamie In A Disastrous Way

This post contains spoilers for "Ted Lasso" season 3, including the season finale.

If you were watching "Ted Lasso" this season, there's a good chance that you loved how Roy Kent and Jamie Tartt fostered a true bond based on respect, true adoration, and platonic love. You probably were thriving when our two favorite headstrong idiots started finding common ground and the understanding they had always been searching for in one another. I was. It was, in my eyes, one of the major highlights of the entire season.

You see, anyone with eyes could tell that Brett Goldstein's Roy and Phil Dunster's Jamie should be friends, but most of us were undecided on whether or not they actually could. There were so many obstacles standing in their way, the largest of which was pride. And with the emotional immaturity these two have worn on their sleeves since the day we met them, it wasn't a far-off assumption that they might never make it further than a steep nod of begrudging acknowledgment the entire series. But they surprised us, as people often do.

Fast forward to the season 3 finale, though, where the "Ted Lasso" writers decided to toss kerosene on the beautiful home they built for those two stubborn lads and light it aflame. In the last episode, Roy and Jamie are pitted against each other once again, all in the name of who gets to be with Keeley once and for all. It's a move that nearly erases all the progress they've both made individually and as a duo, and, to make matters even worse, doesn't even take her into account as an independent person with feelings like they pretty much always have had no problem doing. It's counter-productive in general, but even more so to the strides made by both footballers.

The choice was, frankly, mind-boggling, and it's hard to express how deeply reductive it was considering how much emotional work these two put each other through this season. They've really come out the other side when it comes to maturity and strength in platonic bonds, so it was really dissatisfying to see this hacky motive used as an utterly unnecessary scapegoat of a moment that had no real business in their arc, let alone its final scenes. It all amounts to a very weird choice that, while responded to properly by Keeley — she did throw them out on their asses as a result, as she should've — did not need to happen after so much development between Roy and Jamie. What a disappointment.

Ultimately, anything the writers could've done to finalize Roy and Jamie's bond would've been better than what they did. The weird placement of a totally uncharacteristic choice also threw off what should've culminated in a sense of accomplishment for Roy personally as well, since he inherits the managership once Ted heads back to America. But because the audience was totally thrown off by the Keeley wrench, it lessens the effect of Roy's promotion and certainly sours all the empowerment you're supposed to feel from the strength of his cultivated bond with Jamie.

It's hard not to be sad about how things ended and want more from their story — and who knows, maybe that was a ploy to keep us hooked for a spinoff. But the fact remains: They didn't have to massacre our boys and the emotional work they forged together, but they did, and now the show's finale will forever have a lackluster tinge as a result.

"Ted Lasso" is available to stream now on Apple TV+.