Ted Lasso S3 Finale Completes The Show's Musical Game

Contains spoilers for "Ted Lasso" Season 3 finale, "So Long, Farewell"

"So Long, Farewell" ends "Ted Lasso" Season 3 on a largely positive note despite Ted's (Jason Sudeikis) departure from AFC Richmond. After all, the majority of the characters stay to build the club to unprecedented levels of success and inclusiveness, and it's clear that their stories will continue on a decidedly positive note.

The episode includes plenty of touching and funny moments, but one early scene manages to marry the two in a particularly heartwarming way. As Ted attempts to get through his final team practice in a low-key manner, the players surprise him and Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) with an enthusiastic and immaculately-choreographed performance of "So Long, Farewell" from "The Sound of Music." 

Apart from being a fitting goodbye to the coaches who have had them perform choreographies before, the scene continues the trend of peppering "Ted Lasso" episodes with important musical moments. As it happens, a musical episode is one classic special episode type that has been notably absent from the series despite the fact that it has been happy to dabble with several other varieties of the special episode theme. However, the show has been stealthily collecting individual musical numbers all along ... and with the "So Long, Farewell" performance, it now has so much variety that there's essentially a full "Ted Lasso" musical episode sprinkled across the series.

"Ted Lasso" is no stranger to classic special episodes. Over the years, the show has given us its take on a Christmas episode in Season 2's "Carol of the Bells." We've also received a (mostly) bottle episode that focuses on one character in the same season's Beard-centric "Beard After Hours." Season 3 even dabbles with the classic "the characters go abroad" theme in "Sunflowers." 

With talented singers like Hannah Waddingham and Anthony Head in the cast, it's actually kind of surprising that the show hasn't featured a full musical episode. However, the musical numbers have trickled in over the seasons. From singing "Frozen" in karaoke to her wonderful funeral rendition of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" and the team bus rendition of Bob Marley & The Wailers' "Three Little Birds," Waddingham's Rebecca alone has been responsible for several. Apart from actual musical performances, of course, music has always been an important part of the show's DNA, with the soundtrack and street musicians alike contributing to the series' aural atmosphere. Even when they're not actively singing, the characters have sprinkled a truly astounding amount of stealthy musical references in their various interviews and conversations. 

With an elaborate performance of a famous "The Sound of Music" song, the show gives one more major nod to its devotion to music — and when you put all of its musical moments together, you might discover that "Ted Lasso" isn't too far removed from having a full-length musical episode that just so happens to pace itself leisurely over three seasons.