Ted Lasso season four could be on the cards. Here are the signs

Believe, friends, believe.

Ted Lasso season four really could be happening after it emerged that Warner Bros Television picked up the options for a fourth season with Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein and Jeremy Swift.

The three British actors had been contracted through the UK actors’ union, Equity, and under the terms of their agreements, the studio could option each actor for another season, according to Deadline.

Waddingham played Rebecca Welton, the owner of the show’s football team Richmond FC, Goldstein was the break-out star who portrayed footballer Roy Kent while Swift was the sweet-natured operations manager Leslie Higgins.

Other headliners from the series including co-creator Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt and Juno Temple had their contracts lodged through the American actors union, SAG-AFTRA.

Deadline reported those contracts were only for the three seasons and the option for a fourth has already expired, which means the parties will need to negotiate new terms.

A potential fourth season is an exciting development for a series that quickly became a sensation when it premiered in 2020.

Co-created by Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence, Ted Lasso told the story of an American gridiron coach who had been recruited to lead an English Premier League team, despite knowing nothing about football.

The series’ jovial nature, rapid-fire jokes and emphasis on emotional health and wellbeing made it a sensation with fans and critics, and won the Emmy for outstanding comedy series for its first two years. Sudeikis and Goldstein won acting Emmys for seasons one and two while Waddingham won best supporting actress in a comedy in its first year.

In particular, those first two seasons coincided with COVID lockdowns and Ted Lasso’s message of kindness and decency was a salve for audiences that had been put through the wringer over two difficult years.

From the outset, Ted Lasso’s creative team had said the show was designed to be a three-season story arc, and when the series wrapped its third, its lead character had a very defined end to his journey.

However, it did set up potential jumping off points for continuing stories, most notably a storyline involving Rebecca (Waddingham) and Keeley (Temple) starting a Richmond women’s football club. It could be that a fourth season follows that narrative.

Or another option would be the story of how Richmond F.C. fares without Ted and with Roy Kent at the helm, which is something the third season also set up.

It may also be that Sudeikis returns to Ted Lasso in solely a behind-the-scenes role rather than reprising a character whose story has been neatly wrapped up. It does seem, no matter what it looks like, Sudeikis will be involved in some way.

Earlier this month, Lawrence told Collider that everyone would be on board but it was dependent on Sudeikis. “As fans, we’d all kill if it was going again, but everybody would say the same thing, which is, whatever Jason feels like doing and whatever his decision is, we’re all down with it.”

Lawrence added that because Sudeikis was the head writer and the star, and the one who would need to move his small children back to England where the show was in production, it would be up to him.

On the third season of the series, Sudeikis had his salary bumped up to around $US1 million per episode, taking into account his performance fee and his producing and writing rates. In the first two seasons, he was earning between $US250,000 to $US300,000.