Ted Lasso S4E9 Review: Mae Rides the Bus

There are episodes of television that do their job and episodes that stay with you long after the credits roll. Mae’s farewell speech in Ted Lasso S4E9 “Mae Rides the Bus” does both — and then some. This is the penultimate episode of season four, and it is an hour that understands exactly what it has, uses it with precision, and leaves you with a lump in your throat and a head full of questions about what comes next.

The Dressing Room Decision That Changed Everything

Let’s start with the football, because this season has worked hard to make the Lady Greyhounds feel like a team worth caring about, and episode nine is where that investment fully pays off.

Gemma Jay’s return from injury lasts exactly long enough to matter. She scores in the final minutes of the first half — a moment of pure relief and vindication — but the tackle that preceded it has done its damage. What follows in the dressing room is one of the season’s quietly best scenes. Alice doesn’t soften it. She walks in, asks Gemma directly what the deal is, and Gemma, to her enormous credit, tells the truth. A twitch in the knee. She’s done.

This exchange tells you everything about how far both characters have come. Earlier in the season, Alice hedges. She manages. She keeps people at arm’s length because connection feels like a liability. The Alice who walks into that dressing room and asks a straight question is someone who has learned — largely through Ted — that honesty delivered with care is its own form of kindness. And Gemma meeting that honesty with her own says just as much about her growth.

The decision to bring Shannon on is Alice’s gamble, but it’s also Ted’s read made flesh. All season, Shannon Hayes has worked in the background — after training, before training, quietly compiling a case for herself that nobody was explicitly watching. Except Ted was watching. Shannon scores the decisive goal in a hard-fought 3-2 win, and it is one of the most satisfying debuts the show has ever staged. The football lands. But Mae’s farewell speech in Ted Lasso is where the episode transcends the genre entirely.

Ted Lasso’s Real Superpower Has Nothing to Do With Football

Shannon’s moment confirms something the show has been building toward all season: Ted Lasso is not a one-size-fits-all coach. His instinct — telling Shannon they need her help to win — transfers ownership and responsibility. But the smarter approach for a debut in a high-stakes match is to strip the result out of the equation entirely. Enjoy yourself. Be nervous, that’s fine. The first mistake you make, forget it before it lands. Because a debut isn’t just about the next 45 minutes. It’s about what the player carries out of it regardless of the scoreline.

For a Phil Foden type, you say kill it — load them up, match their relationship with pressure. For a Shannon, you create space. The genius of Ted is that his values never change but his application is relentlessly individualized. The folksy exterior isn’t a persona or a tactic. It’s Kansas. The season four callback to his hometown confirmed exactly that — showing us the soil Ted grew in so we could understand why the man he became makes sense. That also explains why coaching a women’s team required Ted to reinvent himself slightly: same values, new translation required, and Alice as the bridge between what Ted is and what this specific group of players needs.

If you want the full picture of where the Lady Greyhounds started and how far they’ve come, our season four Lady Greyhounds guide has you covered.

Mae’s Farewell Speech in Ted Lasso Is the Season’s Defining Moment

After 29 episodes across four seasons, Annette Badland’s Mae gets her moment and takes it with both hands. Ted invites her onto the bus to Bristol. She speaks to the squad before the match. Mae’s farewell speech in Ted Lasso represents the episode — and possibly the entire season — at its absolute peak.

She talks about growing up wanting to be a footballer. About how women weren’t allowed to play officially. About having a right foot like a rosebush and a left that was even worse. And then she looks at these women and tells them they’re different. That they’re talented. That they belong on that pitch. And she closes with a line that recontextualises everything that came before it — warm, funny, sixty years of love packed into one gloriously profane send-off.

The rosebush line does the heavy lifting. It’s self-deprecating and funny and then it hits you in the sternum because underneath it is an entire generation of women who were told the game wasn’t for them. Mae doesn’t editorialize. She states a fact and steps immediately to celebrating what these women get to do that she never could.

What makes Mae’s farewell speech in Ted Lasso land as hard as it does is that Annette Badland reportedly knew. Sudeikis presented the storyline to her personally, explained how it fit into Mae’s arc, and Badland trusted the story enough to go with it. Every word of that speech she’s playing with that knowledge underneath. That’s not just a great scene. That’s a great actress putting everything she has into a goodbye she believed in.

Mae then collapses. The show heavily implies she has passed away. The timing is not accidental. Mae had spoken to Higgins in the previous episode about the shares in AFC Richmond she owns — shares that put her squarely in the middle of the season’s ownership battle. She understood what was at stake. She had conversations that mattered. And then she chose to spend one of her final days on a bus to Bristol to watch the Lady Greyhounds play.

For more on what happened to Mae and what it means for the season — note that the piece contains heavier spoilers than this review — Decider’s deep dive on Mae Green’s departure is essential reading.

Zelda Southport and the One Thing She Could Never Calculate

Zelda Southport’s unmasking as the mystery buyer lands with impact even if you saw it coming — and some of us did, early. Mae’s farewell speech in Ted Lasso had one more layer that most viewers may not have fully processed yet: Mae talked to Higgins in the previous episode specifically about her shares in AFC Richmond. Zelda is an apex predator fueled by a rage the show has never fully explained, which is simultaneously its weakness as villain writing and potentially beside the point.

Because the Zelda storyline was never really about Zelda. It was always about Rebecca — about whether she could hold onto the club she stopped defining by Rupert and started defining by herself. Zelda wanting AFC Richmond the way you want the next luxury item — not for what it means but for what having it signals — makes her the anti-Mae in the most literal sense.

Which is where Mae’s shares become the season’s most elegant piece of plotting. Zelda has spent the entire season methodically acquiring shares, gets Hugo to track down the Milk sisters for the final piece, and believes she’s cornered the board. What she never calculated — what someone who wants a football club the way you want the next pair of shoes could never calculate — is the woman sitting in the Crown & Anchor who loved AFC Richmond for sixty years and trusted the right person to protect it. If Mae’s shares go to Rebecca, Zelda’s entire campaign collapses. Not through legal maneuvering or a counter-bid. Through love.

Mae defeats Zelda from beyond the grave without ever knowing she was in a fight.

Roy, Keeley, and the Name That Would Complete the Circle

Then there’s Roy and Keeley. Pregnant. Six weeks back together and the universe apparently has opinions about that reunion. These two have been endgame since season one, pulled apart and put back together enough times that the audience has paid its dues several times over.

Roy’s contract situation resolves itself quietly through this news. The question of what Roy Kent is for post-footballer has been circling all season. A baby answers it without a single speech. He signs at AFC Richmond to be near Keeley. To be present in a way the player he used to be never had to think about. That’s Roy Kent choosing a life over a career, and it lands precisely because it happens through a contract rather than a monologue.

And if the writers understand what they’ve built this season: let it be a girl. Let them name her Mae.

A girl named Mae — born from a relationship that almost didn’t survive itself, named for a woman who spent her whole life loving a club that finally made space for women on the pitch — is not sentimentality. It’s the show completing a circle.

Verdict

“Mae Rides the Bus” is the season’s best episode. Possibly the show’s best in years. There will be much written about Mae’s farewell speech in Ted Lasso this week, and all of it will be deserved. Mae’s farewell speech in Ted Lasso will be talked about for as long as people talk about this show — not because it was a grand set piece, but because it was completely, quietly true. She belonged on that bus. She always did.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 9 “Mae Rides the Bus” is streaming now on Apple TV+. The season finale airs Wednesday, October 7, 2026.

Mae’s farewell speech in Ted Lasso was the emotional gut-punch of the season — but what do you think: did Roy and Keeley getting back together land for you, or did you have your eye on Zelda and the shares? Drop it in the comments and follow Prime Time Takes on Threads, Bluesky, and Facebook for more.