‘Ted Lasso’ Season 3’s Biggest Misstep? Nate and Jade (2024)

If you ask anyone what their favorite thing about the Apple TV+ hit Ted Lasso is, chances are they’ll say the characters. Since the Emmy-winning comedy premiered in 2020, fans have fallen head over heels for beautiful “boss-ass bitch” Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham), the growly and profane Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), the wonderfully wise former WAG Keeley Jones (Juno Temple), and, of course, the chipper coach at the center of it all, Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) himself. Ted Lasso has built its reputation on its tender, layered portraits of adults navigating the trauma of life with as much grace and humor as possible. But Ted Lasso Season 3 has a big character problem and her name is Jade (Edyta Budnik).

Specifically speaking, Ted Lasso Season 3’s most befuddling storyline has got to be Nate’s (Nick Mohammed) romance with Taste of Athens hostess Jade. When we first met Jade in Ted Lasso Season 2, she was an impenetrable fortress of coldness. No matter what Nate did to appeal to her better nature, Jade frosted the football coach out, denying him his coveted table and repeatedly pummeling his confidence with her quirky strain of sangfroid.

Somehow in Ted Lasso Season 3, Jade has fallen head over heels for the “Wonder Kid” Nathan Shelley. After discovering her boss idolized Nate for coaching West Ham and watching him strike out with a snooty model, Jade suddenly has transformed into an impossibly obliging love interest. What’s even stranger is that Ted Lasso the show has done little to flesh out Jade’s character in any meaningful way to justify this shift. As Vulture critic Kathryn VanArendonk put it concisely via a recent viral tweet, Jade’s whole personality thus far has been summed up by working at a restaurant, being first mean and then nice, and not having a shy bladder.

Well, in this week’s episode, Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 9 “La Locker Room Aux Folles,” we finally learned a little bit more about Jade. First, she’s Polish; specifically from Nowy Sacz. She enjoys making sarcastic jokes, jesting to Rupert (Anthony Head) that her real name is Jaded, after her mother’s favorite aunt. (That’s a joke, right?) Oh, and when she’s not judging diners at Taste of Athens, Jade can be found delicately eating fancy chocolates on her pillow-covered couch whilst reading Murakami. You know, normal stuff that happens in real life and not just in Dove commercials/male fantasies.

Even with these new details, something seems extraordinarily off about this relationship in a way that is fundamentally atypical for Ted Lasso. Roy Kent and Keeley Jones’s chemistry sparked for weeks in Season 1 before the two finally kicked off their romance. Ted Lasso Season 2 showed Rebecca and Sam (Toheeb Jimoh) exchanging sweet anonymous texts on Bantr long before they met for an in-person date. And there’s a whole vibrant online community of Ted Lasso fans out there devoted to parsing clues from all three seasons so far that supposedly prove the whole point of the show is to push Ted and Rebecca together in eventual romantic bliss. Ted Lasso is a show that lays the foundations of its romances with such precision that even Rebecca’s impulsive night with an anonymous Dutchman (Matteo van der Grijn) was foreshadowed!! But Jade’s transition from Nate’s nemesis to love interest happened out of the blue.

For the longest time, Jade was that mean hostess Nate could never impress. When he finally did get the courage to ask her out, the relationship took off with nary a hitch. Through it all, we weren’t given a single clue why Jade suddenly liked Nate so much. Was it because he was a successful football coach? Because famous models were now on his arm? Did Jade fall for Nate because she, too, loved baklava? What do these two people have in common aside from Greek food, I ask?

Jade’s newfound devotion to Nate feels particularly strange because it seems designed to stand in for his redemption arc. Whether or not you loved or hated Nate’s descent into villainy in Ted Lasso Season 2, it was a fascinating choice that had its roots in the former kit man’s long-simmering rage and jealousy. Ted Lasso Season 3 has shown us that Nate misses Ted and the AFC Richmond crew, but he’s done nothing to atone for his misdeeds. His personal growth has only been evidenced in his positive relationship with Jade. And since Jade is a cipher of a character — a sort of living Rorschach test reflecting Nate’s inner self back at himself —Nate’s “redemption arc” feels hollow.

Ted Lasso Season 3 has challenged its fans with super long episode runtimes, meandering subplots, and a down-and-dour Ted, but the Jade/Nate romance might be one of the show’s most confusing choices. For a show that takes the rules of romantic comedies so seriously it devoted an episode to the theme of “Rom-Communism,” this misfired storyline feels particularly disappointing.

There are only three episodes in Ted Lasso Season 3 — and potentially the show itself — left. Is that enough time for the writers to get us to root for Nate’s awkward love story? I’m not confident, but if any show can make us “believe,” it would be Ted Lasso.