'Ted Lasso' Season 2 finale: How Nate shocker came together

This story contains major spoilers from the Season 2 finale of “Ted Lasso,” “Inverting the Pyramid of Success.” Check out our complete guide to the series here. “Nate the Great,” the beloved underdog of Apple TV+ Emmy winner “Ted Lasso,” hasn’t been doing so great lately. There are so many microaggressions against Nate — all from different people, and really tiny things which we think of as jokes and are inconsequential, like when he doesn’t get given a free coffee machine. Or when, just before Roy joins as a coach, they say they need a big dog to talk to Isaac the captain; Nate says he’ll do it and Ted almost laughs in his face and is like, “No, we need a real big dog.” Given the journey that Nate’s gone on in Season 1 in building his confidence — not completely, he’s still got insecurities and demons and a toxic relationship with his dad and so on — he’s been feeling empowered because of Ted, and now suddenly Ted and others are slightly blindsiding him a little bit and it’s tearing him apart. He said, “Just so you know, the opening and closing shots of the season are Nate’s eyes, and it’s really important you know that for the journey that he’s about to go on, because the eyes are very different in the end.” We shot alternatives for that ending — it was still the same setup, but different things like no raised eyebrow, him looking dead inside, him looking quite smug.