Why is Ted Lasso's third season taking so dang long to make?

Ted Lasso cleaned up at the Emmy’s for the second consecutive year on Monday, with the series, star Jason Sudeikis, and co-star Brett Goldstein all repeating last year’s wins for Outstanding Comedy Series, Lead Actor, and Supporting Actor, respectively. The wins also prompted Sudeikis to make a joke about the show’s much-anticipated third season, announcing that “We’ll see you for Season 3, at some point.”

That comment, alluding to the fact that it’s been more than a year since the show’s second season premiered, with no sign of a return yet in sight, served as the genesis for a new report from Puck this week, attempting to dive into the source of the delays.

Of these, Sudeikis himself comes immediately to the forefront: Although the show is based on a character he created years ago, this is Sudeikis’ first season partially running things on the creative side of the series, stepping in to a co-showrunner role as Bill Lawrence moves his attention over to his new show Bad Monkey. Sudeikis—who’s said that the show’s third season will be his last—has reportedly been pretty strident about the quality of writing for season 3; the Puck report states that he called for significant re-writes that appear to have pushed the start of production all the way up to March 2022, with scripts still being changed on the fly into April.

Meanwhile, real-world considerations have also impacted the filming, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine—that, due to location shoots at the Chelsea Football Club’s stadium being “frozen” because the Russian oligarch who owned the stadium is being forced to sell it off. It’s not clear yet exactly how much of the show has been shot yet—with the season already running “20 to 30 percent” over budget—or how much of the post-production effects work required to fill its stadium with fans has been completed. Despite the delays, the show’s cast—whose careers have been massively elevated by the show’s success—remain locked into their contracts until the season actually manages to be completed.