After Apple TV’s show Ted Lasso was renewed for a fourth season, some viewers were angered by the switch toward a female cast — an increasingly common trend for film and television. But this outrage against diverse casting is baseless if an entertaining production is all you ask for.
“Ted Lasso” was wildly successful, in part for its release during the pandemic era and its wholesome underdog spirit. The show’s third, then-final, season brought the story of an American coach and his British soccer team to a satisfying conclusion. With viewers yearning for more and speculation for months, Apple finally announced the production of a fourth season featuring crowd-favorite Jason Sudeikis reprising his role as Ted Lasso, but with a small twist — Ted is coaching a women’s team.
While this season was meant as a spinoff for fans begging for more, some were quick to anger, not from the loss of a familiar men’s team, but the addition of the female cast. Introducing gender-swapped roles and people of color into shows has become increasingly politicized since the rise of anti-DEI factions mocking diversity as “wokeness” in the 2010s. Trump’s ascendance to the spotlight and the proliferation of McCarthyism-like “anti-woke” rhetoric of Ron Desantis and Tucker Carlson has targeted topics from covering segregation in schools to M&M’s mascots for spreading a hateful and “un-American” ideology.
The 2016 “Ghostbusters” movie faced a similar backlash to “Ted Lasso,” despite its star-studded, comedically excellent cast. Racist hate speech from Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative media editor, compared Leslie Jones to a gorilla and degraded her role in the 1980 “Ghostbuster” remake. “Percy Jackson,” a live action children’s show based on Rick Riordan’s novels, and the upcoming How to Train Your Dragon film angered some when they switched blonde characters of European descent to people of color. The backlash was enough to elicit public responses from Riordan and the movie director to protect the cast from hate. And at an extreme, The Little Mermaid received backlash from middle-aged conservatives for propagating “scientific disinformation” after an African American actress played Ariel, arguing that a cartoon, mythical half-fish could not have enough melanin to be any race but white.
A key argument is that these are unnecessary changes that promote minority groups at the expense of a majority. But this easily overlooks the past underrepresentation of these groups in cinema. For decades, people of color and non-male roles were disproportionately undercast and shown in a negative light. 51.4% of top movies with female leads, according to UCLA’s 2025 Hollywood Diversity Report, are from films with budgets under 30 million USD, which is designated low budget relative to $100 million blockbusters. Phases like the Blaxploitation era, which exemplified a violent genre of African American villains driven by anti-white retribution, degraded the image of people of color. The same diversity report shows that 25.2% of leads in top films were cast as minorities, compared to 10.5% in 2011. Hollywood’s attempts to remediate its controversial and discriminatory past have been effective, but the disparity still exists — 44% of the current US population is non-white.
With more immigrant families in the U.S., movies are starting to better reflect their audience, which is especially true for children looking for relatable role-models on screen.
A key argument against supporting these race and gender swaps is that the change in identity does little to promote visibility of the minority group’s lived experience. While this is true, it also concedes that these minor changes can exist without disrupting the plot, giving value to minority representation without upsetting a familiar audience. This argument is used haphazardly to undermine character renewals by those who seek to poke holes and find gripes with these issues. But it does stand as a valuable argument to promote better, more faithful representation of minorities in cinema. Creating brand-new stories to accurately portray a group can tackle the issues of underrepresentation and stigma at once — which “Ted Lasso” aims to do. Spinoffs, like the upcoming fourth season, build on the advantage of familiar characters and themes to deliver a new, authentic story representative of a new, multicultural cast. The upcoming fourth season attempts to bring honest stories from marginalized backgrounds to a mainstream, and increasingly diverse, audience.
With a biased mindset from the start, reviews from an adult audience are doomed to begin with, which propagates the idea that the diversity these shows promote is what ruins the experience for viewers. But if a change in superficial traits truly takes from the content’s ability to entertain someone, then the content might not be the issue. The issue boils down to whether a new identity changes a character beyond recognition and deviates from the original plot to ruin a remake, or whether the viewer does not want to accept the truth that someone of a minority identity is capable of meeting or exceeding the original, non-minority character’s personality.
The markings of a post-discrimination society are not present in America. And while many events on the news are outbursts of radical activity, its these day-to-day microaggressions and stigmatisms that normalize the idea that minorities cannot live up to the legacy of America’s privileged classes. When these recasts and spinoffs are announced, take a moment to understand the motivations behind the decision, the changes they bring to the plot, and the impact they can have on the targeted audience. Instead of jumping to stereotypical conclusions and outrage, leave the cycle of hate and give Ted Lasso a chance to redefine the narrative of remakes.