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Chapters: 9/9 Fandom: Ted Lasso (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Ted Lasso/Rebecca Welton Characters: Ted Lasso, Rebecca Welton, Henry Lasso, Keeley Jones, Coach Beard (Ted Lasso), boat guy aka plot device, Roy Kent, Michelle Lasso Additional Tags: Friends to Lovers, Angst and Feels, Yearning, they are extra messy in this one, hate the sin love the sinner, Soulmates Soulmating, exorcising demons - not literally Summary:

Nothing good comes out of a middle-of-the-night phone call. It’s never someone calling to say they got the job, or that they’re engaged, or that something finally worked out the way it was supposed to. Those calls wait for morning and a version of the world where good news has room to exist. A call that comes at night only ever means something has gone wrong, that someone is awake when they shouldn’t be, choosing words they don’t want to say. And somewhere else, someone is about to answer, not knowing that whatever comes next will divide everything into before and after.

The Weight of Guilt by TeaSleuth

some fanart from when i was obsessed with hayffie and this very much perfect fanfic that made me feel like it was reading Suzanne Collins write a sequel book :)) love old people falling in love again and again

Luckily for him and for us, Rebecca Welton is the sort of character who sees ‘inescapable fate’ and thinks ‘bet’. Dorothy in the fourth book (nobody ever reads past the first book!) is straight back out of Kansas and good for her lol.

The wonky pacing of S3 can’t be fixed. But I do genuinely think we’ll look back at the character arcs of S3 after watching S4-6 and think that they make a great deal more sense knowing they were written more as Ted’s dark forest midpoint as opposed to a triumphant ending. Maybe I’m way off base! But I don’t buy that those months of delays at the start of S3 filming when Jason threw out the initial scripts weren’t because he’d decided they were continuing past S3. I mean, I don’t actually think he changed the ending in the sense that Ted/Rebecca were initially supposed to have their big happy romcom ending and that he never went back to Kansas. I think he was always going to go back to Kansas but the original ending when it was meant to be the true finale leant much more into the ‘right person wrong time’ of it all and acknowledged the romantic undertone. I don’t think the parallel of Rebecca in the airport to Michelle was an accident either! And I don’t think any of it was meaningless or trolling (minus the opening scene of the finale, that probably needed to be cut but it does also serve a purpose going forward now it’s part of the canon). I do think what a lot of Twitter doomers forget is that the one plot element that was expressly reported as being a new addition as part of the rewrites was…Amsterdam, and all that entails. Because an obstacle is needed, but I also think they’re writing a genuine friends (unhinged soulmates)-to-lovers rather than a trite will-they-won’t-they that ends up sucking up attention from everything else worthy of discussion in the show. I think they’ll keep à degree of plausible deniability as to them being platonic soulmates right up to the minute they narratively make the jump.

Sorry for the stupidly long self-indulgent ramble in your inbox. I’d put my thoughts on Reddit but they all take the creators’ words at face value. Obviously boat guy isn’t her Tish-approved lightning strike of a happy ending. He’s not been made a main or even heavily recurring character and we’ve got three seasons to go. They don’t want us to actually invest in him beyond the superficial. Maybe it’ll be the S4 finale, maybe it’ll be mid-S5, but the prediction I’m most confident in is that ship will sink.

I’m not just giving you a short answer to be flippant but you’re literally voicing everything I also think. I do believe that the guy from Amsterdam is a passing distraction at best. I think the way the episode was shot inside that boat felt almost like a dream with the warm colors and hazy feeling where everything felt almost too perfect. Also, Rebecca going for another man who’s also unavailable in every aspect (being from another country, a pilot, divorced who’s also co-parenting) plays a huge factor. So I’m not at all worried. I do think we will see him again and he’ll play some role in season 4 but nothing like a permanent thing in Rebecca’s life.

I also agree if Ted and Rebecca are to be something more it’ll more than likely happen in season 5. Especially after going back and seeing what they set up in season three. The finale did feel like a rewrite. It was confined that halfway through the season they did, in fact, rewrite half of the season. Which makes sense with reshoots and how long it took for that season to come out. And how bad, quite frankly, the back half the season felt.

Their relationship is ambiguous, and Suzanne Collins supported this ambiguity when, after killing every other alternative ship for Haymitch in sunrise on the reaping (Maysilee was his sister and Asterid was his best friend’s wife), she only made their emotional connection deeper and more meaningful than it was. Implying that Haymitch is still in love with Lenore Dove isn’t an effective way to prove Hayffie wrong, since that’s a lore we’ve been working with since day one and Suzanne Collins know that. If she wanted to actively kill the ship, she would have managed to make it obvious like she did with the others, and..and she absolutely didn’t. So that was a very good hint :)

“oh Hayffie will never be canon. NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER”…first, chill out honey, you’ll survive. Second, the point is precisely that they are not canon, but that they are not not-canon either, because they have twenty-five years of gap in the history and we don’t know what happened during this time, so we don’t know the real nature of their relationship. The ambiguity Suzanne granted us just gave us the green light to keep theorizing, because it is A FICTIONAL BOOK. those people don’t exist, dear

But it makes me think of something else - I saw this theory multiple times but it says that katniss didn’t share her children’s names because it was the first time she didn’t have to share something personal, it’s the first time she could have kept a piece of her life as hers, it her story she doesn’t have to tell.

I think it’s the same with hayffie.

The fact that Haymitch and Effie had this instant connection, instant trust in each other even with their different upbringing and their bond was 25 years long - it probably touch Haymitch so much and meant so much to him worked his ass of to save her from execution.

This connection is so delicate, since they for sure had to walk on their tiptoes around how the Capitol and snow viewed them, a good connection between an escort and a victor could look suspiciously like an affair - they were probably rumours about them (we don’t have any other mentor escort relashionship to compare but drusilla basically ignored mags and wires).

Those 25 years were probably the hardest years of his life and Effie was probably the only one he could be vulnerable to - thats so intimate. Of course he doesn’t want to share it.

And Effie’s imprisonment- Haymitch probably feels hella guilty about this and there were probably some consequences that might hurt their relashionship - that is so so intimate and some of it is Effie’s story - so he probably think it’s not his to tell.

I actually really like the ambiguity with hayffie cause he tell us what is relevant to the story without going overboard - cause their relationship is strong and complex and build on shared empathy but at the same time they both being to the table their baggage and the outside baggage- this is very hard to navigate through. It makes me think that Haymitch himself didn’t knew how to process it - especially in the epilogue.

Suzanne gave hayffie so much depth and I love it, she didn’t have to, especially with the way she probably wanted to put Haydove on this pedestal (understandable) but imo unfortunately a teenage relashionship that was featured in the same book it ended doesn’t hold to the reader as the most meaningful one when you have two characters who we know have a deeper Longer and more unexpected connection, who we know for 15+ years, but then you tell us there was never a love hate thing between them but mutual respect and instant understanding? GOD THAT HURTS IN THE BEST WAY but it’s also more impactful.

We all know that Mags is a very beloved victor among the victors, but Wiress(and Haymitch)? They have a special thing. I mentioned in a post long ago that Mags was the only elder figure that Wiress could rely on during the quell, with Beetee being occupied by mentoring his kids, coming up with a plan and the potato stand he was largely unavailable(not a Beetee shade), and to Wiress, who is so fresh out of her arena having to mentor not two but FOUR kids must have been crazy, I said too that imo Wire put on a brave face to the kids, as the last thing they need is an unreliable mentor, but behind closed doors, Mags was the only one who saw how much of a toll her first time mentoring felt, especially with so much at stake. Just like the way she let Haymitch drop his guard and cry in her arms, Mags would hold Wiress too when the kids fell asleep. She would guide her to dos and don’ts of mentoring, help her with the drills and the protocols, in that way, Mags also became a mentor to Wiress. Another way they connected was unfortunately through trauma. As both were tortured viciously by Snow, and Mags I think felt immense sorrow and pain at the fact that she couldn’t do anything at all to protect Wiress, whether they were tortured together or separate there’s no doubt that they were the first to see each other post torture, and I imagine it was nightmare inducing when you see such a bright girl who did everything she could to help children escape certain death and to aid the rebellion that would ensure nobody would go through what they went through get so horribly punished for it. She would certainly get better in the future, certainly smile at Mags whenever the 2 would have the time for a quick exchange in the mentor’s lounge, with both of them struggling through their words it would be a bit difficult to communicate but they do it, and they each year see Haymitch lose himself to alcohol, and it I imagine isn’t easy for either of them, in a twisted turn of fate it’s another way that they bonded in, because I truly do believe they too tried to help/support the victor of the quell, only to be either pushed away or simply not having enough time in their brief interactions. Their story is very very sad and overlooked imo. When Mags would bring back home a victor she could at least be there for them through the tour/moving into the victors village, but she was not given an opportunity to truly be there for neither Haymitch nor Wiress, it’s a very difficult thing to go through I think oh Mags and Wiress my dear mentors😔😔