Players Steven Fletcher and Elliot Lee celebrate on the pitch of 'Welcome to Wrexham' Season 4
FX

Welcome To Wrexham, FX’s little sports docuseries that could, returned to our screens for a triumphant fourth season this spring. The Emmy-winning show, focused on the quixotic quest of a historic Welsh football club to reclaim its lost glory, is now in the position of being an elder statesman (stateshow? Is that a thing?) of the genre. Wrexham AFC’s multi-year comeback runs on the twin engines of funding from stars Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) and Rob Mac (né McElhenney – he recently abbreviated his surname for simplicity) (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), and the laser focus on excellence shared by the players and the team’s supporters.

Reynolds and Mac hired a film crew to document the earliest days of their association with the team, way back in 2021, when they were courting Wrexham AFC’s Supporter Association with their interest in purchasing the club. Over the course of its four seasons so far, Welcome to Wrexham has garnered 12 Emmy nominations (and won 8), and the actors have developed deep, long-term relationships with players, front office staff, and fans. A fifth season has already been greenlit, and Mac is involved in Wrexham’s spiritual child, Necaxa, a forthcoming FX docuseries about a similarly storied but down-at-heel football club in Mexico benefiting from the involvement of an actor keen to invest in a team with potential (in this case, Eva Longoria).

Welcome to Wrexham’s fourth season broadly follows four arcs of varying duration and importance: the men’s team’s quest for a record-setting third consecutive promotion up the football leagues to the Championship League; Team Director Humphrey Ker’s training to run a marathon; the club’s continuing efforts to build a talent pipeline for both their women’s and men’s teams; and the economic and social impact of club on their home town. It’s a lot to get through in just eight episodes, so we’re just going to highlight the season’s biggest moments.

Another Promotion!

The Team Promotion Celebration in 'Welcome to Wrexham' Season 4

There’s no such thing as spoilers for a news-based reality series, so let’s begin with the ending: they did it! Wrexham’s Red Dragons continued to build on their recent successes by pulling off the unprecedented feat of achieving league promotions across three consecutive seasons.

Wrexham AFC is infamous for struggling and failing to gain promotion during post-season playoffs, so the aim each year has been to clinch automatic promotion by finishing regular season play in one of their league table’s top two spots. Their shot at automatic promotion in 2025 was anything but assured, coming almost down to the wire with the team clinching promotion in the season’s penultimate match by defeating Charlton Athletic 3-0. PHEW!

Seeing all of the fans rushing the pitch once time was called will never get old for me, and I can’t wait to see how the Reds fare next season in the Championship League. Premier League, here we come? Up the town, let’s goooooooooo!

On the Other Hand, Precarity

Paul Mullin in 'Welcome to Wrexham' Season 4

Professional sports can be brutal on their players, in body, mind, and paycheck. While it’s awful to watch things like season-ending injuries or a player losing their touch even temporarily unfold, I appreciate that Welcome To Wrexham doesn’t shy away from this aspect of reality in the business.

Football is a contact sport played without pads or helmets, which is easy to forget until we’re faced with literal bone-crunching injuries, like the two most devastating of the season. Ace striker Jack Marriott describes hearing his tibia crack as it happened. Gifted goalkeeper Arthur Okonkwo’s early-season wrist injury doesn’t take him out of the entire campaign, but the team was lucky to be able to call upon the talents of veteran Mark Thompson. They were similarly fortunate to have the seasoned striker Steven Fletcher on hand to furnish a slew of clutch late-game goals in crucial wins for the team.

But business is business, and Thompson and Fletcher are both in their late 30s. When faced with the increased challenges of competing successfully against other Championship League teams, the club released both players in mid-May. Team manager Phil Parkinson is going to have even tougher decisions to make as the Reds pursue another promotion to the Premier League. Thompson and Fletcher’s respective releases occurred after Wrexham’s season finale was locked, but viewers still get a glimpse of how tough the going can get when the pressure is ratcheted up. Fan favorites and major contributors to earlier seasons like Ollie Palmer and Paul Mullin scarcely appear in later episodes; Ollie watches and cheers his teammates on from home, and Mullin was recently loaned to Wigan Athletic for the 2025-26 season. Them’s the breaks in the big show.

Building a Talent Pipeline

The Women's Team huddles in 'Welcome to Wrexham' Season 4

Rob and Ryan are big into ensuring that their ongoing, high-value investments in the club are building towards something more substantial and sustainable than league promotions alone. Previous seasons have touched on the club’s awe-inspiring women’s team – they, too, earned a promotion to a higher league which actually pays its players – but viewers could be excused from noticing previous blink-and-you’ll-miss-it references to the club’s many teams for younger players on both the men’s and women’s sides.

Club leadership refers to these teams collectively as the club’s academies, where promising players can hone their skills and perhaps win a contract to play for the professional teams. It’s fun to start to get to know some of these future stars of the sport across the season as a whole, and then heartbreaking and joyful by turns, as each player learns their fate in the season finale.

One highlight of the season is seeing the thoughtful long-term investments Rob and Ryan fund to bring the women’s academy and facilities closer to parity with the men’s. Buying a new practice location is a significant upgrade – does anyone else remember the horrible, constantly soggy pitch the women’s side had to use as a home ground? Let’s hear it for a pitch that drains properly!

Old Dogs, New Tricks (Or: Humphrey Lives!)

Humphrey Kerr handing out awards at the Kick4Life event in 'Welcome to Wrexham' Season 4

Humphrey Ker is staggeringly underrated as a screen presence in Welcome To Wrexham. A lifelong football fan and longtime Wrexham appreciator, Humphrey first got Rob hooked on the sport by encouraging him to watch Sunderland Til I Die during the first wave of Covid lockdowns in 2020. Rob was quickly converted to the sport and took a shine to Wrexham AFC soon thereafter. Rob was immediately enthusiastic about the idea of helping a team in one of the lower leagues fight their way back to the Championship or higher. (For those who want to hear Humphrey’s perspective in detail, this recent episode of the High Performance podcast is for you!)

Humphrey is also very adept at translating extremely British aspects of living and running a business in the U.K. for American viewers, and by extension, fulfilling his role as the long-suffering straight man to Rob and Ryan’s unrelenting chaos Muppet-ry.

Humphrey Kerr in 'Welcome to Wrexham' Season 4

His plummy accent and schmancy educational and familial pedigrees (he graduated from the University of Edinburgh and is related to at least one member of the peerage and a notable 20th-century Vice-Admiral of the Royal Navy) suggest that he could be a bit of an upper-class twit. But he’s always ready to poke fun at himself. Last season, it was gentle, self-aware self-mockery about his time at Eton College, where he was in the same class as Prince William.

This season, viewers are treated to his grueling, months-long training regimen in preparation to run the Manchester Marathon. Humphrey’s frankness about the whole project – he’s not an athlete by inclination and loathed the entire training process, while also noting his immense gratitude to the team of sports professionals at Wrexham – is refreshing and even a bit gutsy on a show about professional sports. As he crosses the finish line with literal bleeding nipples, all of his many mortifications of the flesh seem to have been worth it, raising over £130,000 for The Wrexham Miners’ Project.

has already been renewed for a fifth season. All previous seasons are available to stream on Hulu or on Disney+ under the Hulu tile.

Sophie has been happily steeping in the potent brew of British TV since her parents let her stay up late on a Thursday watching the Jeremy Brett adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. She loves mysteries, espionage thrillers, documentaries, and costume dramas, and if you're not careful, she might talk your ear off about the Plantagenets. Sorry about that in advance!

You can find Sophie on all the platforms as @sophiebiblio and keep an eye on her bylines from all over the internet via her handy portfolio.

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Top 4 Moments from 'Welcome to Wrexham' Season 4