Ted Lasso Fans Discover Rupert's Unexpected Buffy Connection
Fans are starting to ask: Are they the same Rupert?
The feel-good story of Ted Lasso wouldn’t be complete without a few villains. The worst of them is Rupert Mannion, Rebecca’s cheating ex-husband who lured Nate away from Ted to coach the opposing West Ham.
You might recognize him from an earlier role, though with a vastly different personality.
Decades before he appeared in Ted Lasso, Anthony Head played another Rupert - Rupert Giles from the beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was a Watcher employed by the Watchers' Council and a loving, supportive father figure to Buffy Summers. A popular character, he appeared in 123 of the show's 145 episodes, and his story was to be developed in the BBC spin-off series Ripper, but rights issues meant it never saw the light of day.
The two Ruperts are in stark contrast, but Head shines in both roles. He plays them with a sense of grandeur and dignity, traits that he brought to both the cruel billionaire in Ted Lasso and the fatherly Watcher in Buffy.
Despite their differences, fans have come up with an interesting theory. They suggest that Rupert Mannion and Rupert Giles are the same person! Well, sort of.
All we know about Mannion's past is that he was married to Rebecca twelve years before the show started (in 2020). That would be only a few years after his appearance in Season 5 of the Buffy spin-off Angel in 2004.
According to fan theory, he was trapped in the Ted Lasso universe by some dark magic and then decided to run a soccer club.
Buffy has shown that several characters have doppelgangers with very different personalities from the main character. In season 5, Xander's personality is split into two different people. Each personality represented the two extremes of his personality. For Rupert, his money-hungry cruelty lived in the Ted Lasso universe.
Ted Lasso hasn't dabbled in the supernatural at all - unless you count a few semi-accurate psychic readings. But fans have their own ideas.
Since his career-making role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Head has had a stellar career. He's appeared in shows like Bridgerton, Doctor Who, and Galavant, as well as film roles in Percy Jackson, Sweeney Todd, and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.
And, interestingly, there was a third time that Head played a man named Rupert in a high-profile project. He appeared in two episodes of Amazon Prime's Jack Ryan series in 2019, opposite John Krasinski, as Rupert Thorne, the CEO of Eprius.
While fans are pretty sure their dreams of a Buffy/Lasso crossover are far-fetched, they can watch it all unfold every Wednesday on Apple TV+.