That is after the front office sorts out the actual team and coach that tackled 2021/22 because, in episodes 1 and 2, Wrexham was already rebuilding after falling short of making the top 7 teams that fought for promotion in the playoffs. Out is Dean Keates, and in comes Phil Parkinson an experienced manager with plenty of English Championship experience who’s not exactly instantly lured by the prospects of the Hollywood actors’ project.
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While there is some focus on the fans and people of Wrexham in the third episode, the main theme is the club leveraging the influence (and money) Reynolds and McElhenney bring to the table, both of which give it a unique advantage it lacked before. Nonetheless, some people behind the club also get to reap those benefits, such as Kerry Evans, a disabled woman who formerly volunteered to assure the club complied with accessibility standards (like The Last of Us), and who’s now a paid Wrexham employee in the position of Disability Liaison Officer.
Parkinson is ultimately convinced to join the club by McElhenney, as is the case for their current CEO Fleur Robinson, however, fans of Football Manager will know a good team needs a few star players, and in this case, it’s EFL League Two top scorer Paul Mullin, whose league actually showed up on FIFA. Welcome to Wrexham sure drives home the idea that this is not supposed to be possible, a player of Mullin’s caliber, who had just obtained promotion to a league 2 tiers above where Wrexham is has no reason to join this football reality show, or does he?
This moment certainly defines Reynolds and McElhenney’s Wrexham story like few others, the two actors are without a doubt absolute game changers at this level, and while even clubs like Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City have learned an endless budget can’t buy a Champions League, it will give them a fighting chance thanks to stellar signings. Mullin decides to sign with Wrexham, a move driven by his desire to live closer to his family in Liverpool, now only a 50-minute drive from Wrexham, yet it will also make viewers wonder how real all of this truly is.
Owning a sports team is an absolute dream for many people all over the world, it’s the reason why we even have fantasy sports leagues and games like Football Manager, and at times, it feels like Reynolds and McElhenney are just playing their own version of that with some English National Football League cheat codes. Nevertheless, with great power comes great responsibility, and despite Mullin’s signing causing excitement among fans, it also drives a bit of a wedge between the players due to the obvious income disparities that exist among them.
The reality TV nature of Welcome to Wrexham sees players like Reece Hall-Johnson, Cameron Green, Dan Jarvis, Tyler French, and Jordan Ponticelli (only Hall-Johnson remains at the club) joke about Mullin’s salary compared to their modest paychecks, meaning money is a big topic in the locker room. Whenever filming sports documentaries, these points of conflict will be put on screen and the matter of how that affects each athlete’s performance is often the subject of controversy as has been the case for Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive, in which some drivers have outright refused to take part in as they do not want their words to be ever taken out of context.
How good is the chemistry at Wrexham? Well, the league standings suggest Parkinson has a big job ahead of him to get this group of players to gel together as half the squad from the previous two episodes is gone. The first few games see Wrexham struggle and the audience gets a front-row seat to watch how that affects the fans, the players, the coach, and the owners, so very much like a real-life Ted Lasso.
As one of the team’s stars, Mullin is in the spotlight, there’s mounting pressure on this expensive signing to perform as expected, even coming from some of his teammates, and although he gets off to a decent enough start, that is not the case for the entire team. At least the extra time he gets to spend with his family, all loving Liverpool fans, is definitely worth it, because fret not, Mullin finished the season as the National League’s top scorer.
Because for all its wholesomeness, Welcome to Wrexham is about Reynolds and McElhenney entering the unknown, which may at times come in the need to spend $364k on a new football pitch, shooting TikTok videos for their new sponsors, and fooling around as any fantasy sports team director would love to do. Perhaps nothing sums up the experience like Reynolds own words: owning a football club, even a tiny one, is “very time consuming, emotionally exhausting, financially idiotic, and utterly addictive.” — Oh, and it’s also pretty fun to watch.
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