HBO‘s new show Task follows the fallout of a string of home invasion robberies spread throughout the Philadelphia suburbs. The one thing all of these thefts have in common? The trio of masked robbers are specifically targeting gang houses immediately after a big drug deal has gone through, leaving with the money, not the drugs.
When we first meet these thieves — single dad Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey), his loyal best friend Cliff Browder (Raúl Castillo), and the recently engaged Peaches (Owen Teague) — it’s impossible not to like them. All three men are softies, embarking on this life of crime to better the lives of the people they love. So it’s all the more stressful when the crew’s latest heist goes chaotically, violently awry at the end of Task Episode 1 “Crossings.”
**Spoilers for Task Episode 1 “Crossings,” now streaming on HBO MAX**
At the end of Task Episode 1, Robbie and his pals encounter their first ever real resistance from the gang members they’ve targeted. A shootout unfolds, claiming the lives of Peaches as well as the homeowners and their interloping friend.
“Shooting that last scene of the first episode sort of set the tone for the entire season in a lot of ways,” Raúl Castillo told DECIDER. “Tom Pelphrey and Owen Teague and I arrived some number of days before we started shooting to rehearse that scene. It was quite complicated. There was a lot of moving elements. There’s a lot of moving pieces. There was a lot of choreography involved, a lot of stunts.”
Robbie and Cliff make it out with their prize, but not before stumbling upon a little boy who had been sleeping in the basement. Sam (Ben Lewis Doherty) has now seen Robbie and Cliff’s faces, meaning they can’t leave him there without giving the authorities a leg up on capturing them.
Robbie makes the only choice a kind-hearted man like him can do…he kidnaps Sam. So why does Robbie make that decision? And what other secrets might you have missed in the final moments of Task Episode 1?
In another crime show featuring any other criminal, Sam might have suffered a far more tragic end. However, according to Task star Tom Pelphrey, that was never going to be an option for Robbie.
“Ultimately I think it was the best choice of a bunch of bad choices,” Pelphrey said of the kidnapping. “There’s one option that would never be on the table with Robbie, which is, you know, I don’t even need to say it.”
“There’s another option where he leaves Sam and then everything that he’s trying to do for his own kids goes out the window within a day or two. And so the only option that he’s left with, that is viable, which is what he does.”
Pelphrey called Robbie’s decision “really beautiful and true to him and surprising.” He then went on tease that what happens next with Robbie and Sam might not be what the audience is anticipating.
“You know, I think, in the history of seeing stories where a child is taken, we’ve never seen one like this,” Pelphrey said with a hearty laugh. “It’s like, wow, that’s not how you would think this would go!”
According to Raúl Castillo, shooting that tense robbery-gone-awry with Pelphrey also helped the actors bond as their Task characters.
“It just set the tone for the three of us who are playing those characters,” Castillo said. “I think it established a sort of trust that we needed to kind of carry throughout the season. It was a lot of fun to shoot, even as dark as the material was.”
Peak TV has taught viewers to look out for Easter eggs everywhere, so should Task fans be reading into the Halloween masks that Robbie and his pals wear for their crimes? Raúl Castillo told DECIDER that series showrunner Brad Ingelsby and Episode 1 director Jeremiah Zagar had “very specific opinions” about the masks. Robbie dons a skull mask while Teague’s Peaches wears a wolf one. Cliff’s is that of a red devil, but Castillo revealed it wasn’t always.
“I think Owen Teague and Tom Pelphrey, both of their masks were picked out pretty quickly. Mine went through a couple changes,” he said. “One of them was a pumpkin mask, which I kind of dug, but ultimately, I think the mask that I wound up with looks great on on camera.”
Castillo’s comments suggest that Ingelsby and Zagar were more interested in how the masks looked on camera than letting them provide any additional clues about the characters.