This article discusses, in detail, the finale of HBO’s Task.
The finale of Brad Ingelsby’s Mare of Easttown follow up, Task, was just as exciting as viewers might have hoped. For the first 40 minutes, it was all shoot-outs and showdowns and deaths, though none quite as gutting as Robbie’s (Tom Pelphrey) last week. Secondary characters that I would have liked to get to know better got relatively satisfying endings. Aleah (Thuso Mbedu) proved she really did care about Lizzie (Alison Oliver) with her persistence in catching Grasso (Fabien Frankel), and maybe learned something about her own strength in taking down a biker twice her size. Kath (Martha Plimpton) stood by her task force, angry bosses be damned.
But a quieter, more emotional and philosophical tone predominated throughout the final third of the episode, titled “A Still Small Voice” after a biblical description of God’s manifestation to the prophet Elijah. It was in these moments that Ingelsby (mostly successfully) tied up the themes of forgiveness, redemption, and in at least once case damnation that call back to Tom’s (Mark Ruffalo) past in the priesthood and undergird the show’s plot. While each character’s outcome draws out a different aspect of Ingelsby’s message, the overarching idea I’ll take away from Task is that—no matter what a person has done or had done to them—for as long as we’re alive, we possess the potential to redeem ourselves and to forgive those who have hurt us.
Jayson damns himself twice over
Anyone who was still holding out hope—even after he fired the first shot of last week’s woodland massacre, in defiance of Perry’s (Jamie McShane) order to stand down—that Jayson Wilkes (Sam Keeley) had a heart or half a brain or a sense of mercy must have been sorely disappointed by the way his story ended. In the finale, he and Perry are hiding out together, but both are on edge, and their quasi-familial bond has been…
