This post contains spoilers for Task season 1, episode 6, titled “Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing, There Is a River.”
After a season of dancing to Gwen Stefani with Grasso (Fabien Frankel) and leading eastern Pennsylvania police on the chase of a lifetime, respectively, both Lizzie (Alison Oliver) and Robbie (Tom Pelphrey) have departed Task for the great sweet escape in the sky.
Sunday’s episode ended with not one, but two shocking character deaths as Lizzie and Robbie met their untimely end within the thrilling series’ penultimate installment, which saw FBI agent Tom’s (Mark Ruffalo) titular force finally clashing with the Dark Hearts motorcycle gang leaders Jayson (Sam Keeley) and Perry (Jamie McShane) in a bloody, woods-set showdown.
With Robbie still on the run following a close encounter with Tom, the groups become separated into clusters of contention, with Tom’s boss, Kathleen (Martha Plimpton), taking a non-fatal shot for the team, while Grasso attempts to evade detection amid the violent squabble as the true informant behind the information leaks that have plagued the FBI’s pursuit.
Peter Kramer/HBO
During the ensuing gunfight, Lizzie is left with traumatic tinnitus ringing in her ear, resulting from Grasso firing a shot at the gang next to her. Later, after she attempts to radio for backup — and unable to hear the warnings of Grasso, who also served as Lizzie’s romantic interest, and fellow force member Aleah (Thuso Mbedu) — Lizzie is struck and killed by the Dark Hearts’ getaway car.
“The impact Lizzie leaves on the group is a profound one,” writer Brad Ingelsby tells Entertainment Weekly. “What her death does is it adds a tremendous amount of guilt, in terms of Grasso’s storyline. He thought he was able to manage all these things, he had this house of cards he constantly tended to, and now the house of cards has fallen down, and he’s left with the guilt and shame.”
Looking ahead to next week’s finale, Ingelsby promises that, for Grasso, “all the balls in the air come crashing down,” as a result of “the horrible death of this woman he cares about.”
“He’s the cause of her death. He literally lets Jayson and Perry go, and because he lets them go, they run into Lizzie,” Ingelsby points out. “In addition, it makes Aleah and Tom determined to get to the truth” next week.
And then, moments later, there’s an even bigger death.
During a violent one-on-one tussle with Jayson — the man who previously killed his brother, Billy — Robbie suffers a fatal stabbing injury to the chest.
Though Tom attempts to save Robbie and accompanies him in the back of an escort car en route to the hospital, Robbie still dies in Tom’s arms. It’s a somber, moving scene that serves as the last chapter in Tom and Robbie’s cat-and-mouse game, one which brings Tom full circle to his days as a priest as he comforts Robbie in his final moments.
“It’s very moving because Tom, in the little time he actually has with Robbie, he understands him, and he understands why he’s doing what he does,” Ruffalo tells EW, adding that Tom sees Robbie’s actions in avenging the death of his brother as human acts before criminal ones — at least in that moment.
Peter Kramer/HBO
“It’s what makes Tom a really great agent: his empathy. It’s his superpower, because he knows how to get under the skin of the people he’s looking for, and it makes it more difficult, but it also makes him a much more canny agent,” observes Ruffalo. “The time he spends with Robbie, he’s surprised by his level of humanity, and he understands the need for revenge, loss, justice, and retribution. Things that transcend the law, which is a human thing. He has a lot of care for him in the short time they’re together. He loves him, and when he dies, he sees a soul. There’s an idea of last rites, baptized, and being saved, that there’s no way to get to heaven, let’s say, without those things.”
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
In the end, “he sees Robbie as a good man who made bad choices in bad circumstances,” Ruffalo says. “I don’t think he sees himself as that different, really. That’s empathy. He’s moved, and it propels him into forgiveness for his son, who murdered his wife.”
See how Lizzie and Robbie’s deaths impact the characters — including Robbie’s niece, Maeve (Emilia Jones) — when the Task finale premieres Sunday, Oct. 19, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO.
