The following article contains spoilers for Task.Viewers following HBO Max’s crime series Task witnessed the show’s most thrilling moments to date in Episode 6, as the penultimate entry featured a violent showdown that resulted in a few deaths. Shockingly, one of the characters who died before the series finale was the co-lead Robbie Prendergast (Tom Pelphrey), who died in the arms of agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) after being fatally stabbed. As surprising as Robbie’s death was, actor Tom Pelphrey has said that he always felt that his character had to die in order to follow the truthful spirit of the story.
Pelphrey, also known for his role as Ben in Ozark, recently spoke to Collider about his character’s “early” death. “There’s no version in this universe or any other that I let a Brad Ingelsby script pass me by for somebody else. I just want to make that perfectly clear,” Pelphrey said when describing his admiration for showrunner and writer Brad Ingelsby (Mare of Easttown). The actor also said that ever since he read Ingelsby’s script, he knew that his demise was inevitable:
“The part of me that becomes joined with Robbie, which is the goal that you have every time, wants him to succeed and be in Canada with his family. I desperately wanted that, and I was trying to play the truth of that throughout every scene I’m in. The part of me that’s the actor who appreciates structure and story is looking at it and saying, ‘This has to go the way it’s going to go. If we’re going to be honest and tell the truth about how this is going to play out, that’s how this has to go.’
“I felt the same way with Ozark. I loved that character so much, but when I read it, I thought, ‘Given this world, given the rules of this world and the people that exist in this world, and given the universe that we’ve created, there’s only one way this can go, if we’re going to tell the truth.'”
“I Don’t Know If There Are Good Guys Here”
Task ends this Sunday with the premiere of the series finale on HBO Max at 9 PM ET/PT. Episode 7 will see agents Tom Brandis and Aleah Clinton trying to take down Anthony Grasso, who has been revealed to be an informant for the bad guys, and whose actions resulted in the death of agent Lizzie Stover.
Pelphrey also used the opportunity to address Brad Ingelsby’s screenwriting skills in creating characters with complicated morals that don’t follow any particular code. In Task, the line often blurs between the good and the bad:
“I certainly feel moved and excited to be a part of when somebody can capture that in a truthful way, like Brad does in Task, with almost every single character, and not just Robbie. He’s insistent upon that. Beyond just the actor in me, the human being in me, very similar to the human being in Brad, is like, yeah, if there’s anything worth talking about, over and over and over again, it’s that. I don’t think any of us get tired of it either.
“That’s something worth exploring from every possible angle we can and maybe even reinforcing the idea of what you just said. I don’t know if there are good guys here, and I’m not sure who the bad guys are either.”
- Release Date
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2025 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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HBO
- Directors
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Jeremiah Zagar