The Task Finale Was ‘A Still Small Voice’ for Redemption and Forgiveness

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.

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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 weakened. Dark Hearts leadership wants loose-cannon Jayson dead and gives Perry an opportunity to kill his surrogate son to save himself. But when the time comes and he has the knife in his hand, he can’t bring himself to do it. This is a fatal mistake: Jayson soon learns that Perry killed Eryn (Margarita Levieva) and stabs him to death. “I know what you did,” he whispers, almost tenderly. For his part, Perry remains loyal to Jayson even as he’s being murdered by him. “They’re coming,” he warns the younger man, giving him a head start as the Dark Hearts converge on their hideout.

Before the day turned violent, Perry had figured out that Robbie’s stash of drug money had to be at Maeve’s (Emilia Jones) house. So that’s where Jayson goes just after killing his mentor, to get the loot by any means necessary. But a critically wounded Grasso is already on the scene when he arrives, and Tom and Aleah are right behind him. As the latter two officers approach Jayson, guns drawn, he uses Maeve as a human shield (and I have no doubt he would’ve shot her if it would have meant escaping with the cash). Jayson doesn’t clock Grasso in the car behind him, and Grasso shoots Jayson just before losing consciousness. (More on that later.)

Jayson proves to be the single worst human being in Task. But that doesn’t mean Ingelsby, in this extraordinarily compassionate show, denies him a modicum of humanity. He’s terminally selfish and out of control of his emotions; how many people would still be alive if he hadn’t killed Robbie’s brother, Billy (Jack Kesy), for sleeping with Eryn? Yet his rage over Eryn’s murder and anguish at Perry’s betrayal suggest that even Jayson possesses the traces of love and moral intelligence that are prerequisites for atonement. He just doesn’t turn himself around soon enough. 

Grasso finds redemption

Anthony Grasso isn’t a terrible person, but he has done terrible things. Early in the finale, we learn why. He confesses to his sister that he worked as an informant for the Dark Hearts to earn money to help her buy a house that would enable her to escape with her kids from an abusive relationship and to get their mother into a better nursing home. None of that makes up for the suffering he’s caused; Lizzie’s death not only laid bare the threat his treachery had always posed to his colleagues, but also robbed him of a person who might have been the love of his life. But he does, at least partially, redeem himself by saving another young woman. When he escapes the shootout that leaves Mike (Raphael Sbarge) dead, Grasso is badly hurt. Instead of driving himself to the hospital, though, he goes to Maeve’s house to warn her that the Dark Hearts are coming for her. Then he takes the fatal shot at Jayson that saves her life.

He was never going to outrun Tom and Aleah. Nor do I think he would have wanted to. As he told Mike, after catching Mike on a mission to kill him, Grasso was about to come clean with OPS. His conversation with Mike underscores the implications of that choice. When Grasso asks Mike how he’s managed to do such horrible things for so long, he explains: “You find ways to rationalize it… I put my three boys through college.” His justification sounds a lot like Grasso’s mental math. A decade or two down the road, if Lizzie’s death hadn’t awakened him to the consequences of his actions, it could’ve been Grasso gearing up to murder his own protégé.

“Hey, boss, are you gonna give me my penance?” Grasso asks, after the melee at Maeve’s house, when Tom comes to visit him in the hospital. “I never gave penance,” Tom replies. “People beat themselves up enough on their own.” This is a callback to what he told Grasso last week: “Confession is a human practice, to help us deal with the shame. Confession’s not for God’s sake. If you want to be forgiven, all you have to do is ask.” If you believe in the Christian God, then it follows that you don’t really have to say a specific prayer or enumerate your sins to a priest in order to convince that omniscient entity that you’re repentant. God already knows. At the same time, sincere atonement can’t save Grasso from a lifetime’s worth of guilt over Lizzie.  

Maeve’s ending is an auspicious new beginning

Robbie’s niece Maeve might be Task’s most sympathetic character, in large part thanks to Emilia Jones’ remarkably authentic performance, but also because she’s locked into a terrible predicament that she didn’t choose yet is too loyal to her family to escape. Her words to Robbie in an early episode—“What have you done to us?”—have reverberated throughout the season, underlining her innocence as well as his guilt. He died an accidental killer and a reluctant kidnapper who never meant to do anything worse than steal drug money from the people who murdered his brother. But for all his failures, he also managed, indirectly, to give Maeve a future.

As many law enforcement characters have reminded us, she is legally implicated in Robbie’s crimes. Plus, she’s in possession of a bag stuffed with the proceeds of his heists. She is ultimately able to leave Delaware County with her uncle’s kids and the cash to build a new life with them thanks to an act of mercy on his part. Back in Episode 5, Robbie briefly abducted Tom. While a more callous criminal might have murdered his FBI pursuer, Robbie let him go. His one request: “My niece Maeve, she had nothing to do with any of this. I don’t want her getting punished for my f-ckups. Will you help her?” Tom agrees, and Robbie pronounces him “a decent man.” He’s right. Though he’s not around to see Tom keep that promise, his trust is rewarded.

Robbie’s wishes aside, Tom’s decision to help Maeve is a reflection of his own understanding that there’s a difference between what the law prescribes and what is actually right. “Robbie Prendergast dropped her into a situation she never wanted, she never asked for,” he told a colleague in last week’s episode. “So we got one kid without a family [Sam]. We lock her up, we’re gonna have two more.” In the finale’s confrontation at Maeve’s house, Tom glimpses the bag of money, and we see him hesitate over what to do with it. But in the end, he does nothing. “You know what they say about wisdom, Kath?” he asks his boss later. “It’s knowing what to overlook.” Had her father and uncle not perished, Maeve might be a carefree 20-something pursuing her dreams. Now, at least, her premature parenthood will be less of a struggle. 

Tom learns to be unselfish with his love

If the show had one storyline that came off as a bit excessive, it was that of Tom’s relationship with his mentally ill adopted son, Ethan (Andrew Russel), who killed Tom’s wife (Mireille Enos). In a series that otherwise felt vividly realistic, Ethan’s crime, his sister Emily’s (Silvia Dionicio) insistence on defending him, and Tom’s inability to so much as visit him in prison played like a philosophy-class thought experiment. Could you forgive your child for taking your spouse’s life, even if he wasn’t in control of his faculties when he did it?

In a development presumably catalyzed by the task-force assignment, Tom finally decides that he must. “We have to speak the truth,” he tells Emily, “even when we’re afraid it’s gonna upset others.” His statement at Ethan’s hearing doubles as that “human practice… to help us deal with shame”: a confession. He admits to the court that he’d sometimes felt ashamed to be Ethan’s father, before the family found the right medication to treat the boy’s disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. And we learn that it was not even Ethan’s choice to go off his meds; a shortage during the pandemic left him no other option. In the courtroom, Tom addresses the young man directly: “I forgive you. I love you.” And although he won’t be the one to decide how soon Ethan will be released, “when that day comes, I’ll be ready. Come straight home.” It’s a nice summation of the show’s attitude towards forgiveness, even if I was left wishing Ethan’s character and Tom’s relationship with him had gotten more attention in earlier episodes. 

A better integrated manifestation of the show’s themes is the conclusion of little Sam’s story. Tom clearly enjoys having him around. But would it be right to commit to raising him, as an aging, exhausted problem drinker with one daughter getting divorced, another still at home, and a troubled son due to move back in sometime in the future? Tom’s priest friend Daniel (Isaach De Bankolé) urges him to “be unselfish with your love. What’s best for you might not be best for the boy.” And so he lets Sam go. This storyline might not directly address forgiveness, but what is forgiveness if not being unselfish with one’s love? We can see that these two decisions give Tom some relief, for perhaps the first time since his wife’s death. In Task’s final, wordless scene, he gazes out the window of his darkened home, into the light-filled backyard garden. A ghost of a smile crosses his face. He exhales. It isn’t a subtle ending, but who wouldn’t love this for him?