‘Task’ Episode 5 Recap – Now That’s How You Do A Cliffhanger

If there’s a better show in 2025 than Task, I’d be interested to see it. You can always rely on HBO to just ride into town and drop extremely high-quality prestige TV on a semi-regular basis, to an extent that it almost feels unfair to other networks and platforms. Brad Ingelsby’s latest has been brilliant throughout, but in Episode 5, “Vagrants”, it reaches near-masterpiece territory – best performances, best writing, best cliffhanger ending. It’s as good an hour of TV as you’re likely to see, especially absent any kind of watercooler gimmick or astronomically expensive large-scale set-piece.

My metric for what constitutes a good show is fluid and complicated; I’m not sure I even understand it half the time. It can be a feeling, nothing more. But my metric for a great show is really simple. If two characters having a conversation can constitute the bulk of an episode that never stops being riveting, you’re watching a great show. I can’t think of any examples where this isn’t true. “Vagrants” is full of conversations, including a long-awaited one between Tom Brandis and Robbie Prendergrast. I couldn’t look away.

I say this about an episode that also nonchalantly reveals the identity of the FBI mole. As we already speculated, Ray’s phone was the key. The fact that it ended up in possession of the Dark Hearts during the sting meant that it was only feasibly Aleah or Anthony Grasso who was tipping them off, and it turns out to be Grasso. We see him meeting with Jayson under a bridge, like in some kind of children’s story, so that he can replace it in evidence and nobody will be any the wiser. The cavalier way in which this is handled is the same approach Task took to identifying Eryn as the Dark Hearts mole working with Robbie.

The conversation – “I’m cutting things way too close this time” – implies that this is a longstanding arrangement, but doesn’t reveal anything about Grasso’s potential motives beyond lining his own pockets. Surely there are easier ways, though? The dynamic between the two is weird. Jayson cautions Grasso to remember who he’s speaking to when he gets a little lairy, but Grasso doesn’t seem like he’s being strong-armed out of fear. He’s mostly just worried about getting caught, which is becoming increasingly likely since Sam remains very much alive, claims to the contrary having been exaggerated.

This is happening at exactly the same time as everyone is figuring out who Robbie is. The guy he punched in a parking lot describes him with eerie accuracy to an FBI sketch artist. Perry, already suspicious, visits Maeve at home and spots a picture of Robbie and Cliff on the fridge. Aleah has forensics examine the DNA evidence on the bucket Sam left at the depot, and it matches Maeve Prendergrast, sending Tom out to Robbie’s place to investigate. All roads are converging. The net is tightening.

And Robbie’s in too deep to find a way out. Through Eryn, he learns that Cliff is almost certainly dead, murdered by Jayson, just like his brother. And after Ray’s betrayal, he only has one way to move the uncut fentanyl – through Freddy Frias, who has no reason to show him any loyalty and, thusly, does not. It might seem a bit out of character for Freddy to sell Robbie out to the Dark Hearts, given his earlier conversation with Perry and Jayson, but at this point, he knows the gang is so desperate they’ll give him anything he asks for in exchange for the information. And he plans to ask for everything he can, which he knows will cause the Dark Hearts a not-insignificant amount of consternation. From his perspective, he wins. It’s only Robbie who loses.

Mark Ruffalo in Task | Image via WarnerMedia

Eryn loses as well, to be fair. Perry tracks her car and almost catches her meeting with Robbie, but even though she’s on her own when he finds her, it’s enough to know that she was lying to him about not being the mole. Perry’s argument will be that he didn’t mean to kill her; that he was too busy staring up at some local kids having a cookout on a nearby cliff to notice that he had drowned her in the lake’s murky waters. But what else was he intending to do by pushing her under? It wouldn’t hold up in court. It probably wouldn’t hold up with Jayson either, which is likely why Perry is so stressed out in the aftermath. He’s going to have to kill Jayson, too, or at least not intervene when the Dark Hearts leadership does it.

Pardon me if I don’t feel too sorry for him, though. If nothing else, Task Episode 5 proves that Robbie and Tom are both heroes, in their own way, even if that way is just their opposition to a more sinister force. But they’re both complicated and traumatised and trying to do the right thing, even if it leads them through several wrong turns. The standout scene of “Vagrants” – of the whole show until this point, arguably – is the equivalent of a therapy session, with Robbie in the back of his car, holding Tom at gunpoint after seeing through his bumbling “aw shucks” Columbo routine. They talk about family, religion, and what may or may not follow death, a concept both of them have intimately examined, albeit from different angles.

There’s all sorts to unpack here, including more about Tom’s backstory and relationship with his late wife, and there’s a palpable feeling of sadness lingering over it all, especially in Robbie’s misty-eyed reiteration of his belief that this life is all we have, and that his is likely coming to an abrupt end. Tom tries to inject some hope into it, telling Robbie about a vagrant bird he spotted in his backyard, miles away from home (we saw him spot it and note it down, if you recall). Robbie could head home, while he still remembers how to get there. But we’re past that now. In what I sadly think is probably setup for the outcome of this story, Robbie asks Tom about his past as a minister, reading people their last rites. They’re all scared, he says, every one of them. The chances of Tom reading Robbie his last rites as he expires have just rocketed up to 99.9%. I don’t think I’m ready.

But it’s coming. Robbie drops Tom off in the woods without hurting him, and Tom immediately gets back in touch with the FBI, who can trace Robbie’s car through his radio as he heads to the meet where the Dark Hearts, all tooled up for war, plan to ambush him. As I said, all roads must converge. Robbie, rightly suspicious of Freddy’s intentions, seems on the cusp of escaping with the drugs. But Tom gets there first, and the episode ends with the two men pointing guns at each other. How’s that for a cliffhanger?

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