‘Task’ Star Raúl Castillo on How Cliff’s Loyalty to Robbie Led to Tragedy

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Task Season 1 Episode 4, “All Roads.”]

Task bid one of its key players adieu in the latest episode, “All Roads,” which saw Robbie Prednergast’s (Tom Pelphrey) best friend Cliff (Raúl Castillo) put in an impossible situation.

As viewers who tuned in saw, the predicament the duo found themselves in grew more precarious when Sam (Ben Doherty), the boy they’d kidnapped, exposed his connection to them, unknowingly, when he tried to dump a fish they caught at the quarry out in a stream. With their feet to the metaphorical fire, Cliff and Robbie were determined to get out of town by selling the drugs they’d stolen in the premiere and moving across the border into Canada.

But when Cliff went to meet who he thought was his hook-up for the drugs, he was run off the road by the Dark Hearts, who had discovered his connection to Sam’s disappearance and the stolen drugs. He was tied up and bloodied as they sought answers, but when Cliff realized Jayson (Sam Keeley) was on the other side of his beating, he refused to give answers as he spat on the man’s face in protest.

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Viewers had learned by now that Jayson was responsible for the death of Robbie’s real brother, Billy, and for that reason, Cliff was especially hostile despite his losing position. As he faced certain death, Cliff continued to stay silent, but what drove that level of loyalty? “This kind of speaks to the genius of Brad Inglesby,” Castillo tells TV Insider. “He gives you a lot to work with as an actor, but there’s also a lot that we don’t necessarily learn as an audience.”

The actor reveals he spoke at length with the showrunner about his character’s background, “his journey through the criminal justice system, his loyalty to Robbie, and what it stems from.” According to Castillo, Cliff “has very little living family…. Robbie is his only relative, and that’s why we see him as loyal as he is.”

“Brad doesn’t hit the audience over the head…. You just understand that these guys have this relationship, and you buy into it. I think that’s a testament to the richness of the scripts,” Castillo concluded.

The pressure was on Jayson to deliver something surrounding Sam’s disappearance after his testy actions put him in the crosshairs of higher-ups, and it put Perry (Jamie McShane) on the defensive. “I took him on as like an apprentice many, many years before,” McShane explains Perry and Jayson’s relationship. “He’s like my son that I don’t have… He’s my kid.”

And Keeley agrees, “There was a father figure missing from Jayson’s life, and I think that Perry stepped into that…  [Jayson] was malleable at the time that he met Perry, and he just turned him into the beast that he became.”

While Jayson beat Cliff to the point of no return, he finished the job by wrapping his head with plastic wrap in a brutal final move. Meanwhile, Perry continued to piece the puzzle of Sam’s disappearance together, as he cross-examined photos from a Dark Hearts gathering that could connect someone from the gang to the gun used to kill Sam’s parents in the premiere episode’s robbery.

Ultimately, he zeroed in on Maeve (Emilia Jones), the daughter of Billy and niece of Robbie. What could happen next? Is Maeve in danger? Tune in to find out and let us know what you thought of Cliff’s tragic ending in the comments section below.

Task, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO and HBO Max

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