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Spoilers for episode 1 of “Task” to follow.

HBO’s hot new show of the fall season appears to be “Task,” based on the series premiere drawing 3.1 million viewers in its first three days (via Variety). The show stars Mark Ruffalo as Tom Brandis, a former priest turned FBI agent. He’s assigned to put together a task force to investigate armed robberies of drug houses in Pennsylvania. Brandis is also nursing some personal demons, though, from alcoholism to his son Ethan’s (Andrew Russel) upcoming sentencing to prison. 

But this is no mystery series. “Task” splits its story between Brandis and the robbers led by Robbie Prendergast (Tom Pelphrey). Robbie is a garbage man living around the poverty line, and he’s decided to make some money by robbing people who deserve it.

The show was created by Brad Ingelsby, who previously created the 2021 HBO crime/family drama miniseries “Mare of Easttown.” That series stars Kate Winslet as Mare Sheehan, a Pennsylvania detective who’s dealing with her son’s recent death by suicide and the murder of a young single mother named Erin McMenamin (Cailee Spaeny).

With two Philadelphia-area detective dramas on his resume, has Ingelsby considered combining the two? In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the creative was asked that very question and replied, “I think there were still more stories to be told about people in Delaware County. They exist in the same world, so it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Mare walked into a Wawa that Tom was in.”

Now, in our shared universe obsessed pop culture, it’s easy to leap on Ingelsby’s comments as hard proof of continuity between the shows. (Can you say Mare-vel Cinematic Universe?) But let’s not jump the gun.

When Ingelsby says the shows “exist in the same world,” he might just be saying how both “Task” and “Mare of Easttown” take place in the rural Philly suburbs of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, i.e. the stories and characters can fit together because they have an overlapping setting. Indeed, he quickly clarified to THR, “I don’t have a story in mind that’s a crossover, but I love the idea of their worlds intersecting.”