MOVIE NEWS – HBO is directly connecting two of Brad Ingelsby’s acclaimed crime dramas. Julianne Nicholson will reprise her role as Lori Ross in Season 2 of Task, officially bringing the series into the world of Mare of Easttown.
Prestige crime dramas don’t often exist in shared universes. That’s more often a superhero habit, or at least something viewers associate with franchise television. Game of Thrones and its spin-offs are an obvious exception, but HBO has generally been more careful than that. Its dramas usually stand on their own even when they come from the same creative voice.
Now, according to Variety, that may be changing in a notable way. The network has signaled that two of its most respected recent crime dramas actually share the same streets. The shows in question are Mare of Easttown and Task, Brad Ingelsby’s newer HBO series starring Mark Ruffalo. Julianne Nicholson is set to reprise her Emmy-winning role as Lori Ross in Season 2 of Task, which means the newer series will now directly overlap with the world of Ingelsby’s 2021 breakout drama rather than merely resemble it tonally or geographically. HBO appeared to lean into the surprise on Instagram, teasing the development with the caption “Plot twist.”
Ahead of Task‘s premiere last year, Ingelsby suggested that the two series already occupied the same narrative space. “They exist in the same world, so it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Mare [Kate Winslet] walked into a Wawa that Tom [Mark Ruffalo] was in”, he told The Hollywood Reporter, while adding that he did not yet have a specific crossover story in mind.
That is a meaningful step for HBO, partly because Task has already started to establish itself on its own terms. The Mark Ruffalo-led show earned six Emmy nominations for the 2026 awards this week, giving the series momentum before its second season has even begun to take shape publicly. In that context, bringing Lori Ross into the picture gives HBO a way to connect a newer success to one of its most acclaimed recent limited series without having to formally relaunch Mare of Easttown first.
A direct Mare of Easttown Season 2 remains a long way off. But earlier this year, Kate Winslet said there was a “strong likelihood” the show would film in 2027, which is encouraging for fans. It also helps that Lori was one of the emotional pillars of Mare of Easttown, and Nicholson’s performance was central to the show’s final stretch and to the series’ awards run. How Lori fits into Task is being kept quiet for the time being, and the official season description doesn’t offer much of a clue. The logline for Task Season 2 reads:
“Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) takes the helm of a new task force, but the deeper the operation runs, the harder it is to tell who’s the target.”
The second season is expected to feature Mahershala Ali, Harry Melling, Adam Nagaitis, Aminah Nieves, and Édgar Ramírez alongside Ruffalo, which points to a fairly ambitious expansion of the series overall. It would still be premature to assume HBO is building a larger shared crime-drama world out of Mare of Easttown. That said, the idea of Mark Ruffalo’s Tom Brandis and Kate Winslet’s Mare Sheehan eventually crossing paths no longer feels entirely out of bounds.
Forrás: MovieWeb
