How Does <em>Task</em> Connect to </em>Mare of Easttown</em>?

Philly folks have a lot to celebrate. Not only are the Eagles handily defending last year's Super Bowl title, but Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby has blessed the city with another HBO crime drama set in the Delaware County area. Titled Task, the new series follows an FBI agent (played by Mark Ruffalo) who assembles a task force to track down the culprits behind a string of armed robberies.

Though Kate Winslet’s Mare Sheehan doesn’t make an appearance in the new series, Ingelsby says that the story starring Ruffalo and Tom Pelphrey technically takes place in the same connected universe. (AKA, the one we're all living in right now.)

“I think there were still more stories to be told about people in Delaware County,” Ingelsby told The Hollywood Reporter. “They exist in the same world, so it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Mare (Winslet) walked into a Wawa that Tom (Ruffalo) was in. I don’t have a story in mind that’s a crossover, but I love the idea of their worlds intersecting.”

It doesn’t feel like Ingelsby’s style to have Winslet and Ruffalo team up in a future series, but why stop there? Echo Valley, the Apple TV+ drama that Ingelsby wrote earlier this year brought Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, and Domhnall Gleeson to a ranch in Southern Pennsylvania. So does Ingelsby’s American Woman (2018) with Sienna Miller and Out of the Furnace (2013) with Christian Bale—which technically takes place closer to Pittsburgh. We’ll let it slide, though, because Pelphrey seems excited by the idea of a crossover as well.

“Welcome to the new MCU,” Pelphrey added in the THR interview. “That would be amazing. I was a huge fan of Mare of Easttown. And obviously, I’m a big fan of Task. So, if there’s a version where those things crossover, I think that would make a lot of people very happy."