The streets in Brad Ingelsby country were never going to stay quiet for long. Appropriately, Deadline reports Mahershala Ali has joined season two of HBO’s “Task,” where he’ll star opposite returning lead Mark Ruffalo.
Created by Ingelsby, the writer behind “Mare of Easttown,” the first season premiered in September 2025 and followed FBI agent Tom Brandis as he led a task force through a string of violent robberies in the working-class suburbs of Philadelphia. The show paired Ruffalo’s worn-down federal investigator with a desperate family man criminal played by Tom Pelphrey, and that tension gave the series its pulse from the jump.
HBO renewed the series back in November, and the network said season one ranked among its top three fastest-growing debut seasons. The critical response was strong too, with “Task” posting a 96% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 77 Metascore.
Ali charges an immediate extra for the second season. Ruffalo brought a bruised, half-haunted gravity to the first run; Ali tends to arrive with a cooler, sharper edge. That is exactly the kind of casting move a crime series makes when it knows season two cannot just repeat the first trick with a fresh coat of rain.
Variety reports the new season is currently in pre-production, so story specifics are still being kept close. In the meantime, Ruffalo is due back on big screens in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” on July 31, while Ali is also part of LAIKA’s “Wildwood,” which opens October 23.
