{"id":861543,"date":"2026-08-20T03:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T03:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/861543\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T03:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T03:08:11","slug":"lucky-creators-on-those-finale-deaths-and-killing-drew-starkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/861543\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Lucky’ Creators on Those Finale Deaths and Killing Drew Starkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: This interview contains major spoilers from \u201cAll Good Things,\u201d the finale of Apple TV\u2019s \u201cLucky<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLuciana \u201cLucky\u201d Armstrong (Anya Taylor-Joy) has just pulled off one last con on the most important person left in her life: her formerly incarcerated father, John (Timothy Olyphant).<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the series finale of \u201cLucky,\u201d the titular con artist pulls off a final scheme to win freedom for herself and her father from notorious gangster Wayne Whittaker (William Fichtner) and his dangerous underboss, Priscilla Masterson (Annette Bening) \u2014 who also happens to be Lucky\u2019s disapproving mother-in-law. During a tense in-person meeting meant to hand over the $10 million she and her late husband, Cary (Drew Starkey), stole from Whittaker at John\u2019s request, Lucky drops a bombshell: Whittaker had been secretly working with FBI agent Kershaw (Eric Lange) to track Cary, a betrayal that directly caused Cary\u2019s fatal car crash in Episode 4. (Cary is also Whittaker\u2019s biological son.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThat revelation instantly jeopardizes Lucky\u2019s tentative deal with FBI Agent Billie Rand (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). Billie had agreed to give Lucky and her father immunity, but only if Lucky could deliver the evidence needed to lock Whittaker up permanently. Listening in from a nearby water tower via a wire, Rand realizes Kershaw\u2019s connection to the plot and holds him at gunpoint, sparking a fierce brawl between them. Meanwhile, on the ground below, Whittaker forces Lucky\u2019s hand. Knowing that he needed a back-up plan, Whittaker\u2019s men kidnapped John from his hotel room and beat him up to make Lucky reveal the crypto seed phrase needed to unlock the stolen $10 million.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Becker<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the ensuing chaos, Whittaker tries to force Priscilla to execute Lucky right in front of John. But Priscilla turns her gun on Whittaker instead, gunning him down with three fatal shots in retaliation for Cary\u2019s death. Priscilla ultimately allows Lucky and John to get off scot-free, believing that Lucky was the only other woman who truly loved her son.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough clear to keep the money, Lucky knows she can\u2019t start fresh with stolen cash. Realizing her father would always risk her life for a con, she sets a trap: she sneakily reveals to John that the 12-word seed phrase is stored on a voice recorder hidden inside Cary\u2019s childhood stuffed bear. By morning, John has vanished with the bear. But when he plays the tape, he finds a new message from Lucky \u2014 telling him he will never see her again, but that she orchestrated this to give him his ultimate freedom. Instead of keeping the fortune, Lucky hands the seed phrase and the $10 million over to Billie.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince wrapping production on \u201cLucky\u201d just over a year ago, Jonathan Tropper<\/a> and Cassie Pappas<\/a> have both moved on to other Apple TV projects. Tropper is midway through production on the third season of \u201cYour Friends & Neighbors,\u201d which he describes as \u201cpretty dark\u201d but also \u201cmore romantic than past seasons.\u201d Pappas, meanwhile, reveals that she is reteaming with her former \u201cSilo\u201d boss Graham Yost; in 2027, Yost will direct a feature written by Pappas, and the two are working together on a new (and currently unannounced) show titled \u201cLexicon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in a wide-ranging conversation with Variety, while breaking down the key creative changes they made in adapting Marissa Stapley\u2019s novel \u201cLucky,\u201d Tropper and Pappas addressed whether audiences have truly seen the last of the titular protagonist.<\/p>\n

\t\tMarissa Stapley gave you her blessing to take creative liberties with \u201cLucky.\u201d In hindsight, what do you think was the hardest part of this adaptation for you to crack?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tJonathan Tropper: There was the density of story in the book that I knew we would not be able to fully carry over into a television show. So it was breaking down: What\u2019s the essence of the story? What\u2019s the essence of the characters? What to keep from the book, what we would have to jettison, and then what we would have to invent to make it work in seven episodes of television \u2014 I certainly hadn\u2019t cracked that before Cassie came on, and we cracked it together over time.<\/p>\n

\n\tI had been able to write the pilot because that\u2019s such a contained piece, but then figuring out what we were keeping, losing, and inventing beyond that was a struggle because we wanted to be really respectful to the themes and characters of the book. At the same time, it was like, \u201cHow do we convey this really complicated woman, and this really complicated father-daughter relationship that formed her? How do we convey that in a really taught thriller without having to tell all the backstory that\u2019s in the book and without having to go into all of the flashbacks?\u201d If we had 20 episodes, we could have done it, but how are we going to do this in seven or eight episodes? I think that was the biggest challenge.<\/p>\n

\n\tCassie Pappas: The things that we invented or added that were not in the book were merely to help stakes and propulsion. So Agent Billie Rand didn\u2019t exist in the book, but we knew we wanted literal heat at [Lucky\u2019s] back chasing her down. I also like the idea of two women locked into [a dynamic where] neither one of them knows how to do anything else. Rand only knows how to hunt and find you, and Lucky only knows how to run.<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: We might\u2019ve mentioned Pacino and De Niro in \u201cHeat\u201d a few times.<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: It\u2019s this good guy\/bad guy trope that we see, but I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve seen two women locked in that dynamic. I was really interested in exploring, \u201cHow do women play that game differently?\u201d because we\u2019ve definitely seen men do it over and over. As we got into it, we realized, \u201cSo we\u2019ve got a woman on the run, a female FBI agent chasing her, and a female mobster chasing her as well. But each one of those women also had a man above them \u2014 you\u2019ve got Kershaw at the FBI above Rand, you\u2019ve got John above Lucky, and you\u2019ve got Wayne Whittaker above Priscilla.\u201d That was a cool metaphor of wanting each one of them to shatter a glass ceiling of sorts. And by the end of the finale, each one of those women do.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou chose to flesh out Lucky\u2019s relationship with John, but you opted not to explore Lucky\u2019s relationship with her mother, apart from a throwaway line in the show that suggests Lucky\u2019s mother either died a long time ago or abandoned Lucky as a child. Why did you choose to focus on one relationship over the other?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: The father-daughter relationship was, to us, the heart of this show; the reason for doing the show was really to explore that. In this show, we wanted Lucky\u2019s search to be her way out. It\u2019s not about figuring out who her mother is; it\u2019s about figuring out who she is. She\u2019s never been given the opportunity to actually know who she is. So the search for a mother felt like it muddied the waters of what her throughline is, which was really a search for herself.<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: We both agreed that it made the stakes more clean if John is all she\u2019s got, if she\u2019s like, \u201cThis is all I\u2019ve got in the world. He\u2019s taught me how to live in this world the way he lives, and that\u2019s all I know. I don\u2019t know how to be vulnerable, I don\u2019t know how to be empathetic, but I do know how to lift your wallet.\u201d So I think there\u2019s something interesting about her being able to be like, \u201cMy mom is dead, and that\u2019s not even in the picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Becker<\/p>\n

\t\tAnya Taylor-Joy was attached to star and executive produce this show long before you boarded the project as co-showrunners. What notes did she give during pre-production that ultimately influenced the trajectory of this story? Did she feel particularly strongly about any part of Lucky\u2019s arc?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: She felt really strongly about Cary and their relationship. She felt very, very strongly that, when their parents went away to prison, Lucky and Cary got a taste of life outside of this criminal lifestyle. It was very important for her father to be the one that drags her back in, and that she didn\u2019t want to be [involved in crime] when we meet her in the life. Because in a way, it creates a great underdog that you\u2019re rooting for her to get out.<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: It\u2019s pretty much a nonstop chase. She really wanted to make sure we were taking the time we needed for the character, and not just having her literally on the run for seven episodes without time to stop, explore different facets of what she\u2019s doing, and slow down for the personal moments. [She wanted to explore] both the fear and the frustration of the con, and also the joy that she still feels against her better judgment when she pulls off a good con. She wanted to make sure that the chase was never at the expense of the character.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow did you think about using those action sequences to reveal more about what is going on internally with Lucky?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: It\u2019s always about where she is on the journey. So, for instance, in Episode 2, when she ends up with a grandmother and her two grandchildren in this very domestic setting, even as she\u2019s conning them, you\u2019re getting a sense of her seeing a life she never had \u2014 a mother figure, children, a dinner table, that kind of love and stability that she never had. So that\u2019s what informs that whole episode. And then you go to Episode 4, which is this really high-octane car chase after she and Cary have found each other. But at the same time, while all that\u2019s going on, where she\u2019s really resolving her relationship with Carrie is during that car chase. So that whole car chase is the vehicle \u2014 no pun intended, or maybe pun intended, I don\u2019t know \u2014 for her to resolve her situation with Cary literally at the last possible minute because then he dies. So I think it\u2019s always story-formed. We just sit there and we think about: Where are we in the story? What is she running from or running to, and how do we express the character within that?<\/p>\n

\t\tWhy did you choose to kill off Cary as early as you did in the show?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: I didn\u2019t realize how avid Drew\u2019s fans are until we killed him. I think that we thought about Cary as level one of the lessons she needed to learn, which was \u201cI\u2019m repeating a pattern that is similar to my dad, but I\u2019m doing it with my husband.\u201d So when we get him out of the picture, then she can look at who she really needs to get out from underneath is her father. It was really servicing that more than anything else, unless Tropper has a thing against \u201cOuter Banks\u201d fans.<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: No! I am shooting with an actor from \u201cOuter Banks\u201d today. [Writer\u2019s note: Samantha Soule is guest-starring as a lawyer in an episode of Tropper\u2019s \u201cYour Friends & Neighbors\u201d Season 3.] But it\u2019s also the fact that we really always firmly believe that for Lucky to start the next part of her journey at the end of our show, she has to do it alone. She has to be freed from everything, and there have to be painful sacrifices for redemption because she\u2019s not innocent, necessarily. We always knew that the last shot of Lucky was going to be Lucky alone stepping into a new life. So if she\u2019s running off with her father or with Cary or with the money, she hasn\u2019t fully extricated herself. We knew [Cary\u2019s death] would be shocking, but we gave viewers the satisfaction of knowing that Cary had not intended to really leave her hanging.<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: I also think just narratively speaking, it always signals to the viewer that nobody\u2019s safe.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Becker<\/p>\n

\t\tLucky was born into this life of crime, but what intrigued you about the way she has learned to justify her actions? How does her moral compass bend over the course of the season as she wrestles with the consequences of her actions?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: I think that\u2019s what Episode 5 is really about. She\u2019s on the run [in Episodes] 2, 3, and 4, and the run keeps getting more propulsive into a car chase sequence where Cary dies. It\u2019s after Cary\u2019s death that she has to reckon with herself and the reality that her cons have consequences. It starts with that grandmother who was injured in the car crash, and she pretends that it\u2019s her grandmother Ruth. But she has to look at that woman and remember, \u201cOh, that woman is injured because of me.\u201d And then when the nurse asks, \u201cWhat\u2019s this woman\u2019s medical history?,\u201d she doesn\u2019t have any answers. I think each one of these moments are like a blow to her.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time that she\u2019s sitting with that stranger at the bar in Episode 5, she goes into the routine of, \u201cHere I go, I\u2019m going to tell you this lie about how the reason I\u2019m wearing these clothes is because the bellman got my bag wrong.\u201d She stops and, for the very first time in her life, she chooses to be honest with someone. I think that\u2019s truly where her moral compass starts to shift. The title of the episode is \u201cAre We Bad People?,\u201d because when she\u2019s a kid, she asks her dad the same question. So if she\u2019s been ruminating on that question her whole life, now as an adult, she gets to face herself and go, \u201cI really hope I\u2019m not a bad person. I don\u2019t want to be a bad person. If I am, I don\u2019t want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: Her moral compass was bent before the show started; it\u2019s been bent her whole life. So going into this, she has a skillset and she has a certain perspective of the role that\u2019s been shaped largely by her father. From Episode 1, she\u2019s doing things in a morally gray area, and that\u2019s where she\u2019s lived her whole life. It\u2019s the unbending of her moral compass over the course of the season that gets her to where she needs to be.<\/p>\n

\t\tWith any great crime thriller, you need a high dead body count \u2014 and two of the most satisfying deaths, Kershaw and Whittaker, happen in the finale. How did you settle on who died in the finale? Did you ever consider killing off, say, Priscilla or anyone else?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: We always knew that this is a show about three women who are pitted against each other. In a sense, there are three heroes and villains, and there was never a question that [the women] were not expendable, whereas everyone else around them was, depending on how the story worked.<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: I think pretty early days, Jonathan and I knew that Priscilla was going to shoot Wayne, and that it was going to be because of the love that was shared between her son and Lucky.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Becker<\/p>\n

\t\tAnd you always knew that Kershaw was a dirty FBI agent who was working with Whittaker the entire time?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: Yeah. Maybe not from day one, but certainly before we started writing scripts past the pilot, we were planning that, yes.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhy do you think Priscilla chose to let Lucky and John go in the end?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: At this point, Priscilla has realized that Lucky is probably the only other person other than Priscilla that truly loved Cary. Deep down, there\u2019s a part of Priscilla that\u2019s still charmed by John. I know it\u2019s not in the show, but we would always talk about [how] they probably had a pretty awesome affair before he started skimming from her.<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: There was a point where that was referenced more directly in the script, and we decided to couch it in a little more mystery. But there was a point where we actually referenced their sexual past. But beyond that, I\u2019ve always felt \u2014 and there\u2019s some dialogue in episode six that alludes to this \u2014 that Priscilla had a point in her life probably when she was around Lucky\u2019s age where she wanted to get out too, and she couldn\u2019t. There\u2019s something in her that is vicariously living through Lucky\u2019s escape.<\/p>\n

\t\tBut the only way that Lucky was going to escape this life is by giving the money over to the FBI, right? Was there ever a version of this story where she kept the money or used it with her father?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: I think it\u2019s pretty clear at the end where she\u2019s given two choices. Her father is very clearly like, \u201cWe\u2019ve got the money. What are you talking about? It\u2019s in the bag. Let\u2019s go.\u201d She\u2019s basically having to choose between those two options \u2014 what her dad wants and what she wants. What she wants is freedom, and the only way she\u2019s going to be free is to get rid of this money.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhile there is still a tremendous amount of love between them, Lucky makes a clean break from John by the end of the show. What do you imagine their individual lives will look like after the screen cuts to black?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: I think John can\u2019t help himself. He can\u2019t help that he\u2019s going to walk into a room and see a con and go back to his hustle. That\u2019s just who he is. And for Lucky, I think she\u2019s going to live a life that is on the straight and narrow, but free, and [she\u2019ll] figure out who she really is without all the masks that she\u2019s been wearing her whole life.<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: I would like to think that after a number of years of figuring herself out and learning to trust people and trust herself in certain situations, ultimately, she may want to have a child to give a child the life that she didn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: In the [writers\u2019] room, we did talk a lot about how criminals like this, whether it\u2019s \u201cBreaking Bad\u201d or \u201cBetter Call Saul,\u201d you walk into a room and you just see the world a certain way. That is how she sees the world, so I don\u2019t think that she can unsee the way her father taught her to see the world. She\u2019s probably always going to walk into a room and see a mark, but I believe that she can choose to not con that person. It\u2019s like an alcoholic walking into a bar and not having a drink.<\/p>\n

\t\t\u201cLucky\u201d was always billed as a miniseries, but in the current TV landscape, nothing in success ever really seems to be limited anymore. Did you ever toy around with a different ending? Did you ever think about extending the story beyond seven episodes?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: No, we wanted to make sure that we tied up all the loose ends and that it was a satisfying ending to a limited series.<\/p>\n

\t\tBut Marissa is currently working on a sequel titled \u201cNo Such Thing As Lucky,\u201d slated to come out in the fall of 2027. Would you ever adapt that book?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: We really poured our hearts into a one-and-done situation and we are both working on other things, but you never say never. Even from a purely business standpoint, I think the logistics of pulling this cast back together and doing this again would take a lot of doing. I think we would have to convince ourselves to a large extent that there would be a story worth telling, because there\u2019s something so compelling about the resolution of these relationships in this one. And if the second one was just kind of like, \u201cLucky gets sucked back\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPappas: \u201cAnd goes on the run again!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTropper: Yeah, I don\u2019t think it would carry the same weight. I think it would feel very much like a business decision. So right now, I personally don\u2019t see us doing that.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains major spoilers from \u201cAll Good Things,\u201d the finale of Apple TV\u2019s \u201cLucky.\u201d Luciana…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":861544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,431262,134,64525,64526,427],"class_list":["post-861543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cassie-pappas","tag-entertainment","tag-jonathan-tropper","tag-lucky","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}