He tells her there is nothing to worry about. They already did the job. That the hard part is over. And that from here on out, it’s all gravy. OK, maybe this guy actually said that last line, maybe he didn’t. But we’d already tuned out his words in these opening moments of Lucky, because we were tuned in on the woman he was failing to reassure.
Anya Taylor-Joy is Luciana “Lucky” Armstrong in Lucky, a seven-episode Apple series from showrunners Jonathan Tropper, creator of Your Friends & Neighbors, and Cassie Pappas, who has written for Silo and Griselda. Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine also exec produces; Lucky was adapted from Marissa Stapley’s 2021 novel of the same name, a Reese’s Book Club hit. And in Taylor-Joy and this show’s namesake main character, we definitely have somebody to believe in and follow.
This doesn’t mean Lucky is a good person one hundred percent of the time. But who is? And like we were saying, we recognized her husband Cary Masterson (Drew Starkey) was gonna double-cross Lucky from the jump, making him even worse. Cary was saying too many empty lines to matter, and he’s easy to place on the back burner as his mark — who is apparently his own wife — is soon bounding through Las Vegas on foot and switching her appearance on the fly.
We don’t know exactly what happened. When Lucky woke up in their hotel suite, groggy from ingesting champagne and maybe worse, Cary was already gone. Also gone? Their two plastic roller cases, packed with millions in cash. When he said they pulled it off, and she said something felt off, Lucky should have listened to the voice in her head. Her father, John Armstrong (Timothy Olyphant), currently in federal prison in California, but always part of the grifter’s life monologue in her thoughts. We understand Lucky, daughter of a criminal, has led a criminal’s life, but we also understand this breakaway with Cary was supposed to offer something different. If only.
While Cary is in the wind, Lucky becomes the prime target for the FBI’s Billie Rand (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). And though Ellis-Taylor establishes enough of her federal agent’s character for us to think she’s likely a straight shooter, we are still rooting in full for Lucky. There is something noble in believing in a criminal who is robbed by other criminals. She steals a Caesars entry badge, a gold-rimmed promotional jacket. She cuts through casino kitchens, finds a random loading dock. She uses makeup to give herself a shiner. Lucky deploys a believable fib about an abusive boyfriend, and she hitches a ride out of there.
There will be flashbacks in Lucky, and we meet John Armstrong in an early one. “There’s something I need you to move for me. For us,” he says to Lucky in the visitor’s area at Lompoc prison. She groans, because in not so many words, this is her dad the flim-flam man saying he skimmed some chocolate off someone else’s cake. We assume the cash from the roller cases is that skim. And now that it is missing, whoever has the rest of the cake will be hunting down Lucky.
Which brings us to Priscilla Masterson. This is Annette Bening, continuing the fine work she brought to Dutton Ranch as Beulah Jackson, and as Priscilla she is the kind of moneyed, unscrupulous operator who has assets to burn and no history of taking no for answer. “So you got played?” Priscilla demands of Lucky once she and her chief henchman Harris Dutch (Clifton Collins, Jr.) catch up to her. “That’s your story?” Cary Masterson is Priscilla’s son, making Lucky Armstrong her daughter-in-law. But that doesn’t stop her from stuffing Lucky in a trunk to be delivered for further questioning.
Delivered to whom? Priscilla has enough willingness to T-bone a federal agent with her goon-chauffeured SUV to indicate she is in a power position. But how powerful? In this criminal world, there is a hiearchy, and she is only searching for Lucky and the money so Priscilla can deliver it to another, bigger interested party. “You can imagine what’s going to happen to you and John if he doesn’t get it back,” she says. So whatever the identity of the big boss is in this scenario, he is able to reach inside a federal prison and pluck the feathers of whoever. That is real power.
Lucky being up against dangerous people like this only makes us believe more in her ability to “run the board,” in John’s words. Having managed to evade Agent Rand and the feds, but captured by Priscilla and Dutch, Lucky flashes her father’s lucky Zippo inside the trunk where she rides. She spies road flares, pockets a screwdriver, and gains access through the backseat to the car’s interior. The goons driving her to Priscilla’s are oblivious. Lucky lights the road flare, unleashes a series of wild kicks, and there is some shooting before the driver starts on fire and collides with a cactus. Chaos in the desert! We’re not sure Lucky thought this escape all the way through. But it’s a better play for this criminal than waiting to be killed by other criminals.
Scratch-Offs for Lucky Episode 1 (“No Shortcuts”):
- Cary did say one interesting thing, back before he sold Lucky out and stole the loot. “America’s over, anyway,” he said, suggesting the criminal spaces where these people operate are mirrors for straight world rot.
- We think it’s kind of hilarious that someone who looks like Anya Taylor-Joy can walk through a police search cordon un-hindered and avoid hundreds of casino security cameras simply by putting her hood up.
- There are also jams to give rhythm to Lucky’s life on the run. The phantasia of her night of Las Vegas double-crossss is soundtracked by Roy Orbison with “In Dreams.” Lucky escapes the clutches of goons to the haunting “Lost” by Zola Jesus. And as she wanders across scalded desert land, Sleater-Kinney is heard with “Hunt You Down.” It’s a stark reminder of the stakes.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.