It can be difficult to think back through all the sudden misdirects, random murders, and effortless con artist masquerades of Lucky, the Apple TV “limited series” that apparently ends with Episode 7 (“All Good Things”). We learned things out of order. Key details and personal connections were not revealed until later. At first this was kind of aggravating, because we weren’t sure Lucky had earned this level of intrigue. But it became really satisfying, because as Lucky, Anya Taylor-Joy invited us right inside the live drawing event that has always been her grifter’s life.
All season, the biggest, most important thing we learned about Lucky’s life is how much she wanted to leave it, and that’s her driving force as this finale episode begins. The meet with Priscilla and Wayne is set at a remote oil and gas processing facility, where Billie Rand and her boss, Kershaw, the top FBI guy in LA, watch and listen from atop a reservoir. Priscilla has arrived with Wayne, and her features are a mask of anger, since he spent the ride from her mansion continuing to callously deny Cary as his progeny. Lucky stands solitary. She deflects Wayne’s natural condescension, his backhanded quips about offering a job to this brilliant criminal. There are many guns present. And she simply taps her head. “The seed phrase is how I’m walking out of here.”
Wait, crypto? No hard cash? But Lucky, still eerily calm, dismisses these protests as elementary. Of course Wayne knows the ten million bucks John Armstrong skimmed from his criminal enterprise was converted to digital by Cary. He knows this the same way he knew it when Lucky’s late husband resurfaced in La Jolla. Wayne knows this, Lucky says, the same way he knows the FBI is currently listening. “His buddy Kershaw told him.” The only interesting thing Rand’s boss did in Lucky, besides being a stock character bureaucrat, is this heel turn as a bad guy on Wayne’s payroll. Their observational perch becomes a battleground as the federal agents turn on each other.
Lucky deduced Kershaw was dirty, but she didn’t anticipate Wayne kidnapping her dad. “New plan,” Wayne says as John is brought out, beat-up and bloodied. “I want him to watch his daughter die.” Then he turns to Priscilla, forces a gun into her hand. “This is your mess. Show me you’re ready to be back.”
Wayne Whittaker, wealthy criminal mastermind, has ridden his high-powered arrogance too far. For Priscilla, this whole experience of the grifter’s life has opened something inside of her. Hounded by Wayne as she chased his money, grieving the loss of the son he would never acknowledge, and seeing her own relationship with Lucky gain valuable daylight — it all contributes to her shooting down her boss and former lover. Priscilla watches a wounded Wayne scrabble away. “Crawling on the ground like a bug…have some dignity for fuck’s sake.” It’s a coldblooded throwback to how Wayne insulted her in Episode 2, and she adds a bullet between his eyes for emphasis.
Billie Rand ends up in a hand-to-hand standoff with Kershaw, who she shoots dead. Harris Dutch appears from a furtive corner and rescues Priscilla from Wayne’s gun-toting henchmen. And Lucky runs to John’s side. This was all part of her play, but now the territory is uncharted. Priscilla is still technically a bad guy! “You can kill us,” Lucky tells her. “But I’m done running. From you, from anyone.” These women, who exist as very different but spiritually linked parts of the crime life, have come to an understanding. With Priscilla’s grudging blessing — “I don’t wanna see either of you again” — she allows them to leave the scene with the loot and Wayne’s Rivian SUV. He won’t be needing either.
Lucky featured a final flashback as the meet and and all this ensuing chaos unfolded. There was an apprehensive Young Lucky, being convinced by John to play at drowning for a motel pool scam. Her dad knew she couldn’t swim. But he put her in the con anyway, trusting that human nature would keep her whole. The incident lasts in Lucky’s memory as an example of John’s lifelong refusal to see beyond a payday, no matter the personal cost. And she thinks about it again the morning after the meet, when John, the Rivian, and the seed phrase teddy bear are all in the wind.
We weren’t even mad at this. We think most Lucky viewers would assume John always had an angle. But Lucky’s angle, like always with this show, is better. Her dad is blasting alone down the highway when he triggers Bloody Teddy. Only to find the seed phrase gone. “Hey Dad. I had a feeling you’d do this.” It’s the feeling she has ignored for most of her life. Lucky uses her new recording to explain how he was always willing to risk her life for a con, which is just not something she wants to do anymore. She’s finally free. Of her dad’s impulses, and the life. “I’m not giving you the money,” she continues, and John grimaces. “But I’m giving you your freedom. I love you, but you won’t see me again.”
Scratch-Offs for Lucky Episode 7 (“All Good Things”):
- Lucky ends with Lucky alone on an unknown beach, her toes feeling scrumptious in the surf. Her last escape! And she’s finally grounded in something real. But come on. A character as cool as this? Will we ever see her again? Lucky creators and showrunners Jonathan Tropper and Cassie Pappas have some postgame thoughts here.
- Lucky also ends with Lucky mailing the entire laptop, complete with its digital wallet packed with millions, to Special Agent Billie Rand, via FedEx. If a grifter returns the grift, was it ever a grift at all?
- And Lucky also ends with Billie confronting Priscilla at her Malibu mansion. “Go home, Rand,” she tells the federal agent. But can she? Will she just forget that her partner got caught in all the crossfire? If there is a play to be made for a Lucky Season 2, it’s probably through Special Agent Billie Rand’s unwavering tenacity.
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.