Lucky Episode 3
In the previous two episodes, Lucky had been feeling sorry for herself. In the previous episode, Lucky had been calmly putting herself into federal custody as though it was an appointment at the spa rather than an arrest. In the remaining episode following “Wherever You Go, There You Are,” the act of custody becomes a high-pressure negotiation in which the con artist gets an opportunity to outshine her own father, John Armstrong. For a master con artist, whose artistry revolves around the ability to talk herself out of anything, negotiating against the FBI may prove to be a difficult challenge.
Before we get into what happens in Episode 6, let us step back and recall why it was that a good con artist found herself negotiating with the FBI in the first place.
Lucky Episodes 1 To 5 Recap: How We Got Here
Episodes 1 & 2 : “No Shortcuts” and “Make ‘Em Dance”
The movie starts during the middle of a run, where Lucky is racing between semi-trucks with a pursuing FBI agent. The film then goes back in time to explain how Lucky got into that situation. Lucky and her husband, Cary, had just committed a robbery. They stole $10 million from a notorious gangster, Wayne Whittaker, under pressure from Lucky’s jailed father, who is a con-artist by the name of John. While most people would prefer not to do something like this with their families, it’s not our choice.
It doesn’t take long for Lucky to have her fun in Vegas cut short. In the morning, Lucky wakes up to find out that her husband is gone along with the money, and that federal agents have taken over the entire building and are looking for Lucky’s face. At the end of this movie episode, the viewer sees that the stakes are set for Lucky to fight against the FBI, headed by Agent Billie Rand, against Priscilla, Cary’s mother and one of the criminals in this organization.
Episode 3 : “Read the Room”
In this episode, the show lets us know just what they’ve got up their sleeve. We find out via flashbacks that John Armstrong had been running a scam with biofuel that stole money for Priscilla while Agent Rand kept an eye on everything from a distance. Currently, Lucky goes hiding behind a truck that was taken right into Priscilla’s base of operations which was as safe as hiding in a lion’s mouth since she was afraid of the zoo. There she witnesses as Priscilla’s henchman, Dutch, tortures and kills a document forger named Noah and uses his ID to find whoever was making the fake documents for Cary. She also makes time to crash a birthday party in order to get some money, clothing, and wheels to escape just like she was once taught by her father as a young girl in order to get out of something as a kid.
Episode 4 : “Too Close to See It”
This is the one which turned the table completely around for them. Cary, who has predicted that eventually Lucky will catch up with him has told the full story and this time it is that he did not mean to betray her. After finding out that John had betrayed Lucky, Priscilla had made him take the money in order to protect her. Lucky has her own secret as well – that she had helped the FBI agent Rand to take Priscilla down by making a deal to work together with him. There was a time when they chose each other and decided to run away, only to be surrounded by the FBI and Priscilla’s men who chased them in a very dangerous car chase ending up with shooting. Lucky wakes up next to Cary who gets fatally wounded. His last words to her were that he has never regretted being with her. Lucky runs away from the place before the police arrive, only to have one more problem – she knew where the fortune was hidden, but Cary, who memorized the crypto seed phrase, had no time to tell her.
Episode 5 : “Are We Bad People?”
This is the episode where the show makes Lucky face everything she has done. Having gone on the run and been alone throughout the season for the very first time, she has discovered something quite profitable, i.e., Cary had placed a recording of the seed phrase into his teddy bear that would give Lucky almost $10 million. Priscilla is having a funeral service for Cary who, in turn, does not even show up. When Priscilla confronts him, he shows no mercy: despite all her grief, Wayne still wants his money back and uses his gun in order to threaten Priscilla. At the same time, there is a new cruel scheme developed by Agent Rand. She has John released from prison ahead of schedule in order to lure Lucky, who indeed arrives to get her father. The scheme has succeeded. In the end of the hour, Lucky and John give themselves to the police. However, there is something quite scary about the way Lucky is accepting it all.
Lucky Episode 6 Recap: “Wherever You Go, There You Are”
The episode starts with the best scene the series has ever come up with, and it has nothing to do with the storyline. The main character gives a monologue where he talks about his first scam as a kid. He is angry with his stern father, who works at a cannery, because he gave away twenty dollars to the traveling evangelist. That night he goes out and steals the whole collection of money, almost a thousand dollars from those who could not afford it and gives it to a man who did not need it. This episode comes close to showing John’s entire outlook on life – everybody is scamming someone in their own way.
That’s when the action begins. Lucky and John make a proposition to Rand: immunity for Lucky, a reduced sentence for John, in return for giving up Priscilla. Rand is not someone to be trusted; she has been burned before when Lucky made a deal and broke it, but with reluctant permission from her boss, she decides to try to get immunity for Lucky and talk about John’s sentence, on the condition that they deliver both Priscilla and Wayne Whittaker. This is a much bigger task because throughout the entire season, Wayne Whittaker has been squeaky clean.
In the negotiation, Lucky and John are put up in an FBI-funded hotel room, as they wait for Priscilla to accept an offer of meeting face-to-face because she only conducts business via the telephone. And it is at this moment where the true gravity of the episode is felt. Trapped in a room together, Lucky confesses how tired she is from running for all of her life and in the process tells John that it was she who sent him to prison in the first place by making a deal with Rand many years ago that went sour. John, on his end, realizes that the adventure-filled life he created for his daughter is one big chain of trauma disguised as excitement.
It is Lucky who stands on the line of danger. Lucky informs Priscilla that she will return the money taken, but not through any other means than directly giving it to Wayne personally. Priscilla agrees to help, yet again not surprisingly, Wayne demands that the meeting take place in a location of his choice, and not at the FBI friendly hotel Lucky suggested, and so Lucky finds herself heading to Wayne’s chosen location. Even though he is against it, John demands to go with her, even though Rand’s men cannot get anyone close enough to the rural location Wayne chose without being noticed.
And that’s when the episode pulls a major cliffhanger. Gates gets pulled away from a poker game with John because he heard something outside, and gets killed by men carrying guns who are thought to be working for Wayne. It ends with one of them breaking into the hotel room of John, and we get to see what happens to him, and the actual meeting between Wayne and Lucky, in the season finale.
Lucky Finale Predictions
Since All Good Things is due out on August 19 as the last word of the season, let’s see how the pieces will fall into place:
1. First, if the deal really stands. Rand has indeed promised to get immunity for Lucky and a lighter sentence for John provided he delivers Priscilla and Wayne but since the attack at the hotel, it is now a debatable point whether Lucky will be able to keep his promise or the FBI will retract their offer.
2. John’s life is literally in danger right from the get-go. With Gates dead and armed men entering John’s hotel room, the first few minutes of the finale will need to be concerned about John making it through the night alive before anything else can even happen.
3. Finally, Lucky meets with Wayne. Set up in episode 6, we see Lucky go alone, tapped, to a place chosen by Wayne on his own accord without us seeing it. This confrontation will no doubt be featured heavily in the finale, and it’s likely to go awry.
4. Priscilla’s loyalty to Wayne is starting to fray. She has already been humiliated, threatened with a gun, and forced back into her cleaning duties. If Wayne’s men killed Gates, it’s one more push towards Priscilla deciding her boss is the real threat to her life.
5. The ending sets up an uncertainty about what lies ahead for Lucky. This is a series that has always been tough on its leading lady, and a miniseries named “All Good Things” will most probably end in a bittersweet way than a happily-ever-after.
No matter what happens, one thing that Episode 6 has made abundantly clear is that even though Lucky can run away from all sorts of dangers, she can’t run away from her father or the deal that she has made with the only federal agent that remembers it. Episodes of Lucky drop weekly on Apple TV+, and with a dead federal agent, a broken hotel room, and a meeting with Wayne yet to happen, there are many things that need to be sorted out in the season finale.
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