Episode 1 is the first episode of the first season of Trickster.
Synopsis[]
When a drug dealer threatens his mom over an outstanding debt, Jared struggles to come up with the money to save her, while frightening hallucinations hint at much bigger troubles lurking right around the corner.
Plot[]
A man carries a baby through the woods. A woman limps behind him, yelling for him to give back her baby. She tries to follow him further, but the man stops, turns around, and his eyes snap black then back to normal. She is frightened and unable to follow him. The man disappears into the night. The woman screams out in protest, causing him to turn around. He begins to cough up blood as his eyes bleed. He falls to the ground and she walks over as he continues to bleed. She takes the baby from his arms and walks away crying, leaving the man at the base of the tree.
Seventeen years later, Jared arrives at a trailer in which he has a drug lab set up inside. He mixes several chemicals while wearing a gas mask, a yellow apron, and gloves. Jared proceeds to make drugs.
In class, the teacher deals out the graded assignments. A student behind Jared mocks him for smelling like weed. The teacher gives him his test and tells him he can do better and to see the counselor.
Jared walks down the halls and sits with Crashpad, who is eating lunch alone. Jared swaps him crackers for his cucumbers. He asks to borrow Crashpad’s bike for work in the morning, to which Crashpad agrees. He then invites Jared to play video games like the old days, just as a fellow student named Dylan approaches. He tells Crashpad to leave as he has grown-up matters to discuss with Jared. Crashpad ignores Dylan’s request and decides to stay. Dylan wants to know if Jared’s working tomorrow as he wants some extra salty fries, to which Jared agrees to give him them after six. Dylan begins to taunt Crashpad, but Jared intervenes. He leverages the extra salty fries in exchange for Dylan backing off Crashpad.
After school, Jared rides the bike home and waves to his neighbors. He stops to watch a teenage girl and an older man enter a house. Jared then goes into his house to find Maggie drunk with more of her friends. She taunts him to fight her, but he refuses. Maggie offers him a beer, but he declines. Maggie loudly explains to her friends that she birthed him in the back of her truck. Jared goes to his room, where he lays out his clothes then puts food in the oven. Jared reminds Maggie to take the tray out of the stove when it beeps. He reminds her that she almost burned their house down last time.
He goes to work at the Tasty Bucket where he’s a cashier. He converses with the first customer, who remarks that Jared's not lazy like everyone else before driving off. Dylan arrives and asks for extra salty fries. Jared packs the order and places a small baggie of drugs in the bag. He continues this charade of delivering three pills in each bag of an order that asks for extra salty fries. He pockets extra money this way.
After work, he rides the bike to Wheeler’s restaurant and waves to an older man on the way inside. He visits his dad, Phil, who lives in the apartment section of the building. Phil invites him in for company. Jared gives him money for rent and clothes but nothing else, sparking Phil to remind Jared that he’s off the painkillers. He pockets the money anyway, explaining that this is only until his disability cheques are increased. Phil’s girlfriend, Destiny, comes out of the bedroom but retreats to the bathroom to vomit. He remarks that the only woman that could keep up with him was Jared’s mother. Jared ensures Phil that Maggie is unaware of Jared's visits.
From there, Jared goes to the bank to pay his bills with cash. He runs out of money and promises to pay the hydro bill another day.
He walks down the street listening to music and watching the birds. He walks through a junkyard but freezes at the sight of a pit bull barreling towards him. Jared runs in the opposite direction as it growls and snarls after him. He hears a yelp and turns to see the dog on the road. The dog's hit by a red pickup truck. Jared is surprised to see his mom driving the vehicle.The dog's owner angrily sprints after the car. He shouts at Jared's mom for killing his dog and demands his money.
Jared asks who the man was, to which his mom brushes it off as just being Richie. She gives Jared some weed telling him to calm down. Richie was her dealer, but he dealt her some crap coke, so Maggie refused to pay him. She drops Jared off at school, reminding him that she would kill or die for him.
Jared visits the guidance counselor, Mr. White, and relays that everything is the same. He has friends but no girlfriend. Jared claims his home life is fine, even though it’s been a year since his parents separated. The counselor asks if he thinks his parents separating is because of Jared’s grades, which are a concern for the counselor. The counselor knows Jared is smart, yet doesn’t apply himself. He asks Jared to think about what would happen if he did try. The counselor gives him a stress ball to let go of the tension holding him back. He asks where Jared sees himself in five years, but Jared doesn’t see himself anywhere.
He goes to work at the Tasty Bucket when Richie pulls up and points a gun at Jared. He pulls the trigger, but Jared is relieved when it's just a water gun. Richie advises him to talk some sense into his mom. Maggie owes him two grand for the coke. But he's rounding up to three for the cost of his dog. He gives Jared three days to pay the fee, or he will kill his mother.
Jared bikes to Phil's house again to find him arguing on the phone while also planning a party with the same caller. He notices Jared’s demeanor and Jared carefully asks for some of the extra cash he gave him back. Destiny approaches and asks Jared to hold out his hand for a surprise. She drops a pregnancy test in his hand, announcing that she’s pregnant and that he’s going to be a brother. Jared is surprised and tells Phil to ignore his request about giving the money back. Before he can leave, Phil asks for more money now that he’s going to be a father.
He leaves to find that the bike has a flat tire, so he walks to the bus stop. A man emerges, the same one from the woods who stole the baby from Maggie. He exits the bus stop asking for directions. He remarks that the more things change, the more they stay the same, but Jared doesn’t pay him much attention. The man asks if he grew up here, but Jared scoffs him off and gets his bike to walk the rest of the way. When he looks over his shoulder, all that remains is a raven.
He returns to the trailer to cook and doesn’t notice when someone identical to Jared enters, picks up a frying pan, and smacks him across the head with it.
Jared goes to Crashpad’s house to play video games. Crashpad’s mom approaches and asks Jared to stay for dinner. Crashpad reminds her that they can’t pause the game. She sweetly reminds Jared that he can stay anytime. When she’s gone, Crashpad remarks that she’s just happy Jared’s here. She doesn’t like it when Crashpad games alone, even though he's just lying low for a while. Jared thinks he should probably be doing too. Upon further inquisition, Jared admits that he got rolled and now all his dope and cash are gone. He thinks Richie did it since his mom owes him three grand, but the attacker didn’t look like Richie. He’s been seeing weird things lately but thinks it’s just too many drugs or he’s inheriting his parents crazy.
He goes home after and hears muffled voices that he follows. Jared finds his mom in her room high and hallucinating friends while talking to herself. Maggie asks if Jared was at Phil’s and accuses him of giving his father money. She remarks that Phil is a user. Jared counters that Phil's off the oxy, but that’s not what she means. He goes to his room for the rest of the evening until his friends come for a party.
They get high before a girl, Ebony, asks Jared to a party at Dylan’s where Jared can sell his pills. Maggie comes home and offers to show them how to play a real drinking game, her loud demeanor winning over Jared’s party friends.
The next morning, Jared rides the bike home and sees the same girl that just moved in. This time, she seems to be sparkling with a golden aura. He is mesmerized, and he watches her throw away a slab of meat that she quickly explains is spoiled moose meat. Jared notes that she just moved in with the Jacks’ family, which is a foster home. He points out that she had blue hair the other day, to which she agrees. She asks what the town is like, but Jared responds that it's boring. A honking oil truck blares past them. She gives the truck the middle finger and asks if Jared knows there is a direct link between the industrial exploitation of land and violence against indigenous women, which he didn't know. As they talk, she reveals this is her third foster home this year, so she figures she will be gone by Thanksgiving. She then retreats inside.
Jared comes home to an empty house.
Maggie visits Jared at work and asks him for a coffee as she’s toasted and hearing things. He reluctantly gives her one when she promises not to cause any trouble. She sits down and dumps sugar packets in her coffee. A man enters the establishment, but Maggie continues mumbling to herself. She spots the man whom she recognizes as the man from the woods that stole her baby. She pins him against a wall with a mop, angrily yelling at the man. Jared and a manager rush over, and when Maggie looks back at the man, he’s physically changed to someone entirely different. She swears it was someone else and leaves. The manager, Tony, pulls Jared aside and reprimands him for his mother’s behavior. This isn’t the first time she has brought her crazy to the Tasty Bucket. He can’t risk it happening again and fires Jared.
That night, Maggie brings Jared a tray of food as an apology. He asks if she regrets having him, but she asks why he would ask such a stupid question. Jared wants to know if she ever imagined what her life would be like without him, but she retorts that her life didn’t exist before him. Maggie asks if he regrets having a crazy mom with anger management issues. He returns the sentiment of that being a stupid question. She plans to buy food for dinner despite not having money. He asks if she’s worked things out with Richie yet, to which she ominously responds that the world is hard, so they have to be harder.
He goes to Crashpad’s and invites him to the party at Dylan’s house. Once there, they begin drinking and are greeted by Ebony. She's excited about the amazing product Jared was supposed to bring. Jared informs her that he’s out, so she scoffs and storms off. Jared spends the rest of the night drinking alone on the couch while Crashpad plays videogames with other partygoers. He slumps backward and looks over to see himself on the opposite end of the sofa, staring back. He goes to the bathroom to splash water on his face. When he comes out, he still sees himself smiling evilly from the kitchen. He runs out of the house, and Dylan tells him to take it easy, asking what Jared took. Crashpad comes to check on Jared, and despite Dylan’s cruel remarks to beat it, claims he just saw Jared in the kitchen.
Jared wakes up on Crashpad’s couch to the sounds of a muffled video game. He sits up and converses with Crashpad, who thinks he should quit taking pills and mixing his drinks. Jared asks if Crashpad has any cash, but Crashpad only has thirty bucks. He wants to know how Jared plans to turn thirty dollars into three grand in only a matter of hours.
Jared goes to a bingo game in the hopes of winning money. The woman next to him helps him keep up with the fast announcer, though she ultimately wins the game. He sits outside when Crashpad approaches and gives him an envelope of cash that he got from selling his game - characters, rare items, all of it. Jared refuses the money first, but Crashpad reminds him that he has to accept.
As they walk to Richie’s place, Jared swears he will pay Crashpad back as they walk to Richie’s place. Crashpad asks why he stopped hanging out, to which Jared explains that things got crazier after his parents’ split-up. They watch the oil trucks pass before spotting a dead animal on the side of the road surrounded by bugs. They walk to Richie’s to find his trailer torched and the place a mess. The boys worry that Maggie might have something to do with it.
Jared hurries home to find spilled milk, a knocked-over chair, and his home in disarray. Richie emerges from the hallway looking high and angry while holding a hammer. Jared slips on the milk in an attempt to run away, just as Maggie comes out of the hall. She explains that she found an alternative way to pay off her debts. The house is a mess because of her alternative payments. She and Richie also worked together to make his trailer fire look like an accident for the sake of earning the insurance money that she and Richie will split 50/50. Maggie tells Jared that Richie is staying with them for a while since he's virtually homeless, much to Jared’s disgust.
Jared goes back to the road where he buries Richie’s dog. A raven lands in front of Jared and begins mocking his sentimental attitude. Jared rightfully freaks out at the sight of a raven talking. The raven wonders if Jared’s never had a Corvus Corax talk to him before. Jared thinks he’s tripping. The raven eerily responds that he’s the one tripping, not Jared. He warns that Jared’s time is almost up as Jared runs away. The raven takes flight and soars over the town.
Cast[]
- Joel Oulette as Jared
- Crystle Lightning as Maggie
- Kalani Queypo as Wade
- Anna Lambe as Sarah
- Nathan Alexis as Crashpad
- Jamie Spilchuk as Mr. Good
- Griffin Powell Arcand as Dylan
- Mackenzie Muldoon as Teacher
- Bianca Nugara as Ebony
- David Huband as Mr. Jaworski
- Laurie Oulette as Mrs. Robinson
- David Assinewai as Tasty Bucket Customer
- Mark Camacho as Tony
- Harshvardhan Koppela as Bingo Caller
- Pamela Matthews as Bingo Auntie
- Kisik Lightning-Cloud as Young Jared (Uncredited)
Trivia[]
- The baby who portrays a young Jared, Kisik Lightning-Cloud, is the real-life child of Crystle Lightning.
- A raven speaks to Jared and asks if he's never had a "Corvus Corax" speak to him before. Corvus Corax is Latin for "common raven", and is the most known of the raven species.
- The episode brought in a total of 0.441 viewers and a 0.09 demographic rating for its CW premiere.
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