The world is hard. We have to be harder.
Maggie to Jared, Episode 1
Maggie is a major character in Trickster. She is the protective but foul-mouthed mother of Jared, who self-medicates a supposedly undiagnosed mental illness with substances and partying. Her erratic behavior forces Jared to look out for her.[1]
Bio
Maggie is Jared's over-protective, hardscrabble, foul-mouthed mom. She likes to laugh as much as she likes to party. She self-medicates with alcohol and drugs to drown out the voices in her head. Jared assumes his mom is afflicted with an undiagnosed mental illness — which he fears he'll one day inherit — only to learn that the voices Maggie hears are in fact real. Maggie is a second-generation residential school survivor, so she protects her son the only way she knows how — with tough love. The world is hard. You have to be harder. Yet despite their conflicts and challenges, Maggie and Jared just want to be in each other's lives. Maggie won't let anything come between them.[2]
History
In Episode 1, Maggie saves Jared from an angry pitbull that charges him down the street. SHe runs the dog over with her red pickup truck and encourages her son into the car. 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.
After school, Jared finds 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.
Jared comes home to 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. Maggie comes home and offers to show them how to play a real drinking game, her loud demeanor winning over Jared’s party friends.
In the morning, Jared counts his money from dealing but hides it when his mom emerges. She remarks on how fun last night was but advises him to hold his drinks better. He asks if Richie is for real or just talk. She tells him that she’ll take care of it and he gets ready for work. He returns home to bandage a wounded head in the bathroom. Maggie barges in and tries to help him with the wound but she proves useless as she can’t find tweezers.
Maggie visits Jared at the Tasty Bucket 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. 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. Her actions ultimately get Jared fired.
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.
The next morning, Jared finds Richie's trailer scorched and 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 is 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.
Physical appearance
To be added
Personality
Maggie loves to party almost as much as she loves her son. She is fiercely protective of Jared and is willing to do anything for him - except become sober. She has an undiagnosed mental illness that leaves her ranting to seemingly imaginary people, forces her on day-long substance benders, and makes her already unpredictable emotions even more erratic. She isn't afraid of anyone, and carries this fearless loud attitude with her everywhere she goes.