What happens in Vegas, doesn’t stay in Vegas for Luciana ‘Lucky’ Armstrong.
New Apple TV crime thriller Lucky has all the ingredients you need for your next binge-watch, but somehow, it’s not. It has a star-studded cast, is adapted from Marissa Stapley’s bestselling thriller by the man behind Your Friends and Neighbors, Jonathan Tropper and has Reese Witherspoon’s production team behind it. The end result is another ‘one last heist’ smorgasbord of cliches and well-worn tropes.
We first meet Luciana ‘Lucky’ Armstrong (Anya Taylor-Joy) in Las Vegas with her husband Cary (Queer’s Drew Starkey). They look young, loved up and rich, like nothing could go wrong. They have just successfully stolen a lot of money in Sin City and are toasting a new life together.
Hours later she wakes up with her husband gone and the money now missing. Just hours after toasting to a new life, she is now on the run, penniless, with multiple thinly written bad guys on her tail.
Looking for her and the money is mob boss Priscilla (Annette Bening), who just happens to be Cary’s mother, plus all her stooges. Also tracking down Lucky and her elusive spouse is Agent Billie Rand (King Richard’s Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor).
Lucky Is Outrunning More Than A Mob Boss And A Cop
But Lucky isn’t just outrunning her current predicament. She is also outrunning her incarcerated father John Armstrong’s (Timothy Olyphant) legacy. She has been raised a criminal, but Cary was her exit strategy. Now, the thing which promised her freedom and the ability to leave crime behind is now the thing which could kill her.
Lucky ducks in and out of situations as she tries to mask herself from the mafia and the authorities. She joins families, gets makeovers at kids’ birthday parties, and acquires cars with very little trouble. She plays up to being the bombshell when she needs to but is more than happy to play the innocent victim in times of need. Everyone seems all too willing to help the beaten-up girl with blood pouring from her head, as charming as Taylor-Joy plays it.
Over the seven episodes of Lucky, the fugitive darts in and out of different predicaments, never settling in one place for too long. It can get a touch disorientating for an audience member as she jumps between locations and supporting characters. It also makes it hard to care about some of these secondary characters when something bad happens.
A Slight Casting Misfire Despite A-Listers
Anya Taylor-Joy is a phenomenal actress, but this show doesn’t use her ethereal qualities to their top potential. It’s not easy to buy her as this tough baddie on the run. She handles the quieter moments better than fiercer ones, like when she joins Alanna Ubach’s fiery but helpful civilian for dinner and opens up a bit more about her life. You’ll also have to suspend disbelief that someone so strikingly beautiful as Taylor-Joy can go undercover and disappear in the American desert.
Annette Bening is underused here, essentially playing the same role as in Dutton Ranch, but is clearly having fun. Has little more to do than chew scenery here, spending most of the show barking lines down the phone like “I don’t have time for your cowboy haikus.” The work is beneath Bening, but she is having fun doing it. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor also elevates a pretty standard cop character into someone a little more 3D, although very little time has been spent making anything more than an archetype.
Drew Starkey doesn’t get a lot to do here, and what he does is not the best showcase of his acting abilities. There seems to be a lack of chemistry between him and Taylor-Joy, which makes it a struggle to care about where he is and whether she will ever find her way back to him. If you hadn’t seen Starkey in Queer, you may have quite a low estimation of his talents as an actor.
Father and Daughter Reunion
A rare shining moment in the series happens when Lucky re-establishes contact with her incarcerated father. The real gem of this show is not in the car chases, the violence and explosions. No, it’s in the bond between a father and daughter. He spends much of the opening episodes offering pearls of wisdom down the phone, and the series is infinitely better when the show moves focus to him.
The latter half of Lucky focuses more on her history and less on her now, and that is when the show finally ditches the cliches. Not only are the softer moments where Taylor Joy is at her best, but Timothy Olyphant is giving the best performance of his career. This soft humanity was a very necessary, if not late, addition to the series. Can you ever outrun your legacy and family trauma? Well, Lucky is trying to.
Is Lucky Worth Your Time?
Lucky is full of attempts at thrills. There is gunfire, fistfights, car chases and mafia bosses. Yet, none of them really give off the intended result. It’s likely because it all feels so derivative. Every element of Lucky reminds you of something else, and something probably better, to the point it almost feels like a parody of the genre.
The show ends much better than it starts. The first two episodes are the weakest in the series, as it hits every predictable beat possible. It even has the walking away from the car in the desert when it’s on fire, but the series does get better. It never really meets its full potential, and it never really shines, but it is mostly a watchable show.
Lucky gets stuck in a rut, while the protagonist jumps in and out of various situations. It gets to the point not that you can’t keep up but that you don’t want to. Mid-series, there is finally a cliffhanger that’ll make you want to click watch for the next series. But that soon fizzles out, as the script always takes the most expected path.
Lucky doesn’t do anything wrong because it doesn’t attempt anything that could go wrong. Despite a talented cast and creative team, it’s another forgettable crime series that will disappear into the streaming ether.
Grade: C-
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Lucky
When a multi-million-dollar heist goes sideways, con artist Lucky is forced to go on the run. Pursued by both the FBI and a ruthless crime boss, Lucky must fight for her life—and a way out.
Release Date: July 15, 2026
Director: Jonathan Tropper
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy , Annette Bening , Timothy Olyphant
