The following article contains major spoilers for the Widow’s Bay finale.
In the grand tradition of Apple TV shows, Widow’s Bay took a minute to find its crowd. But by the end of its first season, positive word-of-mouth had spread for the horror-comedy sleeper hit like a sea shanty earworm. Which is no big shock: across its ten pitch-perfect episodes, Widow’s Bay — which centres on the spooky travails of a helpless mayor (Matthew Rhys) of a cursed island off the coast of Massachusetts — was a delight. Pretty much everything worked, from its Scooby Doo-esque ghoul-of-the-week structure, to its tonal balance of scares and humour, to its well of lore rivalling Lost. The history of Widow’s Bay runs deep, and in the aptly titled finale “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!”, creator Katie Dippold manages to satisfyingly tie the story’s disparate threads together. All while leaving a few doors open for season two.
To recap where we left off in the penultimate episode: Tom had Rosemary (Dale Dickey) do a little digging into the family tree of the island’s founder Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater), whose last living descendant is none other than Tom’s innocent secretary Ruth (K Callan). In order to lift the island’s curse, Ruth needs to kick the bucket — and we last left Tom just as he was heading to her house to do the job. Meanwhile, the residents and tourists of Widow’s Bay hunker down as a supernatural storm begins to brew. Now, let’s dive into the finale, and every single thought I had while watching it.
- Poor Tom just can’t seem to find anything wrong with Ruth. She’s so healthy that she can jog up the stairs after walking two miles on the treadmill. And she’s so beloved that her social calendar is stacked. It’s funny, yes, but there’s also a sad, pathetic undercurrent to Tom’s whole operation of looking for some fucked up way to justify killing her.
- One of my favourite jokes in the whole series was the board game/totally-not-ominous box of pliers Tom finds in the Breakwater Inn that is just called “Teeth.” So it was lovely to see another brilliant example of production-design-based visual comedy with the decor in the storm shelter’s medical room: one handy poster for treating a human bite, and another offering tips on “How to… subdue someone.”
- I fully guffawed at Ruth’s homemade chamomile and lavender tea that takes 27(!) entire minutes to steep. This woman is serious about her cuppa.
- While the shelter descends into chaos thanks to the lacklustre food ration situation, Dale (Jeff Hiller) stumbles upon an old film reel containing a handy instructional video on the island’s whole deal. As it turns out, each church bell toll corresponds with a life that must be given to honour Richard Warren’s covenant with the island’s entity. We then see deeply unnerving footage of the unlucky sacrifices with their heads covered in hoods, while the video reassures us that “their fear is necessary. They say it likes the taste.” Who are “they,” and more importantly, what the hell is “it”? Is it the island itself, or is there a creature we don’t know about?
- While we’re at it, no one in the previous Widow’s Bay administrations thought to leave a little human sacrifice handbook in the office for future clueless mayors like Tom?
- Tom asks Ruth if she knows about the ‘trolley problem.’ “You mean back in ‘42 when we tried to build one and all the workers disappeared?” she replies, misunderstanding his question on the famous ethical dilemma to be about a literal trolley-based disaster from the island’s past. An incredible joke and, on top of that, a troubling lore drop.
- After she’s told about the actual trolley problem, Ruth says she wouldn’t pull the lever. “You can’t control the bad things that happen in life,” she reasons, and if she were to change the trolley’s course, she would be actively making a choice to kill someone. Ruth’s philosophy is informed by the Tennessee Williams quote: “We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.” It’s a nice sentiment, but also cynical: the world is terrible because it was made that way, and we can’t do anything to fix it. I feel like Ruth would feel right at home on another miserable floating rock called Britain.
- Ruth also drops the atomic bomb of a trauma dump that she had an affair with a married man that resulted in a secret child! Who passed away! But she was actually Tom’s wife Lauren! Which means the last living descendant of Richard Warren is not Ruth, but Tom’s son Evan! Rhys’ look of defeat in response to that revelation is completely shattering — Emmy-worthy, even.
- Shoutout to this fan who predicted the above with such startling accuracy that I’m convinced they’ve done a Richard Warren and communicated with another realm via hallucinogenic mushrooms.
