SPOILER ALERT: The following article contains plot details from “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!,” the Season 1 finale of “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
The curse was coming from inside the house.
Over the 10-episode first season of “Widow’s Bay,” the horror-comedy hybrid that’s become a breakout hit for Apple TV, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) has gone from denying there’s anything off about the namesake town he leads as mayor to frantically seeking a cure for its increasingly undeniable chaos. The island village is beset by sea hags, serial killers, creepy clowns and other evils that interfere with Tom’s dream of turning Widow’s Bay into a Martha’s Vineyard-like tourist destination. Together with his assistant Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) and true believer Wyck (Stephen Root), Tom discovers the off vibes originate with a pact between town founder Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater) and the demonic force that inhabits the island. The covenant — including troublesome terms like those born on the island being unable to leave on pain of death — only ends when Warren’s bloodline does, too.
For most of the season’s final episode, “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!,” Tom believes Warren’s last living descendant is Tom’s kindhearted, elderly secretary Ruth (K Callan). As almost everyone else in Widow’s Bay takes shelter from a storm that’s wreaking havoc and even sucking some residents into the sky, Tom goes to Ruth’s house and weighs a terrible moral dilemma. Ruth doesn’t help matters by making him tea, showing off her very full calendar or insisting she wouldn’t pull the lever in the famous Trolley Problem scenario, which she’s unaware her guest is working through at that very moment.
Luckily for Ruth and unluckily for pretty much everyone else, most especially Tom, she isn’t the end of Richard Warren’s bloodline. To Tom’s evident horror, as embodied by the ever-capable Rhys, Ruth reveals that she had a secret child from an adulterous affair — and that said child grew up to be Tom’s late wife, the mother of their son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick). Tom’s North Star throughout the season has been keeping Evan safe; the whole point of attracting tourism to Widow’s Bay was to bring the world to Evan rather than roll the dice on sending Evan out into the world.
Ultimately, Sheriff Bechir (Kevin Carroll) does what Tom can’t bring himself to and shoots Ruth (seemingly non-fatally) in the name of his own newborn child. But his and Tom’s interests no longer align: Tom reveals that Ruth isn’t the final descendant, yet keeps Evan’s true identity secret for obvious, if arguably selfish, reasons. In the season’s closing moments, the last we’ll spend on the island until a recently announced Season 2, the storm has abated, but Tom hears church bells that act as a reminder the covenant is still very much in effect while Evan waits in the car.
“I just love the fact that it’s rooted in something so universal and so deep and something relatable,” Rhys tells Variety of “Widow’s Bay,” which the actor executive produced alongside creator Katie Dippold and lead director Hiro Murai. “You can understand that motivation, as opposed to running away from a monster.” Read on for our full conversation, including what Rhys hopes to see in Season 2 and the scene that almost made him break.
Courtesy of Apple TV