Spoiler Alert: The following article contains plot details for Widow’s Bay season 1 finale, “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!,” now streaming on Apple TV.
The curse came from within the house.
Throughout the ten episodes of the first season of Apple TV’s hit horror-comedy hybrid Widow’s Bay, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) goes from denying that anything is wrong with the eponymous town he leads as mayor to desperately seeking a cure for the town’s increasingly undeniable turmoil. The island village is overrun by sea hags, serial killers, creepy clowns, and other villains who thwart Tom’s dreams of turning Widow’s Bay into a Martha’s Vineyard-like tourist destination. Tom, along with his assistant Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) and true believer Wick (Stephen Root), discover that this off-beat vibe stems from a pact between the town’s founder, Richard Warren (Haimish Linklater), and the demonic forces that inhabit the island. The contract contains onerous conditions that prevent anyone born on the island from leaving on pain of death, and will only end if Warren’s bloodline is also terminated.
For most of the season’s final episode, “I Hope You Enjoy!,” Tom believes that Warren’s last living descendant is Ruth (K. Curran), Tom’s kindly elderly secretary. While most of Widow’s Bay is evacuated from a storm that wreaks havoc and sucks some residents into the sky, Tom visits Ruth’s home and considers a terrifying moral dilemma. Ruth doesn’t help matters by serving him tea, showing off her very full calendar, and insisting that he never pull the lever in the famous trolley problem scenario. She doesn’t realize that her guests are dealing with problems in the moment.
Fortunately for Ruth, and unfortunately for most everyone else, especially Tom, she is not the end of the Richard Warren lineage. To Tom’s obvious horror, as embodied by the ever-competent Reese, Ruth reveals that she had an illegitimate child from an affair – and that child grew up to be Tom’s late wife and the mother of his son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick). Tom’s North Star kept Evan safe throughout the season. The main purpose of attracting tourists to Widow’s Bay was to bring the world to Evan, rather than roll the dice on bringing Evan to the world.
Eventually, Sheriff Bashir (Kevin Carroll) does something Tom can’t remember and shoots Ruth (apparently non-fatally) for the name of her newborn child. But his and Tom’s interests are no longer aligned. Tom reveals that Ruth is not the last descendant, but keeps Evan’s true identity a secret for obvious, perhaps selfish reasons. In the final moments of the final season, which remains on the island until the recently announced season 2, the storm has subsided, but while Evan waits in the car, Tom hears church bells ringing reminding him that his contract is still valid.
“I love the fact that it’s rooted in something so universal and deep and relatable,” Reese told Variety of Widow’s Bay, which he executive produced alongside creator Katie Dippold and star Hiro Murai. “I understand the motivation for that, as opposed to running away from a monster.” Read the full conversation, including what Reese would like to see in Season 2 and the scene where he almost broke out.
Provided by Apple TV
