Critic’s Rating: 4.85 / 5.0
4.85
Thank goodness Widow’s Bay was renewed for Season 2.
This finale opened up all kinds of new avenues for the story to blossom with more time.
Tom, who spent a good portion of his life ignoring the realities of the island, just discovered that his son is its most important — and wanted — resident.
One thing is clear. Jeff Hiller wasn’t kidding when he told me during an interview that his friend, creator Katie Dippold, had a clear framework for the story she had been working on for so long.
The allusions to classic horror stories alone is beyond impressive, but the intricacies of the lore are something else.
I have no doubt that she’s got a grand adventure planned, and she’s mapped out every possibility.
After the events of Widow’s Bay Season 1 Episode 9, Tom was on his way to kill Ruth, who they had discovered was the last descendant of Richard Warren. The belief is that the pact ends when his line ends.
As he searched her medical records for cancer, I thought he wanted to see if there was enough reason to just let her die naturally and suffer until then. But the storm was raging, and a sacrifice was in order to appease it.
We’ve seen the room underground with the hellish iron throne where sacrificial lambs were left to die. We saw it in action during a flashback. The island is easily appeased with a body now and then.
But to end it once and for all, to free the people of Widow’s Bay, the best idea was to end the pact with Richard Warren. Of course, we’re just assuming that would do the job, but it was as good an idea as any other.
So, Tom set out to do what needed to be done. He wants his son to be free. Freedom has a price.
With Patricia telling Tom he didn’t have to kill Ruth and Wyck screaming that he definitely does, Tom made his way to Ruth’s.
Ruth thought he was there to take her to the shelter, but he decided they should just hunker down there together to avoid the danger of the storm.
Of course, Ruth is a lovely person, and every time she opened her mouth, my heart just sank right along Tom’s. You could see his soul was being crushed by the look on his face.
Making matters worse, Tom learned that Ruth is a marvel for Widow’s Bay. Her calendar was filled with the myriad ways she helps people around town, and her loss would be significant for many.
It did nothing to ease Tom’s mind about his impending task, to the point he was hoping Rosemary’s “fucking genealogy” might have pointed them in the wrong direction.
Still, he said that while actively searching for the medications that he spotted in her medical files.
In the “whatever can drag out your torture for longer is probably on the table” of it all, I loved how his initial choice for tea, when offered, was the calm and soothing variety, but when he learned it took 27 minutes to steep, he voted for the three-minute-steeping pick-me-up of peppermint.
The thought of dragging out her death longer when he knew each minute would only prove her to be more loving and valuable was just a no from him. But she had already dumped the herbs in the pot, and she didn’t want to waste good herbs just because he changed his mind at the last second.
What’s really weird is that Tom has entrusted Ruth with his son but has never been to her house. Maybe had he seen the room she had for him, it might have made him think about things a bit. She was sitting on clues to so much.
It’s amazing how much stuff you could go through while tea steeps. From a full house tour to walking down memory lane in her photo albums, Tom got a much larger picture of her life than a man intent on killing someone needed.
And Ruth had really been through it in her life. She was hit on by everyone, lost a boyfriend who turned into the animal that bit him, and lost her daddy in the lake. By the time she was done talking about her past, Tom almost felt good about giving her an out.
He was even willing to give her the option to sacrifice herself, but it didn’t go over as he expected. He gave her the runaway trolley scenario. A trolley is barreling down the track and will kill many. If you pull the lever, it will change directions and only kill one person.
Ruth said, “Well, I wouldn’t pull the lever.” Tom was shocked. As he saw it, pulling the lever was the only choice.
But Ruth explained how she saw it. In her mind, the runaway trolley is life, and the lever is herself. You can’t control the bad things in life, but if she pulled the lever, then she’d be choosing to kill that person, and that’s not something she could do.
And OMG, people always toss out the question of whether you’d kill Hitler if you had the choice, and I never even considered looking at it in exactly the way Ruth did.
Life is a house of horrors. Ruth knows that. And she’s always worried about Tom, who has never even bothered to visit her house. She uses the fact that Widow’s Bay will never be Martha’s Vineyard to get the idea across to him.
It gave me another idea, which we’ll explore later in this review.
I’m not sure her analogy landed, and Tom didn’t have time to ponder it because he spotted a family heirloom that tied her directly to Richard Warren. That was all he needed to crush some tablets and put them into Ruth’s tea.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried sneaking medication into a fellow human’s food or drink, but I have.
And although my boyfriend was feverish at the time and refusing to take medication, when I handed him a bowl of Dinty Moore Beef Stew with crushed aspirin in it, the guilt was overpowering. I snatched it away from him without letting him eat it.
My reasoning? If I could smell the aspirin in the stew, I wasn’t fooling anyone.
Which is to say that Tom didn’t do a good job crushing those pills, and not only would Ruth’s tea taste awful, it would be lumpy. I don’t think I could handle the questions that arose as a result. Why allow someone’s last moments to be filled with dread?
Tom has had a history of putting off the truth. Lauren tried telling him about the island, but he wouldn’t listen. He not only ignored it, but he brought people to the island, people who are now trapped in the middle of Widow’s Bay’s madness in a shelter without enough food or water.
He thought he was telling a dead woman his secrets, but Ruth wasn’t dead. She didn’t even miss a beat when she awoke from her slumber.
Tom was still talking to her when he grabbed a pillow, and thank God for that. Her story was far more convoluted than Tom could have imagined, and it led directly to his son. Maybe if he had come to the house and seen Evan’s room, he might have wondered why she cared so much about Evan.
An affair late in life led to a pregnancy. She gave up Lauren for adoption, but she never lost track of her, and her being in his and Evan’s life was no accident.
But Tom has a way of sticking his head up his rear end to avoid the truth. Even if he had seen the signs, he probably would have seen right past them rather than acknowledge the truth.
All this time, she’s been working just to be a part of Evan’s life. Suddenly, the thing Tom needed to do became a lot more harrowing.
It says a lot about Tom’s love for Evan that the first thing that came to mind was that his son would never leave the island. He didn’t consider that Evan’s death could save the island, and now he has control of the lever. It didn’t even seem to cross his mind.
When Bachir burst into the room and shot Ruth in the back as Tom was holding the woman who gave birth to his wife, I thought Tom would, on some level, be happy about it. If she died, then her secret died with her. Evan would be safe.
But that’s not how it worked at all. Tom screamed that she wasn’t the last descendant. That just keeps the idea alive, and it means that someone, eventually, could connect the dots between Ruth and Evan.
And that’s the twist that changes everything.
Evan spent most Widow’s Bay Season 1 fighting for answers about his mother and demanding honesty from his father. Suddenly, he’s no longer just a frustrated teenager trapped on an island. He’s the person the entire island’s future revolves around.
Kingston Rumi Southwick didn’t know how central Evan would become until production was already underway. In fact, he learned about the reveal in a way that sounds almost too absurd to be true.
During a cast dinner before filming, a producer’s assistant casually told him that the entire mystery ultimately came down to Evan’s lineage. “The whole show, it ends off on you,” she told him.
“She told me everything that happened,” Southwick recalled with a laugh. “The curse, because you’re the last living descendant, and it all ends up on you.”
Even after hearing it, he wasn’t convinced until the scripts arrived and confirmed that Evan was indeed at the center of Widow’s Bay’s biggest mystery. “Holy shit,” he remembered thinking. “This really does leave off on a cliffhanger.”
He’s not kidding!
Unless I missed her taking her last breath, Ruth wasn’t dead. What will that mean as the story continues? Well, maybe the events of the shelter will provide some answers.
Because while Tom was hunting Ruth, Patricia and Wyck were working to divide the supplies for their unhappy underground guests, which weren’t plentiful.
There were 200 bottles of water and 100 MREs for 145 people. It seemed a little early to be worrying about food and water, but this is Widow’s Bay.
Wyck knew enough about what they could potentially be facing down there that his main concern was keeping people calm, and food and beverages did that for most.
The “old citizen” (really, that’s what the subtitles called him) who was spouting off facts during Widow’s Bay Season 1 Episode 9 broke the news that the 1962 Nor’Easter lasted five days, but it’s not unusual for them to last twice as long on the island.
Yeah, those rations would be a problem, and it was getting pretty ugly in there for a while. But things were quickly coming to a head because of those who had ventured out beyond the perimeters of the shelter itself.
Dale was restless and exploring what was down there.
In another tribute to Lost, Dale discovered old movies, one of which, titled “For THEM,” laid out the possible reasons someone could be “there,” including committing a crime, owing a debt to society, or just found wanting “in some way,” there was “absolutely unassailable reason you are here.”
Dale is about as dense as they come sometimes, and despite the “sacrifice” discussed, he was just scratching his head as the film ran out.
I’m pretty sure the rigorous selection process was only rigorous in how difficult it was to get the “volunteers” into the shelter to undergo whatever they were being subjected to.
When he watched “For YOU,” the conversation changed. It was no longer about the Ruths or Kennys of the world, but those who were sending the sacrifices to their death.
To the tributes, the man said, “It’s time. Listen to your facilitator. Move forward. Do not beg.”
To the others, he said, “Be strong. Honor the pact. And remember, their sacrifices are our survival. The bad times will not end until the covenant is honored and honored fully. Life for Life.
“The island will make its needs known. One soul for each bell toll. You’ll be tempted to comfort them. Do not. Their fear is necessary. They say it likes the taste. Now let’s pray for a long and peaceful slumber.”
The island takes, and in return, it gives the residents of Widow’s Bay time without strife.
But, as Dale said, “This place is a death trap. RUN!!!” It’s just too bad that they have nowhere to run to.
Yet we haven’t mentioned the teens, who hoped, like Dale, to explore a bit and maybe even get the hell out of there. Despite his newfound agreement with his dad, Evan didn’t even need heavy-handed peer pressure to join the others.
As someone who loves to explore and discover new things in old places, I understand the desire. But it wasn’t just teens digging around.
They wound up in the iron throne room, but Kenny was hot on their tails. He ushered them out and back to safety, but he got stuck in there. And he became the sacrifice. In an instant, the storm stopped.
The crowds stopped raging, and Bachir wasn’t actively trying to kill Ruth any longer. He just kept wondering why everything had gone so calm. What happened?
Rest in Peace, Kenny. Your tribute saved many. Someday, maybe they’ll even realize that your death was the answer to the calm waters.
But what’s next for Widow’s Bay?
Southwick is just as curious as viewers about what comes next. While he hopes Evan gets pulled deeper into the island’s mythology, he’s not convinced Tom will suddenly start sharing all of his secrets.
“I don’t think Tom would tell him,” Southwick admitted. “Us trying to figure out how to fix it and then him not telling me still, and maybe me learning and being really upset at him, is something that sounds fun to do.”
What the actor does know is that the finale transformed Evan from an outsider looking for answers into someone who may have no choice but to confront the island head-on. As a horror fan, he’s hoping that means even stranger things are ahead.
“I really am hoping to have Evan in some pretty freaky, scary situations,” he said.
We hope so, too. And I have a very good plan to turn the island into a supernatural murder-themed tourist trap. Whether that’s where the story goes remains to be seen, but it seems solid to me.
Because how can Tom keep his son’s secret? And if Ruth is still alive, will the storm abating be enough to get the others off her tail? Now that he knows who she is in his life, Ruth could be helpful. And she sure as hell can keep a secret.
What will Tom tell Evan about the island? And just how satisfied is the island with Kenny’s sacrifice? Well, not very.
Just before the credits rolled, the bell tolled eight times. The island needs eight more sacrifices. And if the film was correct, it would be best if whoever is feeding the island is scared out of their wits.
And here’s where I think Widow’s Bay Season 2 can go. Tom may be beating himself up over bringing tourists to the island, but if they advertise for the dregs of the earth, such as those portrayed in the “For THEM” film, they would have a ready supply of sacrifices.
Widow’s Bay doesn’t need to be the next Martha’s Vineyard, but for the island to prosper and keep Richard Warren’s descendants out of the discussion, it needs to be fed constantly.
So why not advertise to criminals, lonely hearts, and others who just want a way out, but with a fun twist?
I don’t know how they’d account for visitors who go missing or why people would continue to go if word got out that some never returned, but we live in a weird world now. Fear sells. Many people take chances that ordinary folks like me never would.
Appeal to those people, and feed ’em to the island. It wouldn’t account for the pain associated with doing so or how you’d salvage your humanity by taking lives, but Widow’s Bay is being held captive.
They have nothing to lose. They can’t leave the island. They can’t really hurt the outside world unless that world comes to them.
But I just wrote a thesis about this finale, so now it’s your turn. With everything that was revealed, in what direction should the story go next? All hail Widow’s Bay! I can’t wait to pack my bags again for another trip.
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Quick! Duck for cover! The storm isn’t over for Widow’s Bay. In fact, its second season renewal promises this gem of a series is just getting started.
Literal and supernatural storms are brewing on Widow’s Bay Season 1 Episode 9, and in the midst of it, there might be a way out of this nightmare.
