Note: This article contains spoilers from “Widow’s Bay” Episode 10.
It turns out Wyck Crawford (Stephen Root) was not wrong when he said in “Widow’s Bay” Episode 1 that the Apple TV horror comedy’s eponymous island was “waking up.”
In the Season 1 finale, titled “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!,” town hall employee Dale (Jeff Hiller) discovered secret tapes in the island’s storm shelter revealing that the town’s leadership has secretly maintained founder Richard Warren’s (Hamish Linklater) covenant with the island for generations by sacrificing frightened people to the entity within it.
“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,” the tapes instruct, over clips of hooded people in chains being led to the cellar torture chamber shown at the end of the “Widow’s Bay” pilot. “You will be tempted to comfort them. Do not. Their fear is necessary. They say it likes the taste.”
That is not the only shocking revelation packed into the “Widow’s Bay” finale’s tense, gut-wrenching 50 minutes. The episode follows Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) as he goes to the home of his elderly secretary Ruth (K Callan), following his discovery that she is Warren’s last living descendant. Tom grapples with the moral weight of potentially killing Ruth to end the island’s woes and yet still tries to go through with it.
An unaware Ruth survives his poison attempt though, and reveals to Tom’s increasing horror that she had a child in secret, who grew up to be Tom’s late wife, Lauren (Meredith Casey). This revelation makes Tom’s son, Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick), the last living descendant of Richard Warren and, therefore, the person who would presumably need to die to end the island’s covenant once and for all.
That is a bridge Tom does not even consider crossing in the “Widow’s Bay” finale, which partly culminates with Sheriff Bechir Clemmons (Kevin Carroll) shooting and nearly killing Ruth himself when he sees Tom refusing to do so.
Ruth survives the encounter and the island’s terrible storm comes to an end, but only after Evan and his group of fellow teenage troublemakers recklessly lock town hall custodian Kenny (Michael Malvesti) in the island’s subterranean cellar chamber. Kenny is left sealed inside and, after listening to the custodian’s screams, Evan opens the door to discover the room empty and its rusted metal cellar doors left partially open. The entity has feasted, and the covenant is — for the time being — partly fulfilled.
But the “Widow’s Bay” finale makes it clear that the peace Ken’s death has bought is not permanent.
“We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!” pointedly concludes with Tom and Evan surveying the damage the day after the storm, only to hear the sound of church bells ringing eight more times. The entity, it seems, is hungry for eight more souls, though only Hiller’s Dale knows (for now) exactly what the bells mean.
The episode, written by series creator Katie Dippold and directed by executive producer Hiro Murai, wrings a spell-binding, Emmy-worthy performance out of Rhys and elegantly sets the stage for a “Widow’s Bay” Season 2 in which things get a whole lot worse before they get any better. Fortunately, Apple renewed “Widow’s Bay” last week and signed Dippold to an overall deal, which means fans have a lot more of the horror comedy to look forward to in the future.
Below, Dippold dives deeper into Tom’s moral struggle in “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!,” offers some clarity on the episode’s concluding moments and shares her “dream” for the show moving forward. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
TheWrap: I know you worked for years on the “Widow’s Bay” pilot. By the time you had finished writing the final version of that episode, did you know how this season would end?
Katie Dippold: Yes. As an anxious person, I think living on this Earth is a goddamn nightmare most of the time. So the goal of the story was putting Loftis through the ringer as he goes down this rabbit hole of trying to get to the bottom of why this is happening. I wanted him to go from a place of optimism to being forced to deal with these things he’s been repressing and then get to a point of acceptance. I always wanted him to have some complicated dilemmas in the end. Some moral quandaries.
What inspired you to make the finale largely a chamber piece where Tom is forced to make a Walter White-level moral decision?
Dippold: Personally, I can sometimes get bored when the last act of something is just all action and danger. So I spent a lot of time thinking about how to do that differently. Loftis is someone with a lot of walls up. He does think he’s a little smarter than everyone on the island. He thinks he knows best, like he’s the only one that can do this. He doesn’t have a lot of connections with people. So having him go into Ruth’s house with that dilemma and then ultimately connect with this woman, making it harder for him, that was the goal.
Can you tell me about watching Matthew’s performance in this episode for the first time?
Dippold: He’s amazing. I really think he can do anything. I’m very excited for people to see him in this because I love that he just plays it straight. He never goes for the joke, even though he’s so naturally funny and has pitch perfect comedy timing. He just plays it straight. He’s really incredible.
What do you think is going through Tom’s head when he’s hearing those church bells at the end?
Dippold: I think that he isn’t sure exactly what those bells mean yet, but he knows it’s bad. He knows that there’s going to be some unfortunate… How do I put this? He knows it’s not good, and the audience knows even more than him in that moment. That’s something he’s going to have to contend with in the future.
Can Evan hear them, too?
Dippold: Evan can hear them. I don’t think Evan knows exactly what it means. But Evan has seen more now than Loftis has, so I think they’re both chilled by it without fully understanding it yet.
Have you started working on Season 2 yet? Do you have some ideas of what you want to do next?
Dippold: I have. There’s a lot of stuff I would love to do. In some ways, I don’t know if this is weird to say, but Season 1 almost feels like a prequel to the idea of the show. Because I feel like we’ve spent so much time trying to lay the groundwork of what it would be like living on this island. If we started the show living on this island with everything already happening, you wouldn’t buy it. I think there could be a lot of very exciting things to do now.
Do you think the witch who wrote the spell book in Episode 4 is still lurking around?
Dippold: I mean … I tried to do it so that is dealt with in the moment but [she] could come back.
Do you envision future episodes that go back in time like Episode 6?
Dippold: I do think that would be fun. I could absolutely see us doing that. There are things we talked about in the writers’ room that I think would be very fun that we didn’t get to do in Season 1 because it wasn’t the right time.
I also have this dream where, and maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but even beyond this story. If we do this storyline for several seasons and there’s a throwaway line — like the New Year’s Eve disaster at the inn — [maybe] you could see a miniseries of that story and we could have, like, six episodes of that? That would be [the dream] if this show can continue to exist, really building out that world and that timeline.
“Widow’s Bay” Season 1 is streaming in its entirety now on Apple TV.
The post ‘Widow’s Bay’ Creator Explains Those Shocking Finale Twists, Why Season 1 Feels Like a Prequel appeared first on TheWrap.
