Note: This article contains spoilers from “Widow’s Bay” Episode 3.
The status quo is violently upheaved at the end of “Widow’s Bay” Episode 3, titled “The Inaugural Swim.” The standout installment of the Apple TV horror comedy series catches back up with Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) as his efforts to turn the show’s eponymous, potentially cursed island into a tourist trap finally start to pay dividends. Tourists have begun to flood onto the island and things seem, for once, to be looking up for ol’ Tom.
That does not last long.
A late-night drive back to his home is interrupted by a run-in with a Sea Hag (Carryl Lynn), an old, water-logged woman who stands like the ghost from “The Ring” and charges at Tom when he stops to offer her a ride home. She scratches his arm that night and then his leg again during Widow’s Bay’s Inaugural Swim, and it is during a later conversation with Wyck (Stephen Root) that Tom learns the Sea Hag is a mythical figure feared by the island’s fishermen.
Her scratches will leave Tom paralyzed on the night that she eventually seeks him out, and Wyck informs him that she kills her prey by sitting on their faces (naturally). Tom ignores Wyck’s warning, but his paranoia soon grows out of control, spiking his chances with attractive tourist Marissa (Elizabeth Alderfer) and leaving him partly paralyzed in his recliner when — in one of the show’s scariest sequences to date — the Sea Hag arrives to mount and kill him. Tom’s life is ultimately saved by Wyck, who shoots the Sea Hag with a harpoon that kills her in an explosion of muddy sea water.
“Why is this happening?” a traumatized Tom asks in the aftermath of the incident, to which Wyck can only respond, “I don’t know. You just survive.”
The episode’s conclusion marks a significant shift for “Widow’s Bay.” Tom’s skepticism nearly killed him, making it impossible for him to continue to ignore the supernatural realities of the island he has learned to call home. It is for this reason that “Widow’s Bay” creator Katie Dippold sees the end of “The Inaugural Swim” as the climax of the show’s first act.
“A lot of this was just following my gut. I knew I would be frustrated by a show where the whole time Tom refuses to believe it, so I looked at Episode 3 as the end of Act One,” Dippold told TheWrap. “Now, there’s no more denying it. The first couple of episodes, he’s in complete denial, and I wanted to have something happen that was just undeniable.”
“Something supernatural is happening. This place is cursed. He cannot fight that anymore,” the writer, creator and showrunner further explained. “The complication is now the tourists are here, and now Tom has to contend with that. [Episode 3] just felt like the right time to get to it.”
As dramatically monumental as the events of “The Inaugural Swim” are, the episode maintains “Widow’s Bay’s” fine balance of legitimate horror and laugh-out-loud comedy. It does that all throughout its 38 minutes, but particularly when Wyck sings to Tom — with a completely straight face — the sea shanty that local fishermen have created for the Sea Hag. The scene is utterly ridiculous, and it was the first thing Root and Rhys shot for “Widow’s Bay.”
“That was the first scene we did,” Root revealed with a laugh. “We had to come in ready to go with our characters and full backstory and everything else.” When asked how difficult it was to film the scene without breaking into fits of laughter, the actor told TheWrap, “It wasn’t hard, because [Matthew’s] so freaking great.”
“We didn’t break. We quivered,” Rhys contended, laughing.
The episode’s other shining comedic moment belongs to a bit of physical comedy so unexpected and ingenious it leaves one gobsmacked. As the Sea Hag is preparing to mount his face (a sentence every writer expects to pen one day), a partly paralyzed Tom reaches down and pulls his chair’s recliner switch, throwing the Sea Hag off and out of sight behind him. The act buys him just enough time to crawl away to his bathtub and be saved by Wyck.
“I spent months thinking about the recliner,” director and executive producer Hiro Murai told TheWrap. “I had a drawing on my whiteboard about how he would sit in the recliner and how the Sea Hag would try to mount his face.”
“The Inaugural Swim” does not end just on Wyck’s unexpected rescue of Tom.
In the moments afterward, Tom’s answering machine gets a message from Reverend Bryce (Toby Huss), who informs Tom that he heard “it,” before apologizing and saying a prayer that God forgives him one day. Meanwhile, outside in Wyck’s truck, viewers hear his police scanner light up with a call for help from Sheriff Clemmons (Kevin Carroll), who requests all available fire and rescue responders meet him at Patricia’s (Kate O’Flynn) cocktail party.
Things, in other words, seem to be going from bad to worse on “Widow’s Bay,” and now Tom knows the island’s superstitions are not as unfounded as he long believed. How will he, as the town’s leader, face the challenges that lie ahead?
“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” Rhys teases.
New episodes of “Widow’s Bay” premiere Wednesdays on Apple TV.
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