Warning: Spoilers ahead for Widow’s Bay Season 1
Widow’s Bay, created by Katie Dippold and starring Matthew Rhys, has entranced audiences since premiering at the end of April with a perfect blend of horror and comedy. The Apple TV series takes place on a cursed fictional island called Widow’s Bay, filled with unforgettable characters and a legacy of unfortunate events.
In hopes of drumming up tourism to the island, Mayor Tom Loftis (Rhys) has tried to control local talk about curses and other superstitions (while contending with some ghosts himself). But by the finale, it’s clear: There are some seriously messed up things going on in Widow’s Bay, and Season 1 is just the tip of the iceberg.
What’s cursing Widow’s Bay?
In the penultimate episode, Tom discovers that centuries ago, the town’s founder, Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater) made a pact with a demonic entity to protect Widow’s Bay and the only way to destroy the pact is to wipe out his bloodline. After a long-winded and hilarious genealogy lesson from Rosemary (Dale Dickey), Mayor Tom, Tom’s assistant Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) and their ally Wyck (Stephen Root) discover that the last remaining part of Warren’s bloodline is none other than their 84-year-old colleague Ruth (K Callan).
As the finale begins, Tom, Patricia and Wyck discuss whether they could possibly kill Ruth in order to save the town. Patricia is adamantly against it, but both Wyck and Tom agree that it’s a necessary cruelty to save the people of Widow’s Bay. Tom agrees to go to Ruth’s house and kill her. Meanwhile, a storm threatening to ravage the entire town has arrived and everyone else is waiting in the underground shelter for it to blow over, including Tom’s son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick).
While at Ruth’s house, a major twist is finally revealed. Ruth, perhaps due to a new cocktail of meds (Tom mixes her meds after seeing in her medical notes advice from a doctor to not mix her medication in an effort to peacefully kill her), shares a secret she’s been harboring for years. It’s widely believed that Ruth never had a child, but she tells Tom that she had an affair with a married man, and she got pregnant. She hid the pregnancy and ultimately gave the child to the married man, so he and his wife would raise the child as their own.
“She had a nice childhood. They loved her,” Ruth says fondly. The child she’s referring to is Lauren—Tom’s dead wife. That means Ruth isn’t the last descendant of Richard Warren. Evan, Tom’s son, is. In order to stop the curse of Widow’s Bay, Tom doesn’t have to just kill Ruth. He has to kill his own son.
Tom is beyond horrified at the discovery, but Ruth, who has no idea about her cursed lineage, is positively overjoyed to get it off her chest: “It feels so good to finally say all this out loud. To unburden myself for all these years,” she says with glee. It’s one of many brilliant contrasts between horror and hilarity that has Widow’s Bay so adored.
So shaken that he’s barely able to speak, Tom can only offer a few words: “He’s never gonna leave the island.” Snapping into reality, Tom attempts to take Ruth to the doctor as he’s given her a potentially deadly combination of pills, but before he can get her out the house, town sheriff Bechir (Kevin Carrol) sneaks in and shoots her. That’s because Patricia told Bechir in the bunker that Ruth is the last descendant, and killing her is key to removing the curse from Widow’s Bay. With a baby on the way, Bechir is willing to do whatever it takes to protect his child, just like Tom was willing to do, until he discovered that his son may just be the one reason Widow’s Bay is the way it is.
As the two argue, the storm suddenly breaks. It was believed that only the killing of Warren’s bloodline could stop the incoming disaster, but Ruth is still breathing.
That’s because Widow’s Bay has a whole other trick up its sleeve, and it’s in the basement. While audiences have feverishly been speculating on the Warren bloodline, there’s something even more sinister lying beneath the town—literally.
What lies beneath Widow’s Bay?
There’s been a great deal of speculation about what’s in Tom’s basement since Episode 8, where Tom came home and panicked when he thought Evan went through the basement. Viewers have considered a multitude of possibilities about the basement. Could it contain evidence that Tom isn’t Evan’s father? Does his apparently dead wife still live in the basement? And perhaps above all, has Evan never been in his own basement? That’s weird! But perhaps it’s not that Evan’s never been down to the basement, but rather that if he searched hard enough, he’d find something he can’t unsee. An eagle-eyed Redditor even observed that the board game Tom plays in Episode 2 has a warning on it, reading “No! Basement is bad. You lose.” Another theory in the same thread suggests that the sacred geometry hand drawing from an earlier episode is actually a map of underground tunnels that leads to the door under the Salty Whale, where the electric chair is.
After watching the finale, that final theory seems to have the most merit. Evan and his friends leave the bunker out of boredom, only to discover the bunker is part of a large underground labyrinth of creepy rooms. One room they find even has what appears to be a defunct electric chair, and a set of sealed doors on the ground. It’s enough to make the average person start running for their lives, but to three teens waiting for a storm to end, it’s an opportunity to mess around with the chair to stave off boredom.
A townsperson finds them and orders them to come back to the shelter. But Evan’s friend closes the door on the way out, locking the man inside. Evan’s friends run away, but Evan stays behind, trying to open the door. Before he can open it, he hears a scream. Evan pries the door open, but the man is no longer inside. He notices that the previously sealed doors on the ground have been opened, and he leaves to go back to the shelter.
Though it’s unconfirmed by the end of the season whether the basement and bunker are connected, it seems that Tom was terrified Evan would discover their basement is connected to the underground bunkers where a mysterious and deadly creature lies.
Whatever happens to the man in the basement leads to the immediate end of the brutal storm. And what did happen? Well, the finale appears to have answered that, too.
Earlier, Dale (Jeff Hiller) was sent to find some games to entertain the people stuck in the shelter. While searching, he came across a series of videos from the history of WIdow’s Bay—ones that describe a history of human sacrifice rituals that happen in the basement tunnels. It’s unclear exactly what the people are being sacrificed to, but the video eerily remarks that “They say it likes the taste,” it presumably being the monster that lies beneath the sealed doors, and the taste referring to human flesh. The videos also detail that the sound of the bell tolling in Widow’s Bay signals the beast’s appetite. One toll is equivalent to one human sacrifice.
In the wake of the storm, Tom is seen throwing Ruth’s pendant, the one that confirms her lineage to Warren, into the sea. He heads back to his car where Evan waits for him, and hears the bell toll eight times, signaling that the beast requires eight human sacrifices. He and Evan drive back home, and the episode, and season, ends.
Widow’s Bay successfully pulled the wool over our eyes in ten spellbinding episodes. In causing us to obsess over Warren and his bloodline, it deterred us to the horrors that await in the basement network of Widow’s Bay. What happens when Tom finds out that Evan has, in fact, been to the basement? Who will the eight people sacrificed to the monster be? What even is the monster? And who knows about it?
Those are all answers that we can only hope to get in Season 2. But if there’s anything Widow’s Bay has prepared us for, it’s that there’s probably an awful lot to come that we’ve not even considered. And I can’t wait to find out what that is.
