The Spinster of Widow’s Bay

There was a line of dialogue that stood out to me in Episode 6 of Widow’s Bay, “Our History,” but I forgot to mention it in my recap. This morning, I rewatched the episode to make sure I’d heard it right, and honestly, I’d recommend it to anyone. If for nothing else, to appreciate just how great Betty Gilpin is.

Watching it without having to focus on the plot, I could better appreciate what a brilliant specificity she brings to it. Completely inhabiting the character, but simultaneously just outside of it. My favorite is the scene where she’s going to the priest, overwhelmed and terrified, to tell him that she’d witnessed her new husband commit murder. While she’s upset and flustered, he tells her, “There is evil on this island.” [Edit: he actually says “Evil stalks this land.” I am a middle-aged man; anytime I quote something, just assume I’m paraphrasing]. In mid-sobs, she gives an expression that says, “Yeah, no shit.”

It’s the kind of thing that Matthew Rhys also does well, which I mention not to detract from Gilpin’s performance at all, but just to emphasize how much she nailed the task of taking over for him as a protagonist for one episode. He’s always having to react to the residents and the island itself heaping abuse onto him, and frequently reacting to a new weird thing with an expression of “Huh, that’s odd.” Like a bizarre image inserted into a Wolves calendar. Or seeing an old man in a hospital with a chart that says he’s 37 years old. “That doesn’t seem right.”

And in that scene between Sarah Westcott and the priest, she mentions that she’s “almost 4 and 10 years old.” In the moment, it seemed weird, but I just shrugged and carried on, assuming — as I was probably supposed to? — that it was a comically archaic way of saying “40.” After all, the episode had made repeated mention of how she was an aging spinster past her prime, what a blessing it was to find a husband at her age, etc.

But wait, this is a series where that elderly fisherman was described as being only 37, and where Patricia mentioned that her “biological age is 28.” Was the show actually saying that Sarah Westcott was still 13 years old? The priest repeatedly calls her “child,” which doesn’t seem all that jarring from a priest. And the other residents talk to her as if she’s a young woman, even as they’re commenting on how she’s so far past her prime.

It could read as standard-issue 21st century misogyny, talking to a woman in her 40s as if she’s of no use to anyone anymore. Or it could be a gag about colonial-era misogyny, where it was still just taken for granted that very young women would get married off to older men as soon as possible, so as not to be a drain on their father’s resources.

I’ve got no idea what it means, or if it even means anything at all. Which is yet another example of how Widow’s Bay infuses everything with dry humor, which makes all of it, not just the horror elements, work differently.

Earlier, I said that this stretch of episodes is when Widow’s Bay transformed from horror comedy into ongoing mystery series, but that’s not quite right. This series doesn’t work like other “mystery box” shows, because the comedy is a core component of the series. Any detail could be a clue to something bigger, or it could just be a one-off gag on the theme of how the island is ludicrously cursed. Patricia’s mention of “the Boogeyman” sounded like it was just a gag, but it became the focus of an episode and is still being mentioned.

Will we ever find out why Rosemary said that it’s safe to drive by the old hospital, you just can’t stop there? I’m not sure that it even matters. I’ve been through enough of those mystery box shows to recognize that the speculation and anticipation are fun, but it almost always backfires. Even if the series does pick up the dangling threads, it almost never can do so in a way that feels satisfying to fans who’ve created a complex, elaborate mythology in their minds.

I’m still curious about all of the dangling ideas, of course, especially when the show has made a point of mentioning them repeatedly: the chair facing the sealed door, the real story of how and why people born on the island can’t leave, the painting seeming to show a child lost at sea, and what exactly spared Patricia from The Boogeyman. The great thing about Widow’s Bay is that the threads are fun even if they turn out to be nothing, like the mystery of people looking older than they actually are.