The Ongoing Story of Widow’s Bay

I didn’t have a lot to say about Episode 9 of Widow’s Bay, titled “Emergency Shelter,” because it felt like a filler episode designed to set up the finale. It didn’t feel nearly as eventful as the rest of the season’s episodes, more like a showcase for a few funny scenes, slowing down the pace to build up to the big finish.

Which made the key question: the big finish of what? Widow’s Bay the series, or just season one?

We got the answer to that, at least, with the announcement that the series is getting a second season. Knowing that makes me appreciate the episode a little more. It would’ve felt anticlimactic as part of the end of the entire series, but it works pretty well as a build-up for the story going off in a new direction.

Devoting half of the episode’s run time to Rosemary presenting 300 years of Warren family history via transparencies on an overhead projector seems simultaneously like something Widow’s Bay wouldn’t do, but also exactly like the kind of thing that only Widow’s Bay would do. On the one hand, the series doesn’t usually go so far in making a scene that’s mostly comedic; the pacing is just too tight for that, and they usually prefer to have the comedy running underneath or alongside everything else. But on the other hand: making fun of the idea of treating this as a puzzle box series, by making the big reveal as mundane and excruciatingly drawn out as they possibly can, is extremely funny and on brand.

I’d already gotten the impression that the YouTubers and Redditors were setting themselves up for disappointment by looking through freeze-frames for clues and concocting elaborate theories about the full story of the island and the Warren bloodline. Even in series that do lean into that — I’m thinking of WandaVision in particular — it’s rarely satisfying. Either the references are so obscure, and the theories so wildly off-base, that they’re completely irrelevant; or they figure out everything before the series is halfway done, so getting the reveals at the end feel like a let-down. Very few shows are designed to work like ARGs, but the internet treats everything like one.

So my take on Widow’s Bay is that they’ve been reminding us that it’s supposed to be fun, and that it’s all about the characters, and the story would most likely turn out to be one that normal viewers could process by casually watching the show, without having to turn to internet sleuths. I think that’s turned out to be the case, since the “did you notice…?” paintings weren’t just shown briefly in the background for eagle eyes to catch, but timed out to be emphasized exactly when story developments wanted you to notice them.

And the reveal of Warren’s surviving heir(s) could only have gone in a couple of ways and been satisfying. Evan via his mother was the most obvious one, but I also couldn’t think of a resolution for that which would fit into the tone of the series. (Of course, the series is being helmed by outstanding writers, who have already demonstrated that they’re more clever than I am). It would have to be a character that you’d recognize but hadn’t thought that much about, so Ruth was the right level of flying under the radar.

I realized that the funniest possible choice would’ve been Kathy the waitress. It would’ve made the episode’s final scenes a lot funnier, anyway, to hear the main characters, especially Tom, try to come up with justifications not to just kill her and be done with it.

It does make me wonder whether Widow’s Bay has been hiding an ace up their sleeve the whole season, because K Callan is a very funny actor, and she’s seemed charming but under-utilized the entire time. I just assumed — as I might have been supposed to — that her age required her to be funny but more subdued in this series. Now I’m wondering if maybe Ruth is entirely aware of the curse and her part in the blood line, and she’s been the one keeping the demonic forces at bay for so many years. Maybe she’s got surprises in store for Tom, who’s going to show up expecting a frail old woman.

I’m back to my original thought when I first recognized Callan1Mainly from Lois and Clark, where she played Martha Kent: you don’t cast her unless you’ve got plans for her.

Keeping to the idea that the series is character-based that happens to have a horror-mystery plot: after all the developments of the season, it did feel like the episode was returning to the equilibrium established in the beginning of the season. Tom Loftis being perpetually frustrated by an island full of stubborn weirdos who insist on doing things their own way. I liked the shaman being swept away by a tornado because he insisted on bringing his tube socks, and especially that he ran up to Tom yelling, “Wyck!” But my favorite was the return of lighthouse keeper Garrett. Having their roles reversed, and Garrett waving to him from the city hall window, was a fantastic payoff.

I haven’t been going too far into the speculative with Widow’s Bay, but I have been hearing many of the fan theories just by virtue of being on the internet. It is, after all, a little frustrating to be watching a series that seems to be saying “just relax and have fun with it,” but you’re enjoying it so much that you need to be engaging with other fans during the waits for the next episode. Even the less outlandish and complicated fan theories have always seemed a couple of steps ahead of my reading of the series, since they latch onto details that I’d just assumed were meant to be noticed only subconsciously to make more sense later.

(For instance: the painting of a child lost at sea, a comically dark image of the kind that’s everywhere on the island, which others noticed was actually a painting of a child being rescued while lost at sea).

But there’s one aspect of the island’s lore that nobody in the show seems to have considered, and none of the fan theories or podcasts or YouTube videos I’ve heard have mentioned. Everybody’s focused on the Warren family line, with the implied assumption that that was the origin of the curse on the island, and once Warren’s pact is broken, everything will return to some level of normal.

Which might just be a mis-read on my part, since it seems abundantly obvious that whatever evil entity is on the island, speaking to people through mushroom trips, was there before Warren arrived. The pact didn’t summon a demon; it was supposed to appease a demon. So the plan to end Warren’s bloodline and end the pact should make living on Widow’s Bay worse, not better. Not to mention setting up the premise of an indefinitely ongoing series.

Even assuming that the main plot idea of season one is that people born on the island can’t leave, there still seem to be dangling threads that don’t seem to have simple resolutions. The deaths that we’ve heard of happened soon after a person reached the mainline, and seemed to die of natural causes. The ones that we’ve been shown happened immediately on crossing into the “dead zone” around the island. Warren’s children lose their eyesight and develop black spots on their palms and faces. Evan’s mother suddenly realized she couldn’t see, forcing Tom to send the ferry back to the island in a panic.

So what are the “rules” of the pact, and the curse? Is it only Warren’s descendants who are immediately struck by it, not everyone born there who tries to leave, lending credence to the theory that Evan is actually the youngest and last member of Warren’s bloodline? Were the incidents that the reporter asked Tom about in the first episode even verified, or just rumors?

I saw an interview with Hiro Murai, Matthew Rhys, and Katie Dippold that took place around the broadcast of episode 4, but mentioned a few interesting things. One was the foreshadowing that Tom Loftis’s character takes a dark turn at the end of the season, and is changed afterwards. I’m happy to let the series surprise me, since they’ve proven that any direction they take it will be some of the best television, but I’m skeptical that they’ll take it too dark.

My prediction is pretty straightforward, and now that we finally know it’s an ongoing series, it seems heavily-to-the-point-of-obviously suggested throughout the entire season: Tom has been set up to be the next Richard Warren. He’s going to have to make a new pact with whatever entity is on the island, living up to his formerly-honorary title of Lord Protector.

He saw the office of mayor as a figurative curse, not believing in any of the local superstitions and trying to bring the island into the 21st century in order to make life better for people who didn’t like him very much (and vice versa). He was challenged by a local who accused him of being a coward unable to do what needs to be done. He gradually saw enough to convince him that the evils of Widow’s Bay were more than just superstition. He accidentally became one of the few people who have communicated with the evil. He met the first Lord Protector of the island, and he finally took an active role in trying to end the curse while still protecting someone he still didn’t like very much. It sure seems like his character has been set up as the unwilling hero — or at least anti-hero — of the island.

The other interesting quote from that interview was from Dippold, who said that season one of Widow’s Bay felt like a prologue for the rest of the series. It’s exciting to think of everything that could entail, a story that breaks out of a limited-series mindset and can go practically anywhere (as long as it doesn’t leave Widow’s Bay, presumably). And it’ll be difficult to wait patiently and let the brilliant people making this series keep delivering great stuff, without my wanting to second-guess or skip ahead.

1
Mainly from Lois and Clark, where she played Martha Kent

1 Mainly from Lois and Clark, where she played Martha Kent