We knew Apple TV’s supremely creepy horror comedy “Widow’s Bay” would throw one more twist at us in Wednesday’s season finale — but we didn’t expect it to be this big of a gut-punch.
As the finale opens, the storm rages on, and Tom is determined to take out his kindly old secretary Ruth to end the island’s curse once and for all after Rosemary’s genealogy pointed to Ruth as the last living descendant of town founder Richard Warren. He looks through Ruth’s medical file hoping for an easy way out (“C’mon cancer, cancer, cancer”), but he just finds a note warning her not to take her hydrocodone and diazepam medications together. Hmmm. He heads over to Ruth’s house in the storm and walks inside to hear her having difficulty breathing… but the old gal is just working out on her treadmill. (Check out how she zipped up those stairs!) “You came to take me to the shelter!” she exclaims, but he tells her they should actually hunker down and wait out the storm there.
Back at the shelter, Patricia realizes they don’t have enough supplies for the number of people down there, and Bechir the sheriff takes his pregnant wife Chelle to see the doctor, who tells him the baby is coming tonight. She isn’t due for another seven weeks, though, Bechir protests. At Ruth’s, she offers Tom a cup of tea as he admires her very full calendar on the fridge. “I keep active,” she chirps as she offers him two choices from her herb garden: invigorating peppermint or soothing chamomile and lavender. He chooses the soothing option, until Ruth tells him it takes 27 minutes to steep. (The peppermint takes three.) He tries to change his order, but Ruth already started brewing: “I’m not gonna waste herbs, Tom.” Chamomile it is!
The tourists are getting restless
At the shelter, Patricia hands out blankets and finds an old note in them that says, “If you can read this, I’m already dead.” (Yipes.) She sends Dale off to find something to distract everyone, and he explores a side room with an empty gun rack and a bunch of dusty film canisters in it. He loads one film into the projector and plays it, with a man addressing the camera: “So, you’re an offering.” It seems to be a PSA for people preparing for human sacrifice: “Accept your fate and take pride… Widow’s Bay thanks you.” Meanwhile, Tom’s son Evan and his delinquent friends are looking for trouble and climb down a ladder that leads down a spooky passageway. What could go wrong?
Ruth shows Tom her old photo album, pointing to her old boyfriend Alfred: “He got bit by an animal and became that animal.” (!) Then she remembers her father, who built the house they’re sitting in, but “something got Daddy in the lake.” (!!) She’s unfazed by the island’s dark history, saying that on Widow’s Bay, “we learn to weather the storms.” Tom asks what if they could do something to change it, presenting her with the classic trolley problem: Do you let a runaway trolley kill a bunch of people, or do you throw a lever so it just hits one person? Ruth says she wouldn’t throw the lever: “You can’t control the bad things that happen in life, Tom.” (He also notices a hummingbird brooch in her collection; she calls it a “family heirloom.”) When the tea is ready, Tom offers to go get it… and crushes up a potentially lethal mix of Ruth’s medications into her cup before handing it to her to take a sip.
Does the curse end here?
While the tourists grumble about moldy food rations, Bechir’s wife starts having contractions, and Rosemary gets him some water for her. She also lets it slip that she told Tom about Richard Warren’s lineage before he ran off. Hearing that, Bechir tells his wife he’ll be back and heads out into the storm. While Ruth looks through old photos, Tom beats himself up for not listening to his wife about the island’s curse, and for bringing tourists here even though he knew it was cursed. He looks over and sees Ruth slumped over, and he apologizes to her: “I’m sorry. But I had to make it right.” But then she snaps awake again and launches back into more family stories. Evan and his friends make their way to the basement with the electric chair, and Dale watches more film strips of people with bags over their heads being led in chains, with a narrator saying “their fear is necessary. They say it likes the taste.” Dale emerges and screams: “This place is a death trap! Run! Run for your lives!”
The shelter devolves into screaming and chaos, while Tom walks up to a dozing Ruth with a pillow in hand, planning to suffocate her. But she wakes up long enough to admit she once had an affair with a married man… and a secret kid that she gave away. She watched the little girl grow up from afar, she recalls, “and I got to watch her fall in love with you, Tom.” Her secret child was Tom’s late wife Lauren! Which means his son Evan is a descendant of Richard Warren! He sobs at the realization and then rushes to get Ruth to a doctor — but then he sees something and shouts “No!” before we hear a gunshot. It’s Bechir, and he shot Ruth: “I won’t damn my child.”
Tom yells at him that Ruth isn’t the last descendant — but he won’t tell Bechir who that last descendant is. And while Evan and his friends are goofing around with the electric chair, a guy named Kenny comes in to shoo them away, and Evan’s friend PJ locks him inside the room with the electric chair. Evan tries to open the door, but he can’t, and Kenny ominously says, “Something’s happening”… and then we hear Kenny scream like he’s dying. Suddenly, the storm stops, and Tom and Bechir try to get Ruth (still clinging to life, somehow) to a doctor. The tourists all breathe a sigh of relief as Wyck and Patricia lead them out of the shelter, with her deciding: “He must’ve done it.” Evan finally gets the door open and finds no sign of Kenny — just a pair of storm doors mysteriously ajar and a flashlight on the ground.
The sun rises on a calm new day, and Tom gazes out at the bay, tossing the hummingbird brooch into it. He hears the bells tolling (we counted eight times) as he rejoins Evan in his car and drives away.
Whoa… how’d you like that finale, “Widow’s Bay” fans? Give the finale — and Season 1 as a whole — a grade in our polls (yes, Apple TV has renewed it for Season 2), and hit the comments to share your thoughts and theories!
