Summary
Widow’s Bay remains expertly funny, highly dramatic, and deeply mysterious in its penultimate episode. With the identity of Richard Warren’s last living descendant revealed, the question now is what happens next.
As Widow’s Bay hurries towards its finale, it’s running out of mysteries to solve. We’ve been reliably told that Season 1 will complete the story, and Episode 9 takes a big step in that direction by identifying Richard Warren’s last remaining living descendant. The big question now is what that means for everyone else, especially Tom, who may or may not have decided to take the island’s future — and Evan’s safety — into his own hands.
Despite being titled “Emergency Shelter” and backdropped by a massive, mythical storm which morphs into a full-on tornado, the real focus of this episode is the genealogical reveal. We barely even see the storm, to be honest, and it only claims a single victim, but it’s very much lurking in the background, creating a sense of urgency and, perhaps importantly, bundling most of the cast into the same place. But an absurdly long scene of Rosemary laying out Richard Warren’s family tree — one of the funniest stretches of the season, and a long overdue chance for Dale Dickey to steal the show — is very much the centrepiece, and it’s the implications of that which will be carried forward into the finale, more so than the inclement weather.
It’s obvious from the very beginning. For the first time since Episode 6, we return to the past, to Betty Gilpin’s Sarah Wescott Warren, as she tries to escape the island with Richard’s children. It’s revealed that the surviving kid was Frances, who fell overboard and drifted back to shore, clutching a trunk (she’s the one that Sarah gave the brooch to). This proves to be highly important, as we’ll see.
In the present day, there’s a storm incoming. It’s a bad one, reminiscent of the great storm of 1783, as a townsperson warns Tom in ominous tones before Patricia hilariously closes the office door on him while he’s talking. But Tom has a decision to make. Patricia wants him to sound the siren and bundle everyone, even the tourists, into the storm shelters. He’s reluctant, since this kind of thing never happens at Martha’s Vineyard, but contact with the mainland has been lost and, if he doesn’t act, people are going to die.
In a huff, Tom rips the giant portrait in Ruth’s office from the wall in a fine bit of physical comedy that results in him being trapped beneath it. While he’s being squashed, Patricia notices that Frances Fisher, the woman in the painting, is missing a finger. Cross-referencing this detail with Sarah’s journal, she deduces that Frances Fisher was Frances Warren, Richard’s daughter, who lost a finger when her brother ran over it with a wagon wheel. When he’s finally able to wriggle from beneath the giant portrait, Tom solemnly realises that it gives them 400 years of ancestry to untangle, and finally sounds the siren.
The siren prevents Bechir and his wife, Chelle, from leaving the island. He’s going to take a boat, but Wyck convinces him it’ll be too dangerous, so the two of them are ushered, along with Evan and all the tourists, into the storm shelter beneath the Town Hall. Problematically, Chelle seems to be having contractions, but that’ll be a problem for the finale. The bigger issue in Widow’s Bay Episode 9 is that the generator goes out. The shelter’s emergency lights can only run on batteries for half an hour; then the shelter will be plunged into pitch darkness. The only person who might have a replacement starter is Garrett at the lighthouse, but the storm is messing with the radio signal, and he doesn’t have a phone. In a hilarious(ly dumb) sequence, Tom rushes out into the storm to make it to the lighthouse, gets there, and discovers that Garrett has cycled to the Town Hall with the starter. When he looks through the binoculars, he sees Garrett in the window where Tom started, and when Tom radioes him again, he tries to meet him back at the lighthouse.
By this point, a full-blown tornado has started up. Tom rushes back to the Town Hall and manages to get Garrett back inside, but he can’t save Todd the shaman — who still calls Tom “Wyck” after his mushroom trip — from getting swept up by the tornado. Inside, the lights in the shelter are flickering, but Wyck, who found Sarah’s journal along with the portrait, has put Rosemary to the task of figuring out who Warren’s descendant is. And she has a very long-winded explanation to give.
I can’t overstate how funny this is in real time. Rosemary crossing off various branches of the Warren family tree with a hoarse running commentary — “Dead baby, dead baby, lesbian” — is hysterical, especially with Patricia’s aghast reactions to Rosemary’s choice of language. But there’s also some pretty important information laid out here, so here are the essentials.
Frances Warren survived after falling overboard, was washed ashore, and was discovered by Barnabas Fisher on his way back from a whaling trip. Barnabas, a wealthy man, took pity on Frances and took her in, but when she reached 14, he started looking at her a little differently. They married — presumably by force — and after some miserable years, Barnabas passed on, leaving Frances with the whaling business and a son named Jonathan. There have been many relations since then, but they all trace down to a single living descendant: Miss Widow’s Bay 1959, Ruth Livingston, aka Tom’s forgetful assistant.
Ruth isn’t in the shelter; she has been trapped at home during the storm. Immediately, and much to Patricia’s horror, Tom and Wyck debate murdering her to finally end the curse and save the rest of the town. She’s old, after all, and has lived a good life without ever marrying or having children. By all accounts, she has no knowledge of her bloodline or its importance. Tom’s job is to look out for the needs of the many, and if that means killing an elderly lady, then so be it. A frantic call from Mitch saying, I think, “It’s going,” seems to seal the deal. The episode ends with Tom heading out into the storm, presumably to find Ruth.
