If I had to use a single word to sum up my feelings on the ending of Widow’s Bay Season 1, it would probably be “vindicated”. With the help of an enthusiastic fanbase that obsessed over the show each week, we managed to predict almost all of the major turns in this brilliant finale, including confirmation of human sacrifice and the fact that Ruth wasn’t the last remaining descendant of Richard Warren after all. But while these are the big revelations of “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!”, they’re far from the only ones that the show has to offer, which is probably why Apple TV has renewed it for Season 2.
We’ll get into what hasn’t been answered elsewhere, but in the meantime, we have a bumper-length — still only 48 minutes, boo! — finale to break down, which, even though it didn’t yield very many surprises, was nonetheless executed with real aplomb and deserves due credit. While there might be a bit of disappointment in quite how much the show left unaddressed, given that early signs suggested it would be fully resolved in a single season, Widow’s Bay has been so good that it’s difficult to imagine anyone not relishing the idea of more of it.
Tom Commits to Killing Ruth
Picking up from where we left off, Tom really does intend to kill Ruth. He takes a moment to look up her medical records, hoping that she has some kind of underlying condition that’ll do it for him, but she’s in pretty robust condition for her age. The only medication she takes is oxycodone and diazepam, though crucially not together, so Tom deduces his method and heads over to her place, where she’s milling around on a treadmill being a sweet old lady.
Since it takes ages for Ruth’s homemade tea to steep, Tom has to wait around and enjoy a tour of the house, including Evan’s room, where there’s a rope ladder attached to the window which Ruth naively believes he requested in case of a fire. She shows Tom her old photo albums, which include a number of men — and some women — who apparently made a pass at her at one time or another, several of whom seem to have died in incredibly suspicious circumstances.
The Trolley Problem
Gently, Tom starts pushing Ruth on the trolley problem, the classic moral thought experiment that asks, in the event of a runaway trolley being about to kill five people, would you pull a lever to divert the trolley so that it only killed one person? It’s the needs of the many versus the needs of the few, utilitarianism versus deontology, and Tom is trying to lead Ruth down a path where she will willingly sacrifice herself for the greater good.
But she wouldn’t. Ruth lives her life according to a quote by Tennessee Williams, which she has in cross-stitch on her wall. I’ll reproduce it here in full, since it is rather lovely:
“The world is violent and mercurial–it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love–love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.”
Knowing that he isn’t going to be able to talk Ruth around, and seeing the brooch that Sarah gave to Frances, Tom reluctantly crushes up the pills and slips them into Ruth’s tea.
The Shelters and Tunnels Were For Human Sacrifices
While all this is going on, Wyck and Patricia are trying to keep the shelters under control. Provisions are limited, the rations are moldy, and the tourists are antsy, so it begins kicking off almost immediately. Through various sources, we begin to piece together what the shelters, tunnels, and creepy chairs were used for, starting with Dale finding a projector reel titled “For Them”, which is basically an orientation video on being an “offering” to whatever evil deity lives beneath the island.
In days gone by, Widow’s Bay had a formalised process for sacrificing inhabitants. One was due for each toll of the bell, and they were specifically not to be reassured since “They say it likes the taste.” So we now know for certain that there’s something which feeds on fear living beneath the island, and that people have been sacrificed to appease it all throughout Widow’s Bay’s history.
Dale’s hilarious reaction to this only exacerbates the chaos in the shelter, sending everyone into a baying frenzy which Wyck and Patricia struggle to contain. Patricia, having been confronted by Bechir over where Tom is, gives him a brief off-screen lowdown on what the mayor is up to, and Bechir, knowing that his wife, Chelle, is due to imminently give birth, decides to take matters into his own hands.
Ruth’s Secret Child
The big reveal of the finale is that Ruth isn’t Richard Warren’s last living descendant. Somewhat miraculously, she survives being drugged, although she is, admittedly, asleep for Matthew Rhys’s best bit of acting, when he recalls how Lauren tried to warn him about the island, and he naively laughed it off. Deep down, though, he knew; he knew the stroke wasn’t really a stroke, and he knew the dangers were real. And yet he still insisted on bringing tourists to the island, since he wanted more for Evan and himself. And he still does.
When it transpires that Ruth survived the poisoning, and he can hear chaos in the shelter over the radio, Tom heads downstairs with a pillow to finish Ruth off. But she chooses that moment to tell him about an affair she had with a married man when she was 40. She knew he was married, but he wouldn’t leave his wife for her, so when she fell pregnant, she hid it and gave the kid, a daughter, to someone else to raise. She watched from afar, though. And she got to see her grow up and fall in love — with Tom. Yes, Lauren was Ruth’s daughter, meaning that Evan is Richard Warren’s youngest descendant (“The pull-out method,” cautions Ruth, “doesn’t work”).
Tom is immediately, visibly thrown by this revelation. With no reason left to kill Ruth, he insists on getting her to a doctor, but at that moment Bechir walks in and shoots her in the head. He’s not willing to damn his own son with the island’s curse, but he, of course, doesn’t know the truth about Evan. When Tom tells him that Ruth wasn’t the last descendant, he refuses to reveal who is. Bechir rounds on him, but the storm suddenly stopping confuses them both. Ruth is also, miraculously, still alive.
Kenny’s Sacrifice
The storm has stopped on account of Kenny inadvertently being sacrificed to the island’s evil. This is thanks to Evan and his dumb friends Kelly and PJ, the latter of whom found a path to the tunnels through which to escape the shelter. This led them straight to the restraining chair under the Salty Whale, in front of the big metal doors. Kenny followed and found them and instructed them to leave, but after being sent away, PJ locked Kenny inside for a joke. Through the door, Evan heard Kenny screaming, followed by nothing but silence. Immediately, the storm stopped. After, Evan took a peek inside and saw nothing except the giant doors still open a crack.
The ending of Widow’s Bay Season 1 leaves plenty on the table. It doesn’t reveal Ruth’s fate, and it doesn’t clarify who knows about the curse, whether Chelle had her baby, or what anyone has decided to do. All we know is that Tom and Evan are still on the island, which has been badly damaged by the storm. As the finale closes out, the bell tolls eight times, and Tom nervously returns to the car.
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