Welcome to Widow’s Bay, see you next year!

Spoilers for Widow’s Bay season 1

There are hungry places in the world; places that devour, yet humanity cannot resist infringing upon the maw of something dark and terrible we do not understand. It is summer, people will insist on swimming in Lake Lanier. Every spring, thousands line up to climb Mount Everest. You’ll be fine, hubris whispers, it won’t get you. Curses aren’t real. You’re the special one who will make it. The hungry place merely waits, jaws wide, assured of its next meal. Humans will always tread where we are not wanted. The cycle will perpetuate, because humanity never changes. Anyway, welcome to Widow’s Bay! Everything here is totally normal and fine!

Widow’s Bay finished its first season on Apple TV+ yesterday, capping off an extraordinary run of ten perfect episodes. Created by Katie Dippold and with half the episodes directed by Hiro Murai, Widow’s Bay is, technically, a sitcom about a kooky island off the coast of Massachusetts. The hangdog mayor, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys, absolutely superb), is deeply unpopular and only won the election because no one opposed him. But he dreams of revitalizing the island and turning it into “the next Martha’s Vineyard”, and he does. A well-placed article in the New York Times brings droves of tourists…just in time for the island’s reaping season.

Something is wrong with Widow’s Bay, and Tom, a one-time summer resident converted into a year-rounder, refuses to see it. But local fisherman Wyck (Stephen Root) is there to haunt Tom and remind him of the doom coming for them all. Meanwhile, Tom’s teenaged son, Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick), is constantly in trouble and openly disrespecting and defying his father. There is a sense from the beginning that Tom has no control over anything in his life, and he could not be more ill-suited for what is happening on the island just as the summer season kicks off.

Widow’s Bay is a parlor trick of a TV show, balancing multiple tones and significant shifts in style without missing a beat. The cast is unbelievably good, absolutely stacked with best-of-the-best character actors, many of whom wait patiently on the sidelines until their One Big Scene shows why they were cast in this series. (The only exception is Jeff Hiller, who is not best utilized this season but is poised to do more in season two.) But the show is anchored by Matthew Rhys, Stephen Root, and Kate O’Flynn as Patricia, a local woman haunted by things that happened in high school. They carry the show across its ever-shifting tonal landscape with grounded performances that anchor the island’s crazy in real human emotions.

The series is broadly described as a horror-comedy, funny enough to balance the scares, most of which are situational and subtle, though there are some killer jump scares. Everything stems from the mystery of the island. Is it cursed? Is it a hellmouth? Is there an ancient entity stalking it? Something is going on, and while the show lays a lot of narrative track, not every question is resolved. But one thing is clear: Widow’s Bay is a hungry place. Humans never should have settled there.

Some questions do get answered, though, including the mysterious ringing church bells. It seems that whenever the bell tolls, the islanders must perform human sacrifices, numbered to match the chiming of the bells. This season, the bell tolled nine times, and nine people die across the season. In the finale episode, the bell begins tolling again. The mystery of Richard Warren is also answered, as Evan Loftis is revealed to be his last living descendant. The island’s curse cannot be broken until Evan is dead, but obviously Tom is not going to kill his son. (Not so obviously, he might well kill others!)

But at heart, Widow’s Bay is a small town where people never leave, and so no one can ever change. Patricia can never redefine herself, surrounded by her former classmates as she is. Tom will always be known as a coward because he was one as a teen. Wyck will always be the town drunk, even if he gets sober. There is almost zero motivation to attempt to do anything in Widow’s Bay, because everyone’s identity is hermetically sealed within the one thing everybody knows about you. The show is a microcosm of society boiled down to one essential question: What is the purpose of life, when life has no purpose?

When you can never leave your hometown or move on from your high school identity, when what you can accomplish is limited by your tiny town’s failing resources and you cannot experience anything of the world beyond your sh-tty town, what is your purpose? At first, it’s funny that the people of Widow’s Bay seem so indifferent and checked out, but then it becomes increasingly sad as more of the town’s lore consolidates. People are just going through the motions of life with no real inspiration or caring because what’s the point of it all, anyway? They’re stuck, nothing they do will change that.

As cynical and nihilistic as that may seem, Widow’s Bay counters its own central premise with Ruth (K Callan), a kindly elderly woman who works at town hall. Despite being a childless spinster with a very boring life, Ruth seems fulfilled in a way no one else in Widow’s Bay is. In between insane lore drops (“We were in love, but then he got bit by an animal and turned into that animal” – I’m sorry, WHAT? Say more now!) Ruth reveals the purpose in a seemingly purposeless life: love.    She has cross-stitched a Tennessee Williams quote: “We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.” 

Widow’s Bay is the perpetually burning building, and the only thing that gives life there meaning is love. But people will do terrible things in the name of love, too, and Tom does terrible things. He brings tourists to an island he knows is hungry, he contemplates murder, he keeps Bechir (Kevin Carroll), the sheriff, on the island when he knows the risk to Bechir’s unborn child—to be born in Widow’s Bay is to be trapped forever in Widow’s Bay. Tom is selfish and weak and cowardly, but he also loves. And it is through love that he finds courage and, maybe, a way to save the island. Or not, those are season two problems.

Widow’s Bay is an incredible season of television, funny and scary and heartfelt and mysterious. Come for the Stephen King-style lore crammed into a Mike Schur sitcom (Katie Dippold is, in fact, an alum of Parks & Rec), stay for Matthew Rhys’s panicked little screams, Stephen Root singing sea shanties, and Kate O’Flynn’s final girl turn. Just don’t stay too long. Widow’s Bay is a hungry place, and its next meal is always just around the corner. It might even be you.

Widow’s Bay is now streaming all episodes on Apple TV+.