‘Widow’s Bay’ Finale Recap: Interview with Matthew Rhys

SPOILER ALERT: The following article details the plot of “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!”, the season 1 finale of “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.

The curse came from within the house.

During the 10-episode first season of “Widow’s Bay,” the horror-comedy hybrid that has become a breakout hit for Apple TV, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) went from denying that there was anything wrong with the eponymous city he leads as mayor to frantically searching for a solution to the increasingly undeniable chaos. The island village is plagued by sea witches, serial killers, creepy clowns and other evils that disrupt Tom’s dream of turning Widow’s Bay into a Martha’s Vineyard-esque tourist destination. Together with his assistant Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) and true believer Wyck (Stephen Root), Tom discovers that the aberrant atmosphere stems from a pact between town founder Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater) and the demonic force that inhabits the island. The covenant – including tricky terms like those born on the island cannot leave on pain of death – won’t end until Warren’s bloodline does too.

For most of the season’s final episode, “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!”, Tom believes that Warren’s last living descendant is Tom’s kind-hearted, elderly secretary Ruth (K Callan). While most everyone else in Widow’s Bay shelters from a storm that wreaks havoc and even sucks some of the residents into the air, Tom heads to Ruth’s house and faces a terrible moral dilemma. Ruth doesn’t help matters by making him tea and showing off terribly full calendar or insist that they do not pull the handle in the famous Trolley Problem scenariowhich she does not know her guest is doing at that moment.

Lucky for Ruth and unlucky for pretty much everyone else, especially Tom, her is not the end of Richard Warren’s bloodline. To Tom’s obvious horror, as embodied by the ever-capable Rhys, Ruth reveals that she had a secret child from an adulterous affair – and that child grew up to be Tom’s late wife, the mother of their son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick). Tom’s North Star has kept Evan safe all season; the whole point of attracting tourism to Widow’s Bay was to bring the world to Evan, rather than rolling the dice by sending Evan into the world.

Ultimately, Sheriff Bechir (Kevin Carroll) does what Tom cannot bring himself to do and shoots Ruth (apparently non-fatally) in the name of his own newborn child. But his and Tom’s interests no longer align: Tom reveals that Ruth is not the Last Descendant, but keeps Evan’s true identity secret for obvious, if arguably selfish, reasons. In the closing moments of the season, the last we’ll spend on the island until a recently announced Season 2, the storm has subsided, but Tom hears church bells that serve as a reminder that the Covenant is still in effect as Evan waits in the car.

“I just love the fact that it’s rooted in something that’s so universal and so deep and something relatable,” says Rhys Variety of “Widow’s Bay,” which the actor co-produced with creator Katie Dippold and lead director Hiro Murai. “You can understand that motivation, as opposed to running from a monster.” Read on for our full conversation, including what Rhys hopes to see in season 2 and the scene that almost broke him.