Thank god Widow’s Bay is coming back for a second season because that cliffhanger ending would have left everyone on edge. Created by Katie Dippold, the final episode had Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) on a mission that he did not complete, leaving the fate of the cursed island in the balance.
The penultimate episode had revealed that Ruth Livingston (K Callan) was the last living descendant of the town founder Richard Warren. The finale revealed a more heartbreaking truth that Loftis will need more time to absorb. What happened in the final minutes of Widow’s Bay? We break it down. Warning: Major Spoilers ahead!
What does Tom learn from Ruth?
The tenth and final episode of the first season of is titled “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!” Written by creator Dippold, the finale is directed by Hiro Murai, who has helmed a majority of episodes this season. The entire town went into the emergency bunker to take shelter from the storm, except for one Widow’s Bay resident, Ruth. Inside, Rosemary (Dale Dickey) gave Tom, Wyck (Stephen Root), and Tom’s assistant Patricia (Katie O’Flynn) a breakdown of Warren’s (Hamish Linklater) genealogy, leading right back to Ruth.
The trio is left with the knowledge that to free themselves from the island’s curse, they have to eliminate Warren’s last living relative. Tom heads to Ruth house’s leaving Wyck and Patricia to take care of matters in the bunker. As he meets his octogenarian secretary, he discovers that eliminating her is not so easy. She has often babysat for his teenage son, Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick) and is very pleased to see he came to check on her in the middle of a storm.
Tom finds instructions on her medicine in the bathroom saying never to mix two of her pills. Under the pretext of giving her tea, the mayor drugs her drink, thinking it will finish her off. Instead, Ruth gets chatty and lets slip that she had a baby out of wedlock. She’s not the only descendant of Warren anymore.
What happens in the Widow’s Bay bunker?
Another employee of the mayor’s office, Dale (Jeff Hiller), accidentally finds some old videos that explain the sinister goings-on at Widow’s Bay. In one of the videos titled ‘For them’ find a man explaining in a bizarre PSA-style format that they have been chosen as an “offering.” The video tells them to accept their fate.
A second video is titled ‘For you’ in which the pact between the town and the mysterious entity is explained. The man says, “The island will make its needs known. One soul for every bell toll. You will be tempted to comfort them. Do not. Their fear is necessary. They say it likes the taste.” A freaked-out Dale goes to warn the others causing mayhem in the shelter.
Meanwhile, Evan and his friends escape and find some hidden passages behind the bunker. As the town custodian Kenny (Michael Malvesti) arrives later to get them to go back in, the teenagers accidentally lock Kenny in the torture room. Later, the screaming man suddenly disappears. Has a human sacrifice been made?
Who is the last living descendant of Richard Warren?
When Tom pushes Ruth about the identity of her secret baby, he learns a horrifying truth. The baby was his late wife, Lauren, who died a few years after giving birth to Evan. Tom’s son Evan is Warren’s last remaining descendant and the mayor has an impossible moral quandary ahead. When Sheriff Bechir Clemmons (Kevin Carroll) arrives to kill Ruth, Tom tries to help her but says he doesn’t know who the last descendant is. At the end of the episode, we’re still not sure if Ruth is alive after the bullet grazes the left side of her face.
By the apparent sacrifice of Kenny, the deadly storm ends. The series ends with Tom driving Evan home. He stops at a place by the ocean and dumps Ruth’s Warren family heirloom (a brooch) in the waters. Widow’s Bay’s final scene is Tom hearing the church bell toll eight times, indicating that the island needs eight more souls. What will happen when the show returns for Season 2? All 10 episodes of the series are now streaming on Apple TV.