Widow's Bay
Credit: Apple
I can now confidently say that Widow’s Bay is the best new TV show of 2026, and it’s going to be a difficult one to top. Apple TV’s latest horror-comedy series is near-perfect from start to finish, and the Season 1 finale seals the deal. It also sets up Season 2 in ways that are at once intriguing and quite clever.
The finale focuses on two largely separate storylines. The townsfolk and tourists have all made their way to the island’s storm shelter, where Wyck (Stephen Root) and Patricia (Katie O’Flynn) try to keep everyone calm. They almost succeed at this until Dale (Jeff Hiller) stumbles on some very creepy old film reels revealing an old Widow’s Bay tradition: Human sacrifice in order to appease the island’s macabre hunger. He bursts out of the room he was in, just as everyone calms down (and not long after the power has gone out) and screams at everyone to run. “This place is a death trap!” Chaos ensues. More on all that in a moment.
The second storyline follows the mayor, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) as he pays a visit to his secretary’s home. Ruth (K Callan) we learned last week, thanks to Rosemary’s (Dale Dickey) genealogy skills, is the last known living descendent of town founder, Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater). Once she dies, the curse will be lifted. Tom decides to speed things along.
This entire segment is brilliant. Ruth, much to Tom’s dismay, is not only in great health – she springs up the stairs like a woman in her 20s – she’s also a really good person with a really rich, full life. He was hoping she was frail and sickly so that killing her would be less damning. I found myself hoping he wouldn’t go through with it, but he grinds up her pills and puts them in her tea (tea that requires 27 minutes of steep-time). Half a cup down, Ruth passes out and Tom thinks she’s dead but she wakes back up and as they talk again, she tells him a secret she’s kept for decades: She was pregnant once. She hid her pregnancy and gave the baby to its father to raise as one of his own.
Widow's Bay
Credit: Apple TV
Now, many of us had theories that Ruth was not, in fact, the last descendent. Indeed, the prevailing theory was exactly what turned out to be the case, and I think it’s to the show’s credit that people were able to come up with this theory rather than have it be a total surprise. Ruth was the “secret mother” of Tom’s late wife, which makes her the “secret” grandmother of Tom’s son, Evan (Kingston Rumi). That means that Evan is, in fact, the last descendent of Richard Warren. Not only will Tom not kill his own son, he will have to protect him from anyone who discovers this secret.
That could be sheriff Bechir (Kevin Carroll) at this point. One of the big twists in the finale was Bechir showing up at Ruth’s house, not to stop Tom from killing Ruth but to make sure she was dead. Just as Tom is giving Ruth a hug and telling her he needs to get her to a doctor, Bechir shows up and shoots her. She isn’t dead, though we think she is at first. Bechir’s wife, Chelle (Sipiwe Moyo) is pregnant and about to have her baby, and Bechir is determined to get her off the island before that happens (and with good reason, though I find both him and Tom’s attempts to murder an old lady rather in poor taste!)
When the storm stops, everyone is confused. And this is where the real brilliance of this episode comes into play. We, the audience, understand perfectly what’s happened. The characters, however, are all operating on limited information and separate experiences.
Widow's Bay
Credit: Apple TV
Only Dale has seen the creepy human sacrifice reels that explain, rather explicitly (and cheerfully) that when the church bells toll, the number of times they toll must be met with an equal number of human sacrifices. The bells tolled nine times earlier in the season. At the end of the Season 1 finale they toll eight times. Eight more sacrifices are required before the island sleeps. That’s a notably different outcome than breaking the curse, but apparently it’s what the Widow’s Bay townsfolk have been doing for the past couple centuries.
This is almost certainly what Reverend Bryce (Toby Huss) learned when the bells first tolled and he began reading through his notes. After all, the information rattled him so much he hanged himself and tried to burn and destroy whatever information he’d found. He wanted to stop the human sacrifices.
Meanwhile, only Evan and his friends have any inkling about what happened to Ken (Michael Malvesti) who finds them in the tunnels below the shelter. They’ve come to the deeply unsettling room with the torture chair and the scary doors. Ken, the custodian who talks to trash cans, tells them to get back to to the shelter and when they leave, PJ shuts the door and traps him inside. He means it as a joke, but the doors lock from both sides. Ken starts shouting about something happening, terrified, and PJ (Beck Nolan) and Kelly (Kylie McNeill) run away.
Evan stays and tries to open the door, but something bad happens on the other side. When the door opens, Ken is gone. The storm stops. The first human sacrifice was just unwittingly made by PJ who, as Tom says earlier in the season, is a terrible person.
So now we have all these tidbits of information that the group hasn’t put together yet. Dale knows about the sacrifices but has no real knowledge about the rest of the curse. Evan knows something happened in that room with Ken, but also has no real understanding of the curse or the history of human sacrifice. Wyck and Patricia basically missed all of this, and they also don’t know what only Tom and Ruth know: That Evan is the last descendent of Richard Warren (though Ruth doesn’t know that this is a part of a generational curse).
When Season 2 begins, none of the characters understand why the storm stopped. We understand that one of nine sacrifices was just made, but they don’t. This means the curse will continue and the show can (hopefully) return to fun horror pastiche “monster of the week” type episodes, while also continuing the main narrative about the curse itself and how to break it once and for all.
It’s remarkable to me how well the show has balanced this type of storytelling so far. It’s hilarious, terrifying and at times genuinely moving. The monster of the week episodes kept things entertaining while flowing naturally into the larger story about Richard Warren and his bargain. The performances are, across the board, among the best of the year and both Matthew Rhys and Kate O’Flynn deserve Emmy nods, as does the show itself (and its many pieces, from original score to cinematography to writing and direction).
Can you say the same for Martha’s Vineyard? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Widow's Bay
Credit: Apple TV
Scattered Thoughts:
What did you think of the finale and Season 1 of Widow’s Bay? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
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